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Comment by alexandros | Hacker News Reader

If someone told me that a certain truth is not useful, I would be inclined to disbelieve them. The basis of your argument seems to be "I can't think of any uses" but that can hardly be considered "the problem with articles like this". I can think of quite a few applications, but in many cases I have experienced, whenever relevant truths have been ignored, delusions have thrived.

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    > If someone told me that a certain
    > truth is not useful, I would be
    > inclined to disbelieve them

Sure. But I didn't say that. There are some situations in which it's useful to know the Thai alphabet has 44 consonants, but not only is that generally not very useful knowledge for the vast majority of people, it might also lead you to conclude learning to read Thai will be significantly harder than reading English, which is probably not true.

A truth is useful. A given person's knowledge of that truth, not always, especially given that not all truths are simple enough to be understood by the layperson -- how else did we get to a place where evolution is "humans are descended from monkeys"?

OP didn't say "not useful" - it was couched more moderately, which I imagine still allows for the possibility of unforeseen greater uses.

But the specific point made seems sound to me. The hypothetical 5 point difference would not be a sufficient explanatory factor for most scenarios.

OP literally typed the words "wouldn't be very useful". He then goes on to imply that average people would be confused by facts and should therefore not seek/be given them. This is a bad idea.

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