Yesterday I said you’re allowed to think something stupid.
Which sounds simple enough.
Until somebody says: ‘Sure. But there have to be limits.’
Okay.
Maybe.
But now we have a much harder question.
Who gets to decide where those limits are?
Because there is a massive difference between ‘I think your opinion is wrong’ and ‘You shouldn’t be allowed to have that opinion.’
The first one is disagreement.
The second one requires somebody to be in charge.
Somebody has to decide which opinions are acceptable and which ones aren’t.
So who gets that job?
The smartest people?
Fine.
Who decides who the smartest people are?
The most educated?
Which education?
The experts?
Which experts?
Experts disagree with each other constantly.
The majority?
That sounds pretty reasonable.
Except majorities have been wrong about some fairly important things.
Maybe the government decides.
Okay.
Which government?
The one you voted for?
What happens when the people you didn’t vote for win?
Maybe universities decide.
Or corporations.
Or newspapers.
Or social media companies.
Or your employer.
Or whatever group happens to have the most cultural power at the moment.
Every answer creates the exact same problem.
Somebody gets to have an opinion about which opinions everybody else is allowed to have.
And for some reason, their opinion gets elevated above everybody else’s.
That’s where I get stuck.
Because the person deciding which opinions are wrong is also capable of being wrong.
Of course they are.
They’re a person.
The expert can be wrong.
The professor can be wrong.
The journalist can be wrong.
The politician can be wrong.
The majority can be wrong.
You can be wrong.
I can be wrong.
Nobody graduates from being human.
So if the whole reason we need an authority is because human beings sometimes believe stupid things, it seems strange to solve that problem by picking some human beings and saying: ‘Your beliefs about everybody else’s beliefs will now be the official ones.’
We haven’t eliminated opinion.
We’ve just created a hierarchy of opinions.
And maybe that feels fine when the people at the top agree with you.
That’s the easy version.
The harder question is whether you still like the system when they don’t.
Because power changes hands.
Always.
The group deciding what is unacceptable today may not be the group deciding tomorrow.
And if the rule is ‘Whoever currently has enough power gets to decide which opinions are beyond the line,’ then I don’t think we’ve created a principle.
We’ve created a weapon.
And everybody just takes turns holding it.
I think there is a much simpler system.
You think my opinion is stupid?
Tell me.
You think I’m ignorant?
Tell me what I don’t know.
You think my facts are wrong?
Bring better facts.
You think my reasoning falls apart?
Break it.
You think what I believe is immoral?
Make that argument.
You are completely free to oppose what I think.
What I don’t understand is why opposing my opinion requires controlling whether I’m allowed to have it.
Those are different things.
One says: ‘I think you’re wrong.’
The other says: ‘My judgment that you’re wrong gives me authority over what you’re permitted to believe.’
That is a very large jump.
And we make it surprisingly casually.
Especially when we’re convinced we’re right.
But everybody who has ever been completely wrong about something was convinced of something too.
That’s the uncomfortable part.
None of us knows which thing we currently believe that somebody fifty years from now will look back on and say: ‘How in the hell did they believe that?’
There probably is one.
Maybe several.
That’s not an argument against believing anything.
It’s an argument for humility about becoming the person who decides what everybody else is allowed to believe.
Because if you’re allowed to decide that my opinion is unacceptable, I need to know why your opinion about my opinion gets special status.
Who approved you?
And if somebody else approved you, who approved them?
Eventually you end up right back at the beginning.
With a person.
Having an opinion.
So maybe the safest rule isn’t that somebody gets to approve our opinions.
Maybe nobody does.
Maybe you get to be wrong.
And I get to tell you you’re wrong.
Maybe I get to be wrong.
And you get to tell me.
Maybe the answer to a bad opinion is another opinion.
A better argument.
Better evidence.
A challenge.
A disagreement.
Because the moment somebody gets the authority to decide which opinions are permitted…
we are no longer asking whether an idea is right or wrong.
We’re asking something much more important.
Who gets to speak?
