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

[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.