I think this view sucks. A core part of being a functioning human being is being able to interact with others whose views differ from your own.
The core problem is the ostracization of opinion on social media. It also doesn't play very well when social isolation has had other consequences, such as the proliferation of viruses and the broad economic impact. Plus, COVID is now integrated in our society, thus giving more ammunition to those who thought that social isolation was pointless (even if it wasn't at the time).
We need to move on from the isolationism and vitriol of others with differing opinions.
There are 2 contexts for speech, and within each different forces change the outcome of the same conversation. This is why I can say your analysis is resulting in erroneous outputs.
For arguments sake, let’s call it - individual only scenarios vs collective scenarios.
Individual only: What thoughts you say at home in the privacy of your house.
Collective: The vote.
In collective scenarios, the median/average choice dominate.
Eg: The chemical expert knows that chemical X is going to kill humans and avoids it.
The collective votes Yes to elect a representative who advocates for chemical X to be added to all food packaging.
——-
This is a very common trick question where Free Speech argument proponents falter.
Free Speech is a principle for ordering the world. With the internet, this principle needs to be applied to people who would skew or influence collective decisions.
Brandolini's Law also comes to mind. Countering bullshit takes more effort than creating it. It's an understandable self-defense mechanism for an individual or even a community to just isolate and quarantine the source of a problem than to engage with them in earnest discourse. Trolling, astroturfing, and propaganda are real things, no amount of engagement will sway the opinion of bad-faith actors.
This is still too cynical. A large majority of people are not bad-faith actors but rather normal people who simply want to live their lives.
To be clear, I'm not arguing whether the lockdowns were good or bad. I do think they were necessary. I'm more arguing that we shouldn't suppress and ostracize people who disagreed with them. It's okay for people to disagree.
i think THIS view sucks. some things are objectively true. why should we have to tolerate people who literally don’t understand basic statistics and harm reduction? at all?
The core problem is the ostracization of opinion on social media. It also doesn't play very well when social isolation has had other consequences, such as the proliferation of viruses and the broad economic impact. Plus, COVID is now integrated in our society, thus giving more ammunition to those who thought that social isolation was pointless (even if it wasn't at the time).
We need to move on from the isolationism and vitriol of others with differing opinions.