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Shopping Badly: Cognitive Biases, Communications, And The Fallacy Of The Marketplace Of Ideas, Derek E. Bambauer

University of Colorado Law Review

The model of the "marketplace of ideas" governs critical decisions in American jurisprudence on regulating communications. This theory holds that, over time, we collectively process ideas and information to separate truth from falsehood. State intervention is therefore unnecessary and undesirable, for it may prevent us from discovering inelegant but useful ideas. However, research in cognitive psychology and behavioral economics shows that we operate with significant, persistent perceptual biases that undercut this model's assumptions. The marketplace model errs in describing how we interact with information; accordingly, it cannot reliably assess when regulation is desirable. We should discard the marketplace of ideas …