Something I frequently see from people defending free speech is some variant of the idea “in the marketplace of ideas, the good ones will win out”. Is anyone familiar with any deeper examination of this idea? For instance, whether an idea market actually exists, how much it resembles a marketplace for goods, how it might reliably go wrong, etc.
I think you’re better off looking into theories of memetics; that is, a marketplace doesn’t seem to be as good an analogy as an ecology. That makes the somewhat less cheery argument that ‘good’ doesn’t mean ‘true’ so much as ‘effective at spreading,’ and in particular memes can win by poisoning their competitors through allelopathy, just like an oak tree.
Jonathan Rauch discusses the new edition of his book, Kindly Inquisitors, and presents a thoughtful and rational defense of free speech. I believe he makes some comparisons between the marketplace of ideas and economic markets and he certainly makes an argument similar to the one that you mention. It is an excellent video, IMO, and well worth watching.
There is a method of devalueing the weight of ones words by refering how them saying it doesn’t have any actual implications to action. In a free speech environment people can become decoupled from their ideas implications. Epistemic authors are usually reliable because they have passed a filter for errors. If there is no filter on error there is no measure of quality. This can easily turn in that no public shared filter is wanted and everybody is supposed to use their own filter. This has one failure mode of everybody being entirely on their own when it comes to interpreting information, ie that education is not only not provided but it would be wrong to provide it.
One also has to realise that in a market place of ideas bad ideas lose out by going bankrupt. The united states is kind of the home of capitalism but it pansies out when the laws of market would require it’s big banks to fail. So instead of natural death artificial economical support is provided. In the same way you would need to actually watch coolly when stupid people are being stupid and hurting themselfs. That is an idea either blooms or goes bust and if “goes bust” means results in injury to your health or sanity you are just supposed to live with it. Or rathet than giving or requiring each person a pretty basic but universally provided methodology of learnign about the world you rather rely on multiple biases canceling each other out or clustering the world into different audiences.
A market place phasing might also be about information control. Fox news has a bad name for coloring news and in general being stupid and with an agenda. However it might be worth it for americans to rather hear about the outside world than avoid the spin and not hear about it. The idea of a filter bubble is also relevant. There could also be stresses on meaning and communication. If no consistency of concepts is upkept the end result might be a tower of Babel islands of non-communicating schools of thought. This can already be seen in how terms of politics between america and europe is signfiicant enough that misunderstandings happen and one can genuinely ask whether the “talking of politics” is the same thing in both locales. There is a stress in highly specailized scientist using special lingo that is inpenetrable to a layman. You could for example think how “global warming” means somewhat differnt things to a scientist than a politician. It would be good to be aware on how technical results migth have impact on economies and policy. You would also want decision making to be informed about on what they are decising on. If you leave a scientist and a politician to work it out without guidelines on how to deal with the others stances there are some pretty destructive cooperation modes possible even if the indivudals beliefs could be of high fit to their individual lives. And the danger is that their lives remian individual. If they can’t reach a common decision they basically split into two diffrenent nations. if they are free to speak different languages it will be very hard to have a common decision even if desired. Note that this could be solved if each were required to learn the other language. But then they lose the freedom of being lazy and not putting in the time. However if all of their time is spent learning the other language they will not have enough time to do the actual decision making. And in deciding what part of the others language they learn they implicitly decide on what things they can reach common ground on. If you predefine that certain areas are just off limits it frees up energy to have a better quality shared solution to the “on limits” part. A world of private property needs police to enforce against theft. Thus making “ownership” mandatory it frees up guarding your yard with a rifle in favour of organising the ownership relations. Having a forum enforcing against moderation you are guaranteed access to data but no promises to signal-to-noise ratio is given and it is up to the listener to be able to extract any (usefull) information (this includes things like defence against trolls and viruses).
