I suspect the forwarded thread below is grist for this mailing list's mill. Greg mistakenly thought that http://xkcd.com/1357/ was a slam against http://freethoughtblogs.com/ , a rather obnoxious and narrowminded and insular tribe of Internet ideologues. (Like them, Greg is a militant atheist, but they're too groupthink-oriented for him.) Discussion followed. (For whatever it's worth, if anything, I am a non-religious person but see no reason to make a cause of it.) ----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> ----- Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2014 14:51:08 -0700 From: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> To: skeptic@lists.johnshopkins.edu Subject: Re: Fwd: free speech Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already. Quoting greg bart (cyclopasaurus@gmail.com):

On (so-called) Freethoughtblogs....

'Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.' - A.J. Liebling. Or, as an old joke in the open source software world puts it, information doesn't want to be free; it wants to be $6.99. But, of course, you mean the other (fundamentally different, yet subtly related) sense of 'free'. Blogs are an excellent place for asshats to be asshats without any risk of them hurting the real world. You cited an excellent case in point.

It's got everything to do with tribal gangsterism, however.

I'll agree with that. FWIW. ;-> And yet, also:

So, exactly when did it become popular, or even considered a good idea, for supposed "free thinkers" to openly mock the principle of "free speech"?

The right to speak doesn't guarantee the right to be taken seriously by any specific others, let alone to require any specific others either to listen or to give you a stump to speak from. Which is, I believe, Randall Monroe's point on XKCD. Or, as the old saying goes, if you want a friend, get a dog. ----- End forwarded message ----- ----- Forwarded message from greg bart <cyclopasaurus@gmail.com> ----- Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2014 22:14:17 -0700 From: greg bart <cyclopasaurus@gmail.com> To: skeptic <skeptic@lists.johnshopkins.edu> Subject: Re: Fwd: free speech On Fri, Apr 18, 2014 at 2:51 PM, Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> wrote:

The right to speak doesn't guarantee the right to be taken seriously by any specific others, let alone to require any specific others either to listen or to give you a stump to speak from. Which is, I believe, Randall Monroe's point on XKCD.

Well of course that's true, there certainly could never *be* such a right since that would be equally tyrannical, not to mention hopelessly unworkable. The problem is, this notion is being used to silence perfectly reasonable discussion for dogmatic or other just plain bad purposes, which is the last thing supposed "critical thinkers" should be doing. I hope that fine comic hasn't fallen under the spell of that nutty bunch. It would be a real tragedy. gj ----- End forwarded message ----- ----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> ----- Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2014 10:02:18 -0700 From: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> To: skeptic@lists.johnshopkins.edu Subject: Re: Fwd: free speech Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already. Quoting greg bart (cyclopasaurus@gmail.com):

I hope that fine comic hasn't fallen under the spell of that nutty bunch. It would be a real tragedy.

I very much doubt Randall Munroe has even heard of them. As it turns out, militant atheists tend to get ignored by just about everyone including the conventional non-religious. I suspect he has in mind more-noticed matters such as Brendan Eich's brief recent stint as Mozilla Corporation CEO and (more to the point) a vast number of people on the Internet claiming to be oppressed merely because others aren't interested in hearing them or promoting their messages. ----- End forwarded message ----- ----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> ----- Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2014 11:01:20 -0700 From: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> To: skeptic@lists.johnshopkins.edu Subject: Re: Fwd: free speech Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already. I wrote:

I very much doubt Randall Munroe has even heard of them. As it turns out, militant atheists tend to get ignored by just about everyone including the conventional non-religious.

I suspect he has in mind more-noticed matters such as Brendan Eich's brief recent stint as Mozilla Corporation CEO and (more to the point) a vast number of people on the Internet claiming to be oppressed merely because others aren't interested in hearing them or promoting their messages.

Why Eich? Because of this stuff: http://blogs.seattletimes.com/northwestvoices/2014/04/11/mozilla-the-right-t... http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/04/04/mozilla_s_anti_gay_ceo_and_con... A repeated cry in conservative and libertarian circles over anti-gay Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich’s resignation is that the company is somehow trampling Eich's free speech rights. Eich, as you've surely heard, donated $1,000 in 2008 to California's Proposition 8 campaign, which successfully outlawed gay marriage in that state before getting shot down by the courts. It's true that, because of this donation, Mozilla's leaders and board members pressured Eich to resign. But it's absurd and hypocritical to claim that this pressure constituted an infringement of Eich's legal rights. [...] FWIW, I'm conflicted about Mozilla Corporation having (probably) invited Eich's resignation. Obviously, I was in the opposite camp on California Proposition 8, at the time it was on the ballot -- which was six years ago and a whole (locally) obsolete mindset away. Moreover, I donated money towards its defeat, so my name is on the same Fair Political Practices Commission roll as Eich's, except in the 'money for no' column. At the same time, I would like to imagine that corporate Boards of Directors tend to make personnel decisions primarily based on the track record of those people in relevant business conduct rather than on their private lives in their spare time. I would think less of a corporation that wouldn't hire me _primarily_ because I donated money against Prop. 8, and moral consistency requires me to have the same attitude towards such a decision (apparently) taken concerning Eich. Had I been on the Board, I'd ponder: Is there any reason to think Eich as CEO would fail to implement company equal-rights policies and obey anti-discrimination laws and regulations? Does Eich have any record of poor relations with gay or other co-workers and (especially) direct reports? The account I hear - albeit not with certainty - is that the answer is 'no' to both questions, that Eich had a long and fine record as a manager and co-worker, and that his personal convictions were kept as part of his personal life. It bothers me when we are not permitted to keep our business and personal lives separate, merely because someone is able to dig up material from the latter and gratuitously make trouble for us in the former, in the form of a conjured-up Internet outrage-shitstorm. On the gripping hand[0], as Munroe points out by implication, Eich's guaranteed freedoms do not include freedom from consequence, and he had _no_ entitlement to being liked by the Board of Directors in the face of adverse publicity. And, much as I might think people should bury the hatchet over a dead (in California) political cause and a personal donation made _six years ago_, I have to admit holding a 45-year grudge, myself (as the beam in mine own eye). And Mozilla Corporation is a private for-profit[1] corporation, so, strictly speaking, its personnel decisions are an internal matter and not a proper matter for public controversy at all. (Said Internet outrage-shitstorm made it so, and I'm tired of being what's important by either amateur or professional trolls.) Eich will, I'm sure, come out fine. The real damage was to Mozilla Corporation, which I _do_ care about (Firefox, Thunderbird, etc.), and now has suffered mass resignations from its Board. Remaining Board members will have to deal with employees and the public suspecting that the Board will tend to make poorly thought-out decisions, have NO reasonable plan to defend and implement them, and will be weak and indecisive in the face of any obstacle. I.e., Eich could have been acceptable to all reasonable people with a bit of competent handling of the controversy rather than just letting it blow up and having no plan. On the fourth hand, Eich invented JavaScript, so he can Die In A Fire, as far as I'm concerned. ;-> [0] http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/O/on-the-gripping-hand.html [1] It's wholly owned by Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit founded in 2003 by now-defunct Netscape Corporation to lead open-source software projects. ----- End forwarded message -----gg