"I’m NOT allowed to suggest that the conference should pick different speakers who think we should hug kittens instead."
Even this step seems very open to nuance, depending on how strong we interpret "suggest" here. Enter Alice and Bob, two conference attendees:
Alice: "I don't think that inviting Kitten Kicker was a wise decision. We have Harry Hugger right here in the audience, who was perfectly ready to give his Hugging for Humanity talk. Couldn't we have him talk instead? If I hold a conference, I'll invite Harry Hugger instead."
Bob: "How dare the conference invite Kitten Kicker! They're a monster! By inviting them, they have revealed themselves as monsters too! And everyone who attended the conference are monsters by association. Let's all review-bomb them and throw rotten eggs at the conference staff, who live at 123 Main St., so that the world knows to shun them forever more!"
Both Alice and Bob are suggesting that the conference should pick different speakers, but I think that Alice really is following the virtue of freedom of expression, while Bob isn't. (Right?)
This seems so reasonable and well-thought-out!? How are you so good at this
Though I'm uncertain about where that leads to with Blanchardianism. Some particular thoughts:
* One thing that comes to mind is the cancellation of Michael Bailey. Let's say he forwards a claim or seeks to make a presentation or something. It seems semi-common for activists to poison the well by going on about the fuck-saw incident and his association with racists and "he thinks trans women are perverts". Doing so seems like unfair noise, yet also seems highly effective in practice, and it doesn't immediately have to break any of the rules you set up (though I guess does kind of break the virtues?). On the other hand, while these are unfair to cancel on, he's a ridiculous person who does lots of terrible stuff. Most recently he's got a paper out titled "Psychometric evidence that paraphilias are a natural kind", where he claims to make data available to reasonable requests, yet when I requested to know what websites he recruited from, he refused, saying it would be "too much work". This seems invalidating, arguably even retraction-worthy (the reason he refuses is most likely that sharing it would undermine his study - I can write more in detail about that if you are interested). So there's this thing about Bailey where everyone is going after him for stupid reasons but also he really needs people to go after him for less-stupid reasons. It's unclear how hard people need to go after him, and maybe even the form of going after him that needs to occur doesn't have to contradict freedom of expression. (Are retractions a violation of freedom of expression? What if, like with his ROGD paper, the retracted paper stays publicly available after retraction with only a retraction notice?)
* Conversely, I've done a lot of yelling at Blanchardians. For example, Phil Illy was worried that my review of his book would've turned off a lot of rationalists if it had made it to the finalists. Blanchardians claim my book review is unfair. I don't *think* that's true, I review lots of major claims he made, but one could just say I'm biased. If I'm biased, am I undermining freedom of expression by putting up a negative review of an already-marginalized position? If my book review is accurate, are Blanchardians being unvirtuous by patting each other on their back and agreeing with each other that I'm biased? Does it matter whether I think they are getting a core point right that most other people are getting wrong? (What if I think the core point is less important than they think and I think them being obnoxiously wrong about endless stuff justifies people disbelieving in their core point?)
* Blanchardians tend to advocate ROGD theory, and conversely trans people find it urgent to start HRT. Especially trans teens want to start HRT ASAP to not get wrecked by puberty, whereas ROGD theorists urgently want to restrict HRT for trans teens. Is it acceptable to try to get ROGD theorists removed from jobs providing trans healthcare? To put "retracted" notices on ROGD papers in prestigious journals? To spy on ROGD support groups and share the findings publicly? (What if the ROGD groups spy on trans healthcare groups?)
* Is it unvirtuous for me to go "well, I tried talking to Blanchardians, but they are extremely unreasonable, so I really don't recommend it"?
Like Blanchardianism really shook my faith in freedom of expression. It's closely associated with many other taboo right-wing opinions, and ultimately it's just this bizarre knot where people feel like they've found The Truth and they sorta kinda have but they are being so terrible about it in every way conceivable that it'd be better for them to just forget.
