I’m a non-partisan defender of free speech. Not simply from a political stance, but also from a neuroscientific one.
After all, free speech is not only about expressing your views; more importantly, it’s about receiving exposure to ideas outside your cognitive fenceline.
Our brains build internal models of the world based on our personal experience: our unique and thin trajectories through space & time. These internal models are limited, and we don’t know what we don’t know. We can’t have points of view without having blind spots.
In this context, exposure to new ideas (even uncomfortable ones) illuminates parts of the map we couldn’t otherwise see. Different perspectives expand the borders of our internal models, challenge our blind spots, and polish us through friction. Without challenging input, our thinking remains necessarily narrow.
Cognitive flexibility is essential, and free speech is how we cultivate it.
Please watch this week’s Inner Cosmos podcast. I have the pleasure of speaking with constitutional lawyer Greg Lukianoff, president of FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression). Greg is a passionate champion of free speech. He co-authored The Coddling of the American Mind and The Canceling of the American Mind, among several other books. We explore why free speech isn’t only an important right, but vital for the way minds grow.
