What is a good way to get a real conversation going with someone who claims that free speech is a bad thing? Michael Shellenberger offers three questions. His article at Public is titled, “Why These Three Questions Change People’s Minds About Censorship.” An excerpt:

How you approach the topic will depend on whether you’re talking with a friend or relative or moderating a presidential debate, but it should include affirming shared values. You might say, “There’s been a lot of debate about censorship and misinformation. Most of us, myself included, care a lot about protecting vulnerable people and countering bad information while protecting people’s right to free speech. I’m curious how you think about these issues, and I wondered if I could ask you how you think about them.”

Assuming you get permission to go further, here are the three key questions I would recommend:

First, “Can you think of examples where free speech helped past movements for political independence, civil rights, and human rights succeed?”

This immediately will slow many people down. They’ll be forced to reflect on what they know about those movements. Some will say they don’t know. But it’s unlikely that many people will respond that those movements succeeded thanks to censorship since so few cases exist.

Second, “Can you imagine a future government ever abusing its powers to censor hate speech and misinformation for political reasons?

A recent Australian poll found that voters were evenly split, 37% to 38%, on whether they agreed or disagreed with the question, “Freedom of speech should be protected online, even if this means wrong, inaccurate or false information may be published.”

However, when pollsters asked voters, “How concerned are you that if ‘misinformation’ laws were to be passed, government officials would use these powers for political purposes (for example, to limit public debate and censor certain opinions)?” between 61% and 78% of voters said they were concerned. And it was young people ages 18-24 who said they were most concerned.

The first question required people to think about what they know, and the second asked people to imagine the future. For various reasons, most people do not have a hard time imagining governments abusing their power for political reasons.

Third, “Is the best solution to hate speech and misinformation free speech or censorship?”

Acknowledging that bad guys have used censorship more than good guys throughout history and that future governments might censor for bad reasons, this last question slows people down further to assess the evidence on both sides. People who endorsed censorship a few minutes earlier may have second thoughts and even reversing themselves.

I would add one more question to this list. “If we decide that censorship is OK, who should be in charge of determining what is true?” That often stops people cold, but not always. Two years ago, a law professor (to my dismay) told me that in the case of COVID, the public health officials would get to decide what is true. It didn’t seem to bother him that these “experts” got almost everything wrong about COVID. I asked, “What about non-medical issues,” and he (I swear he said this) the FBI and CIA should be in charge.

I like Shellenberger’s suggested questions. I’m going to start using them in my free speech conversations.