Conversely, maybe there's a sort of, neuroticism element to it. Like suppose someone sees something that doesn't quite add up and they try to bring it up to the authorities. But the person doesn't really have a clue what it means and so annoys the authorities and they shout them down. Maybe the person becomes sad and anxious because the problem isn't being taken into account. Like is that what happened to Zack? More generally, at times I turn out to be overly forceful in disagreeing with something and then later I go "oh fuck, I was wrong". But also, it just genuinely is annoying when someone is implying that they've found The Big Thing and then they run around in circles without actually answering what that big thing is supposed to be.
To some extent, I'm wondering if the root cause is what I'd call "coercive differential psychology". Like there's the "nice" kind of differential psychology like self-report personality tests, where there's much less controversy because it's all based on how people self-identify. Like, you'd hope there's a connection between self-identity and reality, but the point is that because our best way of observing that connection is self-reports, you don't have to argue to other people that they are ACTUALLY AGP or whatever. Meanwhile, trying to expose what people REALLY are creates an inherently adversarial element which then diffuses out and makes people (including me, IMO) "the worst version of themselves". Like one can try to resolve the conflict by prescribing better social behaviors but maybe it's just inherent to the general topic.
On the other hand, it's not like you can Just Not do coercive differential psychology, right? Psychiatry seems inherently full of it, as does politics, and both of these are closely linked to trans healthcare.
I think a lot of this is something I feel consequentialist about. I would prefer that ROGD believers not provide trans healthcare, because I think the evidence for ROGD theory is scanty. But if I thought that ROGD theory is true, I would want them to provide trans healthcare. That's fine; sometimes it matters what's true and what isn't.
Similarly, it's bad to write a review that misrepresents someone's book, but not for freedom-of-expression reasons; it's bad because you shouldn't strawman others. I have utter contempt for the idea that bad reviews are censorship. It's just information; people can take it into account or not. You're entitled to speak, but you're not entitled to an audience, and you certainly aren't entitled to a lack of responses.
Similarly, I don't think it's censorship for you to say "I don't think you should talk to X because of Y." It's just, like, your opinion, man. I can listen or not listen. It would be bad if you were like "if you talk to X, I'm going to go gossip behind your back about how you're a Y apologist," but if you just shrug and go "well, you're making a bad decision IMO" then who cares.
Your point about coercive differential psychology is very sharp and I'm going to be mulling it over.
"In short, if the law Abigail Shrier proposed passed, it would lead to the publication of approximately three anti-trans books and three million books where the hero fucks a mermaid."
Mermaid-fucking books are a good outcome though. Maybe Shrier doesn't like them, but from a consequentialist perspective, there's clearly nothing wrong with them. Amazon selling them benefits the people who write mermaid-fucking books or want to read them and hurts no one.
I don't have anything to add on freedom of speech, but I stand in awe of the level of self-restraint you must possess to be able to write about Amazon's mermaid sex bans and refrain from commenting on the fact that you found that stock photo on "Unsplash."
Good post, especially the third section. I have often felt the need to distinguish between the legal object of "freedom of expression" and something like having a culture of free expression. (Amazon not carrying a book has is completely allowed under the legal rule, but slightly discouraged by the culture). But i have had a hard time making the distinction concise.
It seems to me the arguments in the deontology section are more rule consequentialist than deontological.
I had no idea you went to New College, but on another level, that totally makes sense. I grew up on the campus - my mom is a humanities professor of several decades there, and part of an ongoing lawsuit, as one of her classes was stricken from the lineup for dealing with gender presentation in dance/theatrical productions in classical and contemporary performance. I think this is a strong framework to think of free speech and morality in broad terms beyond the case-by-cases that dominate a lot of the discourse and seem to lead to people shoehorning themselves based on strongly held local-opinions that they try to generalize to heuristic. Thank you for writing it!
