Antonia Caenis recently published a defense of the truth-seeking space—a space that is
both rare and unbelievably precious. I’m going to call it “truth-seeking space” based on a conversation that I had with someone from the EA community, and its defining feature is this: It’s common knowledge for people in this space that you do not have to censor your thoughts. You can explore any subject, from any angle, in open-ended discourse. If you are judged, it’s on the quality of the discourse, not on its outcome (or where it falls with regards to the prevailing orthodoxy, common taboos, the Overton window or whatever).
Such requests for the mere existence of an enclave where people might furtively whisper the obvious truths about naked emperors and elephants in rooms would have seemed bizarre to Europeans a few centuries ago, when the Enlightenment was characterized by firm demands for limitless free speech. But culture changes with time, and the shifting norms of the present day point to a social tradeoff which underscores a dichotomy lurking in the human psyche.
Champions of free speech understand very well that the more restricted speech becomes, the more difficult it is to innovate, fight corruption, or defend against authoritarian overreach. Less well appreciated is the way a social group shares information in much the same way that nurons pass signals across a living brain, giving rise to coordinated and intelligent behavior. Accurate speech isn’t precisely the same as free speech, but they’re close cousins—it’s not possible to communicate accurately if there are some things you aren’t allowed to say.
And yet, the freer speech becomes, the more friction, embarrassment, and offense circulates through society. So it is not at all clear that freedom of speech should be an ultimate or even an instrumental value. Humanity as a whole is not likely to flourish under conditions of limitless free speech (if it did, the world would already look like an unmoderated Reddit forum).
The Joy of Uncensored Speech
Given the point I’m trying to make, it might be worthwhile to clarify something about myself: I experience a visceral yearning for free and direct speech at all times and under all circumstances. To speak without hesitation, without reservation, is one of life’s great joys—or at least it is to me.
Some years ago I happened upon a psychological study on the Brief Loquatiousness and Interpersonal Responsiveness Test (BLIRT). The test consisted of eight items:
If I have something to say, I don’t hesitate to say it.
It often takes me a while to figure out how to express myself. (Reverse keyed)
If I disagree with someone, I tend to wait until later to say something. (Reversed)
I always say what’s on my mind.
Sometimes I just don’t know what to say to people. (Reversed)
I never have a problem saying what I think.
When emotions are involved, it's difficult for me to argue my opinion. (Reversed)
I speak my mind as soon as a thought enters my head.1
I don’t score that high, but well, I am rather high in this trait. And while I don’t need to yammer constantly in a crowd, around strangers, or when you’re trying to read, I have spent a long life watching in a state of bemusement as people scream and cry when all I did was to tell them about obvious things like how water is wet, the sun is hot, the harmonic series diverges, their significant other is crazy, and their favorite drawing looks like a retarded squirrel. So, you can probably imagine what happens when political topics come up. (Good news for me: in the current cultural climate, everything is now political)
This view I have of life is almost definitely a result of personality; the study authors report that scores on the BLIRT correlate positively with Extraversion (r = 0.34, p < .001), and negatively with the tendency to experience negative emotions like fear, anxiety, or anger, known as Neuroticism (r = -0.40, p < .001).2 The takeaway here is that I’m a pretty sanguine fellow, so when you read the following, please keep in mind that I’m speaking about what I’ve learned is true here rather than what I really wish were true:
The damage inflicted by open expression on vulnerable people can be serious. In the extreme, the free flow of information can hollow out a person’s self-confidence, induce anxieties where none existed before, and bombard people with nightmare-inducing images of torture, sexuality, and gore.
As a case in point, consider the following exchange I had with Mrs. Apple Pie regarding a movie we’ll call X:
So in just the same way that adults will discretely censor their discussion of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll around the little ones, or curb their use of profanity around strangers, it definitely does seem sensible to exercise sensitivity in polite conversations. This is something that just about everyone knows.
