Was Voltaire wrong?

[andygates]

Oxford Union are hosting a debate on free speech tonight, and they invited a couple of people with pretty unfashionable opinions: Nick Griffin, leader of the far-right BNP, and David Irving, the holocaust-denying pseudohistorian.  There is predictable uproar and protest.

Once upon a time, I was a strong advocate of Voltaire's position: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Not so much any more.  Thing is, I've been around long enough now to see some utter nonsense get trolled out and lapped up by the general public.  I don't think that the general public are especially stupid, but I do think that expecting them to judge an opinion coolly, based on the facts, is naive.  And for a while this has been vexing me.  Why, when cool heads can see clearly, does this tripe still have a hold on people?

I think the memetic theory holds water here.  Meme theory says that the "strongest" ideas will flourish in the ecosystem of our minds.  "Strong" does not mean "good" or "valuable" or "true" - "strong" means that the idea has high fecundity and fidelity.  It has to get into lots of minds, and be the same when it gets there.  Now for the political controversy: I think that reactionary, tribal memes are stronger than cool, rational memes.  The stuff you see in your right-wing rant newspaper is vigorous memetic seed; the thought-out arguments full of nuance are weaker, because they are so subtle - they take more effort to impart, and are more vulnerable to mutation.  Their one strength is truth, but the verity of a meme is a pretty weak test.  That comes later, and by then the reactionary memes can be dug well in, reinforced in their own little complexes.

And this is why my path has differed from Voltaire's.  Some ideas may be very, very strong memes, and yet be utter crap: mental kudzu, if you like.  Holocaust denial is a perfect example: there are living witnesses of the Holocaust and yet this can persist?  It's utter, gibbering bunk, yet it has hooks.  So no, while I respect the necessity to have proper discussion, I will not defend to the death Irving's right to contaminate anyone's mind-pool with his virulent, dangerous, silly memes. 

Comments

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

Humans are just great apes, Munky. Their territory is mostly ideological and cultural rather than physical. It's much easier to defend and hold a position that is distinct, knowable and comprehensible. Truth will never, ever win out against simple. That's why the simple ideas are the best -- not especially because they are more likely to be true, but because they are more likely to be accepted.

Memes like the BNP's "all immigrants are job-stealing bastards" and the Holocaust deniers appeal to human tribal identity and the basic failure to comprehend that the acts we consider "inhuman" are the most human of all. Only humans do shit like that to one another. Every other damn species has the decency to be more straightforward about it.

Humans are clever, aggressive apes exposed to a global environment while they still have instincts evolved for social altruism within a tribal group that has to compete for resources with other tribal groups. Human technology has, in this case as so many others, outrun the biology.

Human response to the memetic environment is (IMO anyway), an exact analogue of human response to the physical environment. As a species (as opposed to individual instances) they haven't quite grasped the concept of the closed system.

They're close, but they're using wetware designed to cope with a much smaller scale. That's why the picture of the Earth viewed from space had such a strong, but sadly short effect.

[gedhrel.livejournal.com]

You say, "Humans are just great apes," and "Truth will never, ever win out against simple." There's a joyful use of reflection here, but I think I have to reject both of those positions :-)

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

Feel free. But do please justify or else it's just a statement of position not open to discussion.

[gedhrel.livejournal.com]

OK: firstly, people aren't just great apes; secondly, truth will occasionally win out against simple. In summary: I'm right, you're wrong, let's move on.

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

Good discussion style there. I mean, in response to that I find myself entirely convinced of your position. Fabulous.

That's how the Daily Mail works, isn't it?

[andygates.livejournal.com]

I'm going to throw you two into a pit in a moment. ;)

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

But it's my birthday!

[andygates.livejournal.com]

I know. You get to gnaw on him all on your own. He's fierce and wriggly but nutritious ;)

[gedhrel.livejournal.com]

That people are not just great apes, either singly or in groups: the incompleteness theorems. The use/mention distinction. Frank Lloyd Wright. Quantum mechanics. Evolution. The abortion debate. New York. The invasion of Iraq. The invasion of Iran. The moon landings. Communism. Beethoven. E=mc^2. Wagner. Van Gogh. You'd have to be a great ape not to see this.

That truth occasionally wins out over simplicity: actually the same list (which is not exhaustive) is good there too.

Let's try an alternative formulation of the argument. 1. People are just great apes. 2. The truth always loses to simplicity. Which of those is true? QED.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Your examples just make us meme-fat apes.

A degree of sophistication is called for in testing ideas. Truth clearly *sometimes* wins. Otherwise we wouldn't have science. In those circumstances, the ideas are thrown into a fighting pit and the stat we test them on is truth. In other circumstances, say in music, truth is barely relevant and virulence and reproducibility score way, way higher.

But that's all just a memefight, and that is our schtick. We do ideas the way tigers do stripes. That doesn't make us any less of an ape.

I'm stuck with "Einstein, I choose you!" and a pokeball now. :)

[gedhrel.livejournal.com]

Your metaphor is beyond fixing.

You can illustrate how it isn't by explaining which of the great ape operators maps onto the reflective musing you yourself have demonstrated in this journal. For reference, they are: sleep; eat; shit; get shot by poachers.

Your tactic works, however: I do approach the point of accepting that some people are functionally simian.

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

Oh, I see.

You're position "I'm right, you're wrong," is simply a result of your failure to comprehend biological fact and how it is possible to be both cultural and an ape.

Silly me.

[gedhrel.livejournal.com]

You can be cultural and an ape?

