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My experience is that it is always important to criticize free speech absolutism, especially when people behave as if it were an atemporal concept. In reality, most of the world for most of the time has had various compromises between protecting individuals and society on one hand and free speech on the other.

That said, I think your take is also empirically supported. There is this [1] very interesting study which comes to the same conclusion. It uses broadcast range of radio towers to do a quantitative analysis on the potential effects and finds few. Interestingly enough, I have seen other studies with similar designs that do show persistent effects of exposure to broadcasts, so I’m favorable to the idea that this one really is a valid null finding.

[1] https://www.ushmm.org/m/pdfs/20100423-atrauss-rtlm-radio-hat...



most of the world for most of time had slavery. that doesnt mean we should have slavery now. your whole first paragraph is bunk.


Today's world have people working for 8 hours a day (minimum) / 5 days a week while making little to no progress on their overall livelihood, and at the same time people (read - the privileged) have more "consumables" yet no one is ever truly happy anymore, resulting in insane concentrations of wealth and power in the hands of a few.

Also, the past isn't just defined by slavery. There are plenty of examples we can learn from the people before us.




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