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Comment by kneebonian | Hacker News Reader

> but at the same time, it's undeniable that a lot of money and attention is flowing to ever-bolder provocateurs whose only possible goal is to escalate existing tensions and iniquities to violence in service of their political aims.

Then you should defeat them in the marketplace of ideas and be able to counter their facillous words. To suggest otherwise is to stand in a position where you claim that some people are incapable of intelligently reasoning about something and that another superior individual should be able to police what they hear.

If someone says racist hateful things you're argument is that people should not be allowed to listen to it because it is a "bad thing" and other people who aren't as wise as you shoudlnt be allowed to hear it because they might act violently.

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> Then you should defeat them in the marketplace of ideas and be able to counter their facillous words. To suggest otherwise is to stand in a position where you claim that some people are incapable of intelligently reasoning about something and that another superior individual should be able to police what they hear.

How do I defeat someone "in the marketplace of ideas" when the person inciting violence is backed by a multi-billion dollar media conglomerate, an undemocratic government, or a police union/sheriff gang?

> If someone says racist hateful things you're argument is that people should not be allowed to listen to it because it is a "bad thing" and other people who aren't as wise as you shoudlnt be allowed to hear it because they might act violently.

It's not about being "wise", it's about incentives. Plenty of people directly and benefit from violence against marginalized groups, and it's in their interest to accept and encourage the normalization of violence against those groups. Media provocateurs have an impeccable sense of what they need to say and what ideas they're communicating when they speak. Plausibly deniable provocation works so well precisely because the target audience understand the real message perfectly.

>How do I defeat someone "in the marketplace of ideas" when the person inciting violence is backed by a multi-billion dollar media conglomerate, an undemocratic government, or a police union/sheriff gang?

Violence. I would not bet against escalating physical violence in the coming decade or two in the US along political lines.

It is effectively impossible to reason people out of positions they have not reasoned themselves into.

The market place of idea struggles in my close friend group where we have sort of a tradition to do these kind of debates, despite us being very close since almost a decade, and educated above our national average.

It's a nice enough idea, but i dont see how to make it work in a space where money amplifies speech, and some types of speeches have been a negative to specific groups of people throughout history.

The obvious long term solution is more education but that requires money, so the obvious short term solution is censorship

> It is effectively impossible to reason people out of positions they have not reasoned themselves into.

Some people cannot be trusted with certain ideas so a more superior individual must control what they can hear.

Do you realize how patronizing and condescending you sound about your friends by the way when you clearly imply your ideas are well reasoned and factual and theirs are the result of psychology manipulation?

But it is true, in fact that is part of the core ideas of representative democracy, and also the basic principle behind the monopoly of violence that any democratic state has to have

Some people cannot be trusted with certains ideas so a more superior indivdual or organisation must control what they can do

Or must we abandon policing since we can all exchange on the marketplace of ideas ?

My idea is since i control 40 gunmans and you control 0, you owe me money despite nothing having ever happened between us. No violence was ever implied.

Not saying that speech = action, but i cannot see how you can argue for police to exist but speech to be free as speech in itself must lead to actions, or why else would we speak in public ?

This isn't really about whose ideas are more correct. The strategy is, as Steve Bannon infamously put it, to "flood the zone with shit". They're basically doing a DDoS against the marketplace of ideas.

The marketplace of ideas is a completely made up thing to justify a stance of political non-action against real harms. People who are for example planning a mass shooting against a demonized minority are not participating in such a market, to the extent it exists at all.

And the people planning shooting against a demonized majority?

They're probably not in that "market" either! Thanks for asking this totally sincere, clarifying and helpful question.

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