I don't think you took the puppykicker analogy far enough:
Suppose that instead of just one speaker being a puppykicker, 80% of the conference speakers were puppykickers. Also, the conference is being organised by the new director of an animal rights organisation dedicated to epistemics in animal rights. You and all your friends have been donating to this organisation and make up a substantial part of the donation base. Are you allowed to point out to your friends that the new director is clearly a puppykicking sympathiser, and that they should obviously stop donating to the organisation? And if, in response to you saying this, the new director is ousted, have you done a bad thing?
My answer to this question is "obviously not". Yes, it meets the definition of "cancelling", but this is just one of the few occasions where "cancelling" is justified. To not "cancel" the director would be to waste your friends money and hurt the cause of animal rights. There are no hard and fast rules: it's always a matter of degrees.
"Needless to say, books about teenagers having sex, consenting adults roleplaying rape, and mermaid sex are all protected speech under U.S. law. "
You might want to do a bit more research about free speech law. "Obscene" speech is categorically less protected than speech expressing opinions about contested social/political issues like transgenderism.
Unless it has literary or artistic merit, which have typically been defined very broadly, such that a mermaidfucking book with a plot would typically be considered to have literary merit. And Amazon is not exactly hiring a bunch of English grad students to rule on whether this mermaidfucking book is artistically worthy before it deletes books.
Sorry, this is only tangential, but the less I try to understand the world and The Good, and the less I express it, the happier I am.
I actually score high on openness but the less I “exercise” that, the better for my mental health. And no, I do not live or engage in a very strict religious or political community at all. Bring artistic and intellectual and curious is very high status in my crowd.
I am highly agreeable, though, and pretty much only get sad, never angry. If I encounter a repulsive belief it just fills me with sadness, never an energising “ugh I could cut their heads off”. Maybe it’s that?
It might be that I’m cowardly, or maybe it’s just one of my Core Values that being Intellectual and Curious and Artistic is not Morally Obligated (TM).
"I’m NOT allowed to suggest that the conference should pick different speakers who think we should hug kittens instead."
Even this step seems very open to nuance, depending on how strong we interpret "suggest" here. Enter Alice and Bob, two conference attendees:
Alice: "I don't think that inviting Kitten Kicker was a wise decision. We have Harry Hugger right here in the audience, who was perfectly ready to give his Hugging for Humanity talk. Couldn't we have him talk instead? If I hold a conference, I'll invite Harry Hugger instead."
Bob: "How dare the conference invite Kitten Kicker! They're a monster! By inviting them, they have revealed themselves as monsters too! And everyone who attended the conference are monsters by association. Let's all review-bomb them and throw rotten eggs at the conference staff, who live at 123 Main St., so that the world knows to shun them forever more!"
Both Alice and Bob are suggesting that the conference should pick different speakers, but I think that Alice really is following the virtue of freedom of expression, while Bob isn't. (Right?)
This seems so reasonable and well-thought-out!? How are you so good at this
Though I'm uncertain about where that leads to with Blanchardianism. Some particular thoughts:
* One thing that comes to mind is the cancellation of Michael Bailey. Let's say he forwards a claim or seeks to make a presentation or something. It seems semi-common for activists to poison the well by going on about the fuck-saw incident and his association with racists and "he thinks trans women are perverts". Doing so seems like unfair noise, yet also seems highly effective in practice, and it doesn't immediately have to break any of the rules you set up (though I guess does kind of break the virtues?). On the other hand, while these are unfair to cancel on, he's a ridiculous person who does lots of terrible stuff. Most recently he's got a paper out titled "Psychometric evidence that paraphilias are a natural kind", where he claims to make data available to reasonable requests, yet when I requested to know what websites he recruited from, he refused, saying it would be "too much work". This seems invalidating, arguably even retraction-worthy (the reason he refuses is most likely that sharing it would undermine his study - I can write more in detail about that if you are interested). So there's this thing about Bailey where everyone is going after him for stupid reasons but also he really needs people to go after him for less-stupid reasons. It's unclear how hard people need to go after him, and maybe even the form of going after him that needs to occur doesn't have to contradict freedom of expression. (Are retractions a violation of freedom of expression? What if, like with his ROGD paper, the retracted paper stays publicly available after retraction with only a retraction notice?)