Something I frequently see from people defending free speech is some variant of the idea “in the marketplace of ideas, the good ones will win out”. Is anyone familiar with any deeper examination of this idea? For instance, whether an idea market actually exists, how much it resembles a marketplace for goods, how it might reliably go wrong, etc.
I think you’re better off looking into theories of memetics; that is, a marketplace doesn’t seem to be as good an analogy as an ecology. That makes the somewhat less cheery argument that ‘good’ doesn’t mean ‘true’ so much as ‘effective at spreading,’ and in particular memes can win by poisoning their competitors through allelopathy, just like an oak tree.
This video is somewhat on topic: The New (and Old) Attacks on Free Thought: Jonathan Rauch on Kindly Inquisitors
Jonathan Rauch discusses the new edition of his book, Kindly Inquisitors, and presents a thoughtful and rational defense of free speech. I believe he makes some comparisons between the marketplace of ideas and economic markets and he certainly makes an argument similar to the one that you mention. It is an excellent video, IMO, and well worth watching.
There is a method of devalueing the weight of ones words by refering how them saying it doesn’t have any actual implications to action. In a free speech environment people can become decoupled from their ideas implications. Epistemic authors are usually reliable because they have passed a filter for errors. If there is no filter on error there is no measure of quality. This can easily turn in that no public shared filter is wanted and everybody is supposed to use their own filter. This has one failure mode of everybody being entirely on their own when it comes to interpreting information, ie that education is not only not provided but it would be wrong to provide it.
One also has to realise that in a market place of ideas bad ideas lose out by going bankrupt. The united states is kind of the home of capitalism but it pansies out when the laws of market would require it’s big banks to fail. So instead of natural death artificial economical support is provided. In the same way you would need to actually watch coolly when stupid people are being stupid and hurting themselfs. That is an idea either blooms or goes bust and if “goes bust” means results in injury to your health or sanity you are just supposed to live with it. Or rathet than giving or requiring each person a pretty basic but universally provided methodology of learnign about the world you rather rely on multiple biases canceling each other out or clustering the world into different audiences.
A market place phasing might also be about information control. Fox news has a bad name for coloring news and in general being stupid and with an agenda. However it might be worth it for americans to rather hear about the outside world than avoid the spin and not hear about it. The idea of a filter bubble is also relevant. There could also be stresses on meaning and communication. If no consistency of concepts is upkept the end result might be a tower of Babel islands of non-communicating schools of thought. This can already be seen in how terms of politics between america and europe is signfiicant enough that misunderstandings happen and one can genuinely ask whether the “talking of politics” is the same thing in both locales. There is a stress in highly specailized scientist using special lingo that is inpenetrable to a layman. You could for example think how “global warming” means somewhat differnt things to a scientist than a politician. It would be good to be aware on how technical results migth have impact on economies and policy. You would also want decision making to be informed about on what they are decising on. If you leave a scientist and a politician to work it out without guidelines on how to deal with the others stances there are some pretty destructive cooperation modes possible even if the indivudals beliefs could be of high fit to their individual lives. And the danger is that their lives remian individual. If they can’t reach a common decision they basically split into two diffrenent nations. if they are free to speak different languages it will be very hard to have a common decision even if desired. Note that this could be solved if each were required to learn the other language. But then they lose the freedom of being lazy and not putting in the time. However if all of their time is spent learning the other language they will not have enough time to do the actual decision making. And in deciding what part of the others language they learn they implicitly decide on what things they can reach common ground on. If you predefine that certain areas are just off limits it frees up energy to have a better quality shared solution to the “on limits” part. A world of private property needs police to enforce against theft. Thus making “ownership” mandatory it frees up guarding your yard with a rifle in favour of organising the ownership relations. Having a forum enforcing against moderation you are guaranteed access to data but no promises to signal-to-noise ratio is given and it is up to the listener to be able to extract any (usefull) information (this includes things like defence against trolls and viruses).
Here’s Scott Alexander discussing this concept in the context of lifehacks: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/03/do-life-hacks-ever-reach-fixation/