"We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom."
E.O. Wilson
It's easy to look around today and see a world where misinformation reigns supreme and truth languishes. It wasn't supposed to be this way.
In a free society, we have a competitive marketplace of ideas. Here, truths tend to prevail over falsehoods, and bad ideas die exposed to the searing light of reason. All opinions are permitted, even those that seem obviously wrong. After all, we often cannot easily identify false beliefs until they get debunked through public debate. And anyway, there's the off chance that today's obviously incorrect opinion is tomorrow's unquestioned fact. In these ways, even apparently bad ideas serve a purpose.
That's the theory, anyway, and it goes back a long way.
The Idea That Good Ideas Triumph Over Bad Ones
John Stuart Mill wrote eloquently about the importance of freedom of expression. According to Mill, "There must be discussion, to show how experience is to be interpreted. Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and argument: but facts and arguments, to produce any effect on the mind, must be brought before it." Mill's defense of free speech rested on the idea that only through the free and open exchange of ideas — good, bad, and otherwise — could an open society prosper.
Moreover, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes agreed, writing in a 1919 dissent, "...that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out."
Even today, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, most people still basically agree with these two assessments on the value of free and open debate.
However, I want to take a look at that "abundant evidence to the contrary."
The Marketplace of Ideas Under Assault
I recently came across something I found thought-provoking while reading Jason Stanley’s How Fascism Works.
It goes something like this: The idea we live in a functioning marketplace of ideas is a fallacy. We don't anymore, not really, because that is predicated on the assumption that differing viewpoints actually resolve themselves in reasoned, good-faith debate, with the best, most rational ideas winning out in the end. Unfortunately, our assumptions, even about basic things, are now often so irreconcilable that no reasonable debate is possible. Sometimes the best ideas do not win but go down in flames.
Or, to put it more bluntly, sometimes stupid wins.
Any observer of the current status quo can see Stanley's point. The ideals of Mill and Holmes are struggling mightily in the information-inundated world of the twenty-first century. Conspiracies thrive. Fake news becomes indiscernible from quality journalism that at least tries to ground itself in fact-based reporting.
What happened?
First, for any reasoned debate to occur, the two sides must share a few presuppositions. For example, Jane may think that raising taxes on the rich will benefit society. At the same time, Bob believes lower taxes are better. Or maybe Jane thinks gun ownership promotes good citizenship, while Bob believes the opposite.
Here, the two share a common objective: creating and sustaining a better society as they see it. Yes, they may disagree passionately on how to make that happen. But they still operate within the same basic realm of facts, even if their values and priorities differ. Mutual respect for the other's opinion can still exist here, and neither side sees the other as evil incarnate.
Suppose Bob and Jane want to implement their preferred policies. In that case, they must work within a common framework of established laws, the country's Constitution, free and fair elections, and the actions of democratically-elected officials. Citizens like Bob and Jane implicitly accept these ground rules and agree to work within them to achieve their policy goals. In theory, over time, the best ideas eventually win out, and society is better for it. Rational arguments shine brighter and make more sense while irrational ones get banished into the darkness. This is all thanks to the marketplace of ideas.
So far, so good, right?
But what happens when the fundamental assumptions between the two beliefs are irreconcilable? Well, then things get interesting.
For example, perhaps Bob believes that Bill Gates is part of a shadowy global cabal of billionaire elites who concocted the COVID pandemic as part of a master plan to use mass vaccinations to install tracking chips that could later be activated by 5G networks. He also believes global elites and Hollywood celebrities are pedophiles who enslave children to blood harvest their adrenochrome.
Or something like that.
Meanwhile, Jane thinks this is the stupidest thing she has ever heard.
Where is the common framework they can both agree on? Where do Bob and Jane even begin to have a rational discussion about how best to deal with the COVID pandemic when Bob's position is so clearly irrational? These two interpretations of reality are so far apart that any productive conversation is difficult to have.
