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Comment by tombert | Hacker News Reader

I don't want to get too political here, but the propagation of Alex-Jones-esque conspiracy can be very influential to a larger-than-it-should-be percentage of the population, who will vote in demagogues who perpetuate these narratives.

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If you have such little faith in your fellow citizens' decision making capabilities, isn't your argument really just a criticism of democracy?

You only trust them to vote, if they're going to vote according to a narrow band of acceptable thought. At that point, you're really just tyrannical, the democracy is an illusion.

Democracy requires a functional education system. It's not about "a narrow band of acceptable thought". The truth matters.

I didn't realize the truth was so simple, and a matter of education.

Is an unborn fetus a person or a cluster of cells?

Is a transgender woman a woman or a man approximating phenotypical gender characteristics of a woman?

Is sex under 18 capable of consent? Under 16? Under 14? In Spain it was 13 until only a few years ago, where is "the truth?"

Prostitution, gambling, drugs? Truth?

Almost all of the most contentious issues are not unresolved because of a lack of education, they're unresolved because of inherent moral conflicts worthy of negotiation. (Age of consent isn't really contentious, I just wanted to show something that most people consider to be obvious or a given not being necessarily resolvable). If we were to simply convince more people that a woman's right to bodily autonomy supercedes the unborn's right to live, or vice versa, we would have only really succeeded in indoctrination. Neither position is "truthful," it's always just an arbitrary moral elevation of one violation of consent over another.

I think the only issue even close to approximating the simplicity you've described would be climate change, but even then there is a wide chasm between the role people believe that the state should play.

That's their choice then. We have to have believe that a majority of our fellow citizens are by and large capable of overcoming such views otherwise democracy itself is a failed concept.

Censoring their content to bias their political views in a way you like is... extremist at best.

Ok, I'm a little tired of this constantly coming up; it's not a political position to rebut something that is objectively incorrect. If Party A bases its platform on the idea that "All Circles Are Secretly Squares", this is objectively false, and me saying so isn't me "biasing their political views in a way I like", it's a simple matter of fact.

The earth is not flat. This is relatively easy to prove, but people can be influenced by the right rhetoric, and they vote.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't be allowed to believe in dumb things from a legal perspective, I just don't think they're entitled to a platform.

Would you apply this logic to ISIS recruitment videos? "It's their choice! YouTube shouldn't pull their videos because if they do democracy has failed as a concept!"

> I'm a little tired of this constantly coming up

Perhaps then you shouldn't have made it into a political position by suggesting that they'd all vote for a specific candidate.

> This is relatively easy to prove, but people can be influenced by the right rhetoric, and they vote.

It's a bit of a trusting trust exercise - you can prove it in a way that satisfies you, but that doesn't necessarily satisfy everyone.

> Would you apply this logic to ISIS recruitment videos?

Much more debatable because ISIS videos encourage outright violence.

I didn't say they'd all vote for a specific candidate, but based on what you're telling me, this is the logical conclusion:

1) People don't vote based on their beliefs, 2) Beliefs can't be wrong, 3) A vote based on a wrong belief can't lead to an undesirable candidate.

That's a complete and utter misrepresentation of what I said and I have no interest in engaging it.

I didn't say that's what you said, I said that's the logical conclusion.

If we expose people to the most sophisticated system of disinformation ever created in the history of mankind, with no restrictions or supervision of any kind, and then watch democracy collapse, it's not enough to to say "Welp! Democracy is a failed concept".

This is not about censorship. This is about each of use trying to help educate, uplift and enlighten those around us. In other words, it's up to us to help our fellow citizens. If you want to punt on that project, then so be it. But not all of us have given up.

> the most sophisticated system of disinformation ever created in the history of mankind

The exact same system is used for spreading that information too. Adding your personal bias into the system is not a "fix" for disinformation.

No, it is absolutely necessary to control the spread of racial slander and similar forms of hate, because those have got people killed. From the Holocaust to Rwanda to Myanmar, once the lies about the evil of X racial group reach a critical level the violence starts and can be inflamed into a self-sustaining cycle of violence.

This is off topic as we're talking about flat earth here, but I'll engage it anyways: Are you suggesting that a lack of access to such information is the only thing stopping such genocides from occurring? You think this is a realistic level of faith in humanity to hold?

Why is it unreasonable to think that people act on the information they receive? That is after all how normal politics works. If people talk about how bad the potholes are in the roads, someone will demand that something is done about the potholes. If people talk about how Jews eat the blood of children, someone will demand that something is done about the Jews.

It's not sensible to say "lack of information about X is the only thing stopping Y from happening" because that can be true of an infinite number of falsehoods. Lack of information about the riches of Atlantis is a major factor in people not setting off into the sea. And so on.

Isn't it also reasonable to think that people consider the information they take in? Testability is key to most strong beliefs and I like to think that the majority of the population is not so firmly rooted that they refuse to update their views based on evidence to the contrary.

Sure, a few crazy people may choose to believe that Jews eat the blood of children, but I hope that in a free society where information to the contrary is readily available it will not impact a significant enough portion of the population to cause the sorts of genocides you're suggesting.

This is measurably false. Climate change denial is a pretty obvious example that hurts everyone. The facts are available, relatively easy to find, but people still tow their party lines about it being a "hoax from China", or some such nonsense.

Is it measurably false? I seem to remember seeing statistics that showed those convinced it very much is happening were over 50% and rising of even the US population while those who were convinced it was NOT were under 7% and dropping. I would suggest that this is in fact an example to the contrary.

Do you have any evidence to suggest that these beliefs are so widespread as to influence a majority of the population and require intervention for a properly functioning democracy as the parent was suggesting?

Well, first off, you don't need a "majority" for it to cause damage. The Nazis didn't have more than 30% of the vote, but they caused damage. Currently in the US, we have a president who has said, multiple times, that climate change was a hoax made up by China to make us weaker in manufacturing [1], and has dismantled the EPA to make sure they explicitly don't do anything about climate change [2].

Second, I'm going to need some sources for your stats. It looks like in the Gallup polls, we still have roughly 69% of Republicans who claim that climate change is greatly exaggerated [3], with only 35% of Republicans who think humans are the cause of it, and only 18% or Republicans that think it will cause any problems in their lifetime.

[1] https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jun...

[2] https://mashable.com/2017/02/03/trump-epa-climate-website-ch...

[3] https://news.gallup.com/poll/231530/global-warming-concern-s...

While there may be truth there, those numbers don't take into account the strength of those beliefs, also note that if I'm not mistaken, it's not counting independents who may vote republican, so the pool is actually much smaller in terms of overall Americans. I think this was the study I'd seen if you're interested:

https://e360.yale.edu/digest/americans-who-accept-climate-ch...

> Isn't it also reasonable to think that people consider the information they take in?

We started this conversation talking about people who believe the earth is flat.

Yes and the number of people who believe in something like that is actually rather small. That's kind of my point. These things get treated as way more serious than they are given actual belief rates.

It's not censoring as much as school is not censoring. Some things are just factually, objectively wrong and unsupported by evidence.

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