I am a free speech absolutist, and yet...
"Can people handle free speech?" isn't the question to start with.
Well, before I even finish that thought, let me point out why as a free speech absolutist I feel it is important to acknowledge and consider criticisms of absolute free speech.
If having free speech means anything at all, it means that we can think about or debate any topic, no matter how abhorrent it may seem to some people. A society with truly free speech allows for heretics to critique the dominant religion; it allows for dissenting political views; it allows for competing moral claims. People can voice their dissent and voice their thoughts no matter how shocking. Someone, somewhere, will be egregiously offended, perhaps even to tears and panic attacks, at the content of some speech, but if we are to have genuine intellectual and moral freedom then this is simply a price we must pay.
All topics are open for debate.
But, if free speech advocates like myself are going to be consistent, then we must acknowledge that this even includes the topic of limiting our free speech. If we are going to take free speech seriously, then there must be nothing sacred; everything must be open for criticism and discussion. Free speech advocates, like myself, believe that anytime someone doesn't want to discuss a given idea, the onus is actually upon them to recuse themselves from the conversation, never upon others to refuse to have that conversation. But, again, if I am to be consistent in my beliefs...and anything inconsistent is not worth believing anyway...then I must also entertain arguments against my beloved freedom of speech.
If having free speech means anything at all, it means that we can think about or debate any topic, no matter how abhorrent it may seem to some people. A society with truly free speech allows for heretics to critique the dominant religion; it allows for dissenting political views; it allows for competing moral claims. People can voice their dissent and voice their thoughts no matter how shocking. Someone, somewhere, will be egregiously offended, perhaps even to tears and panic attacks, at the content of some speech, but if we are to have genuine intellectual and moral freedom then this is simply a price we must pay.
All topics are open for debate.
But, if free speech advocates like myself are going to be consistent, then we must acknowledge that this even includes the topic of limiting our free speech. If we are going to take free speech seriously, then there must be nothing sacred; everything must be open for criticism and discussion. Free speech advocates, like myself, believe that anytime someone doesn't want to discuss a given idea, the onus is actually upon them to recuse themselves from the conversation, never upon others to refuse to have that conversation. But, again, if I am to be consistent in my beliefs...and anything inconsistent is not worth believing anyway...then I must also entertain arguments against my beloved freedom of speech.
So, with all that being said, allow me to now finish that thought from above:
I am a free speech absolutist, and yet I do see where there is a problem with free speech that has been causing harm to our social fabric. The problem is not that sometimes people are deeply hurt by what they hear. Rather, the problem is that we know with certainty that there is a sizable portion of the public that will always be predictably irrational and prone to accepting erroneous (and sometimes dangerous) beliefs. One of the key reasons I support free speech is that I think that it is important to openly and forthrightly address ideas, and that if ideas are allowed to be frankly debated the truth will hopefully win out. However, in light of some things we've learned over the years, that belief is becoming harder to uphold.
I am a free speech absolutist, and yet I do see where there is a problem with free speech that has been causing harm to our social fabric. The problem is not that sometimes people are deeply hurt by what they hear. Rather, the problem is that we know with certainty that there is a sizable portion of the public that will always be predictably irrational and prone to accepting erroneous (and sometimes dangerous) beliefs. One of the key reasons I support free speech is that I think that it is important to openly and forthrightly address ideas, and that if ideas are allowed to be frankly debated the truth will hopefully win out. However, in light of some things we've learned over the years, that belief is becoming harder to uphold.
"Can people handle free speech?" isn't the question to start with.
First, let's ask ourselves if they can handle thinking.
We have based our whole social system...ostensibly at least...on the idea that each individual person is a self-contained, rational, decision making entity. These entities are able to take in data, contemplate it, and make informed choices. If a person has a false belief, it was (and traditionally still is) believed that all that needed to happen was that someone explain the correct information to them, and that they would then be led to change their mind and adopt the new, correct belief.
Well, I believe that this view of people in general is no longer tenable.
