The Ugly Truth About Free Speech

It's not just for getting to the truth. Sometimes, quite the opposite.

Free speech's political danger is not only that undesirable truths can be spread but that desirable counter-lies might capture the audience you're successfully fooling. Politicians tell people a story that many voters want to hear. The opposition gives an alternative that many others prefer, with some overlap. When those in power try to suppress dissidents, it's not because the enemies reveal the falsity of the lies they're telling. The truth is boring, and voters don't like to hear it. The danger of letting people speak is that they might tell different attractive lies. The world is run according to Social Desirability Bias: the path to success is proclaiming that the public is correct about what they want to be true. When leaders are replaced, it's by another demagogue who is better at validating people's nonsense stories.