The desire to "correct" other people who are wrong is the fundamental impulse of authoritarianism.
Maybe, but it's also the impulse of people who rightly care about the future of our shared world.
Literally no authoritarian says "i want to suppress people because I'm evil mwahaha." Every single authoritarian says "i need to suppress this evil disinformation because i care about the future of our shared world---unlike you unworthy people who presumably don't care."
There's a tendency to wishfully think that people are rational and should be expected to sort out their own information environment with no governmental influence whatsoever, but I don't buy it at all. We're predictably manipulable, emotional creatures, and we can decide rationally to improve our information environment without falling into your implicit slippery slope.
Yes. I never said authoritarianism is bad. In fact, I probably consider myself an authoritarian.
That's not rationalism, that's just saying "I'm right, they are wrong, end of discussion".
Good luck with judging who's right and who's wrong.
Yes, in a world with literally billions of people, you have a few millions who believe outlandish things. If that was the extent of the problem with polarization/toxicity on the internet (or public debate in general), I doubt we'd talk about it, and I'd be very happy with the state of the world.
Those people have no large base, no stable membership, no money, no power. Focusing on them is like decrying the fall of science because 6yo Timmy still believes in Santa Clause.
* the Flat Earth Society has a very stable membership and patreon. Mark Sagent's youtube channel alone has 58k subscribers. Social media influence is the source of money, and a power all on its own. * Gweneth Paltrow's pseudoscience has a facebook group with 500k members. She has a netflix series and a reliable income from her online storefront. The facebook group came first, then the netflix series. * QAnon is a persistent conspiracy theory with no basis in fact. Regardless, tripcodes (a public hash of the password used for identity verification on 4chan) denote a persistent online identity, so he's got a following... and the following is what causes power.
Power in its purest form is asking someone for something and getting it. This looks different in the modern age than it did previously, but saying that celebrities don't have power belies the entire concept. These are celebrities, either advocating obviously false things, or due to their advocation of obviously false things, and millions of people are taken in.
In contrast, the expected Iowa caucus turnout numbers are going to be around 60,000. Or, in other words: There are more people believing in flat earth than there are democrats caucasing in Iowa. How in the world is this not a problem.
I mean, isn't the answer already in these sentences? The world vs Iowa.
It's not that I don't believe pseudoscience and cults are a problem, it's just that they are a small problem on the grand scheme of things. Increasing polarization of society at large is a problem on a different scale. It's something that has very tangible effects for most people, some guy believing that the earth is flat and having 60k people watch his videos really doesn't.
So sure, paying attention to the edge cases is fine, but focus most of your attention on the big issues.
The desire to compel others to conform to one’s ideal of correctness is the fundamental impulse of authoritarianism.
...but also libertarianism, for a particular aspect of correctness.
My understanding is that the core value / principle of libertarianism is individual liberty.
How do you derive compelling others from that?
Yes, and libertarians tend to hold that it is right and proper (and even often define “violence” to exclude this use of force) to use any degree of force necessary to get others to observe the individual liberties libertarians see as essential.