* Conversely, I've done a lot of yelling at Blanchardians. For example, Phil Illy was worried that my review of his book would've turned off a lot of rationalists if it had made it to the finalists. Blanchardians claim my book review is unfair. I don't *think* that's true, I review lots of major claims he made, but one could just say I'm biased. If I'm biased, am I undermining freedom of expression by putting up a negative review of an already-marginalized position? If my book review is accurate, are Blanchardians being unvirtuous by patting each other on their back and agreeing with each other that I'm biased? Does it matter whether I think they are getting a core point right that most other people are getting wrong? (What if I think the core point is less important than they think and I think them being obnoxiously wrong about endless stuff justifies people disbelieving in their core point?)
* Blanchardians tend to advocate ROGD theory, and conversely trans people find it urgent to start HRT. Especially trans teens want to start HRT ASAP to not get wrecked by puberty, whereas ROGD theorists urgently want to restrict HRT for trans teens. Is it acceptable to try to get ROGD theorists removed from jobs providing trans healthcare? To put "retracted" notices on ROGD papers in prestigious journals? To spy on ROGD support groups and share the findings publicly? (What if the ROGD groups spy on trans healthcare groups?)
* Is it unvirtuous for me to go "well, I tried talking to Blanchardians, but they are extremely unreasonable, so I really don't recommend it"?
Like Blanchardianism really shook my faith in freedom of expression. It's closely associated with many other taboo right-wing opinions, and ultimately it's just this bizarre knot where people feel like they've found The Truth and they sorta kinda have but they are being so terrible about it in every way conceivable that it'd be better for them to just forget.
Conversely, maybe there's a sort of, neuroticism element to it. Like suppose someone sees something that doesn't quite add up and they try to bring it up to the authorities. But the person doesn't really have a clue what it means and so annoys the authorities and they shout them down. Maybe the person becomes sad and anxious because the problem isn't being taken into account. Like is that what happened to Zack? More generally, at times I turn out to be overly forceful in disagreeing with something and then later I go "oh fuck, I was wrong". But also, it just genuinely is annoying when someone is implying that they've found The Big Thing and then they run around in circles without actually answering what that big thing is supposed to be.
To some extent, I'm wondering if the root cause is what I'd call "coercive differential psychology". Like there's the "nice" kind of differential psychology like self-report personality tests, where there's much less controversy because it's all based on how people self-identify. Like, you'd hope there's a connection between self-identity and reality, but the point is that because our best way of observing that connection is self-reports, you don't have to argue to other people that they are ACTUALLY AGP or whatever. Meanwhile, trying to expose what people REALLY are creates an inherently adversarial element which then diffuses out and makes people (including me, IMO) "the worst version of themselves". Like one can try to resolve the conflict by prescribing better social behaviors but maybe it's just inherent to the general topic.
On the other hand, it's not like you can Just Not do coercive differential psychology, right? Psychiatry seems inherently full of it, as does politics, and both of these are closely linked to trans healthcare.
I think a lot of this is something I feel consequentialist about. I would prefer that ROGD believers not provide trans healthcare, because I think the evidence for ROGD theory is scanty. But if I thought that ROGD theory is true, I would want them to provide trans healthcare. That's fine; sometimes it matters what's true and what isn't.
Similarly, it's bad to write a review that misrepresents someone's book, but not for freedom-of-expression reasons; it's bad because you shouldn't strawman others. I have utter contempt for the idea that bad reviews are censorship. It's just information; people can take it into account or not. You're entitled to speak, but you're not entitled to an audience, and you certainly aren't entitled to a lack of responses.
