If your position is marginalized, the problem is not in producing enough copies of your screeds, but in getting people to read them and take them seriously, since they are perceived as low-status relative to the respectable mainstream sources. I don't see any significant advantage that The New York Times enjoyed over some contrarian's xeroxed pamphlets 20 years ago that wouldn't also apply to the nytimes.com website relative to some contrarian blog nowadays.
I think there's an Emporer's-New-Clothes / Common-Knowledge effect that differentiates the two. If a significant minority holds marginalized view X, but all such people think virtually no one else holds the view, then it's easier for a blogger to help the Xers identify each other and come out the woodwork (closet?) than for a lone pamphleteer.
And if I may indulge in some mind-killing speculation, I think that's exactly what happened with libertarianism pre- and post-internet. Before, it was relegated to low-circulation newletters, with most adherents thinking themselves alone in the dark, and afterward it dominates internet discussion, a now mainstream medium.
I think there's an Emporer's-New-Clothes / Common-Knowledge effect that differentiates the two. If a significant minority holds marginalized view X, but all such people think virtually no one else holds the view, then it's easier for a blogger to help the Xers identify each other and come out the woodwork (closet?) than for a lone pamphleteer.
Sure, but all they will achieve is to form an online echo chamber. To have real-world impact, they will have to establish themselves in the mainstream institutions of public opinion (principally media and academia)...
Today's post, Stop Voting For Nincompoops was originally published on 02 January 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
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This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was The American System and Misleading Labels, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
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