> No, because any world in which such a trade was acceptable is not a just or fair world that I would want to live in. You have to reason at multiple levels.
But in the same way that the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you, the universe is also under no obligation to be just or fair to you; it simply exists. One of the primary issues here is that all meaning is subjective, and therefore all value judgments are subjective. People are not fungible. You would certainly save twelve of your closest friends and family if it meant the death of a complete stranger, but we could guess that the complete stranger's husband would pick his wife over what appears to him to be twelve random names on a list. If that man gets to make the choice, and he makes it, it was a fair and equitable choice for him, but unfair and unjust to you. That is the nature of our universe, whether we accept it or not. Imbalance exists because all meaning is subjective. This consequence holds even if the subjectivity is only marginally variable.
And because meaning is subjective, and therefore all value judgments are subjective, life itself has no inherent value, except for the meaning and value we each assign to it. Whatever our differences in opinion, this is indisputably the case. The inherent objective value of any given life is precisely zero United States dollars (and the same is true of those dollars). This is a really really big hurdle, and I'd venture an estimation that most people in fact go all the way to their grave believing the opposite, or at least believing that the opposite "should be" true (hint: words like "should be" are the language of value judgments and therefore in the realm of the subjective).
It is at its core primarily an issue of control, and illusions of control, and the complications arising from this. Control -- real control -- does not extend beyond the boundary of your mind. Most people go through life without truly grokking what control means, what it looks like, where it exists, and where it does not exist. It follows then that because of this ignorance, most people do not have control of their own minds. And being only human, we project so much of ourselves and our thoughts onto our perceptions of the universe, that we can fool ourselves easily with illusions of control.
I think this is where most criticism of free speech is rooted: Most people are unable to control their own minds, their own thoughts, because they don't understand the nature of control, and therefore they are subjected to literal mind control by the external forces creating the storm of words, ideas, internet memes, gossip, propaganda, tweets, comments, et cetera, coming in from all directions. And so it's a simple matter of imagining that everyone else is also powerless against this torrent, such that people need to be protected from "dangerous" ideas and speech.
But in the same way that the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you, the universe is also under no obligation to be just or fair to you; it simply exists. One of the primary issues here is that all meaning is subjective, and therefore all value judgments are subjective. People are not fungible. You would certainly save twelve of your closest friends and family if it meant the death of a complete stranger, but we could guess that the complete stranger's husband would pick his wife over what appears to him to be twelve random names on a list. If that man gets to make the choice, and he makes it, it was a fair and equitable choice for him, but unfair and unjust to you. That is the nature of our universe, whether we accept it or not. Imbalance exists because all meaning is subjective. This consequence holds even if the subjectivity is only marginally variable.
And because meaning is subjective, and therefore all value judgments are subjective, life itself has no inherent value, except for the meaning and value we each assign to it. Whatever our differences in opinion, this is indisputably the case. The inherent objective value of any given life is precisely zero United States dollars (and the same is true of those dollars). This is a really really big hurdle, and I'd venture an estimation that most people in fact go all the way to their grave believing the opposite, or at least believing that the opposite "should be" true (hint: words like "should be" are the language of value judgments and therefore in the realm of the subjective).
It is at its core primarily an issue of control, and illusions of control, and the complications arising from this. Control -- real control -- does not extend beyond the boundary of your mind. Most people go through life without truly grokking what control means, what it looks like, where it exists, and where it does not exist. It follows then that because of this ignorance, most people do not have control of their own minds. And being only human, we project so much of ourselves and our thoughts onto our perceptions of the universe, that we can fool ourselves easily with illusions of control.
I think this is where most criticism of free speech is rooted: Most people are unable to control their own minds, their own thoughts, because they don't understand the nature of control, and therefore they are subjected to literal mind control by the external forces creating the storm of words, ideas, internet memes, gossip, propaganda, tweets, comments, et cetera, coming in from all directions. And so it's a simple matter of imagining that everyone else is also powerless against this torrent, such that people need to be protected from "dangerous" ideas and speech.