Well, I believe that this view of people in general is no longer tenable.
- We know that there is a "boomerang" effect. If you point out to someone why what they belief is false, they are likely actually double down and believe it even more.
- We know that people are likely to express belief in topics as part of an effort to socially identify themselves. A conservative person might have some doubts about human-caused climate change, but if a reporter asks them where they stand on it they may say that they believe it is an absolute hoax so as to strongly identify with their social group.
- We know that people are likely to think differently depending upon their blood sugar levels. Studies have shown, for example, that judges are likely to be more lenient in sentencing before they get hungry. (So, if you are ever up for parole, hope that you go before the judge after they have eaten breakfast or lunch.)
- We know that people are prone to believe "fake news" (and other forms of inaccurate nonsense) if it conforms to their existing worldview.
- We know that if fake news and falsehoods are shared in online "echo chambers", people are likely to more strongly believe them.
- We know that people tend to value their identity over facts, and that in a tug of war between the truth and what someone must believe to maintain their identity, the later often has the advantage.
The above indicate deeply ingrained psychological tendencies in human beings. These are cold, hard facts. They don't care about our feelings; they simply are. We evolved to survive, not necessarily to survive truthfully. Our brains are primed to find easy ways to make sense of the world and keep our ego intact. They are also primed to evaluate things on an emotional good/bad spectrum prior to evaluating them on a factual correct/incorrect spectrum. These facts cannot be willed away any more than we can wish away the fact that cancer naturally occurs.
There was a time where some people (myself included) held out hope that education would work to countermand some of the above listed facts. However, it turns out that more educated people are likely to simply be able to better and more effectively rationalize their way out of cognitive dissonance. This means that, in a sense, the more educated one is, the better able they are to dodge logic and evidence. Sometimes increased education does lead to a person developing the ability to tend to think rationally. But there is no guarantee that just educating someone in general will increase their tendency to be rational.
So how do these depressing psychological facts enter into a discussion on free speech? It all comes down to a common perception on free speech creating what's called the marketplace of ideas.
The marketplace of ideas is the notion that if people are exposed to competing ideas, then whichever idea has the truth behind it will tend to win out. It takes its name from the notion that if competing products are presented in a free market, then the better product will win out because more people will favor it over the inferior one. Thus, if person A states that the earth is flat and person B states that it is not, then an open society will, theoretically, be able to rationally and freely discuss and debate the topic and then the side with the most evidence will win. People will believe the truth and discard the falsehood.
But this does not happen.
History is littered with stupid ideas, and it is of concerning note that if one looks closely they will see that many of these ideas still survive in some form or fashion. They have not gone away. Some have evolved, slightly, to take on different forms. Others have straight up never vanished. When one looks around, it is easy to see that a disappointingly large number of people have fallen prey to beliefs like...
This is fairly easy to see in operation from a third-person perspective, though we are all guilty of it at certain points in time. Say that someone you know starts believing in magic; they believe that they can project their mind out of their body and visit fantastical realms or travel to other parts of the world. They also believe that they are "in touch" with the universe, and that they have some levels of supreme spiritual insight and precognition. If they are not being critical, it would be easy to develop such beliefs. All it would take is a few vivid dreams and some intuitions that happened to turn out to be correct.
Now, these fantastical beliefs make an otherwise ordinary person feel extraordinary. They feel special. If they find other people who share similar delusions (either in person or online) then they can start to feel like they are part of a truly unique and dynamic community. This combination of feeling individually special and important while enjoying a relatively small community belonging is intoxicating.
Of course, if you came along and pointed out that there's literally no good argument or reason to believe that a consciousness can travel outside of its own nervous system (let alone fly through space) and that everyone's intuitions are right once in a while, the fantastical believer is not likely to be immediately persuaded. It won't be that they have any astounding facts or evidence to support their position, though they might try to deploy personal experience and appeal to vagueness in defense of what they believe. Personally, I find that people in this position will usually say something to the effect of "Well, we all have our own opinions," which of course justifies nothing at all. These tactics are there to obfuscate; to try to discredit the notion of proving or disproving anything and to simply end the conversation.
