Freedom of thought and expression
The messy process known as science requires we tolerate even the most abhorrent ideas
It was the summer of 1992. My co-counselor Justin and I were having a late night discussion with one of our campers around a campfire in the back country of Yosemite. Laura had asked us a question about how we ourselves came to decide if something was true or not. At the age of 21, an avid rock climber and backpacker, someone who went to almost every Grateful Dead show I could get tickets for, I would have been hard pressed to explain where I had gotten my views. Interestingly, views that my co-counselor Justin was agreeing with me on.
I told Laura that I thought the best policy was to accept things as true temporarily based on a lack of evidence that such a claim wasn’t true. For Laura, a rising Junior in High School, this was way to grey. She, being exceptionally smart, argued (very persuasively) that some things must always be true and others always false. She argued that a philosophy of knowledge (epistemology) which could not arrive at some sort of objective reality was stupid. No way to live one’s life. After some discussion with her, and consideration, Justin and I relented to Laura’s position. We told her she was right.
About fifteen silent minutes later, Laura erupted. FUCK YOU TWO!
“What did we do?” Justin and I inquired.
“You accepted my argument and changed your position” said Laura.
We smiled.
She ended this round with: “You assholes just showed me why your position is correct and you made me do all the work.”
That interaction has stuck with me over the years.
What I did not fully appreciate, and what I would not fully appreciate until I was in my early 30’s and discovered Karl Popper, was my philosophical position on knowledge acquisition had a name. Falsification. It was the reading of Popper’s book, The Logic of Scientific Discovery that helped me understand the organization of my thinking.
As a Physics switched to Economics major in college, I hadn’t picked this up in any philosophy classes. Fortunately, some where along the way, my brain had been wired to see the world as Popper saw it. I say fortunately because this way of looking at the world tends to inoculate one’s self from the more tribal aspects of societies opinions.
I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth.
-Karl Popper
Error. The identification and elimination of error. This simple and open process has generated more useful “knowledge” for humanity than any other system we have developed in our history.
The rule Justin and I had articulated to Laura was essentially this idea of no final say. Simply put, human knowledge is temporary. To participate honestly in the world of knowledge, you have to become comfortable with uncertainty and adopt a willingness to discover error. Most importantly be open to your own errors.
This gets us to an interesting conflict within each of us. Certainty is easier on the brain than uncertainty is; uncertainty requires more mental effort. Our "brain craves certainty and avoids uncertainty like it is pain”1 and that makes honest participation in the generation of knowledge very difficult.
If there is no final say, what is one to do when someone wishes to challenge something for which society is beyond questioning?
A recent example of this dilemma has emerged on social media. A news story is circulating about a Texas school official who, in reaction to a recent state law, indicated to an audience assembled on a conference call “make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust, that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives.”2
So many errors involved in this story, but as near as I can tell, all of them come from the desire to suppress ideas/speech.
The remarks were made by Gina Peddy, the executive director of curriculum and instruction in the school district, which serves more than 8,400 students in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Ms. Peddy was addressing House Bill 3979 which relates to how public schools handle subjects such as critical race theory. Essentially, the law says that teachers who choose to discuss current events or “controversial issues of public policy or social affairs” should also explore the issues “from diverse and contending perspectives without giving deference to any one perspective.” Rather than letting Critical Race Theory collapse on the multitude of internal errors, the government is trying to have say on the basis of personal authority.
I think most of us can agree, there is little about the Holocaust narrative as it is popularly understood that might be error. That said, if people feel there are errors in the Holocaust narrative, then they should be free to propose what those errors are. The whole point of liberal science is that no one has final say, so we don’t object to freedom of speech because it is essential to discovery of error. This includes speech (ideas) that I personally might find painful and horrifying. Liberal science is not always a “nice” in our relentless (and historically quite successful) march towards knowledge.
Which brings us to the government's attempt to legislate what can and cannot be taught in the classroom. Such legislation is a violation of the empirical rule: No one, not even the government, has personal authority over knowledge. Ideas must be free to be criticized so that their errors, or lack of errors can be arrived at through the process. Knowledge literally depends on it.
We are all free to claim that a statement has been established as knowledge. Then such a statement is checked for error. The method used to check must arrive at the same results regardless of the identity of the checker, and regardless of the source of the statement. This is, in part, why much (all?) of Critical Race Theory will ultimately fall into the dustbin of history as error.
It should also be noted that no one proposing that something is knowledge gets a free pass simply because of who they are, or what group they belong to. This means we cannot accept that the Holocaust is beyond checking just because a Jewish person or organization says so. Identity does not count; this rule applies to all.
So, when an organization opposed to anti-semitism creates a tweet like this:
they themselves are in error. The error is not about the Holocaust, the error is that there can be no opposing perspectives. What we are really saying here is that we are only willing to accept one position, and that this position is final. That may indeed be the case (I think it is), but that does not mean that such a position is above the rule of no final say.
This liberal science business is very messy! Freedom of thought and speech is very messy. Feelings will be hurt. Sensibilities will be challenged.
At the end of the day, when we tell others we are “open minded,” we need to recognize just how much personal work must be undertaken to keep an open mind on “settled issues.” To be sure, the forces of the moment in the United States are inviting us to go strongly in the other direction. Authoritarianism is back on the left and the right and it is attacking our very system of knowledge production.
This authoritarian push (which started in the early 1980s when I was in colleger) are fueled by three idealistic impulses. We have fundamentalists want to protect "the truth" as they see it. We have egalitarians want to help the oppressed and let in the excluded; they don't want to discuss anything that might intefear with their immediate goals. Lastly, come the humanitarians want to stop "verbal violence" and the pain it causes.
These three impulses are now working in concert to undermine (for seemingly noble reasons) our ability to find error. If cannot seek error due to restrictions on thoughts, speech, and topics we risk ending science as it has been practiced. If you are interested in reading more on this, please consider picking up the following titles and giving them a good once over:
The Consititution of Knowledge by Jonathan Rauch
The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff
Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker
Woke Racism by John McWhorter
Footnote to readers: I recognize that the Holocaust is a particularly difficult subject with which to defend this notion of “no final say.” In no small part this is why I chose to use it. I think we can all agree it is hard to imagine that someone could make a case (strong or weak) as to why the Holocaust as perpetrated by Nazi Germany could have any other narrative than the one commonly accepted by both Germany and the civilized world. As such it is the case we need to worry the least about alternative theories (as upsetting as those might be). Error checking based on evidence should quickly dispense with any theories that conflict with our “knowledge” based on the prevailing narrative.
Rock, David. “Hunger for Certainty”: Psychology Today, October 25, 2009.
From all available evidence (including a recording of the meeting in question) Ms. Peddy seemed to have been using this as an extreme (& sarcastic) example. Contrary to the outrage on social media there is no evidence she believes there is a legitimate opposing view.