But anyone who has ever worked in a position involving even a smidgeon of customer service also knows that sensitivity has a strong tendency to veer into insincerity—and under those circumstances, even if a clear signal might be sent through conversation, trust in its fidelity will ultimately be lost. You cannot believe what the waiter, the secretary, or the museum tour guide tells you beyond the most obvious and easily verified information. Personal experience has taught me that one also cannot trust one’s supervisor without great care. What about the stranger on the street, or the fellow-passenger on the train? Sorry, any situation where politeness matters is a situation where speech is not really free, and clear transmission of information cannot be relied upon.
Where, Then, Can Speech be Free?
The natural assumption is that speech restrictions loosen among friends and relatives. Lately Westerners segregate along cultural, demographic and psychological lines. Partly this is a result of the modern world we live in, where children are raised in small families, separated educationally by year of birth and then by field of interest, and then later by sociopolitical values. But even with all of this—even having met my wife while we were both pursuing degrees in physics, and finding further compatibilities due to our libertarian backgrounds, and growing together over years of marriage, after all of this, the kinds of interactions depicted in that cartoon above are still an occasional risk.
I mentioned libertarianism; it’s hard not to when discussing free expression. Libertarianism runs like a silver thread through Western society, a curious third-party political orientation that most people don’t quite subscribe to. But it isn’t supported equally everywhere or by everyone. Libertarianism.org asks “Why aren’t more women libertarians?” and “Why are there so few libertarian women?” while The Libertarian Republic wants to know “Seriously, where are all the libertarian women?”
The answer is simple: Libertarian attitudes are rather masculine attitudes. I’ve written previously about the way most males score lower in Emotionality than most females. It’s worth clarifying that Emotionality is a personality trait blending Big Five Agreeableness and Neuroticism together; it measures a person’s overall level of sentimentality, anxiety-proneness, and dependence on others.
It should be of some interest, then, that libertarians show the same male profile of lower Emotionality and heightened analytic thinking. In a comprehensive series of three studies, consisting of over a thousand US participants, libertarians are found to be lower in Agreeableness and Neuroticism, lower in empathic concern, and more likely to endorse individual liberty as a guiding principle than members of other political groups. Though they have other characteristics as well (for example, they scored as rather introverted) libertarians are clearly a masculine bunch.3
Also interesting is the way that this silver thread doesn’t seem to run through, for example, Asia. Internet searches on Libertarianism Asia return a lot of crickets; a bit of digging gave an enticing mention of the Liberal League in Japan, but my excitement quickly faded upon finding the League had dissolved in 2005. What we do see in Asia is a lot of paternalism: China and North Korea are bywords for authoritarian overreach. And the thread there, lately, seems strangely pink:
“Little Pinks,” xiao fenhong, is the name given to the young, hypersensitive, hyper-nationalist keyboard commandos of the People’s Republic of China. Xiao means “little” or “young” and fenhong means pink, but the expression can also mean “little fans of the Red.”
…They act as online vigilantes on the lookout for anyone — Chinese, foreign, or foreign Chinese — who has “hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.”
…The Little Pinks demand apologies, and frequently receive the most grovelling of ones, from those who want to keep working, or at least making money, in China.
Fortunately we don’t have anything like that here in the West. But we might be able to learn something about ourselves by considering the issue of free speech and hurt feelings through an Asian lens. What if, instead of concerning ourselves with the importance of freedom, we focused instead on the idea of face?
Face
The concept of face saturates Asian society. In common understanding, the term refers to one’s sense of dignity or prestige, and it is considered natural that one will go to some lengths to “save face” to avoid being thought of badly by others. But saving face is also done on behalf of other people, as we may also be embarrassed by watching as others are humiliated.
