Against Censorship

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Suppose that there was an unopinionated, dispassionate, disinterested observer with no prior commitments any particular ideology — an ideological virgin. Suppose further that this individual is rational and can be persuaded by any argument if and only if the argument is sound and is supported by the available evidence.

Our detached, rational observer observes that many different groups of people, ranging from Chinese party officials to Scientologists to Christian fundamentalists to Saudi Wahhabists, and countless other groups throughout human history, all passionately believe (or at least claim to believe) that they have The Truth, and they strenuously insist that opposing points of view must be censored.

Something doesn’t feel right. Although these different groups of people all claim to have The Truth, their claims are mutually incompatible. And they are behaving in exactly the manner one might expect from people who are trying to suppress the truth. If they really do have The Truth on their side, why do they feel so threatened by a free and open conversation? As much as they claim to find their own arguments convincing, they clearly do not expect others to find their arguments convincing. They clearly do not regard it as obvious that their beliefs are true. If their belief system was obviously true, then it would not require the indoctrination of children, suspension of critical thinking, shunning or excommunicating nonbelievers, a massive conspiracy of censorship, and every other dirty trick imaginable to protect and perpetuate itself. One could almost be forgiven for thinking that these people are deceiving themselves and others to keep a false belief system artificially alive.

The Chinese government strenuously insists that nothing of significance occurred in Tiananmen Square 1989 and relentlessly censors all references to The Incident. Imagine if you were a college student in China and you told your professor, a member of the Chinese Communist Party, that you’re interested in learning about The Incident. What might he say? Honestly I have no idea. In the real world, the professor might not even be allowed to answer. But one can imagine a possible response: “First, you need to undergo a period of extensive training in Party ideology — let that world be your reality. Only after you have a undergone this lengthy and thorough immersion in Party values and have absorbed all of the requisite background information, so that you become a proper Party-imbibed mentsch, will you be capable of appreciating such a complex and confusing matter in its appropriate context. Then and only then can you be permitted to do your own research into the matter. Also, you must be at least 25 years old before you can even think about doing any research into this matter.”

Your professor also warns you not to trust the so-called “““evidence””” for “““the other side’s position””” on the matter, because in order for something to really count as evidence, it needs to be testable, repeatable, and experimentally disprovable in the present. So-called “““evidence””” which relies on the patterns we observe today to extrapolate backwards into the past is not reliable. This approach of backwards-extrapolation-from-observed-patterns may be deductively valid (i.e. it’s impossible for the premises to the true and the conclusions false), but it presupposes that the laws of physics we observe today have always been the same, and there is no basis for making such an assumption, because The Official Handbook Of Party Ideology seems to demand (but does not say explicitly) that certain physical constants such as the speed of light were different after 4 June 1989 CE. Or something.

The student remarks that the Party’s behavior looks suspiciously similar to the behavior of someone who is profoundly unconfident about their beliefs because their belief system is extremely fragile and cannot withstand five seconds of scrutiny in an free and open and honest conversation. “If we really do have the truth on our side”, the student asks, “then why is such relentless censorship of opposing views necessary in the first place? Isn’t all the censorship a tacit admission of weakness? And also, isn’t it important to be open-minded? There are plenty of people who think they’re right just as much as we do, but both of us would agree that they’re wrong. What if we’re also wrong? If we were wrong, it would be very difficult for us to know it, because all of the potential evidence has already been censored.”

“The weakness of whom?” The professor replies. “If the topics are complex and have confused millions, is it really fair to expose more people to them? If the Party is correct, and I mean objectively correct, then other ideas that cunningly obscure The Truth can only be bad. I am very open minded, and I understand that it can seem irrational, arrogant and dangerous to assume the “I'm right", but only if you are actually wrong (as you said about the plenty of people). But if you really have The Truth, it can be rational, humble and safe to believe so.” 

“Wow, that makes perfect sense”, the student replies. “I wasn’t so sure about this whole ‘massive conspiracy of censorship’ thing before, but now I totally support it!”

One can imagine similar dialogues between a young person who is “questioning”, and the spokespersons of 1003 other groups which claim to have The Truth, such as Scientology or Wahhabism.

Now, along comes the 1004th group, the Chareidim, who, just like the Chinese government which strenuously insists that nothing of significance occurred in Tiananmen Square 1989 and relentlessly censors any references to The Incident, also strenuously insist that their narrative is True and relentlessly censor any opposing views. To the detached, rational observer, what is the fundamental difference between the Chareidi censorship of materials labeled as “kefirah”, and the Chinese government’s censorship of materials related to the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre? The difference, of course, is that unlike those dirty commies who are obviously totally wrong, the Chareidim are actually right. But how is the detached, rational observer supposed to know that, when they appear to be behaving in pretty much the same ways for pretty much the same reasons? 

What should our detached rational observer’s default assumption be? What is the simpler, more likely explanation, from the detached rational observer’s point of view? That one of these myriad groups really has The Truth, like a needle in a haystack, or that they’re all full of shit?

If you really wanted to convert the detached rational observer to your point of view, the first thing you need to do is allow a free and open conversation. This is absolutely essential. If you can’t even do that, it’s a very very very bad look. It shows that you’re unwilling to seriously acknowledge the possibility that you could be wrong, would not be capable of changing your mind even if you were wrong, and that you don’t believe your views are strong enough to withstand scrutiny. In fact, it would not be unreasonable for our detached rational observer to adopt a heuristic which says “the more a group which claims to have The Truth insists on censorship, the more improbable it is that they actually have The Truth”, and simply ignore all such groups.