The Sunday Times February 6, 2022 23COMMENT
Matthew Syed
The right to speak nonsense in
public is a pillar of democracy
When we encounter an argument we don’t like, the worst thing we can do is try to shut it down
subtle logic. It traded on the idea that,
however much the human species
knows at any given time, the space that
lies beyond the frontier is limitless. As
Karl Popper, an eloquent advocate for
open societies, put it: “Our knowledge
can only be finite, while our ignorance
must necessarily be infinite.”
In this context it is vital people have
the freedom to venture into the infinity
of the unknown: pioneers who will often
be wrong, outrageous and threatening to
the status quo are crucial to progress. In
tolerating this freedom, we will also
endure a great deal of nonsense and
quackery from the snake-oil salesmen
and those gullible enough to believe
them. I have spent hours immersed in
the Covid antivax echo chamber and
acknowledge the damage that many
have inflicted upon themselves and
others by refusing the jab.
On the balance of harms, though, this
is vastly smaller than the alternative.
Take the vaccine itself, the subject of
much controversy. It is worth noting that
in open societies, with some tolerance
for dissent, vaccine uptake has been
high, not least because of the battalions
of impartial fact-checkers and
authoritative news sources that refuted
the conspiracists. In the UK 98 per cent
of people over the age of 80 (the most
vulnerable) have had at least one jab,
and more than 90 per cent of over-12s.
The scientific consensus won out.
But the value of free speech reaches
far deeper. Consider that there are many
consensus positions held by experts
today that will be comprehensively
disproved in the future. These currently
“respectable” viewpoints — of which
Neil Young doubtless approves — are
harming us, here and now, in ways we
do not yet grasp, and perhaps lack the
conceptual framework to understand.Without free speech, without the “mad”
ideas of dissenters, we rob ourselves of
the raw material of progress.
We face an interesting few decades. In
China a social credit system is being used
to monitor the thought and speech of
millions. The ostensible purpose is to
determine whether people are
trustworthy (think of a financial credit
score on steroids), but is set to become
even more Orwellian. President Xi
Jinping is taking a historic bet that
surveillance and control enabled by
artificial intelligence will prove superior
to the messy, disruptive and sometimes
confounding system called democracy.
I believe with all my heart that he is
wrong. It is why I urge us not to be
frightened of a silly little chat between a
stand-up comedian and a maverick
scientist, any more than between a ping
pong guy, a footballer and a cricketer.
The more pernicious danger is the
growing intolerance of different
opinions, the hysterical cancellation of
those with whom we disagree and,
perhaps most of all, the urge to censor
falsifiable positions rather than expose
them.
Our task today is not to retreat from
the spirit of the ancient Greeks but to
rejuvenate it for the tech age. To ensure
that the digital platforms that dominate
the public square do not have monopoly
power to set the limits of speech; to be
vigilant that science remains open and
accessible; to vigorously defend a free
press; and to protect democracy from
the autocrats and pseudo-liberals out to
destroy it.
In the long run our system will prove
more resilient, but only if we keep the
faith. A liberal society cohabiting with an
illiberal mindset is a recipe that could
kill democracy itself.
@MatthewSyedWithout mad
ideas we rob
ourselves of
the raw
material of
progressA
few years ago I presented a
regular BBC podcast with
Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff and
Robbie Savage. It was
imaginatively called Flintoff,
Savage and the Ping Pong Guy
and had a surprisingly loyal
audience. I loved doing it, not
least because of the friendship with the
two other presenters.
The podcast was ostensibly about
sport, but we ranged across anything
that took our fancy: politics, mental
health, parenting and so on. I imagined
that the free-flowing format might
alienate listeners, but they loved it. One
of the most popular episodes was about
Flintoff ’s flat-Earth views. Savage and I
hammered him, but Freddie defended
his position valiantly, and listeners
reached their own conclusions.
Free speech is one of those
expressions that everyone claims for
their own. It’s a bit like democracy —
even the most oppressive states have the
word in their name. Those who are
against free speech are widely
considered awful. But, as philosophers
have asked since classical times, what
exactly is “speech”, and when it is free?
Joe Rogan, an American stand-up
comedian, has a podcast on Spotify not
dissimilar to my former one, the main
difference being that it is a million times
more successful. I have listened to it a
few times and it involves vigorous chat
and plenty of give and take. He has had
guests with whom I agree, some with
whom I disagree and others in whom I
have no interest. As you might expect.
Recently he was joined by a scientist
called Robert Malone, who has argued
that US hospitals are given incentives to
say that deaths are caused by Covid and
that young adults should not have the
vaccine, as well as other things withwhich I happen to disagree. Neil Young
withdrew his songs from Spotify in
protest, and others followed suit.
Young said in an open message to
Spotify: “They can have Rogan or Young.
Not both.”
