Will we say goodbye to free speech?

Posted on June 5, 2023 | 17 Comments

Interesting speech by Rowan Atkinson where he defends free speech.

Timely too, as several countries are now facing the introduction of legislation which will be used to attack freedom of speech.

New Zealand/Aotearoa is no exception.

And this comes on top of actions of censorship, de-platforming and social pressure being used to intimidate and shut people up.

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17 responses to “Will we say goodbye to free speech?”

  1. Andy | June 6, 2023 at 9:46 am |

    Is this quite an old video of Atkinson?
    Things have got markedly worse around the world in terms of free speech issues.
    E.g Kathleen Stock at the Oxford Union

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  2. Ken | June 6, 2023 at 4:29 pm |

    It seems to be about 4 years old. But still relevant and my purpose was really to try and draw comments from paper who either deny the current situation, or justify it, as it is happening here.

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  3. Andy | June 6, 2023 at 4:58 pm |

    Activists are trying to get Monty Python to rewrite the Life of Brian stage version to remove the “Men can’t have babies” sketch.

    I guess the logical conclusion to all this is that all humour will be banned for fear of offending someone.

    Meanwhile, trans activists are punching 70 year old women in the face (at the recent Posie Parker visit), and no one in the NZ media or government seems remotely concerned about this

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  4. Christopher Atkinson | June 10, 2023 at 7:04 pm |

    I was fairly shocked to see on news tonight that ‘Russian disinformation’ had ‘infiltrated’ and altered news stories here in NZ.

    So called ‘Kremlin phrasing’ had been used to describe news stories.
    It appears that the Maidan Coup can’t be called as such- it was ‘a Revolution’

    It also appears unacceptable to describe Yanukovych as elected as this is pro Russian (despite being factually correct)

    As this story is simultaneously being run in the UK in the Guardian it’s clear NZ is facing its own propaganda onslaught

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  5. Ken | June 11, 2023 at 4:59 pm |

    Yes Christopher, I am afraid that is the new “reality.”

    When our media (and others) talk about facts they mean narrative. Fact checking is narrative checking.

    Unfortunately, I think this has been a common approach – how many people have the time or expertise (or opportunity) to drill down to facts and find evidence. People prefer to accept the narrative of “their side.” That has been an acceptable approach.

    However, in the past there has been an acceptance that it was permissible to dig deeper, look at facts, consider the evidence. Now anyone suggesting this is attacked, accused of being a “Putin puppet,” etc.

    Rational and open-minded discussion is completely closed off.

    This current approach is very dangerous. We are in an international situation which can easily lead to world war and nuclear war. I would think sensible people would be aware of this and try to get beyond their prejudices to look at solutions.

    If we can avoid a world war it looks like a defeat of the Ukrainian army and NATO could lead to the USA being prepared to negotiate with the Russian Federation. I hope those negotiation go beyond the question fio Ukraine and consider a new rigid European security arrangement.

    Effectively those negotiations consider the draft treaties proposed by the Russian Federation in December 2021. A good settlement should guarantee the neutrality of what is left of Ukraine, retreat of NATO to the situation in 1997, and treaties on conventional arms, etc. Together with the possibilities of renewing nuclear and strategic arms treaties.

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  6. Richard Christie | June 20, 2023 at 8:35 pm |

    “….USA being prepared to negotiate with the Russian Federation.”

    Not a show in hell. USA engineered this war and is clearly in the process of doing something similar over China and Taiwan.
    And anyway, who in their right minds now believes anything the Murkins say or promise .
    Look at how they run their own country.

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  7. Ken | June 21, 2023 at 8:17 am |

    I agree – no chance at the moment. But the war is not yet at its climax. At some stage NATO will acknowledge defeat and then the sensible thing is for the USA to negotiate a way out.

    Don’t forget the USA has lost most of its wars against countries less powerful than Russia and this war is hardly existential to the USA as it is to Russia.

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  8. Andy | June 21, 2023 at 1:56 pm |

    Operation Mockingbird was a programme started by the US government/CIA to influence media during the Cold War.
    Well, according to Wikipedia, an “alleged” programme.

    Various CIA whistleblowers have stated that much of the info they pushed out was false.
    So, nothing new here.

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  9. Ken | June 22, 2023 at 9:09 am |

    No, it’s not new but it is far more complex and effective (at least with the majority of the population).

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  10. Andy | June 24, 2023 at 5:50 pm |

    Prof Norman Fenton got cancelled by the organisers of a conference on Bayesian networks in medicine because of his comments and articles about the CV Vx. His views are, as far as I know, completely rational and are often a critique of the misuse of statistics in medicine.

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  11. Ken | June 25, 2023 at 9:05 am |

    There are a lot of people, including me, who crticise the way statistics are used in medicine and epidemiology. I have written a lot on the way the group led by Christine Till as misused statistics (starting with Perrott, K. W. (2018). Fluoridation and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder a critique of Malin and Till (2015) and many of my blog articles. The anti-science people in the health movement (including RJK) lap up such misuse of statistics to promote their claims of harmful effect. It’s a matter of confirmation bias.

