Free speech and a meritocracy of ideas

There are the nazis, cynically exploiting free speech to give themselves a legitimate reason to organise, and there are there those who are fooled by this. They are split into a small group who are subsequently recruited into the far and another larger group who work for the Telegraph.

But what about this group?

For those not aware, Thanos is the villain in Marvel’s infinity war and wants to kill half of all the life in the universe to make things more sustainable for the survivors. Ben Shapiro is an American conservative. As hilarious as the idea is that a supervillain had just been hanging out on the wrong parts of LessWrong, I think Ben Shapiro’s bizarre idea highlights an important and growing group of free speech supporters: the meritocratic free speech supporter.

This group are so wedded so meritocracy, and so convinced it is both functional and good they think that any sufficiently good and correct idea must just win. They’re unconcerned with how successful ideas are actually transmitted or popular practices spread, they’re convinced that victory will be theirs if only those damn students would stop preventing them speaking at university. Or whatever.

I don’t think this is merely a variant of overconfidence, although overconfidence plays a role. You have to also think that a “fair” competition would leave your ideas victorious. This I think makes it a curiously right wing phenomenon. Australian LGBT campaigners didn’t want an election on equal marriage in Australia, and feminists don’t want a referendum in Northern Ireland on abortion, not because they don’t think their ideas are right and good, or that they’d be denied a fair fight, but because they realise that we’re not in a meritocracy and sometimes bad things happen.

Likewise, the process of debate isn’t just an intermediate stage to be disregarded, its a means to an end, and ends don’t always justify the means. You can see this with trans rights campaigners, who are not trying to win in the marketplace of ideas. Or at least, that’s not the main route to success. They’re trying to get policy changed and their enemies marginalised and their rights guaranteed. Why would they? If we live in a meritocracy then how do you explain the way trans people been treated for decades? Attitudes will change, but not because of any meritocracy of ideas or triumph of free speech. The marketplace of ideas is much more likely to change in response to social changes than vice versa.

So, that’s some thoughts on free speech. It’s still good, but don’t get carried away loving it or misinterpret people who don’t love it as much as you.

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