Kendall goes on to question the utility of free speech as understood by Mill and lists a number of arguments based on practicality and human nature against the idea of an “open society” actually working as Mill intended, all of which are probably valid but ultimately unsatisfying. However, one extended philosophical point stood out:

Third, Mill denies the existence … not only of a public truth [my note: for the purpose of lubricating free debate], but of any truth whatever… whenever and wherever men disagree about a teaching, a doctrine, an opinion, an idea, we have no way of knowing which party is correct; the man (or group) who moves to silence a teaching on the ground that it is incorrect attributes to himself a kind of knowledge (Mill says an “infallibility”) that no one is ever entitled to claim short of (if then) the very case where the question is sure not to arise — that is, where there is unanimity, and so no temptation to silence to begin with.”

….

The proposition that all opinions are equally — and hence infinitely — valuable, said to be the unavoidable inference from the proposition that all opinions are equal, is only one — and perhaps the less likely — of two possible inferences, the other being: all opinions are equally — and hence infinitely — without value, so what difference does it make if one, particularly one not our own, gets suppressed? This we may fairly call the central paradox of the theory of freedom of speech. In order to practice tolerance on behalf of the pursuit of truth, you have first to value and believe in not merely the pursuit of truth but Truth itself, with all its accumulated riches to date. The all-questions-are-open-questions society cannot do that; it cannot, therefore, practice tolerance towards those who disagree with it. It must persecute — and so, on its very own showing, arrest the pursuit of truth.

There is something interesting here, although first the wrong parts must be excised. For one, I don’t like the infinitely valuable or infinitely without value sentence. That’s stupid. The only conclusion is obviously just what the original says, that all opinions are equally valuable, so as long as the value is positive, then at least some argument can be made to not suppress them. As a side note, I’m not even sure that Mill says all opinions are equal or whether just all opinions have positive (but possibly unequal) value. Kendall’s scaling relationship between the value of an opinion and how much it should not be suppressed may not be Mill’s idea at all. Either way, we can treat the phrase equality of opinions as either what it says or as positive valuation of opinions, and read it as equal treatment of opinions.

Now then the good part. The meta-tolerance paradox itself is a bit contrived (even if it does come up almost daily) since once the “no truth” hammer is found, it can hit pretty much anything. But, it caused me to think of a related and much more relevant paradox. It isn’t about believing in the Truth a priori. It is about believing that there is some truth to be found — that the pursuit has an end, that there is a purpose to the debate. Otherwise free speech for that purpose would have no point, either. Now, if the purpose is to seek convergence from open debate, then there is certainly nothing to guarantee that the process of debate will ever converge (setting aside what it converges to) — not because there is not a truth. But even worse is if every opinion is to be equally valuable for all time, for it prohibits convergence! For convergence to happen, by definition, some opinions will need to be reduced and others bolstered, perhaps on account of reason. The only way out of this is to say opinions are equal only initially. Unfortunately, society has no time origin. Even if it did, we are way past time 0 and hence must be in a state biased toward certain possibilities of truth and therefore inequality of various opinions. Therefore, it is the inequality of opinions on the way to convergence to truth — the ostensible goal of free speech — that strikes down the non-suppression of some speech on the grounds that all opinions are equal. This is the central paradox of Mill’s thesis that I see.

I guess the point is that non-suppression must be based on something less absolute than what Mill says, as it is in practice.

This opening sets up this opinion later in the piece:

而对于一个健康、合理的社会来说，知识分子绝对应该是社会的唯一的统治阶级。
In a healthy, sensible society, the intellectual elite should absolutely be the society’s sole ruling class.

The arguments following this line: In developed societies with high standards of living (and of education in critical thinking, perhaps), the stability of the society is not threatened by a high degree of mass participation and freedom. The same cannot be said of developing societies with opaque politics, contradictions in living conditions, remnants of pre-modern faiths, beliefs, and ideologies, and people prone to be whipped up by ambitious ringleaders.

Let’s just say this is pretty “rightist” stuff, and would be labeled as “reactionary” ironically during quite a few political movements in history subsequent to Hu Shi. But this essay being a product of the modern era in which the thought it embodies is triumphant as a governing ideology, it is perhaps not so controversial. Much of this strain of thought is reaction drawing on the experiences of the Cultural Revolution, of course, but in reality, it is common sense. Much of the developed world is run by the intellectual elite, if we peel off the thin veil of rhetoric and procedural formalities. It is this way because it works.

Of course, what the essay doesn’t mention are also important. It is not wrong to expand the ranks of the elites and reduce the number of foolish masses who cannot think. That’s some kind of responsibility of the state, one would think; although one must wonder about the limits of such effort. It is also imperative that the elites not rule for the benefit of the elites solely, which would create an exploitative class (and is the center of complaint for “elitist” systems), but to rule for the benefit of all people. So, fine, elites rule to produce stable development, but they can’t get too comfortable and need to keep the foolish masses happy enough to not be overthrown by them. One would think that whatever means achieves this outcome is a good one. There is no reason not to be pragmatic about this point.