In the end, they will say whatever they need to say in order to end the painful episode of possible identity dissolution and return to simply enjoying their beliefs. Later, they'll meet with their community and share their unpleasant encounter with you, and together they and their community will simply reinforce it's insider-vs-outsider perspective.
As it relates to free speech, this disposition to follow the internal logic of one's own sense of identity over and above the facts (whatever they may be) will mean that there is guaranteed to always be at least some number of people, somewhere, who will believe any conspiracy or any claim no matter how ridiculous it is and no matter how well articulated the cases made against it are. They will hinge their identity upon those beliefs and the small, tight-knit communities they produce.
So these little idea-based communities are capable of entrapping people in evidence-proof belief systems. The internet and other technologies (like cars and planes, which make large convention-style gatherings easier) will enable these groups to ramp up their beliefs as they "entrench" themselves against the outside world. The more and more people try to argue and debate with them, the deeper that entrenchment becomes and the more fervently group members begin to build their identity around the core ideas.
Further, from among that group, a subset will be willing to act on those ideas. Its this acting-upon that is truly bothersome.
For some, acting upon their irrational ideas will lead to relatively tame behavior, like inflammatory remarks on message boards or silly (though harmless) beliefs. But for others, it leads to harassing the families of dead children and accusing them of being "crisis actors" and agents of the secret global elitists. Or, they might dox people as a way to encourage violence and make their enemies feel threatened. The beliefs they hold and the identity they've built up around those beliefs will lead them to feel justified in doing whatever it takes to "save the world" from any number of fantastical enemies that they think they're fighting.
For a certain few, a subset within a subset, these ridiculous beliefs will lead to them taking potentially lethal action. The would-be rescuer of child sex slaves who stormed a pizza restaurant did so with an assault rifle, firing three warning shots. Its frankly rather amazing that no one was hurt or killed. Another man armed himself and blocked a highway near the Hoover Dam, acting on his belief in the "Qanon" conspiracy and demanding the release of a secret report on James Comey. Its also amazing that that incident didn't end in bloodshed. Future incidents may not end so cleanly.
In a country like ours, at a time like now, dangerous beliefs are reaching an all-time high in their ability to cause harm. For example, easy international travel means that diseases can be reintroduced into the US thanks to communities who refuse to vaccinate based on false-beliefs. Denial of climate change wastes what precious little time we have left to ward off the worst effects. Homeopathy robs people of limited funds that could have been spent on real medicine.
Furthermore, in our contentious political climate, the spread of conspiracy beliefs about the "other side" only makes the already rampant dehumanization found on the political extremes get even worse. In an era where people keep bringing up the notion of a second civil war, easy-going dehumanization mixed in with beliefs that are divorced from reality is a dangerous powder keg.
A common example is that you cannot yell "fire" in a crowded theater, because if people believe you and subsequently act upon that claim then others may be hurt in the panicked evacuation.
Notice how the limits on speech result from the likelihood that people will believe the false statements and that if they act upon that belief harm will likely result.
Well, if we acknowledge that at least some people will believe and act upon any speech (no matter how preposterous that speech is) then why not extend our prohibitions to cover more territory than just prohibiting direct calls for violence and shouting "fire" in a packed theater? Does it not make sense to extend that limiting-logic due to the information we now have, which is that there will always be people who are irrational enough believe (and act upon) almost anything?
But the common denominator in the ideas above is that we could ban any speech.
Some of you might actually be okay with that idea, which is blood-chilling. I get that it sounds tempting when we're listing the groups that are obviously crazy. It is easy to point at Alex Jones and others and highlight how their conspiracy mongering can whip people into a potentially violent frenzy.
