Most discussions of ideas eventually invoke the metaphor of the “marketplace of ideas”. I’ve always assumed this alludes to the market square of ancient Athens—the Agora—where some of the greatest minds of antiquity thrashed out the issues and ideas of the day. It is one of our better metaphors, in my opinion, because like the marketplace of commodities and currencies, it is subject to many of the same strengths, weaknesses, and manipulations. There are those who believe that the marketplace of ideas should take a “hands off” approach. This laissez-faire approach today is most often represented by the post-modern academic who has taken the notion that every idea is worthy of being considered on its merits, and distorted it into one in which every idea is equally worthy, and that no idea is “better” than another.

But like the economic marketplace, the intellectual marketplace functions more effectively when there are regulations and safeguards in place. Just as we have laws banning dangerous products, false advertising, cons, scams, monopolies, trusts, and so forth, the marketplace of ideas has—or had—its pariahs as well as its guardians. For a long time academia was a bulwark against bad ideas that were better discarded. Likewise the government (although that is less true today), which is still the largest single publisher of information on the planet. But in academia today there are Deconstructionists who regard the concepts of “true” and “false” as socially constructed discourse reflecting the biases of the power structure and hence meaningless in any real sense. Thus they have thus abdicated the power to make value judgments. They do not by any means represent the majority view in academia, but there are enough of them and others like them to have an unhealthy influence on people who should know better.

For example, consider Dr. Eric R. Pianka, who without citing a single piece of evidence claimed in a recent lecture before the Texas Academy of Science that the only way to “save” the earth as it exists today would be if 90% of the human population were exterminated. Although Dr. Pianka argues for his mass die-off to happen by “natural” means, he does not wish our species well. But even more shocking, was that by all accounts, his words were warmly received by the audience, who gave him a standing ovation at the end of his lecture. This was a severe breakdown in the marketplace of ideas.

But I submit that Dr. Pianka is not the problem. His ideas are the kind that are easily refuted, and deserve only to take their place beside the cosmology of Velikovsky, the exobiology of Von Däniken, Intelligent Design, Supply-side Economics, and other crackpot ideas. Such nonsense will always be around in one form or another. The problem was the Texas Academy of Science, whose job it is to winnow facts from genocidal fantasy. There are any number of other scientists and scholars who know of Dr. Pianka’s work and have not denounced or refuted it publicly. For this reason my good friends Forrest Mims and Shawn Carlson deserve credit for bringing this to the attention of that portion of the scientific community they serve.

But let’s return to the marketplace of ideas. How does it fail? There are three main causes. The first is a problem that also plagues the traditional marketplace: false or misleading information. In the economic marketplace we call it false advertising (or good advertising, depending on who stands to gain from it). In the intellectual marketplace it’s propaganda or pseudoscience or disinformation. Advertising can bind the Invisible Hand and skew the market so that clearly inferior or even dangerous products are successful at the expense of better products or services. Macintosh users over forty know what I’m talking about. The marketplace of ideas is supposed to weed out bad ideas, but if certain interests are willing to throw enough money behind it, I’ve learned to my frustration that even the most self-evident truth is small shakes against a sustained, sophisticated, and well-funded publicity campaign.

The second problem is the post-modern reluctance to make value judgments. This is a problem I’ve mentioned before that is usually associated with academics, but you see it anytime where being “wrong” is inconvenient or politically undesirable. There is the stereotypical politically correct approach that to decide that one group or culture or policy is better than another is misguided or arrogant or intolerant. And there is also the variety driven by blind faith in ideology or cult of personality (One cannot but think of the 32% of people in a recent survey who think George W. Bush is doing a heckuva job).

This brings us to the third corrupting influence: ideology. I plan to talk about this more later, but for now suffice it to say that ideology is not about what is right or wrong, but group cohesion and social dominance. Hewing to any ideology as a canon for truth is like going to Jack the Ripper for medical advice.