Hey #nostr. Approaching this question with genuine curiosity: is freedom of speech absolute? Is some information better not shared? For example: the instructions to making a nuclear weapon, or bioweapon etc. it just takes one bad actor/ crazy person to use it.
FWIW, I’m super pro freedom of speech, but am hesitant to take it to its absolutist/ extremist conclusions. #plebchain
Once someone restricts information it’s not freedom it’s a right granted by an oppressor. If we never have freedom we will never come to the realisation of what we truly are. Thus never hitting the next level of human maturity.
Law Enforcement is not meant to perform prevention, in a free society or world. It is response. It is a check, to restore balance in the cost function for the next criminal.
There is no violation of rights or property in sharing knowledge of any kind. No one owns 'intellectual property'. If my brain can know it and share it, it's not theirs to own. Knowing how is not doing. Knowing how is merely preparation and everyone deserves to be able to prepare themselves as completely as possible.
If everyone could launch a nuclear weapon in response to a personal threat, there would be no personal threats.
Appreciate your good faith engagement and argument (genuinely). My counter to that is, what if the stakes of the action you are trying to prevent is SO high that talking about a ‘response’ is silly? I.e. nuclear bombs and existential bio weapons.
Imagine if tomorrow someone invented a type of bomb that you can make in your back yard and has the power of a nuclear bomb. Should we just publish that information freely on the internet? I feel like self censorship of that information should at least be considered?
I’ll respond with a few Socratic questions: is there such a thing as ‘true’ self and how do we know? What is it? What is the next level of human maturity and why does it depend on us finding our true self?
Finally, what if freedom of speech comes at a cost of other freedoms?
FWIW, I’m not proposing necessarily someone else decide what you can or can’t say. At the very least sometimes maybe self censorship is considerable? #[3]
Bringing this to my end point which will be an unpopular opinion.
I believe humanity needs to accept what we are as a species. Regardless of societal ‘norms’. The next and inevitable step in maturity will be space exploration. What we are trying to do is survive as a race.
If we don’t even get off the planet and cease to exist we deserved it.
If we cant learn to treat each other in a prosperous way we run the risk of meeting a more advanced race that will see us as a universal threat and choose to end humanity itself. And we deserved it.
In real talk if we don’t quit being dicks to each other we will all die.
If we give free information to everyone and we all die it’s because we are still being dicks.
The end scenario is - If we cant quit being dicks we will all die And we deserved it.
Secrecy is not a strategy for preventing this discovery from having a dramatic impact on the world. Its a trick. It will have an impact, regardless.
The one who has the knowledge is therefore and perpetually advantaged over all others in the world. Are they so benevolent and good as to be trusted with perpetual advantage?
This advantage will play out in ways that you can't predict. You can't control what decades or centuries of disadvantage will produce for everyone else.
Control is an illusion. You can't control access to technology or knowledge or even resources. It's inevitably a failure, and then another has advantage over most everyone.
You can, however, prepare yourself and get your own power. Make sure you're expensive to attack. Make sure the gain is small and the cost is high. If everyone has this power, instead of the 1-2 who managed to develop it or steal it, then it doesn't matter when the next person learns it. Also, everyone has prepared for it. They have bunkers, masks and other tools to minimize the damage in an attack.
