Freethinking. Who controls our heads and how to protect ourselves in a new battle for the mind

When we say that in the era before the advent of modern media, advertising and propaganda, it was possible to think more freely, we forget that in fact, few people had access to discussion platforms at that time. The Internet has created the conditions for communication among the truly broad masses. However, did he make them as free-minded as the Enlightenment thinkers who were once liberated by coffee shops and the printed word? It seems that the opposite is true. States and corporations, by giving us a very illusory freedom of expression and searching for information on the Internet, have learned to get into our heads deeper than we could have imagined. Catherine Courage asked Simon McCarthy-Jones about what freedom of thought is in general, what traps modern technology sets in front of it and how to protect yourself.

In 2017, Simon McCarthy-Jones, associate professor of clinical psychology at Trinity College Dublin, wrote an article on schizophrenia for The Conversation. Jokingly, he says that more than two people read the article, which is a very exciting event for a scientist. Nevertheless, in the days after the article was published, McCarthy-Jones found himself in the iron grip of social networks: he constantly checked the likes and comments under the publication. "It captured all my attention, my thoughts were endlessly spinning: "Check social networks! Check the social networks!"" he told us via video link from his office in Ireland.

Maybe something was driving the professor's thinking (in this case, a large technology company)? This experience made him think about what freedom of thought really is. He began to plunge into the murky waters of psychological, philosophical, cultural and legal ideas about what thought is and how it can remain truly free.

These intellectual searches have gone beyond the professor's head, as is often the case with thoughts in general, and now exist in the form of a new book, "Free Thinking: Defending Freedom of Thought in a new War for Reason."

We talked to McCarthy-Jones. He told us about the history of the concept of "thoughtcrime", the physical boundaries of thinking and how architecture and urban planning can create conditions for truly free thinking.

— How would you define a "new war" for the mind and do you think that there is now more than one front in this war?

— I think there are four fronts in this war: threats from states, threats from corporations, threats from individuals and threats from the law. If we define the right to freedom of thought very narrowly, many thoughts become unprotected from the threats posed by new technologies.

The last one is the most difficult. There is a lot of talk now that devices for reading our thoughts directly through the brain are on the horizon. Elon Musk's Neuralink continues to make headlines. Musk is going to create a kind of interface for the brain that will allow thoughts to be directly transmitted to a computer. But the question is: how realistic is this type of technology — and does it pose a threat that we need to think about now? My concern is that this may lead to some moral panic.

Perhaps the more immediate threat from new technologies is not mind reading through the brain, but something called monitoring our behavior.: what we like on social networks, which websites we visit, what kind of music we like, and so on. Thanks to this data, competent people can assess our mental state and get an idea of how we think. That way they'll understand which buttons they have to push to get us to act in a certain way. Combining this knowledge with artificial intelligence technologies can become a really serious threat to our autonomy.

In a sense, these technologies provide a fresh perspective on a well-known problem. In ancient Greece, philosophers had concerns about sophists — people who used the power of thought and rhetoric not to achieve the truth, but to support certain politicians or political ideas. Thus, the concern about sophistic ways of argumentation has existed for thousands of years, and now we consider artificial intelligence as a digital sophist. At the same time, there is a huge imbalance of power — he knows much more than ordinary mortals can.

Perhaps we want to say: no, we are independent, autonomously thinking people. But I think we have to admit that in the face of advanced AI, we may have big problems.

— Of course, I would like to think that what is inside the head will forever remain private property. But, as you have noticed, you should not be naive and certainly believe in this fantasy. How can we protect our own freedom of thought?

— When I began to delve into this problem — as a simple psychologist, and not as a lawyer — two things first excited me, and then horrified me.

First, freedom of thought is an absolute right based on the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the United States, this is as close to an absolute right as the Constitution provides. And this is very impressive, because it means that no one can encroach on my freedom of thought. There are times when you can restrict someone's speech if it is slanderous or false advertising, or abusive words. But thought in this sense is exceptional, you can think anything.