However, if you are tempted to think that banning speech that could become harmful is a good idea, just remember that literally any set of believers is likely to have fringe elements that take those beliefs too far and that say inflammatory things. And once that happens, we are back at the problem of speech causing potential harm. Thus, literally any speech could become potentially harmful.
If we go down the path of saying "XYZ speech has potentially dangerous outcomes so we are formally limiting it", then we open ourselves up to anyone and any political party being able to use that justification to ban other expressions. They could simply say that criticizing the government is potentially dangerous (somehow) and silence critical media. They would be acting consistent with the logic of speech-limiting.
But if we leave people free to say whatever, then we guarantee that there will always be a sizable portion of the public saying (and believing and acting upon) irrational and potentially dangerous ideas.
There is no direction to draw that line on where we limit speech that cannot be either abused by those in power or else be so permissive as to allow potentially dangerous speech.
My personal conclusion, for now, is to bite the bullet and say that a society with free speech is one wherein you will always have a subset of the population believing and acting upon potentially dangerous beliefs. Even though I do not believe that the "marketplace of ideas" actually works, I still think that it is better at limiting the harms of some speech/beliefs better than formal limitations.
Furthermore, I think that any legal limitations on speech constitutes another dangerous tool for the powerful to use against anyone who would criticize their power.
So for now, as far as I can see, we should remain a society of some people shouting good ideas above a never ending chorus of nonsense and vitriol. It remains a risky world.
History is littered with stupid ideas, and it is of concerning note that if one looks closely they will see that many of these ideas still survive in some form or fashion. They have not gone away. Some have evolved, slightly, to take on different forms. Others have straight up never vanished. When one looks around, it is easy to see that a disappointingly large number of people have fallen prey to beliefs like...
- Astrology (which is making a comeback among young people)
- Homeopathy (which literally gets people killed)
- Vaccines cause autism (or, even more ridiculously, that vaccines are part of a government effort to subvert and control the population in some nefarious fashion)
- "Detoxing" and other pseudo-scientific diet fads
- Rampant conspiracy theories, like the "Q" conspiracy now propagating in corners of Trump's base
- That a group of Satan worshipers control the world through shadowy organizations
- That there is a secret "Jewish conspiracy" (a long standing irrational belief that still spreads among neo-Nazis)
Beyond the realm of pure conspiracy and into the realm of applied politics, one can see many disgraced political systems making a resurgence. There is a die hard element of modern communism that sees no problem with Stalinist tactics. There are neo-Nazis and other fascist groups that want to (either with or without the explicitly Nazi element) bring back brutal totalitarian social structures. At the fringes of America's religious population there are Christian Dominionists who would like to turn America into a literal theocracy. A man stormed a pizza restaurant in 2016 because he believed "a satanic cabal of political elites" was running a secret global child sex ring and that they stored children in the pizza restaurant's basement.
For those who say that the marketplace of ideas "just takes time" to stamp out untruth, I must state that I simply cannot bring myself to believe that any longer. For instance, the market of ideas was slowly squashing out astrology, but now it is making a strong return. How many generations will it take to snuff out the idea that the relative location of planets and stars billions of miles away has any effect on the burgeoning psychology of an infant born when the earth faced said astrological bodies in just such a way? And if something so preposterous as astrology can survive and even thrive within a free speech society, then can we really think that free speech is sufficient to drive away other ridiculous ideas?
Okay, people will believe dumb things. So what?
I think we can safely say that people will always find a way to believe nonsense. They will gravitate towards ideas that make them feel special, powerful, and that reaffirm their sense of identity. If those ideas are later threatened, then someone without an exceptionally strong sense of Self will tend to double down on their beliefs, perhaps getting even more radically preposterous, as an ego defense mechanism.This is fairly easy to see in operation from a third-person perspective, though we are all guilty of it at certain points in time. Say that someone you know starts believing in magic; they believe that they can project their mind out of their body and visit fantastical realms or travel to other parts of the world. They also believe that they are "in touch" with the universe, and that they have some levels of supreme spiritual insight and precognition. If they are not being critical, it would be easy to develop such beliefs. All it would take is a few vivid dreams and some intuitions that happened to turn out to be correct.
