Yes, I suspect it was about expression of ideas. Certainly ideas are the foundation of everything else, so protection of freedom to express ideas must be the core protection. Then again, ideas are often best expressed graphically....

Yes, you are right in a sense, in that the former violates a sense of fairness and rationality. It is offensive for that reason - the idea is offensive as you say - whereas the second is offensive because it is a pejorative. There is a difference. But then again, censorship of pejoratives would silence a great amount of valuable literature and art.

Yes, I agree. I don't know the solution. I only know that there is a problem. Perhaps it comes down to holding accountable the individuals who make decisions within organizations. After all, every communication by an organization is initiated by an individual. The problem is that organizations have aggregated power, and they are single-minded in their mission, whereas individuals can weight social benefits versus personal benefits. Organizations tend to be amoral - even sociopathic - and are therefore not "good citizens". And even worse, organizations use money to amplify their influence far beyond the influence of individuals. I don't know the solution though.

Yes, good points.

I agree it is a slippery slope. But there actually are standards. E.g., one cannot libel someone. And if you yell "fire" in a theater and there is no fire, you will be kicked out. But you are right that we must be careful about such standards because they can indeed be used to censor ideas. The censorship of ideas and of whistle-blowing are the main concerns in my opinion.

Indeed. The 1st Amendment protects us from government, but who protects us from powerful groups, such as companies, unions, etc.? We really need a supplemental "Bill Of Rights" to address organizations of people and how individuals are protected from those organizations. You are perceptive, that so-called intellectual property is the currency of power of the 21st century, and will be the primary instrument of oppression. We are seeing it take shape now. Small startups are hard pressed to create _any_ product that does not infringe on _some_ patent held by some large company with a patent portfolio.

Yes, our culture equate free speech with art and any form of expression. I am not sure that was the intent. But I don't know. To me, I would value the expression of an idea, such as "the government is corrupt" as much more important than the ability to express it in a rude way such as "fuck the government". But that is my personal value.

No I am not saying that. I am merely musing about the intent of the 1st Amendment. I think it was about preventing censorship of people by government. If a machine generates something, that is not generated by a person, so it was not anticipated by the Constitution. But there might be a gray area: perhaps a person arranged for the machine to express the person's opinion. E.g., suppose it is a drone vehicle that flies around painting a political message in the sky. The drone is a machine, but the message was arranged by a person. Wouldn't this be "speech"? But if an AI algorithm generates speech, is that protected? I would think not, since today's AI machines are not people, and the Constitution is about people.

Yes, is a dilemma. On the one hand, groups of people can do wonderful things. But they can also do awful things. Today the greatest threat to democracy is the power of special interest groups. These groups have agendas of their own, and they act in ways that their individual members might not. It is a real dilemma, and perhaps something that was not anticipated by the Constitution.

I am not a Constitutional scholar (although I have read the Constitution and refer to it frequently), but I would presume that "freedom of expression" and "freedom of speech" are intended to ensure that ideas cannot be censored. And since the Constitution is about the rights of people and government, I also presume that the right pertains to people - not organizations. Organizations are not people, just as a pack of dogs is not a dog and a mob of people is not a person. And not machine generated content: such content is not necessarily the output of people, unless a person arranges for a _specific_ machine output in order to express an idea. If the 1st Amendment is truly about ensuring that ideas cannot be censored, then free speech is not about permitting anyone to say purposely offensive things (i.e., the form of their speech), but about their right to express (perhaps politely) the _ideas_ contained in their speech.

Undoubtedly.

But I, as a mere citizen, feel that the Teacher's Union has done enormous harm to our educational system, and continues to do so.

I have two master's degrees and an undergraduate in physics/math, all from an Ivy League university, and was told that I could not become a teacher because I did not have a "teaching degree". Yet I regularly provide training in a corporate setting and am an experienced facilitator. Last week I conducted a training class and the comments afterwards were that "the instructor was excellent" and so on and so on. But when I wanted to have a career change, simply because I enjoy teaching, and become a teacher for a few years in a high school, I could not.

It is the Teacher's Union that is preventing us from having more qualified teachers. They act to protect their own numbers, acting like a guild. They do not have our kid's interests in mind, even though they say they do.

It should be up to a school to determine if someone is qualified to teach - not a union.

Good point.

I think that statements made in newspapers should be attributed to either an individual author or to the newspaper's editorial board.

We get into real problems when we treat organizations as "people" with the rights of "people". The organization-as-person concept is not mentioned in the Constitution and it is a huge extrapolation in my opinion. Treating organizations as people has led to the current mess with regard to companies building up huge patent portfolios to destroy startup competitors. It has also led to the concept of paid advertising by an organization being a form of free speech.

The Constitution starts out very prominently with "We the People...". If it intended to address organizations, it would have said so or mentioned it in some manner. Businesses and large organizations had already been in existence for a long time by 1776. The lack of mention of companies or organizations in the Constitution is deafening in its silence.

A wedge shape for a laptop is just an idea. How can this be patented? Ideas are not supposed to be patentable. "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea." - Thomas Jefferson

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea." - Thomas Jefferson

cold fjord -

I believe that my facts about Iran are correct. I am not an expert on this, but I have read several articles about it from different sources. For example, the wikipedia article explains that MI6 and the CIA arranged for a coup of Iran's first democratically elected government, and that their primary reason for doing this was to ensure that cheap oil would continue to flow from Iran to England and the US. If that is true, and I were an Iranian, I would have a boiling outrage against the US. And if it is true, then the Iranian revolution - when they took over our embassy there - was indeed a legitimate revolution, against the US. I don't approve of the government that they have there now, but if the wikipedia article is true about Operation AJAX, then we can blame ourselves primarily for what Iran has become.

You are right about the Soviet Union. But I was talking about the US. We did terrible things to compete with the Soviet Union's terrible things. But that is an explanation: it is not an excuse. If two gangs are fighting, and one gang shoots an innocent child bystander in the crossfire, that gang is still responsible and guilty of killing the child: the fact that it was fighting with another gang is an explanation: it is not an excuse. To the child's family, the gang that shot their child is 100% guilty, and its anger toward that gang is justified. In our struggle against the Soviet Union, we were one of those gangs, and Iran was a bystander.

But my understanding is that the primary motivation for Operation AJAX was oil: not a struggle against the USSR. And oil has again and again been the reason for our meddling in the Middle East, and it might be our undoing. I wonder what the price of gasoline would be if we included all of the costs of defending our presence in the Middle East, as well as the geopolitical costs of our interference there, as well as the cost of the "war on terror" that is our response to the terrorism that has grown out of our meddling in the Middle East?