I believe a significant component of this division, in academia at least, concerns whether people can or can't generally be trusted to think critically, for example, about subtly incoherent and/or morally repugnant viewpoints that Prof. Boghossian may have publicly interrogated (e.g. James Damore's). "Does giving him a platform to speak do more harm than good?"
I don't generally trust people to think critically. The last ten years have showed us all how easy it is for people to be manipulated and misled at scale if the belief is accepted by their respective communities. This was shown scientifically decades ago[1]. And we all know some anti-vaxxers and/or cult followers.
Of course, most attempts to repress misinformation inevitably cause bigger problems than any alternative, including doing nothing. Attempts to repress opinions based on misinformation sow divisions which are even worse.
There is a tension between efforts towards a weak form of "prior restraint" and a belief that people are smart enough to discern truth from fiction. But don't fool yourself -- no matter your feelings here, everyone including you is subject to in-group favoritism.
I don't generally trust people to think critically. The last ten years have showed us all how easy it is for people to be manipulated and misled at scale if the belief is accepted by their respective communities. This was shown scientifically decades ago[1]. And we all know some anti-vaxxers and/or cult followers.
Of course, most attempts to repress misinformation inevitably cause bigger problems than any alternative, including doing nothing. Attempts to repress opinions based on misinformation sow divisions which are even worse.
There is a tension between efforts towards a weak form of "prior restraint" and a belief that people are smart enough to discern truth from fiction. But don't fool yourself -- no matter your feelings here, everyone including you is subject to in-group favoritism.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments