[nikodunk]

Read further down though! He gets to the self-cleaning of the marketplace through "Gauntlets" – that unpopular opinions will be attacked, but if there's truth to them and they stand, they'll eventually be accepted and become mainstream (ex: "smoking causes cancer" from 1940 -> 1960)

The cigarette story is a story of the MPI doing its job. It’s a story of a needle of truth rising up from a haystack on the fringes of the big brain’s consciousness and piercing its way through a century-long barrage of gauntlet attacks until it had conquered the Thought Pile mountain and become the mainstream, status quo viewpoint.