Even though in many places such as Canada or Iran many ideas are illegal to discuss, USA has relatively wide freedom of expression. The First Amendment victory of Westboro Baptist Church is an example.
Sometimes Argumentum ad populum is used to discredit unpopular opinions. In my opinion that argument has some power but it also has a shortcoming. In order to show that any idea is insane or unworthy of consideration, you have to show that <1% of population supports that idea. If >5% of population supports some idea, then it is a minority opinion worthy of consideration. After all 5% of American adults is 10 million people.
Let’s put it this way. In 1865, only one person on planet Earth believed that light, magnetism and electricity were interrelated phenomenon that could be described by a few simple equations. That person was James Clerk Maxwell. He published a book about it called A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field. When people read the book, they agreed with him. Pretty soon millions of people believed the same thing Maxwell did, because his equations so closely matched the physical evidence.
Was Maxwell crazy when he was the only person on the planet who believed that his equations were a good description of the physical world?
I don’t understand any of this. Are you saying it’s ok to censor a few people because they might be crazy? And what does libertarianism have to do with this? And who says millions of people can’t be crazy?
Sure they can. Do you think there’s some kind of an upper limit on how many crazy people there can be? Hell, there’s not a single human being alive that isn’t irrational and wrong about something.
Before heliocentrism gained traction around the time of Coppernicus (although yes, I am aware that there were a few earlier detractors), it was widely believed that the sun revolved around the earth. Surely it’s not an exaggeration to say that millions of people believed in the geocentric model, and over the course of centuries, no less.
Are you saying that it’s not possible that all those people were wrong (or “crazy,” as you prefer to deem them)?
I think you are equivocating a bit. It’s obvious colander is referring to incorrect beliefs and crazy ideas. I don’t think colander is actually arguing that the majority of the population is legally.
How popular a belief is has no bearing on whether its true or not.
I don’t know what the OP is on about, or what this has to do with free speech or Canada, but: There’s a big difference between being wrong and being crazy. If millions of people are wrong about something, there’s some reason (good or bad) why they believe what they do.
“Millions of people believe something, therefore it must be true”? Of course not. “Millions of people believe something, therefore it’s worth hearing them out or knowing why they believe it”? Yeah, I’d go along with that.
If the OP agrees with this, then the he isn’t talking about argumentum ad populum. The basic idea behind the concept is that the masses are right, not just that it might be worth hearing them out, even if they’re wrong in the end.
CCitizen, do you actually have a solid idea of what this phrase means?