Humans are just great apes

And the ability to resolve such contradiction is one of the many ways in which people are NOT just great apes.

Silly me.

Quite.

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

Oh, never mind. I think you were probably fine to stick with "I'm right and you're wrong." It seems to reflect your philosophy accurately enough for purpose.

[flitljm.livejournal.com]

I think we're having a definitional dispute here.

Humans are great apes unless you define great apes as 'all the other great apes that aren't human'. We are not bonobos; chimpanzees are not orangutans, but in evolutionary terms we are all apes, unless you want to do some really special pleading.

We've only recently figured out that the other apes have culture, but the evidence is very strong. I've stored it here http://www.citeulike.org/user/great_apes/tag/culture

This sort of culture is transmission within groups of learned behaviour, so that you get different groups employing different means to come to the same ends. Studies of chimpanzee and orangutan culture tend to focus on what's good to eat, smart ways to get to it and other sorts of tool use.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

That special pleading usually ends up with "because a big old book says so" or some wildly optimistic stuff about how we've climbed completely out of the slime pool, neither of which are compelling.

[gedhrel.livejournal.com]

I think the argument wasn't about semantics - it was that "people are just great apes" in some poetic allusion, followed by the assertion that all behaviour is naturally derived from this via an atrocious memetic analogy.

When I point out that the analogy is broken, the metaphor is dropped and instead we're talking about a biological relationship between species.

[flitljm.livejournal.com]

Moving off the topic, tool use has now been seen in all the ape genera - gorillas didn't seem to be bothering for ages, but last year some were observed using sticks to test the depth of a pool before deciding where to wade across. Western gorillas spend a lot of time in swampy places.

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

I always was.

[gedhrel.livejournal.com]

Then don't say "memes"! The memetic landscape has close to fuck-all to do with biology: there's a vast difference in scale and timeframes. We could be descended from velociraptors for all the similarity we share with gorillas memetically.

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

I don't separate thoughts from biology like that. I don't believe that a human identity is some sort of nebulous cloud that has segregated itself from its evolutionary past.

I've had low blood sugar.

The memetic substrate is the ape. Without the ape as host, the memes wouldn't thrive and breed. Therefore the nature of the substrate is a necessary consideration. We have evolved to think. We didn't just spring forth from some unseen creator, all bright-eyed, tail-less and memetically hungry.

Considering memes without considering the nature of the ape is like trying to work out what species will survive in a given location without taking into account the environment.

But hey. You're right and I'm wrong. I liked that part. We should do that again.

[gedhrel.livejournal.com]

You just have.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

You can illustrate how it isn't by explaining which of the great ape operators maps onto the reflective musing you yourself have demonstrated in this journal. For reference, they are: sleep; eat; shit; get shot by poachers.

Simple: you missed out "be social", something the great apes do in spades. They looked fab doing it on Long Way Down in Rwanda on the telly the other night. Gossip and natter is human flea-picking.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

I think we're on the same page here. And to Gedhrel, humans are clearly great apes physically. And in the truth-vs-simple debate, well, I've spent something like five or six years saying "I told you so" about all sorts of world crap. Blow up Saddam! No such thing as global warming!

I'm tired of trying to push the truth.

Terence McKenna said, "If the truth can be told so as to be understood, it will be believed," and I think he was wrong too. Truth is too complicated. A simple untruth will be more palatable, more easily grokked despite its falsehood because it doesn't need testing...

But if I give up pushing the truth, what the hell do I push now?

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

The objectivist would declare that one must always push the truth.

I'm not an objectivist. I say push what gets the job done. That's why I continue to support Greenpeace. Because someone has to push the other extreme for the iteration to have a chance of finding the middle ground.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

That'll be why I got a Christmas card from the Sea Shepherd ;)

But promoting an opposite extreme as a counterweight is standard practice for setting out the field of play in debate. Greenpeace one side, CBI the other, and then each mainstream position can get going without feeling that it's lost any initial ground: both sides can give up the extreme with no loss and cash it in for an appearance of reasonableness.

Truth should have demonstrable merit beyond its simple appeal. It should be testable, in other words. Fine in theory but some things are so large, complex or one-off that they're not very testable.

This insight does make political violence more understandable. If an idea is wrong, no biggie, out-talk it. But if it's *dangerous*, if it is a *contaminant*, then shutting it up is necessary before it messes up people's rational heads.

I'm really uncomfortable with where this is leading me, you know.

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

Why do you think I continue to get paid shite for doing a thankless job when I have the intelligence and skills to get a much better paid job?

Truth is irrelevant. Only life is important. Assuming that a testable truth will win through ascribes to the human species a degree of rationality it simply does not have. Not on the species scale. The evidence is right there in our faces.

We're down to yelling insults at each other over the cultural boundary, and that sucks ass. I understand your position exactly. I really, really do. My own response has been to maintain personal integrity. As a relativist I cannot over-ride other people's positions no matter how crap they are.

I'm right, you're wrong. Let's move on.

Doesn't really work, does it? All you can do is try to find a different position that can exert leverage.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Relativism only works up to a point though.

Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose.

As an entity with personal integrity, I'm feeling that I have to override some people's positions or surrender my integrity.

I feel like Thomas bloody Covenant.

[gedhrel.livejournal.com]

Humans are clearly colanders topologically. In the words of Rob Smith (and completely at odds to the point of the lyric), so what?

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

Please just stick to "I'm right and you're wrong." Pretty please. With a cherry on top.

The irony of it makes me giggle.