Building Exits and Building Minds

Free Speech, Panic, and Personal Responsibility

I don’t buy the classic, well-rehearsed argument against free speech—more specifically, against speech that causes foreseeable, immediate harm—repeated ad nauseam: that you should be punished if you shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater and cause a stampede, or if you incite an angry mob to violence and trigger mob justice.

Why?

I want to live in a society where people know how to act in tense or emergency situations—people who can keep their cool and respond appropriately. I also expect that buildings like theaters, cinemas, malls, and stadiums are equipped with enough functional emergency exits.

I realize that the person who shouts “Fire!” is exploiting well-known human weaknesses—panic and emotional contagion. But anyone who knowingly spreads lies and manipulates engages in the same behavior. Consider the flood of disinformation from Russia Today and Sputnik. The first response in open societies after the start of the Ukraine war was to suspend the licenses of these propaganda outlets, not to reform the education system so students could focus on and practice real critical thinking. This seems to me the wrong approach. You want those propaganda channels to function but with zero viewers. You want people who resist being transformed into panicked mobs.

I don’t argue that we all can resist primal survival reflexes. I only argue that we can—and should—train ourselves to stay rational under pressure.

I also don’t buy the excuse “I just did what everyone else was doing.” What are you—a sheep? You shouldn’t be swept up by an angry mob. You should learn not to go with the flow. You should always think for yourself and understand that you’re responsible for your actions. In fact, I want to live in a society where personal responsibility is encouraged. So if you follow someone and act violently, you should be held accountable for it.

It’s far too easy to restrict freedom of speech under the pretext of punishing reckless or hateful instigators. It’s equally easy to argue that people sometimes succumb to demagoguery and commit violence. Instead, ensure that at every protest, anyone who crosses the line into violence, looting, or aggression is consistently punished. Make it clear that under no circumstances can anyone engage in violent acts. How do you teach that? By guaranteeing that every offender—whether an Ivy League student or a member of any sexual or racial minority—is held accountable when they trespass.

People can’t stay calm or think rationally in the heat of the moment? What the hell are they learning in school? They spend at least a decade there—what exactly were they doing all that time?

Yes, I’m aware of the well-documented phenomena of panic and mob mentality. But lynch mobs are equally well documented—and we don’t see them anymore. Why? We no longer have slavery in the civilized world—ISIS and other theocratic hellholes aside. Why? Because moral progress is possible. Learn not to get caught up in highly emotional group dynamics.

I know individuals aren’t always rational, self-controlled, or capable of independent thought—especially under stress. My point is that we fail to train these skills. Our schools are stuck in another century, a time when critical thinking and rationality weren’t as crucial as they are today, in an age of nuclear weapons and, soon, synthetic biology and AGI.