We celebrated the end of our puzzles with photos of other puzzles. For today’s puzzle painting: a French anagram, Voltaire, and Freedom of Speech?
The solution? Why is Voltaire a puzzle? Well, Voltaire is actually a pen-name that is an anagram of the author’s real name. So there is a puzzle in that name.
Of course, it’s also timely, as Voltaire has rather much been in the news lately. The New York Times ran an op-ed today in which someone criticized France for double standards. (The US freedom of speech is constitutionally protected. Speech in France is also free, but there are things in France, which, unlike in the US, it is illegal to say. The Times didn’t point this out, but we should mention that the US has sedition laws that are thought to become enforceable in times of war or major crisis — and are thought to be unconstitutional during times of peace. So, even in the US, freedom of speech moves around, at least according to some.)
Now we’re data scientists, so it should be possible to discuss all this without any politics at all. (And, indeed, we’ve done several blog posts discussing such a framework. See the our previous posts on the Social Progress Index and applying it to countries.) These techniques use not what politicians say is happening, but actual surveys of journalists.
These surveys also account for threats by thugs, foreign governments, private lawsuits, etc against journalists. We pointed out in our prior articles as well that, as a result of using these surveys rather than legal ideals, freedom of speech moves around numerical, giving way to national security concerns at times. This constant give and take between freedom and security is important in these economic models.
The US believes that the long term balance is that freedom of speech helps the economy. Consider the European “Right to Forget.” Privacy is related to security (security of the individual), but this right may hurt Europe companies trying to start websites. Will the greater security from privacy off-set this? Europe lives in a more dangerous neighborhood that the US, so who knows. In practice it is often the powerful that take advantage of these laws.
Voltaire knew all of these things personally. A powerful Noble family sent thugs to attack him for his writings about some minor scandal. (This family also held extremely senior religious positions as well.) The king had Voltaire imprisoned in the Bastille, a good place to die a slow death. He managed to arrange for exile to England instead, where he befriended Newton.
More on all this in later updates to this post and elsewhere on this blog.
A version of this article originally appeared as a photo post on our Instagram feed.