zlacker

> 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?

>>majorm+(OP)
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.

>>s3r3ni+T1
not true - people are susceptible to propaganda and marketing. lies spread mimetically, truth does not

>>s3r3ni+T1
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+T1
Sure, that took hundreds of years, we really don't have that sort of time during a pandemic.

>>wonder+e7
So? When time is short, nobody knows which ideas are right.

>>wonder+e7
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.

>>theand+99
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+B3
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.

>>buscoq+Mg
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.