The Right to be Wrong

Many years ago, a friend … convinced … me to watch Gone With The Wind.  I wasn’t impressed, for various reasons (none of which are particularly important here), but there was one moment that lingered in my memory.  The ‘heroes’ – Southern Gentlemen of a breed that largely only existed in myth – are discussing their chances of victory in the forthcoming civil war.  One of them makes the mistake of asking Rhett Butler for his opinion, which leads to the following exchange (clip):

Rhett: I think it’s hard winning a war with words, gentlemen.

Charles: What do you mean, sir?

Rhett: I mean, Mr. Hamilton, there’s not a cannon factory in the whole South.

Man: What difference does that make, sir, to a gentleman?

Rhett: I’m afraid it’s going to make a great deal of difference to a great many gentlemen, sir.

Charles: Are you hinting, Mr. Butler, that the Yankees can lick us?

Rhett: No, I’m not hinting. I’m saying very plainly that the Yankees are better equipped than we. They’ve got factories, shipyards, coalmines… and a fleet to bottle up our harbours and starve us to death. All we’ve got is cotton, and slaves and… arrogance.

This does not go down well, naturally.

Man: That’s treacherous!

Charles: I refuse to listen to any renegade talk!

Rhett: Well, I’m sorry if the truth offends you.

Charles: Apologies aren’t enough sir. I hear you were turned out of West Point, Mr. Rhett Butler. And that you aren’t received in a decent family in Charleston. Not even your own.

Rhett: I apologize again for all my shortcomings. Mr. Wilkes, Perhaps you won’t mind if I walk about and look over your place. I seem to be spoiling everybody’s brandy and cigars and… dreams of victory. 

What struck me, as I remembered the scene, was how closely it resembles modern day problems.  Rhett is asked for his opinion, which goes down poorly; he is offered a chance to recant, which he declines; he is personally attacked and smeared and made to feel unwelcome, so he leaves (but not without a final parting shot.)  And, of course, Rhett is absolutely right.  The South is outmatched nearly everywhere.  The Yankees not only can lick them, they do lick them.

And, just like our modern day issues, there is no attempt to debate Rhett in good faith.  Charles could have pointed to the Southern fighting man, to skilled generals and brave soldiers who would – theoretically – give the South a considerable advantage, at least in the early months of the war.  Or he could have pointed to the demand for cotton overseas, insisting that Britain and/or France would force the North to abandon its blockade for fear of economic collapse.  Or … my point is there were plenty of pro-victory arguments that could have been put forward, in good faith.  They might not be convincing arguments, but at least they’d be good faith arguments.  The reaction to the merest hint they might be wrong – and Rhett’s plain speaking – suggests a certain basic insecurity.

I have zero sympathy for the Confederate States, but I’ll say one thing for them.  The gentlemen – one of them, anyway – was prepared to put his life on the line to silence Rhett in a duel (one of the others even tells him, afterwards, that he would have lost.)  The same cannot be said for modern-day social justice activists. 

***

I am, if I may make so bold, one of those people who is interested in truth.  I don’t care so much who says [whatever] – I care about whether or not [whatever] is actually true.  An idea can and must be tested, to determine if it holds good or if it shatters under the first touch of an inquisitive mind.  It’s fairly easy to test an argument, if everyone involved is arguing in good faith.  A good faith argument – and arguer – is not personal, never personal.  It is merely concerned with objective fact and subjective arguments.  For example, a fact that states “Texas City is the capital of Texas” is easily checked and objectively wrong; a fact that states “Edinburgh has better fish and chips than Glasgow” is a subjective statement of opinion, one that allows for (at least) two possible – and legitimate – answers.

Those who can and do put forward legitimate – i.e. good faith – arguments are, in my view, suggesting they are secure in their positions.  Those who put forward illegitimate – i.e. bad faith – arguments are suggesting they are not.  A person who calmly and reasonably argues for or against his position is likely to make a good impression, even if his arguments are unconvincing.  (In the same way one can lose at chess, then shake his opponent’s hand and proceed to the next game.)  A person who throws a colossal fit, engages in histrionics and demands that the other guy be silenced (disinvited, deplatformed, banned, etc) is someone who will make a very bad impression, even if his audience agrees with his points!  And this, it should be noted, can undermine the rightness of his cause.

