Free speech, censorship, and the Big Bang Theory

PSI Blog 20180606 Free speech, censorship, and the Big Bang Theory

The news is neither fake nor new that those who dare to confront popular ideas face deprecation and censorship. The guardians of the Big Bang Theory are numerous and relentless. The paradigm must be protected at all costs—billions in funding are at stake. The censorship usually is quite subtle: rejections of manuscripts and grant proposals. Mild criticism of “A Universe from Nothing”[1] can get you disinvited from a debate on the subject by no less than Neil deGrasse Tyson,[2] the new point man for the BBT. So far, the attack on free speech in physics has not reached the violence promoted by the regressive left at UC and Evergreen State, where opposing views are now banned from campus.

Of course, our crusade to overthrow the Big Bang Theory is absolutely dependent on free speech. Courtesy of Jerry Coyne, here is part of John Stuart Mill’s famous chapter on the importance of free speech.

According to the editors of the piece:

“Mill opens his argument for free speech by imagining a world in which just one person holds a view contrary to that held by the rest of humanity. What harm could be done by silencing this lone eccentric?”

http://go.glennborchardt.com/Mills-freespeech

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[1] Krauss, L.M., 2012, A universe from nothing: Why there is something rather than nothing: New York, Free Press, 224 p.

[2] http://go.glennborchardt.com/tysonalbertkrauss