As a pro-free-speech advocate, I think that argument is important and smart and good.
Free speech does have disadvantages, and those disadvantages can have serious consequences.
The attempt to hand-wave those disadvantages away with "but enough people will just be perfectly rational and care about truth, and then all those good people who love truth will prevent genocide!" is... extraordinarily naive.
Whether to support free speech is a question of weighing advantages and disadvantages. I happen to think the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. But if you seriously can't see any of the disadvantages, and can't empathize with a person who reasons that those disadvantages outweigh the advantages, then you're probably not thinking clearly enough.
As a pro-free-speech advocate, I think that argument is important and smart and good.
Free speech does have disadvantages, and those disadvantages can have serious consequences.
The attempt to hand-wave those disadvantages away with "but enough people will just be perfectly rational and care about truth, and then all those good people who love truth will prevent genocide!" is... extraordinarily naive.
Whether to support free speech is a question of weighing advantages and disadvantages. I happen to think the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. But if you seriously can't see any of the disadvantages, and can't empathize with a person who reasons that those disadvantages outweigh the advantages, then you're probably not thinking clearly enough.