Why is the Iranian government opening the world’s biggest bookstore? | Hacker News Reader

Why is the Iranian government opening the world’s biggest bookstore?

aeon.co

56 pointsbenbreen11 comments

Disclaimer: from Iran

The fun thing about printed books in Iran(well im not sure about other states but at least about Tehran) is that you can almost find any censored book you want if you try, maybe just not in the bookstores, perhaps street.

Also the censorship in Islamic TV is just stupidly ridiculous but it's not that stupid comparing it to printed books.

Another fun thing about this topic is that I wouldnt have heard about this biggest(?! come on :|) bookstore if it werent for the folk who submitted this link.

I wanted to avoid being negative, yet, I see this is a central store to promote government approved and censored books that should emphasize or at best not interfere with the governing ideology. Anything that could challenge the ruling system will not find its place in this book store.

The list of banned books in Iran includes Dante's Inferno and Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code.

This is commented upon in the linked article in detail. In my interpretation, the author shares your view.

I approve of the ban on Dan Brown :)

Geoffrey Pullum (a well-known linguist) had this hilarious review on the Language Log:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000844.h...

...to fabricate the illusion of intellectual freedom.

What is the west doing with its intellectual freedom? All I see is news of shootings, bailouts, starting wars, and propping up the likes of Kim Kardashian and Donald Trump.

That is selection bias. Of both the media and of you. First, media select news that they think people are interested in to get sales or clicks, second, of all the stories they report, you remember exactly the worst. So after the first step it already isn't an accurate representation of reality, and after the second step we get your comment as the result of that double-filter.

Is that really all you see?

That all exists, but if you're not seeing anything else, please consider changing the channel. A few suggestions:

- https://www.gutenberg.org/ - http://www.sciencemag.org/ - http://one.npr.org/ - https://www.ted.com/ - https://www.plos.org/

I mean absolutely no disrespect, but to imply that the West is somehow less intellectually productive than Iran betrays ignorance, at best. Everywhere I look, people are hard at work trying to do meaningful things. Some of it's garbage, but Westerners are definitely doing something with their intellectual freedom, though you won't hear about it on reality TV (duh).

Of course there is some of that but to paint this whole effort with a black and white brush merely as a negative and ignore any positive is no less dishonest than the censorship of porn and alcohol by the Iranian gov.

Hmm so what else is it? The article suggests it's a matter of getting Iranians to read pre-approved material, which sounds a lot like "fabricating the illusion of intellectual freedom".

In size, not in assortment?)

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