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Comment by aikah | Hacker News Reader

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_denial#Laws_against_...

I happen to live in one of these countries (which name is easy to find out, continue reading...). While I certainly do not deny the Holocaust, on the contrary, I'm against these kind of laws. Should politicians decide what the historic truth is? because it can go both ways.

So in that country of mine, some politician (well I should say the president of that country) wanted to force school teachers to make pupils learn that colonialism "had positive effects on the colonized people". So where does it stop? shouldn't we let this to researchers or specialists to decide whether or not that's true? why should a some politician,who isn't an historian, be able to decide in their place?

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FWIW, the Canadian Law against Holocaust Denial was struck down in 1992. The section read [e]very one who wilfully publishes a statement, tale or news that he knows is false and causes or is likely to cause injury or mischief to a public interest is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment.

I note that this applied only to people publishing things they knew was false, not to people who sincerely believed what they were saying.

> politician wanted to force school teachers to make pupils learn that colonialism "had positive effects on the colonized people

> So where does it stop?

Your example is the government forcing the teaching of falsehoods, which is wildly different from forbidding the distribution of hate speech.

Yeah! What have the Romans ever done for us?

I can claim anything is a falsehood, and I can claim anything is hate speech. The ability to deny ideas is the ability to deny all speech. (There are some things we can clearly distinguish as truly wrong speech - 'kill that man', 'there is a fire' when there is no fire, etc..., but ideas and history? That needs to be free game).

I can claim anything is hate speech.

Yes. An important part of learned helplessness (playing the victim) is ignoring broadly accepted definitions.

The ability to deny ideas is the ability to deny all speech.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

"In logic and critical thinking, a slippery slope is a logical device in which a person asserts that some event must inevitably follow from another without any rational argument or demonstrable mechanism for the inevitability of the event in question."

Not sure this is a slippery slope. "It might not happen" isn't really a refutation to caution - the word "ability to" doesn't have the concreteness of outcome that a slippery slope requires.

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