I think the crucial difference between the salmon/Brit and the drawings/Muslims is form-invariance, which is present in the latter, but not the former.
The Muslims in question don’t merely say, “Hey, don’t draw pictures that have the form of Muhammad.” They say, “Don’t express any critique coupled to our offense at that narrow part of artspace.” (including, e.g., Drawing an anonymous stick figure and saying, “I call that Muhammad … is that enough to offend you, or does it have to …?”)
In contrast, there are workarounds in the Brit/salmon case that allow one to reference salmon anywhere and everywhere—even right in front of Brits! -- without triggering their hardwired response:
use a euphemism for salmon
when a diagram is needed, use one that doesn’t look like salmon, but has a known mapping
use indirect complex constructions that nevertheless, after some thought, are identified as referring to salmon
Heck, the Brit-requested prohibition would ever permit you to (incorrectly) argue that the kind of mod the aliens did is impossible.
Yet Muslims expect all of the analog activities to cease.
Now, you can revise the situation to force consideration of the least-convenient possible world, but then you’d be constructing a scenario in which the aliens implant strong AI that can identify every possible kind of salmon reference. But at that point, you’re no longer talking about Brits at all, but beings with a different identity, which reduces your dilemma to “Brits are killed and replaced with robots. What else would start to suck about that situation?” Er, the problem was the identity deletion, and any further harm pales in comparison.
I think you can connect the dots from here: there is a difference between expecting others to restrict the manner in which they do something, vs. whether they do it at all. Indeed, even the Americans you criticize have no problem with time/place/manner restrictions of free speech: e.g. “Sure you can say a candidate’s great, but not through spam, and not by blasting an airhorn at 3am.”
I think the crucial difference between the salmon/Brit and the drawings/Muslims is form-invariance, which is present in the latter, but not the former.
The Muslims in question don’t merely say, “Hey, don’t draw pictures that have the form of Muhammad.” They say, “Don’t express any critique coupled to our offense at that narrow part of artspace.” (including, e.g., Drawing an anonymous stick figure and saying, “I call that Muhammad … is that enough to offend you, or does it have to …?”)
In contrast, there are workarounds in the Brit/salmon case that allow one to reference salmon anywhere and everywhere—even right in front of Brits! -- without triggering their hardwired response:
use a euphemism for salmon
when a diagram is needed, use one that doesn’t look like salmon, but has a known mapping
use indirect complex constructions that nevertheless, after some thought, are identified as referring to salmon
Heck, the Brit-requested prohibition would ever permit you to (incorrectly) argue that the kind of mod the aliens did is impossible.
Yet Muslims expect all of the analog activities to cease.
Now, you can revise the situation to force consideration of the least-convenient possible world, but then you’d be constructing a scenario in which the aliens implant strong AI that can identify every possible kind of salmon reference. But at that point, you’re no longer talking about Brits at all, but beings with a different identity, which reduces your dilemma to “Brits are killed and replaced with robots. What else would start to suck about that situation?” Er, the problem was the identity deletion, and any further harm pales in comparison.
I think you can connect the dots from here: there is a difference between expecting others to restrict the manner in which they do something, vs. whether they do it at all. Indeed, even the Americans you criticize have no problem with time/place/manner restrictions of free speech: e.g. “Sure you can say a candidate’s great, but not through spam, and not by blasting an airhorn at 3am.”