The Fundamental Truth About Ideas
I was thinking about ideas and wanted to talk about a Veritasium video I saw a few years back that was good advice.
RELIGIONGENERAL


I often think about the war of ideas. I watched a Veritasium video years ago that was about treating ideas like slips of paper. As soon as you find an idea better than the idea you currently hold, you swap out your slip of paper for the better idea. This is in opposition to the more typical approach of personally identifying with your various ideas. I was going to find the video and link it here but then I realized that Veritasium has almost 400 videos on the channel now and Google searching by description didn’t cut it.
The idea he presented in the video I’m referring to resonated with me and is something I’ve adopted as my own. I think it’s also relevant in the war of ideas we’re currently watching unfold. There seem to be two approaches to handling ideas. Everything else falls on the spectrum between them. There’s the full Unadulterated Free Speech Approach. In this model, everything goes, and it is assumed that the truest ideas will eventually battle their way to the top. After all, the nice thing about being right is the fact that you’re right.
For example, if I say a glass of wine is poisoned and you disagree, we can enter into a battle of wits Prince’s Bride style. You can drink the wine you’re claiming is not poisoned. If you die, it will be apparent if you’re right or wrong. This is the fundamental characteristic of truth. It is absolute. There is no getting around it. Either your equations will get you to the moon or they won’t.
At the other end of the spectrum, there is the Censorious Approach. I’m using that word in a way that I’m not convinced is quite right but I’m going to roll with it anyway. In this approach, some ideas are too dangerous to be allowed into the public discourse. As a result, they must be censored.
Take hate speech. Hate speech, specifically inciting violence, is not to be tolerated. We all more or less agree with this, so we censor it where we can. However, the Censorious Approach has a problem that the UFSA does not. It would be a line-drawing problem. Someone has to decide what is and isn’t hate speech and with that comes power. As I talked about in the “Let’s Talk About Power” essay, people with power historically don’t have a great track record. People using the CA tend to abuse it. We’ve seen this a lot recently. If you hold the wrong opinions or ideas, you don’t get to be a person and you aren’t allowed to talk. In many cases, you can even be fired and all of that stuff. It’s truly kind of pathetic just how bad it is currently.
I personally favor the UFSA. Not really because I like it but as a matter of principle. The closer you align with the truth; the better things will go for you. The truth is really the only thing that there is. Everything else is lies by definition. The truth is a rock. All else is squishy. There’s a reason that the best lies are founded on as much truth as possible. The truth is really what matters at the end of it all.
Up until I did the leg work for it, from a religious perspective, the UFSA caused me a good deal of stress. Growing up, there were a lot of times when I ignored things because I was afraid of my worldview falling apart. During that period, I was operating more under the CA than the UFSA when it came to the ideas that I held. I was afraid of being dashed to pieces on the rocks. Eventually, I realized that a religion that can’t fight for itself on its merits is worthless. Christianity is only valuable if it’s true. The apostle Paul said as much himself in 1 Cor 15:14.
This was a major shift for me in my life. It’s also a shift that the people who take the CA have not experienced. If they had, they’d be in the UFSA camp. Since adopting this view, a lot of ideas have been forcefully sifted for me. To give you a few examples, religions where believers try to force non-believers to respect their deity and practices are the first thing that comes to mind. As a Christian, I always find it amusing when other Christians get worked up and feel the need to defend God. It’s basically equivalent to an ant trying to protect an elephant from another ant. No god worth worshiping would need protection from the words and actions of a human.
The Christian God is thought to be an eternal being with infinite power and intelligence. Anything less isn’t worth worshiping. If this first premise is true, then it follows that God doesn’t need anyone to defend him. He is quite capable of Thanos snapping anyone out of existence on a whim.
Another example would be the now century-old capitalism vs socialism squabble. I see people on the right who want to censor socialist ideas and I just find that laughable. If capitalism can’t beat out socialism on its merits, then what worth does it have to us? The concern then usually seems to turn to a worry about dishonesty. That is a valid concern but once again, the truth will always win out. There’s a reason why the USSR isn’t around anymore and a reason that China stopped starving when they adopted market economics.
So, to tie all of this together, Veritasium’s paper slip idea is basically a model that describes the UFSA. It seems to be the best way to proceed in life because reality will always win out in the end. Fighting with it usually doesn’t end well.