Similarly, I don't think it's censorship for you to say "I don't think you should talk to X because of Y." It's just, like, your opinion, man. I can listen or not listen. It would be bad if you were like "if you talk to X, I'm going to go gossip behind your back about how you're a Y apologist," but if you just shrug and go "well, you're making a bad decision IMO" then who cares.
Your point about coercive differential psychology is very sharp and I'm going to be mulling it over.
"In short, if the law Abigail Shrier proposed passed, it would lead to the publication of approximately three anti-trans books and three million books where the hero fucks a mermaid."
Mermaid-fucking books are a good outcome though. Maybe Shrier doesn't like them, but from a consequentialist perspective, there's clearly nothing wrong with them. Amazon selling them benefits the people who write mermaid-fucking books or want to read them and hurts no one.
I don't have anything to add on freedom of speech, but I stand in awe of the level of self-restraint you must possess to be able to write about Amazon's mermaid sex bans and refrain from commenting on the fact that you found that stock photo on "Unsplash."
Would you believe me that I didn't notice?
Good post, especially the third section. I have often felt the need to distinguish between the legal object of "freedom of expression" and something like having a culture of free expression. (Amazon not carrying a book has is completely allowed under the legal rule, but slightly discouraged by the culture). But i have had a hard time making the distinction concise.
It seems to me the arguments in the deontology section are more rule consequentialist than deontological.
I had no idea you went to New College, but on another level, that totally makes sense. I grew up on the campus - my mom is a humanities professor of several decades there, and part of an ongoing lawsuit, as one of her classes was stricken from the lineup for dealing with gender presentation in dance/theatrical productions in classical and contemporary performance. I think this is a strong framework to think of free speech and morality in broad terms beyond the case-by-cases that dominate a lot of the discourse and seem to lead to people shoehorning themselves based on strongly held local-opinions that they try to generalize to heuristic. Thank you for writing it!
I don't think you took the puppykicker analogy far enough:
Suppose that instead of just one speaker being a puppykicker, 80% of the conference speakers were puppykickers. Also, the conference is being organised by the new director of an animal rights organisation dedicated to epistemics in animal rights. You and all your friends have been donating to this organisation and make up a substantial part of the donation base. Are you allowed to point out to your friends that the new director is clearly a puppykicking sympathiser, and that they should obviously stop donating to the organisation? And if, in response to you saying this, the new director is ousted, have you done a bad thing?
My answer to this question is "obviously not". Yes, it meets the definition of "cancelling", but this is just one of the few occasions where "cancelling" is justified. To not "cancel" the director would be to waste your friends money and hurt the cause of animal rights. There are no hard and fast rules: it's always a matter of degrees.
"Needless to say, books about teenagers having sex, consenting adults roleplaying rape, and mermaid sex are all protected speech under U.S. law. "
You might want to do a bit more research about free speech law. "Obscene" speech is categorically less protected than speech expressing opinions about contested social/political issues like transgenderism.
Unless it has literary or artistic merit, which have typically been defined very broadly, such that a mermaidfucking book with a plot would typically be considered to have literary merit. And Amazon is not exactly hiring a bunch of English grad students to rule on whether this mermaidfucking book is artistically worthy before it deletes books.
Sorry, this is only tangential, but the less I try to understand the world and The Good, and the less I express it, the happier I am.
I actually score high on openness but the less I “exercise” that, the better for my mental health. And no, I do not live or engage in a very strict religious or political community at all. Bring artistic and intellectual and curious is very high status in my crowd.
I am highly agreeable, though, and pretty much only get sad, never angry. If I encounter a repulsive belief it just fills me with sadness, never an energising “ugh I could cut their heads off”. Maybe it’s that?
It might be that I’m cowardly, or maybe it’s just one of my Core Values that being Intellectual and Curious and Artistic is not Morally Obligated (TM).