{"id":736,"date":"2004-08-17T13:30:47","date_gmt":"2004-08-17T18:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.xorph.com\/creator\/2004\/08\/17\/736\/"},"modified":"2004-08-17T13:30:47","modified_gmt":"2004-08-17T18:30:47","slug":"736","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/2004\/08\/17\/736\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

It occurs to me that all known arguments for censorship–in fact, all possible arguments for censorship–are logically rude<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Gerda:<\/i><\/td>\nI wish to { purchase, view, broadcast } this material.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Grobian:<\/i><\/td>\nUpon reviewing this material, I find it to obscene. You may not { purchase, view, broadcast } it; it is harmful to the mind, inhibiting moral judgment and causing its viewers to confuse fantasy with reality.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Gerda:<\/i><\/td>\nWhy is it permitted for you to review the material and judge it, and not for me to do so?<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Grobian:<\/i><\/td>\nI have been tasked with reviewing such material, and would not be so tasked if I were incapable of viewing it safely.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Gerda:<\/i><\/td>\nBut if the material impairs judgment to such a degree, and prevents its viewer from realizing that his or her judgment has been impaired, how do you know that your verdict is not the result of impaired judgment?<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Grobian:<\/i><\/td>\nI am striking it down as obscene, instead of running out to commit vicious criminal acts, which I would clearly do if the material had affected me.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Gerda:<\/i><\/td>\nSo your prediction is the opposite of the only available evidence–your own case–of the effects of reading this material. Doesn’t this empirically disprove your prediction?<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Grobian:<\/i><\/td>\nNo. If you, for example, were to view this material, you would commit vicious criminal acts.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Gerda:<\/i><\/td>\nHow do you know that?<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Grobian:<\/i><\/td>\nYou’re a pervert. The fact that you want to { purchase, view, broadcast } this material proves it.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

That’s just one example–not all arguments for censorship use such flagrant circular logic (but the FCC certainly does). I’d have a more powerful argument here if logical rudeness were inherently invalid, but unfortunately, it’s not<\/a>. Then again, if one’s going to be logically rude in the first place, one isn’t terribly likely to mind being invalid too, is one?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It occurs to me that all known arguments for censorship–in fact, all possible arguments for censorship–are logically rude. Gerda: I wish to { purchase, view, broadcast } this material. Grobian: Upon reviewing this material, I find it to obscene. You may not { purchase, view, broadcast } it; it is harmful to the mind, inhibiting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,25,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-angst","category-connections","category-obsessions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}