A conspiracy theorist like Bob eschews reality in favor of an ever-more fantastical understanding of events. Facts are selectively applied to support the conspiracy narrative, and anything contradictory is dismissed out of hand. For a person who does not buy into the narrative, this is hard to understand.
Conspiratorial interpretations of current events are not outliers. According to a Pew Survey, a solid quarter of respondents believe that COVID was planned as part of some larger conspiracy.
So, I ask, how is that marketplace of ideas working out?
Not as well as we'd like, at least if the goal is for better ideas to win out over worse ones. The marketplace of ideas still can and does work. The dramatic shift in public opinion over the last ten years on LGBT rights is an excellent example of this marketplace of ideas working well. Inclusive arguments defeated discriminatory ones arguing to uphold a sadistic status quo. Society changed for the better by bestowing rights to those traditionally discriminated against. Now they are full and equal participants in the marketplace of ideas. They have a voice that they didn't before, thanks to free and open public debate. But it works both ways. When they go too far in their own ideologies, as has happened in recent years, they find their own assumptions challenged.
But it has its drawbacks as well. Remember, sometimes stupid wins. Everyone’s ideas get equal play and everyone has a platform to express them, no matter how divorced from reality. Expertise is often drowned out by smooth-talking liars. People tend to believe things that conform to preconceived notions about the world.
The Marketplace of Ideas vs. The Bazaar of Opinions
And why wouldn't they? There is so much contradictory information that most of us cannot process it all. Most of us don't have time to fact-check everything we read or watch, so we take much of it on faith or based on the source's perceived credibility. What people choose to believe is less a matter of any critical analysis of the evidence and more a reflection of pre-existing values and beliefs.
This transforms the classic “marketplace of ideas” into a “bazaar of opinions,” a place where we can all shop for custom-curated realities that let us live comfortably numb in communities of shared illusions. Truth is less important than the identity that an opinion confers upon us. It’s a fantasy world where opinions have become identities and are as valid as people believe them to be. Yet, it’s a fragile world allergic to challenge.
Debate, the key to a functioning marketplace of ideas, becomes frowned upon in polite society. The untouchable sanctity of one's opinion, no matter how divorced from reality, is everything. That allows laughably bad ideas to flourish without the cleansing purge of having them exposed in open debate.
To me, people unwilling to have their dearly held beliefs challenged are like medieval knights who only polish their armor without ever testing it in battle. The armor ends up as little more than a fashion accessory.
“Oh, but see how it shines!”
Truth and Reason Need Champions
Every time we joke about the truism that no one ever wins an argument online, we are tacitly conceding defeat to those who would spin falsehoods as truth. Like a virus, this plague of deceit can spread until it eventually seeps into the real world.
If there is any silver lining, it’s that it doesn't have to be this way. We get to choose how we engage the world intellectually. Mill and Holmes were on to something, even if technology has dramatically altered the equation. Reason is not destined to win every argument against ignorance. No, it needs champions willing to defend it, now more than ever.
Quite often, there are actual, unequivocal facts. Either Bill Gates and his billionaire buddies are spreading COVID to control the world, or not. Not. Either QAnon is speaking the truth, or not. Not. Either climate change is a hoax, or not. Not.
These genuinely are either/or issues. We should not give in to the temptation of just scrolling down every time we come across bad ideas. Left unchecked, they metastasize and eventually make their way into the halls of power. Then, as we have seen over the last few years, all bets are off.
Yes, there are also ambiguities and things we don’t know and never will. But we should not fall into the trap of believing that all facts are inherently relative, open to endless interpretations by clever sophists and gullible fools alike. While it may seem quixotic, we need to keep fighting against ignorance and conspiracy, even if it feels like a losing battle at times.
Care enough to believe in something beyond yourself, then have the courage to defend it. And if your nicely polished armor gets bashed to bits, be grateful.
And then choose again.
Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty, and The Subjection of Women. Penguin Books, 2006.
Stanley, Jason — How Fascism Works, 2018.