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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33388 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023

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If Alice is breaching a duty, for example if she works for the US government and is obligated to keep nuclear secrets confidential, then it's proper for the US government to intervene and stop her from speaking. If Alice obtained the nuclear secrets without incurring or breaching a duty, for example if she found them laying on the street, then there's no proper basis to stop her from speaking, even if her speech is likely to cause harm.

I claim that it is legitimately in the interests of person C (the rest of us humans on Earth) to prevent that communication from happening, even if Alice had never signed a nondisclosure agreement.

There are lots of things that may be in Person C's legitimate interest but are nevertheless are impermissible because they infringe the rights of others. Person C may want a new Rolex watch and it therefore may be in Person C's interest to steal a Rolex from the jewelry store, but that doesn't make it permissible to do so because stealing a Rolex involves violating the rights of others.

The current policy in the US is that certain information, specifically the design, manufacture, or utilization of atomic weapons, is born secret. Philosophically this is a really ugly and unprincipled hack, and it's probably unconstitutional. As you say, there is no proper basis to stop her from speaking, and it totally violates her rights. Moreover, once the exception is carved out, I expect that politicians will twist the intent and make it illegal to talk about other, non-dangerous-but-enraging-or-embarrassing stuff for the purposes of "national security".

I hate it. And yet, on the balance, I'd rather live in a world where the policy exists than one where it doesn't, because I expect the world that has that policy to contain nice things like "cities" for several more decades than the one where that information is a free-for-all.

I guess I come out on this the way Sam Harris comes out on torture. He argues torture should be illegal, but nevertheless there are situations where it should be done anyway, such as if a terrorist has hidden a nuclear bomb in a city and torture is the only way to discover its whereabouts. In truly extreme situations, morally repugnant acts may be necessary.

I think censorship is repugnant even when it's used to prevent the disclosure of nuclear secrets, but perhaps it's a necessary evil in extremis.

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