The evidence is that it's only 15%. Free speech doesn't guarantee everyone will have right beliefs. In fact, it's a certainly that in a free speech environment lots of people will have crazy beliefs.

Free speech does, however, guarantee that no one group can control which ideas—crazy or not—can be expressed. And that, in the long run, ensures that there will be space to push back against the crazy and the harmful, which tends to be good for the less powerful.

If you're celerating that "only" 15% of people believe the most obvious bullshit anyone could possibly cook up, then your plan is flawed.

What would a non-flawed plan look like? One that results in everyone having "correct" beliefs? I'm pretty sure it would be a great deal worse than what we have now.

Nuking social media from orbit would be a good start. Any platform where what content you're shown is primarily driven by an algorithm is very suspect.

On that we can agree. Social media is a scourge. But it's also true that people believed crazy things before social media.

They did, but a more manageable dose. The current amount and effectiveness of disinformation is making society itself unstable.

Education could be a big part of it as well, not even teaching people what's correct but how to figure it out.

Income inequality isn't exactly helping either. Many people will believe any noisy asshole if their life sucks enough.

Furthermore, in the grand scheme humans beliefs being 'right' or 'wrong', people today probably have far more 'right' beliefs than ever during history. Conspiracy theories and wrong beliefs have been more prevalent in the past than today.

How does it guarantee that? What if I have information that so and so in a government is a rapist but a sea of lies implies I'm a traitor or pedophile

As usual the NYT tells half the story to advance an agenda. Ten years ago you coulda asked about Area 51 conspiracies and gotten the exact same response rates.

If you ask leading questions you’ll get the answers you’re looking for. The poll is bad and the data is meaningless if you’re trying to find out what people think. However if you’re trying to push a specific agenda, and convince a large part of the other 85% that many “others” are crazy and need to be “re-educated”well then it’s a very useful poll.

You’ve been had.

"Ten years ago you coulda asked about Area 51 conspiracies and gotten the exact same response rates."

And that's a good thing to you? I don't get what you're saying.

Clearly there are people who believe in QAnon. And that's a problem. Not sure what you're trying to argue.

Yes, it shows that we're ok with people making their own decisions no matter how deluded, trying to pretend that this is some new phenomenon that is threatening the republic is hyperbole.

Exactly. The combination of free speech and the internet has made things worse in a lot of ways.