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[return to "UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse"]
1. perihe+l8[view] [source] 2025-08-15 10:36:51
>>JoshTr+(OP)
In the Oxford philosophy-exam thread from yesterday, I was distracted by question #3: "Should anonymous posting online be forbidden?"[0] Never mind the quality of essay you (or your machine surrogate) could write about that. The striking thing is this is now within firmly within the Overton Window in British academia—this is what they seemingly teach their cultural elites in their elite schools. In place of Enlightenment* values, they're normalizing the inversion of them—normalizing thinking as an autocrat, in viewing the general public as an unsafe factor and as an adversary.

[0] https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/c...

*(A not-small body of which were famously published anonymously in order to escape ostracization. Were these Oxford philosophers to take their own advice, they would forbid all volumes mentioning Voltaire or Spinoza from their libraries).

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2. pama+ad[view] [source] 2025-08-15 11:24:25
>>perihe+l8
What was that thread? Oxford philosophy exams never suggest a particular stance on a question so you are free to argue on either direction of this argument and bring about your strongest points based on the current philosophical thinking on the subject. It is not normalizing lack of anonymity (nor horror movies, or the pursuit of happiness), but helps make people hone their argument skills. (And as another user mentioned, the discussion of the british nanny state is not new; it was old when Orwell wrote 1984.)
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