Free Speech, isn't

It comes at a cost (or at least it should)

I’m old enough to truly appreciate the magic of the internet. I regularly joke with my 20-something-year-old kids when they ask me a question: “If there were only a device you could simply ask…” One of my favorite things is to hold up my phone in a crowded restaurant and say “Siri, identify this song.” Magic.

I’ve also taken a liking to working with AIs. These days, I spend more time having deep conversations with various AI bots than I do with people — mainly because I can ask an AI to respond “from the perspective of…” and it (seems to) have no agenda. People really suck at that.

I’m also old enough to remember that one of the promises of the internet was to give everyone access to all information; to level the playing field. It was supposed to be the greatest thing for democracy since sliced time. It was supposed to make it possible for everyone to hear all kinds of viewpoints from all kinds of people…. Well, we all know how that worked out. Instead, social media algorithms took over and now simply make it incredibly easy for everyone to find lots of other people who think exactly like we do.

One thing for sure is that the internet, chat platforms, and social media all converged to give everyone a voice. And I mean EVERYone.

I think it’s time we dial it back. Maybe we should be required to earn our voice again. Maybe then people would give more thought to what they say.

I’m not saying everyone has to be an expert before they can open their mouths. Hell — I’d never say anything. But I do think that there’s no longer any good excuse to be uninformed. There’s not even really an excuse to be intentionally, willfully misinformed.

For example… as I alluded to earlier, it’s now possible to ask any AI (Perplexity, ChatGPT, Claude, etc) to answer any question from any perspective. Furthermore, you can ask it a question the way you would normally ask a person, and then (get this) ask it to give counter-arguments. And counters to those arguments. It doesn’t take long to get a broader, more balanced view of the world. It doesn’t take much to learn something. It’s actually remarkably easy to uncover holes in your own thinking.

It’s also very scary, because most people don’t want a balanced view of the world. They want to win arguments. And they want their viewpoint to be the right one. People don’t like to change.

I believe very passionately that we need to spend less energy learning to make convincing arguments, and a lot more learning to ask better questions.

My own experience with AI gives me hope that, despite the potential danger in AI, the potential to reawaken true inquiry is a glimmer of hope.

I knew this guy once. His name was Nick. He used to play this game with people — I think he called it “Quist.” It was a game in which only questions were allowed. No answers. And no statements disguised as questions (“isn’t it true that…”). Also all questions had to be self-referential. The objective of the game was to continually open the subject — not shut it down.

Free speech is NOT free. It comes at a cost. If all you are doing when you “speak out” on a subject is to add fuel to a fire that shouldn’t be burning in the first place, you are part of the problem. More bluntly, I believe very strongly that if you really have nothing to add to a conversation, you should shut the fuck up and let wiser voices prevail. Listen. And try to think of a good question to ask.

So… what if AI’s real promise were that it taught humanity how to ask smarter questions?