zlacker

> Social media and mainstream media saw it fit to censor dissenting voices --not those of quacks, we can mostly all agree on minimizing the voices of quacks but shutting down medical professionals and medical academics and so on is very concerning.

No I don't agree with censoring _any_ voices - precisely because of this issue. The decentralized market of ideas will address the "quacks" in the room, as I don't trust any central authority to do that for me.

If a centralized authority wields power in a way that creates negative consequences, you don't give them _more_ power, or just hope that they'll do the right thing.

>>s3r3ni+(OP)
"the dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution, is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes. History teems with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not suppressed forever, it may be thrown back for centuries."

– John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (https://www.utilitarianism.com/ol/two.html)

>>s3r3ni+(OP)
> The decentralized market of ideas will address the "quacks" in the room, as I don't trust any central authority to do that for me.

It'll magically take care of itself? Based on what evidence?

>>s3r3ni+(OP)
>The decentralized market of ideas will address the "quacks" in the room, as I don't trust any central authority to do that for me.

Name one time in the entirety of recorded history when "the decentralized market of ideas" did anything of the sort.

>>s3r3ni+(OP)
Isn't twitter part of the market of ideas? The NYT ect? The idea that we could have an information ecosystem devoid of human judgement is new or at least not widespread before the internet. It was part of a utopian idea, not entirely different from the ethos powering say crypto that we could encode simple rules and the truth would filter to the top, but that isn't how the public square worked before the internet, quite the opposite, your ability to reach anyone outside your town was pretty dependent on a small handful of companies and those utopian thinkers never really managed to show the rules they came up with for how that information should be spread resulted in truth

>>s3r3ni+(OP)
I don't think on any time scale that the marketplace of ideas is sufficient to get rid of quacks. There are plenty of popular health-related practices which have had plenty of time to demonstrate their clinical efficacy, but which have failed to do so. Acupuncture, reiki, homeopathy etc all have people that believe in them despite the absence of evidence.

But on _short_ timescales, during an emergency when people are emotional, and in a context where media can benefit from amplifying a message whether or not it's true ... we've seen enough people believe some harmful stuff, and sometimes require extra medical attention because of it.

I'm not saying censorship alone is an answer -- but the marketplace of ideas is not functioning as you describe.

>>krapp+J
The box office flop of Morbius

>>majorm+I
Based on all of recorded history.

For example, we didn't need the Vatican, a king, or some other central committee to tell us that the sun was the center of our solar system - eventually the data and market of ideas exposed the best & correct ideas.

The best disinfectant for bad ideas is more sunlight - not coverups.

>>krapp+J
> Name one time in the entirety of recorded history when "the decentralized market of ideas" did anything of the sort.

This is literally how most scientific progress is made.

>>s3r3ni+(OP)
In principle I agree with you but in practice quacks take advantage of people’s weaknesses, so it’s a balance between open marketplace and some very basic rules. But I agree with you in principle.

>>s3r3ni+J2
No, scientific progress is made by people educated in a particular field of study in the work of prior authorities in that field, making hypotheses and following established experimental methods, then publishing their results for review and verification by their peers. In other words, by the "centralized authority" of scientific consensus.

Science absolutely does not work by just letting everyone believe whatever they want and somehow just expecting the truth to "win."

>>s3r3ni+B2
not true - people are susceptible to propaganda and marketing. lies spread mimetically, truth does not

>>krapp+f3
I would call a group of educated professionals debating all sides / data for a particular hypothesis, coming to a general consensus after rigorous evaluation and debate, essentially what the "market of ideas" is meant to convey.

What you don't see here, for example, is any mention of a "President of Science" or other committee making that call, nor particular suppression of lines of inquiry.

>>s3r3ni+B2
It feels different now, as if the quacks have voice-amplifying tools they didn't have hundreds of years ago.

Tools that have been painstakingly engineered to exploit bugs in the human brain's OS.

>>s3r3ni+14
What you also don't see in that process is every viewpoint given equal weight and consideration, or in the case of ignorant quacks, even any consideration.

>>s3r3ni+J2
According to Structure of Scientific Revolutions this isn't true; people hold onto silly ideas firmly for their entire lives, and they have to be discredited either by a revolution or retiring so they can't fight for it anymore.

Linguistics being an example where ideas about grammar are only accepted because Chomsky is still around forcing everyone to accept them; AI language models don't seem to follow them.

>>s3r3ni+(OP)
"The decentralized market of ideas will address the "quacks" in the room" This used to be the case, it no longer is in the time of social media. The voices of the quacks are amplified and they gain legions of followers. Just look at the rise of Q as an example and the current political climate. Any crazy fact can be thrown out and if it supports their world view, a good percentage of people will believe it without looking any deeper than what the guy on Twitter said.

>>s3r3ni+B2
Sure, that took hundreds of years, we really don't have that sort of time during a pandemic.

>>abeppu+g1
>we've seen enough people believe some harmful stuff, and sometimes require extra medical attention because of it.

>I'm not saying censorship alone is an answer -- but the marketplace of ideas is not functioning as you describe.

Honestly, neither is curated news. At the time of this poll, 41% of people who identified as Democrats believe that if someone caught covid, their chance of hospitalization was 50% or higher. The actual number is 1-5%. Massive amounts of Republicans and Independents also believed this as well. You assume a fair, pure and incorruptible curator, which doesn't exist. Censorship isn't the answer.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/briefing/atlanta-shooting...

>>wonder+W7
So? When time is short, nobody knows which ideas are right.

>>vkou+b7
And that’s decided by the president of science?

>>pigeon+Da
No, it's decided by an unelected cabal of experts (appointed by the previous cabal of experts), who vet and haze new entrants for years and decades, before so much as giving them five minutes of their time, or letting them speak to a room full of laymen who don't know better (undergraduates).

You're right, though, public vaccine discourse would have been significantly better if we required internet research experts like Joe Rogan or any of the talking heads on Fox to have a PHD in immunology or epidemiology or at least a double-masters in biology and economics before we allowed them to speak to more than ~ten people at a time.

>>wonder+W7
During a pandemic, we also don't want to immediately fixate on a wrong idea, and not allow dissent.

As evidence, I gesture about me.

>>astran+F7
You've never changed your mind?

>>theand+R9
Which is why you don't ban people from platforms and demonize them when they present alternate ideas. Especially when those people up until the "pandemic" were considered experts in their fields and have equal or greater training then the "experts" on TV who have never actually seen patients and worked in the government for 40 years.

>>Camper+j4
People said the same thing when they invented the printing press and the radio and pretty much any other time it suddenly became easier for people to get their message out.

On the whole I tend to view it as a good thing overall rather than a negative.

>>kbelde+wb
I'm not a scientist with a publishing history, so we can't tell.

>>wonder+O7
This was never the case unless you have a very strange reading of history. Look how long bad ideas like witches causing problems persisted and the popularity of mob justice for such acts.

>>buscoq+uh
I agree, but still... it feels different this time, somehow.

Maybe because few people had the means to shout everyone else down in the past. When everybody has a printing press or a radio station, it turns out that the noise floor gets really high. Everybody spends more time writing and talking, and less time reading and listening.

We're finding that the ability to boost your signal above the noise floor isn't even vaguely correlated to the merits of the message, the way overcoming resistance from editorial gatekeepers was in earlier times. Freedom of the press used to be the exclusive preserve of those who owned one, and that wasn't right, but now it goes to whoever yells the loudest, and I'm not convinced that's going to work out better for us all in the long run.

Sure hope it does, but early signs aren't inspiring.