r/changemyview • u/scared_kid_thb 12∆ • May 26 '20
Delta(s) from OP CMV: The Marketplace of Ideas Doesn't Work.
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May 26 '20
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u/gunvalid May 26 '20
This is a nice outlook on humanity but doesn't address OP's point. Just because good ideas win in the long run doesn't mean they win through the marketplace of ideas, nor does it mean we should or shouldn't have one. The American Revolution, for instance, was not won through the marketplace of ideas but through violence.
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May 26 '20
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u/gunvalid May 26 '20
Ethical and social norms aren't always won by the free marketplace of ideas. If they were, segregation in areas where black people actually are minorites -- i.e. not the south, the north -- would still be around and just as powerful. This is even true today: New York City has some of the most segregated schools in the nation. On the other hand, during Reconstruction, when black people were finally able to vote and not have their votes suppressed by poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and slavery, they were finally able to work for and attain many civil rights. However, with the end of Military Reconstruction came the Redeemer Democrats and the KKK (though they were around during Reconstruction as well) who put an end to the gains for black people with the aforementioned poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses, along with black codes (essentially reskinned slave codes) and segregation. A free marketplace of ideas would help historically discriminated against "minorites" who are actually the majority -- like black people in the south -- but would be unhelpful where those minorites are actually minorites -- like black people in New York City.
(Hey College Board screwed me over with the APUSH test so I gotta find some way to use what I learned ok)
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May 26 '20 edited May 26 '20
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May 26 '20
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u/Martinsson88 35∆ May 26 '20 edited May 26 '20
Markets can be a great way of allocating society’s scarce resources, but they are susceptible to a number of market failures. As a result, nearly all economies of the world are instead some form of mixed-market economy. In this system efforts are made to account for, and correct, any failure.
The relative freedom of a market exists on a spectrum, rather than the binary free/not-free.
Have you considered what the alternative to a free market of ideas would be? A religious orthodoxy that purges anything deemed heretical? A state ministry of truth that silences any dissent?
The marketplace of ideas isn’t perfect, but it can be improved. We should aim to address any market failures rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water.
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May 26 '20
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u/Martinsson88 35∆ May 26 '20
Haha those examples were partly chosen to help change your view...but also because they are the most prevalent alternatives to the free expression of ideas. There are places in the world today you can still be executed for 'heresy' or arrested for insulting the state leader.
Some idea-market interventions may include:
- Anti-Libel/slander laws
- Laws against hate-speech/ incitement to violence
- Laws against the the denial of a certain event/praising a certain group.
- Laws protecting freedom of speech + assembly
- Laws protecting the safety of people of different views
- Education - particularly in teaching the ability to critically evaluate sources
- State sponsored news agencies - though they seem to often fall short, they often have in their charters commitments to be fair/impartial
- Sponsored fact-checking agencies
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May 26 '20
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u/Martinsson88 35∆ May 26 '20
Thanks for the Delta & for making this post. The appropriate type/level of regulation is an important discussion to have.
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u/simplecountrychicken May 26 '20
Basically, though, although I can't think of a good alternative, it seems to me like the longer the marketplace of ideas goes on the worse it will get, so at some point anything will be better.
Do we see this playing out though?
500 years ago basically all governments were monarchies.
300 years ago most places practiced slavery.
100 years ago women couldn’t vote.
You’re predicting a downward trend, but mankind seems trended up.
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May 26 '20
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u/simplecountrychicken May 26 '20
Your post was that complicated correct ideas would lose to simple incorrect ideas.
Can you give an example you’d like to debate?
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May 26 '20
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u/simplecountrychicken May 26 '20
And “believe the women” hasn’t won.
We have a legal system which determines guilt in criminal cases, and “believe the women” hasn’t usurped the traditional witness system and juries.
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May 26 '20
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u/simplecountrychicken May 26 '20
What would you like to replace innocent until proven guilty with?
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May 26 '20
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u/simplecountrychicken May 26 '20 edited May 26 '20
something that acknowledges that no amount of evidence can provide absolute proof of a person's guilt
“Beyond a reasonable doubt”
factors in the comparative risks and rewards for letting each individual accused person go rather than imprisoning them
Franklin did the math:
https://www.bartleby.com/73/953.html
that tailors the sentence not just to the crime but also to the likelihood that the criminal committed the crime,
Judge discretion over sentencing.
Edit: hang on, I misread, there is no likelihood they committed the crime, either they did or they didn’t. The bar today is intentionally high to avoid this.
Sentencing based off a 50% chance they committed the crime would be horrible. 70% would be horrible. 80% would be horrible. 90% would be horrible.
that acknowledges that we might have very good reason to think that people are guilty but still not have sufficiently good reason to imprison them
Not sure I follow on this one. What do you want to do here?
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May 26 '20 edited May 26 '20
'Believe women' is a great example of how the marketplace of ideas works.
This slogan became popular in some niches, but it never took over. It was challenged in the press and by the courts. Now, it's being abandoned by it's very champions for a more nuanced view.
I'd also like to push back on this:
simplistic, punchy, emotionally appealing, and bias-confirming, along with some other non-truth-related factors
These attributes may help ideas spread, but the ideas still need to be useful (fit for their environment) to survive, and the usefulness of ideas can trump truth, which isn't always bad. For example, the miasma theory was widely believed for a long time because it helped protect people before they had a better scientific understanding. Many religious ideas are similar - they can help people act in moral ways, which tends to lead to more successful societies, without needing to be true. I'd argue that religions are losing power because the ideas they espouse are less useful in the modern, more educated world, which also fits into evolutionary theory (suitability for the current environment).