For example, a few years ago, I attended a panel at a convention that touched on the Sad Puppies controversy.  One of the panellists put forward an argument that went a little like this: “Vox Day supports the Sad Puppies, Vox Day is a fascist bastard, therefore the Sad Puppies are evil.”  Quite apart from the sheer number of inaccuracies in the statement, it misses the fundamental point that [whatever] is not rendered right or wrong by whoever says it.  Just because Vox Day said something doesn’t make it automatically wrong.  That argument leads to logical fallacies like “Hitler was a vegetarian and openly promoted the lifestyle, therefore vegetarians are evil.”  I’m pretty sure that every last vegetarian would find that fallacy offensive.

The Sad Puppies affair does show, on a small scale, the problems caused by bad faith arguments.  No one would have objected to a statement that started “the Sad Puppy books are not Hugo-worthy” and gone on to give a calm and reasonable argument.  Even if the arguments were unconvincing, they would not have the corrosive effects of bad faith arguments like the one I mentioned above and many more.  To use a slightly different example, I have played and lost many – many, many – games of chess.  But the handful of losses that rankle, that convinced me never to play those opponents again, were the ones that were fundamentally unfair. 

To put forward an argument does not necessarily mean the arguer supports it – nor does it mean that the mere act of saying the argument renders the arguer beyond the pale.  The Catholic Church, for example, used to employ a ‘Devil’s Advocate,’ who had the job of critically examining every candidate for sainthood and putting forward arguments why the candidate should not be canonised.  They did not earn any official disapproval for pointing out the flaws, although – in some case – I imagine they drew the ire of the candidate’s supporters.  (I imagine it was a little easier as most candidates were safely dead before the church had to decide if they deserved to be canonised or not.)  It was their job to point out the problems and help their fellows to place them in context and decide if they disqualified the candidate.  This is, of course, why militaries tend to form ‘red teams,’ groups with a mandate to think as the enemy thinks – or as close to it as they can come – and try to predict what the enemy will do.  This can and does lead to embarrassment, but it also gives the good guys a chance to fix problems before they blow up in their faces. 

The problem facing bad actors, however, is that silencing their opponents only lends credence to their arguments.  Simple logic argues that, if someone can prove their opponent wrong, why wouldn’t they?  The inference – rightly or wrongly – is that they can’t, which leads to cases of fascist propaganda being taken seriously because the folks in charge – however defined – are acting in a manner that suggests they should be taken seriously.  When Google fired James Damore, for example, it did so in a manner that proved Google was unable or unwilling to engage with different viewpoints (and thus suggested it couldn’t).  It made no attempt to prove Damore wrong before it fired him.  Worse, by clamping down on dissent, Google made sure it wouldn’t receive any more honest opinions.  Who’d dare offer comment, even anonymously, when he thought it might get him fired?  

And so, if no one is prepared to speak out, Google – and any other large corporation – might discover it runs into trouble it could have avoided, if they’d been willing to listen to dissenters.  It is no coincidence that states such as the USSR, Iran, China, Iraq and many others found themselves sliding downhill when they decided they wanted to keep ideas out, while keeping their people in.  They didn’t stop their people thinking – how could they?  They just forced them to stay quiet until it was too late.  

The backlash of silencing people – directly or indirectly – can be disastrous.  Corporations that destroy their employees’ faith in them are in serious trouble.  Military forces that refuse to listen to their red teams are doomed when they try to go to war.  Governments that try to cover up disasters – everything from Chernobyl to the Migrant Crisis and Coronavirus – find they have no credibility left.

The point is not that the dissenters are right.  The point is that you have to give them a fair hearing, and you have to refrain from punishing them for ‘bad’ opinions, even if you don’t like them.  At best, you’ll be able to confirm your positions and make a show of open-mindedness; at worst, you’ll avoid disaster. 

I was looking up the Gone With The Wind quote above and ended up skimming through the TV Tropes page.  It raised an interesting alternate character interpretation of Prissy, one of the black slaves on the plantation, in suggesting she pretends not to know about “birthing babies”, only to casually dish out useful childbirth advice at a later, less convenient time.  One interpretation is that she could have learnt a thing or two, between the first birth and the second, but another is that she was playing stupid.  She was a slave, then a ‘freewoman’ who was not truly free.  Letting her mistress’s baby die through keeping her mouth shut might have been her only hope of revenge against a system that had effectively enslaved her from birth.

Petty, spiteful, very human … and precisely what you get if you treat people poorly.