Perhaps the first thing to say is that
Young had a perfect right to withdraw
his music, just as Spotify had the right to
retain Rogan. Freedom of speech
encompasses the freedom to protest and
the freedom to publish. I am not
particularly exercised by this debate: I
suspect that Spotify will act in its own
interests, just as Rogan, Young and
others will act in theirs.
More interesting, I think, is the scale
of anger directed at Spotify and, by
implication, the view that opinions like
Malone’s should not receive an airing at
all. This is striking, given that there are
dozens of podcasts on Spotify that offer
an alternative position and, in some
cases, explicitly reject Malone’s claims.
Hundreds (perhaps thousands) of
newspaper articles have done the same,
as have academic papers. In other
words, democratic debate seems to be
operating in roughly the way envisioned
by the founders of Athenian democracy
two and a half millennia ago.
This is why I think that the question
we need to be asking in such cases is not
“Is Malone right or wrong (and, if the
latter, how quickly can we ban him from
speaking out)” but rather “In what sort
of system do the best ideas rise to the
top?”. Socrates argued that too much
central control over speech is inimical to
progress because it has the tendency to
suppress unconventional views that
might, in time, prove to be useful,
innovative or right.
The ancient Greeks lived in a very
different milieu, of course, but the
argument expressed a penetrating andT
hank goodness for Boris
Johnson. So well known is the
vast, £275,000 salary he
extracted from The Daily
Telegraph to graciously bestow
upon its readers the confused
ramblings we now all receive
free of charge that everyone in
Westminster seems to have a hugely
inflated view of what columnists are
paid.
“There’s a rumour going round that
you are paid more than the PM was,” a
government minister muttered to me
conspiratorially shortly after I began this
column. In retrospect it might have been
helpful to let him believe it, but I only
realised that once I’d stopped laughing.
Anyway, it’s none of his business what
I am paid. Or perhaps it is. A US-based
journalist of about my age, working for
the travel website The Points Guy, caused
a stir last week when she tweeted, “If
you apply for my old job as Senior Travel
Reporter, you should ask for no less than
115k [£85,000] ... In full transparency, I
was at 107k.”
After I had finished booking my flights
to New York, I began to wonder whether
this transparency could catch on. The
case for knowing one another’s salary is
obvious. Where women and people from
ethnic minorities are paid less, the light
of transparency will create a correction.
Maybe. But I am instinctively uneasy
about a system that relies on those who
are unfairly paid finding out and having
to fight for more. I believe that the
burden of effort should fall on those at
the top.
Actually, that’s not really the whole
truth of it. I am probably saying that
because it sounds more intellectually
coherent than my actual reasons for not
wanting salary transparency, which are
these: I don’t want to know what my
friends earn. And I really don’t want
them to know what I earn either.
I would rather publish the text
messages in which my friends and I
dissect our dates with forensic intensity
than tell you my salary. Isn’t that odd? I
have asked myself why, and I think it is
because money has become an
increasingly fraught topic in my life.
Suddenly, it matters in a way it never
used to when my friends and I were allI know people
who have never
told their
children or
partner what
they earnjust varying degrees of broke. As our
careers have progressed, our lifestyles
have diverged, and it is causing tensions
I never could have predicted. I find
myself longing for the days when, on
holiday, we would all scrape together
our spare change for a €2 bottle of wine
and a cheap pack of cigarettes, before
fighting over whether the communal pot
should have been used to buy a luxury
brand of yogurt. I can only imagine how
much worse it would be if we all knew
exactly what everyone else was paid.
Then there is the fraught relationship
between money and love. Some of my
high-earning female friends feel
miserable because men will start to treat
them differently when they realise what
they are paid, somehow emasculated by
their economic power. (Do not say to
them: “That sounds a nice problem to
have.” I’ve tried it.) Some even keep our
salary secret from those we love most. I
know people who have never told their
children or partner what they earn.
Money is the source of many private
anxieties for all of us. Yours will be
different from mine. I think of the man I
once loved who earned significantly
more than me, and my constant worry —
although he would never have asked it of
me — that if we had children I would end
up being the one to have to give up my
career. I think of the shock of fear I
would feel in my early twenties when
someone suggested splitting the bill, and
the microwave rice I would live on for
days afterwards as penance. I think of
the previous generations of my family,
doing good, honest work with their
hands, who could never have dreamt of
the cash I now get for sitting in a warm
room writing this column. All of these
things are too personal, too private.
So the bad news is I am not going to
tell you. It is less than the prime
minister, and more than a lot of people I
know who do something socially useful,
which also makes me anxious. Let’s
leave it at that. The good news is that I’ve
just gone over my word count, so, just to
be transparent, you should know that
you got those last two sentences free.
@CharlotteIversCharlotte
Ivers
My salary is
none of your
business: I’ll
tell you that
free gratis
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