Now, these fantastical beliefs make an otherwise ordinary person feel extraordinary. They feel special. If they find other people who share similar delusions (either in person or online) then they can start to feel like they are part of a truly unique and dynamic community. This combination of feeling individually special and important while enjoying a relatively small community belonging is intoxicating.
Of course, if you came along and pointed out that there's literally no good argument or reason to believe that a consciousness can travel outside of its own nervous system (let alone fly through space) and that everyone's intuitions are right once in a while, the fantastical believer is not likely to be immediately persuaded. It won't be that they have any astounding facts or evidence to support their position, though they might try to deploy personal experience and appeal to vagueness in defense of what they believe. Personally, I find that people in this position will usually say something to the effect of "Well, we all have our own opinions," which of course justifies nothing at all. These tactics are there to obfuscate; to try to discredit the notion of proving or disproving anything and to simply end the conversation.
In the end, they will say whatever they need to say in order to end the painful episode of possible identity dissolution and return to simply enjoying their beliefs. Later, they'll meet with their community and share their unpleasant encounter with you, and together they and their community will simply reinforce it's insider-vs-outsider perspective.
As it relates to free speech, this disposition to follow the internal logic of one's own sense of identity over and above the facts (whatever they may be) will mean that there is guaranteed to always be at least some number of people, somewhere, who will believe any conspiracy or any claim no matter how ridiculous it is and no matter how well articulated the cases made against it are. They will hinge their identity upon those beliefs and the small, tight-knit communities they produce.
So these little idea-based communities are capable of entrapping people in evidence-proof belief systems. The internet and other technologies (like cars and planes, which make large convention-style gatherings easier) will enable these groups to ramp up their beliefs as they "entrench" themselves against the outside world. The more and more people try to argue and debate with them, the deeper that entrenchment becomes and the more fervently group members begin to build their identity around the core ideas.
Further, from among that group, a subset will be willing to act on those ideas. Its this acting-upon that is truly bothersome.
For some, acting upon their irrational ideas will lead to relatively tame behavior, like inflammatory remarks on message boards or silly (though harmless) beliefs. But for others, it leads to harassing the families of dead children and accusing them of being "crisis actors" and agents of the secret global elitists. Or, they might dox people as a way to encourage violence and make their enemies feel threatened. The beliefs they hold and the identity they've built up around those beliefs will lead them to feel justified in doing whatever it takes to "save the world" from any number of fantastical enemies that they think they're fighting.
For a certain few, a subset within a subset, these ridiculous beliefs will lead to them taking potentially lethal action. The would-be rescuer of child sex slaves who stormed a pizza restaurant did so with an assault rifle, firing three warning shots. Its frankly rather amazing that no one was hurt or killed. Another man armed himself and blocked a highway near the Hoover Dam, acting on his belief in the "Qanon" conspiracy and demanding the release of a secret report on James Comey. Its also amazing that that incident didn't end in bloodshed. Future incidents may not end so cleanly.
In a country like ours, at a time like now, dangerous beliefs are reaching an all-time high in their ability to cause harm. For example, easy international travel means that diseases can be reintroduced into the US thanks to communities who refuse to vaccinate based on false-beliefs. Denial of climate change wastes what precious little time we have left to ward off the worst effects. Homeopathy robs people of limited funds that could have been spent on real medicine.
Furthermore, in our contentious political climate, the spread of conspiracy beliefs about the "other side" only makes the already rampant dehumanization found on the political extremes get even worse. In an era where people keep bringing up the notion of a second civil war, easy-going dehumanization mixed in with beliefs that are divorced from reality is a dangerous powder keg.
Okay, but what does that have to do with free speech?
