Maybe I’m naive, but I think we do get to decide society’s norms! We do so in explicit discussions like this one, for example. Or hypothetically if a friend asks “why did you go to that event with all the racists”, you could let them know of your disapproval of the stances of some of the invited guests, while also highlighting that you attended because of specific talks or events or other friends you were excited for.
We collectively (the members of the society) get to decide society’s norms. But it’s also true that U.S. citizens collectively get to decide who the President is, and look where that gets tens of millions of people each election cycle. People individually or in small groups ordinarily have only a slight influence on society’s norms., and I think what you’re suggesting is sufficiently far afield from current norms for small movements to make a material difference.
Of course, it’s possible for social norms to shift considerably. But it takes a lot of both time and concentrated effort. The end objective would presumably be a mass social movement engaged in advocacy for that interpretation of free speech and free association. I don’t see that kind of theory of change being worked toward, so I don’t see any reason to believe isolated, less systematic attempts to change norms will have much overall effect.
On the merits, I think I’m more open to informal societal pressure as a manner of social control (as opposed to censorship by governments or big corporations). I think it’s good that people incur serious social costs from attending (e.g.) neo-Nazi or KKK events. For some particularly dangerous ideas, social pressure is a fairly modest way of mitigating that harm without giving any entity a concentrated and/or too-strong censorship power. Moreover, I think failing to socially stigmatize certain types of speech sends a problematic message to groups who are the target of the particularly problematic speech. If one reaches that conclusion, then we have a line-drawing exercise about whether any given event is problematic enough to justify a social sanction on attendees.
If we decide that attendance at some events should be stigmatized, then that raises the question about what to do about mixed events (with significant objectionable and significant non-objectionable content.) My view is that we would stigmatize attendance at such events. Doing so would likely cause events to unmix quickly, so we wouldn’t lose the social value of content we didn’t want to stigmatize. And I think any other answer gives plausible deniability to people seeking to avoid the social pressure that we had decided was warranted.
Maybe I’m naive, but I think we do get to decide society’s norms! We do so in explicit discussions like this one, for example. Or hypothetically if a friend asks “why did you go to that event with all the racists”, you could let them know of your disapproval of the stances of some of the invited guests, while also highlighting that you attended because of specific talks or events or other friends you were excited for.
We collectively (the members of the society) get to decide society’s norms. But it’s also true that U.S. citizens collectively get to decide who the President is, and look where that gets tens of millions of people each election cycle. People individually or in small groups ordinarily have only a slight influence on society’s norms., and I think what you’re suggesting is sufficiently far afield from current norms for small movements to make a material difference.
Of course, it’s possible for social norms to shift considerably. But it takes a lot of both time and concentrated effort. The end objective would presumably be a mass social movement engaged in advocacy for that interpretation of free speech and free association. I don’t see that kind of theory of change being worked toward, so I don’t see any reason to believe isolated, less systematic attempts to change norms will have much overall effect.
On the merits, I think I’m more open to informal societal pressure as a manner of social control (as opposed to censorship by governments or big corporations). I think it’s good that people incur serious social costs from attending (e.g.) neo-Nazi or KKK events. For some particularly dangerous ideas, social pressure is a fairly modest way of mitigating that harm without giving any entity a concentrated and/or too-strong censorship power. Moreover, I think failing to socially stigmatize certain types of speech sends a problematic message to groups who are the target of the particularly problematic speech. If one reaches that conclusion, then we have a line-drawing exercise about whether any given event is problematic enough to justify a social sanction on attendees.
If we decide that attendance at some events should be stigmatized, then that raises the question about what to do about mixed events (with significant objectionable and significant non-objectionable content.) My view is that we would stigmatize attendance at such events. Doing so would likely cause events to unmix quickly, so we wouldn’t lose the social value of content we didn’t want to stigmatize. And I think any other answer gives plausible deniability to people seeking to avoid the social pressure that we had decided was warranted.