Dwarkesh Patel

You're not going to be able to keep up with that speed.

And one of the funny problems that the Inquisition always had when trying to persecute printers is printers worked in the information distribution industry.

They were the people who paid the news writers whose job it is to move as fast as humanly possible between cities.

which meant that news always reached them first.

So if a printer was ever convicted by the Inquisition, they would find out before the Inquisition could possibly get there to arrest them.

And so the Inquisition never succeeded at arresting printers.

They've always skipped town by the time the Inquisition gets there, because if you employ the news writers, you find out first what's going on.

The Inquisition can't keep up.

And when we look at censorship...

There's an intersection of four factors as to whether censorship is possible.

One of them is law.

Is it legal for this censorship to happen?

But another one is the technology.

Is it actually possible to censor this thing?

And you cannot censor whatever moves the information fastest because it will move the information faster than you can move.

And even if that one printer had to skip town, he will set up shop somewhere else.

A new person will take over his shop.

The information will still move.

So pamphlets become unpoliceable.

You can try to police them.