Kindly Inquisitors The New Attacks On Free Thought

What Hacker News says

1. coryfkleinJan 2021
   It's the practical erosion of Free Speech. Liberal (small "l" liberal) democracy and liberal science thrives on members:

   1. Being willing to admit they may be wrong

   2. Having access to a diverse information diet

   But the past two decades have shown erosion of not only legal Free Speech, but practical free speech:

   * Whereas previously they were just ignored (or even rebutted), today employees, students, and professors are all punished administratively for saying something that contradicts the narrative of the predominant members, or that may be offensive to someone. "If the federal government won't do it, let's restrict free speech on the ground-level."

   * It is difficult to broaden your information diet, even intentionally. The platforms of yore that provided a place for free debate are empty, with everyone having migrated to social media where they can form disjoint sets defined by their ideology. Ever try having a dialectic on Twitter with someone of an opposing ideology? Haha, good luck.

   * Expanding on ^, folks that aren't actively seeking diversity of thought have no natural avenue of exposure to information that contradicts their ideology. Whatever information delivery mechanism they choose today is, by default, going to agree with them.

   * All of the above results in: staunchly maintaining your correctness in the face of opposition is rewarded far more strongly than admitting the possibility of wrongness

   * Online radicalization makes in-person dialogue even harder; there are fewer and fewer opportunities for two moderates to debate when the possible participants are further across the spectrum than ever

   Although restricting offensive speech has the upfront benefit of not hurting our iddly-widdly-fweelings, this is the price we pay for abandoning free speech.

   For further reading, I recommend Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought [0]

   [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/703086.Kindly_Inquisitor...

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2. dubfanDec 2014
   Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought, by Jonathan Rauch (http://www.amazon.com/Kindly-Inquisitors-Attacks-Thought-Exp...)

   I picked this book up shortly after the Brendan Eich incident earlier this year. This book was written over 20 years ago but it could very well have been written yesterday. It lays out an excellent argument about why all free speech, even hateful speech, much be unrestricted. It's also very good at rebutting what Rauch calls the "humanitarian" attack on free speech, which seems to be the preferred method of attack in the last few years (in Western countries anyway). Perhaps saying that it "changed my life" is an overstatement as I've always held the belief that unrestricted free speech is the ultimate freedom, but it's allowed me to express exactly why I believe that way.

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3. nemo44xAug 2020
   “ His 1993 book Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought (published by the University of Chicago Press; expanded in 2013) defends free speech and robust criticism, even when it is racist or sexist and even when it hurts.”

   From the authors Website. Simple to Google - it has been reprinted Ted countless times and is very popular since being published in the early/mid 1990’s.

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4. therealdrag0Oct 2014
   A related thesis can be found in: 'Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought' by Jonathan Rauch.

   Which has actually been sitting on my to-read list for a while. Has anyone read this?

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