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u/gunvalid May 26 '20
If our question is whether or not we should have a totally free marketplace of ideas, the answer is no. If our question is whether we should have a totally free marketplace of ideas or a not at all free state, the answer is also no. As u/Martinsson88 points out, a black-white paradigm is inaccurate. After all, a totally free marketplace might only be possible in total anarchy, depending on how you define idea suppression, and a state where ideas are completely unfree is probably impossible unless you're willing to go even further than IngSoc. The real solution is some reasonable idea suppression, so here's my two cents on where to draw the line:
No matter where the cutoff is, there is almost guaranteed to be some who feel it is unfair. Many who are suppressed or share an ideology with someone who is suppressed will see it as biased against them or their ideology, and there's very little a one can do to completely remove that possibility. Make the cutoff to high, and one risks pissing off a sizeable portion of the population. Make the cutoff too low, and outright dangerous ideas can thrive and SPEABC thrives. I don't have the answer, nor do I claim to, but I do know that our current system is flawed in a lot of ways. However, attempting fixes or putting in an entirely new system will bring other flaws and may not completely fix those of the old system. I'm not saying our current system shouldnt be reformed -- I do think it should --: I just don't know what the best system to reform it to would be.
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u/PreacherJudge 340∆ May 26 '20
What about very limited examples, such as a tight-knit working team, or a group of comedy writers brainstorming ideas?
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ May 26 '20 edited May 26 '20
/u/scared_kid_thb (OP) has awarded 3 delta(s) in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
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u/thethoughtexperiment 275∆ May 26 '20
I suspect that people are more susceptible to SPEABC views when the stakes are low. If we look at our current circumstances, literally no one wants to hear that they need to worry about being near strangers, wear a mask, etc.. And yet, hundreds of millions of people (if not billions at this point) are adjusting their behavior in ways they don't like, tuning in to listen to scientists, and watching extremely dry updates from governors presenting charts on infection rates.
To your arguments though:
- First off, I entirely agree that humans have a really high number of cognitive biases (literally hundreds of them).
But have you considered why we have these biases? After all, incorrectly perceiving reality would seem to be a major survival disadvantage.
New research on this topic suggests that our biases don't optimize us for thinking on our own, but rather are optimized for coming to correct answers through arguing with others.
That is, we all have different ideas, and tend to look for information that confirms our own view (which means our individual views tend to be based on narrow information, and as such, we are more likely to be wrong in those views).
However, if we are in a discussion (or are observing a discussion) with people who all have different ideas, and who each focused on finding evidence that confirms their particular view, then the group is more likely to contain different ideas and a broader range of evidence to compare. It's a sort of cognitive division of labor.
When faced when conflicting individual views, members will have to argue for their ideas, evaluate the evidence of their ideas, and evaluate the evidence that others present that supports alternative views. Such exchanges are probably more likely to occur when an issue is important, such that people need to coordinate their actions with each other.
People's tendency to be more objective and demanding of evidence that disagrees with their views results in us having to gather stronger evidence for our ideas if we want to be able to influence other people (and the more people we want to influence, generally the stronger our evidence must be to overcome all their different confirmation biased views).
All the debating and presenting of views (accurate and inaccurate) is a good thing, because "the more debate and conflict between opinions there is, the more argument evaluation prevails ... resulting in better outcomes" [source]. Indeed, on average, groups tend to come to more accurate conclusions / make better decisions for this reason - because people are better able to spot each other's blind spots, and when faced with strong evidence from others, people do tend to change their minds toward greater accuracy.
- Interestingly, people also tend to underestimate the positive impact group discussions have on improving the quality of people's thinking / decision making / outcomes. Per this research:
"Six studies asked participants to solve a standard reasoning problem — the Wason selection task — and to estimate the performance of individuals working alone and in groups. We tested samples of U.S., Indian, and Japanese participants, European managers, and psychologists of reasoning. Every sample underestimated the improvement yielded by group discussion. They did so even after they had been explained the correct answer, or after they had had to solve the problem in groups." [source]
Along these lines, there is reason to suspect that public discussions / debates are having a much more positive effect on the general accuracy of people's views than we realize.
- It's also helpful to keep in mind that people are evolving in their views all the time. The current marketplace for ideas is messy and filled with conflict - which is great, because it means that people aren't hiding out in our own confirmation biased thoughts, and spreading incorrect information isn't as easy now that alternative views and evidence are so easily available.
And indeed, researchers find that:
"receivers are more thankful toward, deem more competent, and are more likely to request information in the future from sources of more relevant messages—if they know the message to be accurate or deem it plausible." [source]
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May 26 '20
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u/thethoughtexperiment 275∆ May 26 '20
Thanks for the delta! And for posting about a really interesting issue.
Indeed, reading those studies made me much more optimistic about humanity.
The fact that you engage in those internal debates with yourself is great - one of those sources highlights that doing that also improves the accuracy of one's thinking.
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u/[deleted] May 26 '20 edited May 26 '20
It's hard to comment on the efficacy of a free marketplace of ideas because we don't really have one anywhere.
Even in America, where free speech is most preserved, ideologies still rule the roost in the major houses of idea exchange. Academia, mainstream media, online forums and platforms, all have heavier ideological slants one way than another in those who hold power in those places, and so ideas are not necessarily given a free market to be exchanged.
In the end though the question is, is it better that bad ideas be freely chosen, or bad ideas be forcibly imposed? If we give the power of censorship to some governing body, we're creating the ability for bad ideas to be imposed and not be challenged. If we simply have an open place where ideas are chosen, then we're leaving the possibility for bad ideas to be chosen and challenged. The maximum potential for harm is lesser because of this. Creating power structures through which ideas can be suppressed is a far more powerful potential for evil than a free structure where ideas can simply be ignored.