#open discourse

Princeton professor Robert George recently wrote:

"I sometimes ask students what their position on slavery would have been had they been white and living in the South before abolition. Guess what? They all would have been abolitionists! They all would have bravely spoken out against slavery, and worked tirelessly against it."

He's too polite to say so, but of course they wouldn't. And indeed, our default assumption should not merely be that his students would, on average, have behaved the same way people did at the time, but that the ones who are aggressively conventional-minded today would have been aggressively conventional-minded then too. In other words, that they'd not only not have fought against slavery, but that they'd have been among its staunchest defenders.

I'm biased, I admit, but it seems to me that aggressively conventional-minded people are responsible for a disproportionate amount of the trouble in the world, and that a lot of the customs we've evolved since the Enlightenment have been designed to protect the rest of us from them. In particular, the retirement of the concept of heresy and its replacement by the principle of freely debating all sorts of different ideas, even ones that are currently considered unacceptable, without any punishment for those who try them out to see if they work.

Why do the independent-minded need to be protected, though? Because they have all the new ideas. To be a successful scientist, for example, it's not enough just to be right. You have to be right when everyone else is wrong.

Why is it in modern fandoms characters have to be gay? Like I don’t mean “Hey I have this ship with two characters of the same gender identity” I mean more like the fandom forcing a narrative that the character is gay and does like this person and if you disagree you’re homophobic or the writers/creators are homophobic. Why are male ships more accepted than female ships? Why are heterosexual ships or lesbian ships getting thrown into rareshiphell? Why isn’t it acceptable for me to headcanon a character to be bisexual or pansexual or ace or literally anything that isn’t gay? Why can’t a character exist without people being hyper-focused on their sexuality? Why do these problems exist in fandoms that the main characters are teenagers and still developing as people?

Why can’t I have my cake and eat it too? Why do people have to come along and look at my cake, not even try a slice, and tell me that I’m wrong for eating it? Why can’t I like chocolate cake with vanilla icing and chocolate cake with strawberry icing all at the same time?

And this could just be me, I could be the only person who thinks this and y’know that’s ok. If everyone agreed with me I’d honestly think there’d be a problem. But I feel like there should be variety in everything we do. If you only eat your favorite food your entire life how do you know it’s your favorite without something to compare it to?

While free speech doesn't lead to the victory of truth, at least it allows the search for truth to continue. As long as you have a large, diverse society, you're likely to have a rationalist subculture - or at least a bunch of subject-specific rationalist subcultures. Free speech allows these truth-seekers to ask thoughtful questions and propose reasonable answers, even if the thoughtful questions are awkward and the reasonable answers are scary. While the rationalists are likely to remain the minority, free speech preserves their existence. And since the methods and fruits of rationalism appeal to the smart and curious, free speech allows rationalists to continuously skim off the cognitive cream of society. Free speech doesn't make truth popular, but it does rescue the elect from abject error.

Thus, I can't honestly give three cheers to free speech, I can give it two. The first cheer for free speech is deontological: People have a right to express themselves freely, even if their expression is erroneous or irrational. The second cheer for free speech is elitist: Free speech lets the best and brightest produce and consume truth, even if most people hold the truth in disdain. But we can't honestly give free speech a third cheer for making truth popular - because the claim that free speech makes truth popular simply isn't true.

These days, however, I'm also often appalled by the opponents of political correctness. I'm appalled by their innumeracy. In a vast world, daily "newsworthy" outrages show next to nothing about the severity of a problem. I'm appalled by their self-pity. Political correctness is annoying, but the world is packed with far more serious ills. Most of all, though, I'm appalled by their antinomianism, better known as "trolling". Loudly saying disgusting things you probably don't even believe in order to enrage "Social Justice Warriors" further impedes the search for truth - and makes your targets look decent by comparison.

Against both political correctness and the trolling it inspires, I propose an old-fashioned remedy: good manners. Everyone should feel comfortable speaking their minds - as long as they're polite. In slogan form: It's not what you say; it's how you say it.

Every child knows the basics of politeness. Talk nicely. Don't yell. Don't call names. Listen and respond to what people literally say. Don't personally insult people. Don't take generalizations personally. If someone's meaning is unclear, don't put words his mouth; ask him to clarify. And of course, don't escalate. If someone's impolite, the polite response is to end the conversation, not respond in kind.

Isn't this just "tone policing"? Sure. People can and should comport themselves like ladies and gentlemen. You can fairly criticize Social Justice Warriors for one-sided tone policing - their failure to police their own tone. And you can fairly criticize them for acting as if there's no polite way to reject their views. But proper tone policing is what makes conversation productive and pleasant. (And of course, the more pleasant conversation is, the more we're likely to constructively converse).