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Vaniver comments on Open thread, Jan. 19 - Jan. 25, 2015 - Less Wrong
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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.