Re:Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits wor...
by croon on Sunday April 28, 2019 @12:06PM
(#19771870)
I can produce hundreds of posts from a chosen narrative and filtered or manufactured truths before you can construct a well sourced and thought out counter argument. Good ideas don't naturally win, for the simple reason that the energy cost is asymmetrical, and people's rationality is dependant on access to facts, which further adds energy cost to the good idea side. Bad ideas only need to spread, not worry about facts or reasoning.
Re:Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits wor...
by uniqueid on Sunday April 28, 2019 @11:09AM
(#19771491)
I'm not convinced that "good ideas will naturally win over bad ideas" applies to twelve year old children. My assumption is that a sizable contingent of tweens explains the tone of many of the internet's worst places.
Re:Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits wor...
by sagichmal on Sunday April 28, 2019 @12:00PM
(#19771816)
> I feel like you're disregarding the concept of the "marketplace of ideas".
I’m not disregarding it at all. I’m directly confronting it, and calling it both naïve and insufficient as a strategy for improving society.
Bad actors have weaponized our elevation of “the marketplace of ideas” to an ends rather than a means, and so it’s both necessary and appropriate to recontextualize it, and where it makes sense to call forth.
Someone from 1500 would be very much concerned about censoring "heresies", because they'd believe that people are easily swayed and manipulated by evil. I think we know that dumb ideas, are just that, dumb. There's a reason why these types of extreme ideologies, are just that, fringe beliefs. Because the vast majority of people recognize that them for the idiocy that they are.
If we can tradeoff exposing normal people to extreme ideas, and extremists to mainstream thought, that's a great tradeoff. Many, many more of the latter will be convinced than the former.