It seems to me a repeating pattern that once freedom of thought, speech and expression is limited for essentially any reason, it will have unintended consequences.
Once the tools are in place, they will be used, abused and inevitably end up in the hands of someone you disagree with, regardless of whether the original implementer had good intentions.
As such I’m personally very averse to restrictions. I’ve thought about the question a fair bit – there isn’t a clear cut or obvious line to draw.
Please elaborate and motivate your answer. I’m genuinely curious about getting some fresh perspectives.
There should be no restrictions on freedom of thought. Simple reason: One cannot control their thoughts.
I think speech and expression should be limited in ways that prevent negative outcomes for individuals or populations of people based on immutable characteristics like sexuality, skin colour, ethnic background, etc.
I can see no reason why anyone should ever be allowed to use free speech to incite violence, or expressing oneself in a way that is destructive to others. There should be no reason why we allow people to target others with slurs.
There are already laws restricting speech and expression in numerous ways. For example: one cannot utter threats to another person, even though they are not physically doing anything and operating with “free speech”.
If one cannot speak or express themselves without hurting others I see no reason why that should be tolerated in modern civilizations.
I want to know what you mean by this.
I don’t know that i fully disagree with you, I don’t get to will myself to instantly think any thought, but i have a plethora of tools at my disposal to manage my thought processes. when i find myself thinking thoughts that violate my values i introduce counter thoughts to balance it all out, or sometimes i just cut it off with a “we’re done here for now” kinda vibe. I can control what kind of thoughts pop into my head in response to external stimuli by altering my values. Meditation and prayer also provide a means to alter or dissipate the flow of thoughts. Many of my values are at odds with each other, so i must partake in a seemingly constant exercise of identifying and resolving the dissonances in my values either internally (changing my values) or externally (attempting to alter the world around me to match my values).
One is merely an observer of their thoughts. The reason for this is there is a delay from Stimulus and Brain activity before the Conscious awareness of the stimulus and brain activity. This natural delay causes us to assume that we are consciously making choices, and thinking on our own.
The core idea that I believe in here is that Humans do not have free will. We cannot control our actions or thoughts, and we merely observe them with our conscious mind.