I've been reading Robert Cialdini's
Influence lately. He puts forth an interesting argument against censorship in a chapter talking about how scarcity influences behavior.
Everyone is probably familiar with the idea that people perceive scarce items as more valuable. I don't just mean supply and demand affecting price, but people's subconscious desire for things goes up when the learn that it is limited. Thus "only 3 left!", "today only!" and other marketing emphasize that an item's availability is limited in some way.
So, one part of the anti-censorship argument is that, since banning something is a severe limitation on availability, the desirability of the banned material increases. But there is another angle I had never heard of. Restricting ideas can cause them to seem more true. Studies were done where a speaker was to give a talk promoting a particular controversial position. The speech was then canceled, limiting availability of the ideas to be presented. Even without hearing the speaker's arguments, people's views shifted to be more in favor of the speaker's position.
The conclusion is that censoring material makes people want to access it more and censoring ideas can make people believe them more.
Of course, a counter to this is that, unless the speaker is incredibly unconvincing, the speaker would probably convince more than the cancellation convinced.
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science #
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unintended_consequences
