No. The belief that allowing all ideas to stand on their own merit would be inherently good is the sentiment we are questioning. Is it? Is a radically free market in terms of goods and supplies the best idea? If not, why did we think it would apply to speech and ideas? As much as we love to live in the fantasy where good speech will counter bad speech, our history of research into markets and behavioral economics should show us that marketing, the ability to control outlets of speech, etc. make it unlikely that good speech always gets an equal (or even similar) opportunity to counter bad speech).
the overall result of this openness seems to be growing disdain for beliefs which we now know are founded in hate, not logic or science.
All beliefs have some kind of fundamental assumption taken on faith, even the ones you will claim are founded on logic and science. Even the idea of science as definitive proof is based on the fundamental belief that the peer review method of scientific correction and checking cannot be coopted or subverted (and yet examples show that it can).
Do you really feel that the world is in a worse place than it was in the 70's or even in 2010?
No but why does this matter? It doesn't mean every choice we made in the past was right. If we had chosen a centrally controlled, heavily censored Internet rather than the radically free and open model we live with now, still the world would be a better place than in the 70s.
Comments
No. The belief that allowing all ideas to stand on their own merit would be inherently good is the sentiment we are questioning. Is it? Is a radically free market in terms of goods and supplies the best idea? If not, why did we think it would apply to speech and ideas? As much as we love to live in the fantasy where good speech will counter bad speech, our history of research into markets and behavioral economics should show us that marketing, the ability to control outlets of speech, etc. make it unlikely that good speech always gets an equal (or even similar) opportunity to counter bad speech).
All beliefs have some kind of fundamental assumption taken on faith, even the ones you will claim are founded on logic and science. Even the idea of science as definitive proof is based on the fundamental belief that the peer review method of scientific correction and checking cannot be coopted or subverted (and yet examples show that it can).
No but why does this matter? It doesn't mean every choice we made in the past was right. If we had chosen a centrally controlled, heavily censored Internet rather than the radically free and open model we live with now, still the world would be a better place than in the 70s.