Well, we already acknowledge that our society has deemed it acceptable to limit free speech in cases where physical harm could easily result from the speech involved. That's why you can say "I hate blond people" (I don't) but you cannot whip a crowd into a frenzy and then shout "Go kill that blond person over there!"A common example is that you cannot yell "fire" in a crowded theater, because if people believe you and subsequently act upon that claim then others may be hurt in the panicked evacuation.
Notice how the limits on speech result from the likelihood that people will believe the false statements and that if they act upon that belief harm will likely result.
Well, if we acknowledge that at least some people will believe and act upon any speech (no matter how preposterous that speech is) then why not extend our prohibitions to cover more territory than just prohibiting direct calls for violence and shouting "fire" in a packed theater? Does it not make sense to extend that limiting-logic due to the information we now have, which is that there will always be people who are irrational enough believe (and act upon) almost anything?
- We could ban any speech that promotes homeopathy because, if believed, it could get someone killed.
- We could ban any speech that promotes anti-vaccination because, if believed, it could get someone killed.
- We could ban any speech that promotes conspiracy theories because, if believed, it could get someone killed.
- We could ban any speech that promotes racist thinking because, if believed, it could get someone killed.
But the common denominator in the ideas above is that we could ban any speech.
Some of you might actually be okay with that idea, which is blood-chilling. I get that it sounds tempting when we're listing the groups that are obviously crazy. It is easy to point at Alex Jones and others and highlight how their conspiracy mongering can whip people into a potentially violent frenzy.
However, if you are tempted to think that banning speech that could become harmful is a good idea, just remember that literally any set of believers is likely to have fringe elements that take those beliefs too far and that say inflammatory things. And once that happens, we are back at the problem of speech causing potential harm. Thus, literally any speech could become potentially harmful.
- Radical animal rights activists portray meat eating as akin to tacitly supporting murder. Someone could get inflamed at the idea of murderers or supporters of murderers getting off scot-free, so they buy a gun and shoot up a BBQ restaurant or meat processing plant.
- In Marilyn French's novel The Women's Room a character says that "all men are rapists". Someone could believe that this represented the author's actual views, and then believe that the author was right. Deciding that rapists should die, they may shoot the first man that they see.
- A whole foods activist could say that genetically modifying plants is a danger to the whole planet if it creates unforeseen consequences. Another person could be so persuaded that this is true that they build a car bomb and blow up a Monsanto research center to try to (they think) save the world.
If the above scenarios seem ridiculous, well...remember, a man took an assault rifle and stormed a pizza restaurant believing that he was going to free child sex slaves from the clutches of Satan-worshiping politicians.
My point is, we can never assume that there won't be at least some people who would believe (and act on) anything. There is no set of beliefs that someone, somewhere, somehow, couldn't put a dangerously crazy twist on and then convince others that radical action is necessary. Once that happens, speech related to that set of beliefs can become potentially dangerous.
So where draw the line?
Precisely.
If we go down the path of saying "XYZ speech has potentially dangerous outcomes so we are formally limiting it", then we open ourselves up to anyone and any political party being able to use that justification to ban other expressions. They could simply say that criticizing the government is potentially dangerous (somehow) and silence critical media. They would be acting consistent with the logic of speech-limiting.
But if we leave people free to say whatever, then we guarantee that there will always be a sizable portion of the public saying (and believing and acting upon) irrational and potentially dangerous ideas.
There is no direction to draw that line on where we limit speech that cannot be either abused by those in power or else be so permissive as to allow potentially dangerous speech.
Conclusion
I remain a free speech absolutist.My personal conclusion, for now, is to bite the bullet and say that a society with free speech is one wherein you will always have a subset of the population believing and acting upon potentially dangerous beliefs. Even though I do not believe that the "marketplace of ideas" actually works, I still think that it is better at limiting the harms of some speech/beliefs better than formal limitations.
Furthermore, I think that any legal limitations on speech constitutes another dangerous tool for the powerful to use against anyone who would criticize their power.
So for now, as far as I can see, we should remain a society of some people shouting good ideas above a never ending chorus of nonsense and vitriol. It remains a risky world.