As a broad heuristic I think this fails because posts get downvoted or removed for a variety of reasons. One common reason is that it’s a cryptocurrency scam. Are those “more likely to be true?”

Cryptocurrency scams aren’t ideas in the sense of the marketplace of ideas. Vaccine efficacy, election integrity, causes of unrest in France, traditional analysis of gender - those are examples of topics around which we discuss ideas. Try to discuss them in a simulated user forum. As an experiment, vary the viewpoint of your remarks, pro-X vs. anti-X. Observe what happens. You can learn from the censorship profile what the censors are worried about.

I suppose that’s a way of learning about what upsets people. But why they’re upset is another question. Maybe it’s not the idea, but its presentation?

Also, what set of ideas are you drawing from? There are a lot of uncontroversial and true ideas. (Or if you negate them, obviously wrong.) Why aren’t they “more likely?” I don’t know how you decide on the set of ideas to test without bias.

And how do you evaluate the results? To tell whether ideas that are “likely to be true” are more likely to make people upset, you need to already know whether they are true. Otherwise you’re just sorting by controversial.

Here’s a fun story about that: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/

People != censors.

Ah yes, contrarians are always right.

Contrarians run against the grain of common thought, not censors. It is precisely the value of censored ideas which necessitates their censorship. That is, were they allowed to persist they would become accepted but for the censorship.

Let's say we're in an astrophysics forum. Flat earthers keep coming into other topics and posting about how astrophysicists are all wrong, and flat earth is true. According to you that means flat earthers are correct and astrophysicists are wrong. Do you see where your logic breaks down?

I see that you’re intimidated by flat earthers.

Of all the possible takes that is, charitably, the dumbest. Your basic assertion is that contrarians are always right which begs the question that all orthodoxy must be a conspiracy.

Sometimes contrarians are right about things. But when they are they bring receipts. They have evidence, repeatable experiments, falsifiable hypotheses, and general academic rigor.

Flat Earthers aren't intimidating to anyone. They're tiring. Like all good conspiracy theories Flat Earth conspiracy theories are unfalsifiable. The Flat Earthers' lack of evidence is defended by them as evidence of some sort of orthodox conspiracy. Evidence contrary to their stupid ideas, including empirical observations, are also just labeled as some orthodox conspiracy.

It's not edgy, funny, or even interesting. It's just fucking stupid. It's a handful of bad faith trolls and a lot of scientifically illiterate boobs that decided to wrap their identities around Internet memes.

Would you like to try seriously engaging with my previous message?

Some examples, please? You have no evidence.

> The ideas that are censored are deemed by the censors to be likely to prevail in a free marketplace of ideas and thus threatening

You're right. Except that you seem to be implying that the "marketplace of ideas" optimizes for worthwhile ideas, rather than ideas that simply make people feel good - despite being terrible in practice, overly simplistic, fallacious, logically incoherent, etc.

These two qualities used to be in much closer alignment when the Internet was dominated by logical types who would at least try to get to the truth of things, modulo that everpresent lure of feeling superior by knowing something that bucks the common narrative.

But at this point we've devolved to full on Gresham's law as applied to ideas. Anything that carries the slightest bit of nuance or reservation demands analysis (slow path) rather than simple team allegiance (fast path). This is multiplied by the dynamic of sharing things verbatim - either quoted or by reference (URL) - which allows one to effortlessly propagate memes while disclaiming attachment to their own reputation.

Presupposes a monolithic marketplace. Locker rooms and scientific journals self-sort. Who decides which ideas are “worthwhile”? We are what we are, indeed what we were meant to be, deplorable as we may be in the eyes of the “elite.”

No I'm not presupposing some monolithic marketplace, rather just the idea that ideas themselves can be judged and compared - the essence of reason. I think therefore I am. Give me a place to stand and a lever long enough and I'll move the world.

Self sorting directly supports the dynamic I described, because feel-good terrible memes don't fool everyone uniformly. Look at both political herds - each baited with acknowledgement of specific real problems, and then mostly misdirected into avenues that rage against nonsensical bogeymen. It's utterly anti-productive and often self-harming, but it sure makes the participants feel good.

Why would such transcendent elites sully themselves with we unwashed fools wallowing in our cesspits of dopamine soaked fora? Surely such angelic figures mingle among the gods with their levers moving worlds. Can the most high not suffer us peons the fleeting comfort of our ignorant commiseration in our own vulgar impotence? We cattle promise to return to productive obeisance to your wise direction when our brief respite in collective reverie is through, if only we might be allowed to say our piece to our ugly equals.

I'm not an "elite". And no, I will not condone you wallowing in your self-harming coping memes, of which an overfocus on "elites" is most certainly one.

The "elites" want you to move in their preferred direction, yes. But much of that bearing is just common sense - so pushing in the exact opposite direction out of spite puts you further behind and suits them just as well.

If you actually want to actually assert your own independence, you have to do the excruciating work of using reason to figure out the right direction to push that actually represents your own self interest.