You cant honestly believe "real censorship" is drowning out actual facts?
Absolutely it is. I see this every day in the news here.
if the facts dont agree with YOUR narrative then they are wrong therefore shouldnt be said or written.
That's exactly the attitude every single "free speech absolutionist" I've ever met actually carries. That if it's not their personal truth, it's wrong, and no amount of persuasion or evidence will convince them.
Remember, we live in an era where the notion that our planet is flat is becoming more popular. That the moon landings never happened and were filmed on a parking lot in a desert. Or how the circumference of a circle is exactly 3 times the diameter of it (and not 3.141...) And if you meet people who believe these things, it doesn't matter how much evidence you give them, you as the non-believer are wrong.
We live in an era where information overload is so dense, literally anything can be refuted with 'that's just your opinion' and cite any number of documents that can be found online. And at a time where people are quite prepared to discard evidence to suit a theory if the evidence happens to not agree with their reality.
We live in a world where you can be a reviewer of media and get literal death threats because you offended some fans of that media with any review of less than perfect. Or you gave a game 7/10 and that's grounds for suggesting you being disbarred forever from reviewing games. And death threats. (Oh, you can give the *other* games 7/10 but not *this* game, no, *this* game's perfect, 10/10. And it's sequel is also better but equally perfect 10/10, just like its prequel that is still utterly perfect 10/10. It is, of course, nonsense thinking.)
I also rather think you're projecting somewhat; I never pushed the narrative that 'if they are wrong they shouldn't be said'. But it would simplify a great many things if that actually were true. Unfortunately for a good many of us, we would be facts that would need altering.
History has shown time and time again, that over the long term if everyone gets their say the best ideas will win, good ideas will drown out the bad and become mainstream, that's how it works.
Citation needed.
If nothing else, the sheer logic of that on a small scale demonstrates why it doesn't work, rather than why it does: because for any given field there's enough people who can have a go, who think they know, who will drown out those who do every time.
Also consider the human nature effect to accept anecdotal evidence with more conviction than it necessarily deserves. There are so many fields where this holds true where the 'good ideas' should long since have shut dow the 'bad ideas' and yet... here we are. Homeopathy, chiropractice, multi-level marketing schemes, they're the obvious ones, but there are plenty of others.
Those who want to censor ideas because they don't suit their narrative are the ones that are against free speech.
That's just it, though. You can be 'for free speech' and just as efficiently shut down competing narratives. Moreso, because you can convince people that you're enabling discussion. It's very easy to sway opinion in people if you can convince them of the 'goodness' of your narrative being to engage everyone.
We've seen in this thread the notion that if you don't do 'the research', you're effectively stupid. But what research? To what standard? What sources? Is (insert newspaper here) a reliable source for politics? No? What about their recipe for butter chicken?
Worse, you can readily convince people to defend a narrative that's absolutely false with a passion and an energy if you start with appealing to their narrative and turning it. And they'll happily shout down any rejection and *still* claim to support freedom of speech while doing it. Brexit here in this country is a fantastic example; its supporters continue to talk about the freedoms we're going to have/now have. They can't *name* any, and they can find downsides, but they're passionately convinced it was in the name of freedom.
They just didn't stop to ask whose freedom.
Similiarly with being 'for free speech', we curiously don't stop to ask whose. Because it's never 'everyone's'. Not even conceptually.
I said it before, I will say it again - and it's important: truth is a three edged sword. Consider, for a moment, what those three edges might be.
(I also expect this post to be somewhere between tl:dr; and 'well that's just your opinion', because that's the majority of my experience so far talking to people who holds the views being discussed here. I remain open to the possibility that this discussion will be the one that changes my mind on the subject.)
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