I swear that the New York Times and the Washington Post are getting closer and closer to HuffPo all the time. Yesterday I saw this article in the WaPo on human sexual dimorphism, which uses Trump’s sexism to cast aspersions on a well-established body of data on sexual selection. It’s an ideological argument masquerading as a scientific one. (I’ve argued before, using that data, that sexual selection produces disparities in body size in humans and many other species).

Now, in today’s New York Times, we have Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett arguing that some kinds of speech really are violent, and should be banned. (Barrett is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University). Click on the screenshot to see the fun:

Barrett’s argument runs like this:

1.) Chronic stress exacts a physiological toll on the body, overworking your immune system, shrinking your telomeres, and the like.

2.) That stress, because it causes physical harm, is a form of violence. To wit:

If words can cause stress, and if prolonged stress can cause physical harm, then it seems that speech — at least certain types of speech — can be a form of violence. But which types?

This question has taken on some urgency in the past few years, as professed defenders of social justice have clashed with professed defenders of free speech on college campuses. Student advocates have protested vigorously, even violently, against invited speakers whose views they consider not just offensive but harmful — hence the desire to silence, not debate, the speaker. “Trigger warnings” are based on a similar principle: that discussions of certain topics will trigger, or reproduce, past trauma — as opposed to merely challenging or discomfiting the student. The same goes for “microaggressions.”

This idea — that there is often no difference between speech and violence — has stuck many as a coddling or infantilizing of students, as well as a corrosive influence on the freedom of expression necessary for intellectual progress. It’s a safe bet that the Pew survey data released on Monday, which showed that Republicans’ views of colleges and universities have taken a sharp negative turn since 2015, results in part from exasperation with the “speech equals violence” equation.

3.) Some types of speech can be violent and others not, as (says Barrett). Violent speech is that causing physiological (my emphasis in her words below):

The scientific findings I described above provide empirical guidance for which kinds of controversial speech should and shouldn’t be acceptable on campus and in civil society. In short, the answer depends on whether the speech is abusive or merely offensive.

Offensiveness is not bad for your body and brain. Your nervous system evolved to withstand periodic bouts of stress, such as fleeing from a tiger, taking a punch or encountering an odious idea in a university lecture.

What’s bad for your nervous system, in contrast, are long stretches of simmering stress. If you spend a lot of time in a harsh environment worrying about your safety, that’s the kind of stress that brings on illness and remodels your brain. That’s also true of a political climate in which groups of people endlessly hurl hateful words at one another, and of rampant bullying in school or on social media. A culture of constant, casual brutality is toxic to the body, and we suffer for it.

4.) I guess you could objectively determine which speech was “violent” by measuring telomere shortening or the titer of proinflammatory cytokines—a measure of stress. That way you’d know which speech to ban, for, make no mistake about it, this article is pretending to use science to find which speech should be banned.

And exactly what kind of speech causes stress and should be verboten? Here is Barrett’s example:

That’s why it’s reasonable, scientifically speaking, not to allow a provocateur and hatemonger like Milo Yiannopoulos to speak at your school. He is part of something noxious, a campaign of abuse. There is nothing to be gained from debating him, for debate is not what he is offering.

And whose speech is merely offensive?

On the other hand, when the political scientist Charles Murray argues that genetic factors help account for racial disparities in I.Q. scores, you might find his view to be repugnant and misguided, but it’s only offensive. It is offered as a scholarly hypothesis to be debated, not thrown like a grenade.

5.) And to show that Barrett’s essay really is about banning speech, here’s her last paragraph:

By all means, we should have open conversations and vigorous debate about controversial or offensive topics. But we must also halt speech that bullies and torments. From the perspective of our brain cells, the latter is literally a form of violence.

This is pure nonsense, and dangerous to boot. Milo appears for an hour or two on college campuses, and yes, the students often get riled up. But they’re subject this his “campaign of abuse” only for that short while—unless they expose themselves to him all the time, and if they do that, they’re causing violence to themselves. As for Murray, has Barrett seen the videos of the Middlebury College students so worked up by Murray’s appearance that they attacked him and his host, injuring that host? What’s the difference here? After all Milo doesn’t just stand on stage and abuse people, he does make arguments, even if I reject many of them—and to some his and Murray’s arguments are equally repugnant. Milo is seen as a transphobe and a misogynist, Murray as a racist.

And look at Evergreen State College. It’s a postmodern college that indoctrinates its students with Authoritarian Leftist dogma, and yet goes out of its way to promote racial equity and mutual respect. Still, many of its students appear to feel that they’re living in an atmosphere of chronic harassment. That much is clear from the way they exploded and rioted when biology professor Bret Weinstein refused to leave campus on the Day of Departure, and by the way they harassed, often in an unhinged manner, Weinstein and College President George Invertebrate Bridges. Gangs of these students later roamed the campus with baseball bats, looking for “fascists” to club. This was not a short-term period of “fight or flight”, but a mental mindset of “fight.” It’s the mindset of Perpetual Offense.

Should Weinstein’s speech be banned? What did it do to the students’ cytokines? We don’t know. The Decider of whether speech is harassment or merely offensive is—you got it—Barrett herself, not a bunch of lab tests. She’s set herself up as a surrogate Lab Test to decide which speech needs to be banned.

And that’s the problem.  Students will always tell you they live in a climate of harassment, whether it be the Patriarchy, white racism, “Islamophobia”, or so on. In the absence of being able to look at their telomeres, we have to make a subjective decision if we’re to use Dr. Barrett’s distinction. And who is to make that decision? As always, that’s the big problem, and that’s why the clear-cut interpretations of the First Amendment are infinitely preferable to Barrettt’s pseudoscience. With a few well-accepted exceptions, don’t ban any speech, although of course you can choose who to invite for talks.

Ten to one you’d find all those rioting snowflakes at Middlebury College, Evergreen State, or Amherst College asserting that they’re not just offended, but harassed.  Without lab tests (and that’s accepting Barrett’s premise, which I don’t), you’ll simply have to ask students whether they’re offended or harassed. Can you guess what the outcome would be, for the Decider and for free speech?

This article is ridiculous, purporting to use science to decide what is Free Speech and what is Bannable Speech. But it comes down to the claim, as it always does with people like Barrett, that the author is to be the Decider.

I don’t buy that. It’s embarrassing to see the Times publishing such tripe. Yes, it’s an opinion, but one that leaks like a sieve, and has the consequence of overturning the First Amendment to the Constitution. (“Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech—unless that speech elevates your cytokines by 30%.”)

And let me add just one more thought. If you consider speech like Milo’s to be “violence” because it causes physical harm to you, then you have an automatic justification for meting out physical violence in return. In other words, you become a Dan Arel who thinks he has the right to punch Nazis—or those, like me and Dave Rubin, whom he sees as white supremacists.

I’m not convinced at all by Barrett’s self-serving argument that there is a scientific distinction between violent and nonviolent speech—a distinction based on whether or not it harms your body. Those offended by speakers will always claim they’re stressed, and may indeed show physiological signs of stress. Well, lots of things are stressful, and if they’re too much for you, just remove yourself from the stress. Don’t go to Milo’s talks or watch him on the Internet. (Workplace harassment, which you can’t escape, is a different matter and is rightfully prohibited.)

I’ve seen a lot of arguments to ban speech, but this pseudoscientific justification is not only risible, but unworkable. Shame on you, New York Times (and, of course, Barrett.)

h/t: BJ