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Sun vs Wind
There's an Odds Bodkin tale about a wager between the Sun and the Wind. They each bet the other that they could get a man to take off his coat. The Wind blew hard, and tried to blow it off of him, but he only pulled it more snugly around him. Then the Sun’s turn came, and the Sun shone warmly on him, and he grew warm and comfortable, and of his own free will, he took off his coat.
“That’s fake news!” is Wind.
“Conspiracy theory!” is Wind.
“Believe the Facts™!” is Wind.
“You’re a science denier!” is Wind.
Wind has been tried. It doesn’t work.
The way to kill an idea is to provide an alternative so superior that it makes the old one irrelevant.
See Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is not people getting together in meatspace and burning piles of fiat currency. It’s people trading in the old for the new. It is by virtue of the inherent qualities of the new thing, that the old thing becomes safe and obvious to relinquish. When a new idea is “just so much better at accomplishing the same things,” then the old idea can be put down willingly — like the man’s coat.
The way to kill an idea is by the sheer sanity of a better idea.
That’s what Ideamarket is for — it’s for discovering and popularizing ideas of superior sanity, so that common knowledge can evolve without coercion.
Therefore, negative signaling is not very useful. It’s not important how bad a bad idea is.
The important thing is how good its potential replacement is.
The only votes that matter are up.
Which ideas, which voices, can attract upvotes from all demographics? Those are the unicorns.
Long sanity.