    As for cancelling scientists – that has always happened (and has happened to me). The science community is far from democratic at this level.

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  12. Andy | June 26, 2023 at 10:13 am |

    I’m not familiar with RFK’s “anti-science” views, but Peter Hotez has the opportunity to debunk them on Joe Rogan’s podcast, and get over a million dollars in the process.

    Meanwhile we are supposed to believe that there are many genders in the world, and it is possible to change gender using surgery. This is supported by “science” apparently

    Back in the day scientists were discovering subatomic particles with exotic names. I hanker after those days when science was truly exciting

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  13. Ken | June 27, 2023 at 4:41 pm |

    Andy, you say:

    “Meanwhile we are supposed to believe that there are many genders in the world, and it is possible to change gender using surgery. This is supported by “science” apparently”.

    Well, this is not supported by science. But you may have got this impression because the issue has been “debated” at the “podcast” level – at the narrative level. It’s quite different when you critically and intelligently look at the actual evidence – that is you take a scientific approach.

    The issues are never resolved and the level of contesting narratives. And what a circus to offer monetary prizes.

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  14. Andy | June 28, 2023 at 12:22 pm |

    >>But you may have got this impression because the issue has been “debated” at the “podcast” level

    No I was being rhetorical of course, I don’t believe for a minute that this gender theory is supported by science, but if you say so these days, you risk losing your job in education etc.

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  15. Ken | June 28, 2023 at 4:26 pm |

    True – and this worries me. But it is a lot wider than that specific example (and the discussion on the relevance of Māori traditional science has shown). So we have examples of how political correctness has carried space in the natural science as well as social sciences. It would not take much for the anti-science views of people like JFK, Paul Connett, etc., to be injected into our natural science teachings.

    Once the power of narrative pushes aside evidence our science ends up like a religion.

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  16. Andy | June 28, 2023 at 4:48 pm |

    Ken, with respect I challenge your use of the term “anti-science”.

    I think there is a degree of difference between gender theory claimed as a science, or supported by science, and the so-called “anti-science” views of the people you mention.
    Some of these people may make claims that are not currently supported by main stream science (e.g do some vaccines cause autism) yet may be proven true at some point in the future, and a concept such as gender theory which is really a postmodernist concept that has nothing to do with science.

    Of course, as you have said earlier, we all have cognitive bias. Scientists in the pharma industry are likely to claim that all vaccines are safe and effective, because their job depends on it and this is the culture in which they are immersed. Conversely, the same but opposition views could be held by natural health practitioners. Some of the latter may be truly “anti-science” when it gets to the woo end of the spectrum, but also some could just have a healthy scepticism of corporate made products that they’d rather not have in their bodies

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  17. Ken | June 28, 2023 at 9:12 pm |

    I use the term “anti-science” to describe adhering to a narrative rather than dealing with actual facts – evidence.

    For example, I can check claims about the effectiveness and safety of recent vaccines by reading the research papers which came out of the trials and the subsequent papers investigating claims of side effects. I do not have to rely on the claims made by people in the industry. I can do exactly the same with claims made by people in the agricultural industry (where I had research experience).

    On the other hand, there are people in the alternative health industry and in the alternative agricultural industry who promote narratives, claims, which are not supported by actual research evidence (or alternatively rely on cherry picking results from studies). I call those claims anti-science (because they rely on myths or distortions of evidence). Of course, as a scientist I am always open to changing my attitude about specific claims when I see convincing evidence. Interestingly though, when I have said that to proponents of alternative health of agricultural narratives, the evidence they have presented to me simply has not supported their claims.

    In saying this I am aware that at some levels people in the health and agricultural industry may be supporting claims about their products which are well supported by evidence, but they themselves have never checked out the evidence. They are in the position of simply accepting and promoting the narratives common in their industry.

    That is understandable – humans must adopt procedures which make their lives simpler. But it can be a problem. I once put it to a fellow campaigner on the fluoridation issue that he might not support me if I saw convincing evidence of harmful effects and therefore would change my advice on fluoridation. He would go with the accepted narrative rather than the evidence.

    I made this argument because he was saying that I was sensible about science (fluoridation) but hopeless about politics. That is because he supported the accepted narrative on the war in Europe whereas I didn’t. My counter was that in both cases I based my attitudes on the facts as far as I can evaluate them. Interestingly he could not debate the issue with me because he didn’t know the facts about Ukraine and European security. I would not be surprised if he really did not understand the science behind fluoridation either but simply went with the narrative.

    I may be wrong in many of my beliefs or claims (I know for a fact this has been the case from time to time). But I always tell potential discussion partners that they must rely on evidence to convince me I am wrong. Simply promoting the accepted narrative will not change my opinions.

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