There are certain difficulties here. For example, you may think that freedom of thought and freedom of speech are naturally linked, but the problem is that if you said that someone manipulates your thoughts with speech, you would contribute to new restrictions on freedom of speech in the name of freedom of thought.

The second problem, which is perhaps even more worrisome, is the lack of a definition of this right. If we look more closely, we will see that, in fact, it has no definition. It is amazing how thinkers have extolled freedom of thought for centuries, for example Jefferson, Voltaire, Chomsky. But in a way, we were so busy praising her that we didn't define her. Thus, despite the fact that this right seems to be protected, in fact it is very vague and therefore fragile.

— More recently, the UN tried to define this right, but do you think they have not gone far enough?

— In 2021, the UN released a special report highlighting the four pillars of freedom of thought: immunity — the idea that you cannot be punished for your thoughts; honesty — the idea that you cannot manipulate other people's thoughts; privacy — the idea that you have the right to have your thoughts remained private; and, finally, fertility — the idea that the state is obliged to create conditions for freedom of thought for its citizens.

But some fundamental issues remained unresolved. What should be considered a thought? What makes thought free? How you answer these questions will determine to what extent you actually protect a thought—or how many thoughts you leave vulnerable and unprotected.

— If we turn to Descartes' words, "I think, therefore I exist," does freedom of thought also imply our individuality or our autonomous existence?

— Yes, I think that thinking allows us to separate ourselves from the world and have a kind of personal workspace where we can create plans, intentions, separate ourselves from the demands of the environment and be reflexive, control our actions from the inside. So I really think this plays a central role in our autonomy.

But speaking of Descartes, we seem to implicitly agree with the idea that thought is something that happens inside the head. I have seen many legal articles on this subject where people talk about protecting the inner world, about what they call forum internum.

It seems to me that this is not all that we are defending. I think that freedom of thought, which would simply protect the inner world, would limit us to a greater extent than it would liberate us — because we think a lot outside our heads. As philosophers, technologists, and psychologists would say, there are important ways of thinking externally that we need to protect: we count on our fingers, make shopping lists, we think with technology (for example, with Google), we think about each other with speech.

— And this is what you call thought speech?

Yes, although thinking takes the form of speech, we actually use it to think with others. As E.M. Forster says, "How do I know what I'm thinking until I know what I'm saying?" And when we talk to others, it's quite possible that we're just thinking along with others.

There are many psychological studies showing that, under the right conditions, we are more likely to get closer to the truth when we think together as a group rather than as individuals. Psychological research also shows that in order to have the best chance of getting closer to the truth, it is necessary that there be a group of people with diverse ideas. So, we are talking about creating such spaces. During the Enlightenment, coffee shops were the place for discussion all over Europe — although, obviously, they were not such inclusive spaces, and the diversity of opinions in them was limited. Now the question is, how can you achieve real diversity of views?

Obviously, we now have online spaces. But unless you are rich and reckless, it is very difficult to think openly in these spaces. And if we don't make people feel safe in these places, they won't feel comfortable speaking on their own behalf, and then we won't be able to get any closer to the truth.

— The idea of protecting this kind of thinking eventually led you to... urban planning?

We talked at a conference with one of my colleagues from Brazil, and he told me about how city planners deliberately changed the construction of their capital, Brasilia, to reduce the number of intersections — because people could gather at the corners and think and discuss something together, and this could pose a threat to the ruling regime. Thus, urban planning can have a major impact on the public's ability to think together.

This is an important part of the idea that freedom of speech needs some financial support. Similarly, the situation is with freedom of thought — the opportunity to walk in parks contributes to reflection. Libraries will work better if they are spaces with lots of light and rooms for informal conversations, rather than dark and dusty rooms. Proper design of buildings and spaces promotes collaborative thinking.


Source: knife.media