There is another study where sensitivity to considerations of face was measured by the Loss of Face (LOF) Questionnaire.4 This inventory consisted of the following 21 items administered in a 5-point Likert-format:
1. I am more affected when someone criticizes me in public than when someone criticizes me in private.
2. During a discussion, I try not to ask questions because I may appear ignorant to others.
3. I maintain a low profile because I do not want to make mistakes in front of other people.
4. Before I make comments in the presence of other people, I qualify my remarks.
5. I downplay my abilities and achievements so that others do not have unrealistically high expectations of me.
6. I carefully plan what I am going to say or do to minimize mistakes.
7. I say I may be in error before commenting on something.
8. When I meet other people, I am concerned about their expectations of me.
9. I hesitate asking for help because I think my request will be an inconvenience to others.
10. I try not to do things which call attention to myself.
11. I do not criticize others because this may embarrass them.
12. I carefully watch others’ actions before I do anything.
13. I will not complain publicly even when I have been treated unfairly.
14. I try to act like others to be consistent with social norms.
15. Before I do anything in public, I prepare myself for any possible consequence.
16. I prefer to use a third party to help resolve our differences between another person and me.
17. When discussing a problem, I make an effort to let the person know that I am not blaming him or her.
18. When someone criticizes me, I try to avoid that person.
19. When I make a mistake in front of others, I try to prevent them from noticing it.
20. Even when I know another person is at fault, I am careful not to criticize that person.
21. When someone embarrasses me, I try to forget it.
And the same study5 reports scores on LOF showed significant correlations with personality across both European-American (left) and Asian-American (right) samples:
Extraversion: r = −.25 and −.38, p < .01
Conscientiousness: r = −.12* and −.13*, p < .05
Neuroticism: r = +.20** and +.20**, p < .01
Openness: r = −0.14* and −.17**, p < .01
I think it’s very interesting to speculate that face helps to reduce stress and smooth cooperation within small groups, while free speech promotes society’s ability to carry accurate information across wide social networks.
But more to the point, it doesn’t seem to be the case that attention to face is merely an Asian value. Rather, concern for the concept of face is alive and well right here in the West among sensitive individuals—particularly the anxious and conventionally-minded. This is virtually the polar opposite of the sincere, communicative, and blirtatious personality for whom face is an alien concept, and the free and unfettered flow of information is a source of boundless joy.
A Modest Suggestion
There seems to be a tradeoff between the brash, masculine desire for open expression, and the introverted and feminine need for face.6
Fortunately, however, simply framing the issue in these terms suggests a solution to the problem. There are already spaces that lean male; these can simply be co-opted to become locations of free and open communication, leaving everywhere else pleasant, polite, and conflict-free. My old professors told me that a lot of the important discussions in physics happened at the bar.7 I don’t know about bars per se—that was never really my scene. But if you could get a modern day scientific colloquium / video arcade / MMA ring / philosophy circle / gaming store up and running, I’d be there. I fact, I already experience something like this at the local chess meetup I attend every week. It’s a space dominated by open, uninhibited expression veering from moment to moment between the ribald and intellectual. Nobody had to tell us that being offended wasn’t on the table; it turns out that people who like to play chess aren’t much affected by conflict or shocking statements made to be truthful rather than sensitive.
The trick after that seems largely to lie in figuring out how to get rid of the lummoxes, and convince the clever, less-emotional ladies and others that this is (no, really) a good place to hang out. Norms where citations will be required for contentious claims might do the trick for the first problem, and perhaps some tasteful decorations and free babysitting services could handle the latter. (Hey stop looking at me like that, it’s not sexist, this is Mrs. Apple Pie’s idea)
Swann Jr, W. B., & Rentfrow, P. J. (2001). Blirtatiousness: Cognitive, behavioral, and physiological consequences of rapid responding. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(6), 1160.
Ibid.
Iyer, R., Koleva, S., Graham, J., Ditto, P., & Haidt, J. (2012). Understanding libertarian morality: The psychological dispositions of self-identified libertarians. PLoS ONE, 7(8), e42366.
Zane, N. (1991). An empirical examination of loss of face among Asian Americans. Paper presented at the 99th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association; San Francisco.
Ibid.
By the way, have you heard about Yin and Yang?
The text was too complicated for me, but I must admit that I liked the cartoon. Especially the cat. I have one principles for separating movies worth watching from movies not worth watching: The first category consists solely of movies so complicated that a pet can't understand them. If the cat gets what happens on screen, then the movie is not for me.