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I agree - people are probably not always rational and people are indeed subject to manipulation. But it changes nothing. If anything it’s BECAUSE of this that w

I agree - people are probably not always rational and people are indeed subject to manipulation. But it changes nothing. If anything it’s BECAUSE of this that we need to agree all ideas are fallible and subject to debate and that no one owns the truth. An appeal to a fundamental authority cant work precisely because we are not rational and are subject to manipulation. We just don’t know. We have a right to opinion, beliefs, and debate but not much more. No one is above this. No one is an oracle. The thought that came from The Enlightenment to philosophers like Karl Popper to modern authors like Johnathan Rausch explain this better than I can here. I’d read “Kindly Inquisitors” if you have a bit of time (pretty short overall) to get a better understanding of these ideas. We have a series of liberal democracies in the West for a reason and it isn’t a fluke. Countless wars, inquisitions, and pointless suffering led to it. We are still struggling to fulfill the potential today and have to constantly fight off regressive philosophy but that’s the price.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
The most impactful "ideas" in the current (social) media climate do not subscribe to any of your idea(l)s. Pizzagate/QAnon, as examples, are not "subject to debate". They are "oracular" in nature (there is a single source of "truth" ) and followers are expect to ... follow. You can try to apply a Popperian approach to "controversial" or "conspiratorial" ideas, but the end result is that essentially always, such ideas fail to pass any credibility threshold. But then people show in comment threads online, insisting that "not listening" to such ideas is inimical to the basics of free speech, and that nobody owns the truth. These kinds of ideas have created a scenario in which nobody benefits, and in which truth, or more accurately perhaps, the pursuit of truth, suffers.
- nemo44x 6y ago
  I don’t think you have to listen to them. More so, you have every right to ruthlessly mock those ideas and the people that propagate them if that’s how you want to counter it. There’s a billion chain-letter bad ideas and rumors floating around. Who chooses which ones must be stopped and which ones ignored? The internet poses a problem in that yea, bad ideas flow faster. But I’d argue so do good ones. I think we need to take the lumps and learn the lessons and be better for it down the road.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago

The most impactful "ideas" in the current (social) media climate do not subscribe to any of your idea(l)s. Pizzagate/QAnon, as examples, are not "subject to debate". They are "oracular" in nature (there is a single source of "truth" ) and followers are expect to ... follow. You can try to apply a Popperian approach to "controversial" or "conspiratorial" ideas, but the end result is that essentially always, such ideas fail to pass any credibility threshold. But then people show in comment threads online, insisting that "not listening" to such ideas is inimical to the basics of free speech, and that nobody owns the truth. These kinds of ideas have created a scenario in which nobody benefits, and in which truth, or more accurately perhaps, the pursuit of truth, suffers.

nemo44x 6y ago
I don’t think you have to listen to them. More so, you have every right to ruthlessly mock those ideas and the people that propagate them if that’s how you want to counter it. There’s a billion chain-letter bad ideas and rumors floating around. Who chooses which ones must be stopped and which ones ignored? The internet poses a problem in that yea, bad ideas flow faster. But I’d argue so do good ones. I think we need to take the lumps and learn the lessons and be better for it down the road.