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Comment by hintymad | Hacker News Reader

I don't know why it's right to ban conspiracies. Conspiracies are to be debunked, not banned. Otherwise, people who believe such conspiracies simply go underground and we end up cultivating anger, distrust, and cynicism. Is that covid-19 would turn into a global pandemic back in Feb a conspiracy? Is criticizing USSR in the 30s a conspiracy? Is that earth is not the center of our universe a conspiracy 700 years ago? Is that FBI's infiltration and surveillance on political groups a conspiracy? Are all the questioning on the reasons for the US to invade Iraq conspiracy theories? Where are the WMDs now?

In general, are we sure that no conspiracy ever turned out to be true? How many heresies turned out to be correct and changed the course of our history? And how many people were persecuted in the name of spreading conspiracy? Why are we so afraid of conspiracies?

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Most of the modern, big conspiracies have been thoroughly debunked, but that doesn't stop their spread. Any flat-earther has heard all of the flat-earth debunking. Sadly, I know a handful of flat-earthers, and I tried arguing for a while, but it does no good. Instead it appears that the theorists double-down on the conspiracy.

I think people believe in conspiracies, not because they're mislead on a certain topic, but because they want to believe. So debunking conspiracies is attacking their faith, which is what causes zealotry.

It's more like spreading a religion, which, yeah, you can't really ban it. You just have to let people do their thing.

tl;dr I agree that one shouldn't censor it, but only because it does no good.

> Most of the modern, big conspiracies have been thoroughly debunked

I'd argue this is purely selection bias. I think the biggest modern conspiracies are not yet called conspiracies by the public zeitgeist.

Ex. Remember Jeff Epstein? I'm sure there are dozens of powerful people who hope you don't.

I misspoke. I should have said that the modern, big Conspiracy Theories have been debunked.

Epstein was a Conspiracy. No theory required :)

Right. It's frustrating that the term conspiracy theory has become a blunt weapon that can be used to quickly dismiss allegations of wrong doing and paint the accuser as a fringe lunatic. Sometimes people do evil things or conspire with others to do evil things (see Tuskegee experiments, Epstein, etc.). Just because someone doesn't currently have irrefutable proof that something happened doesn't mean that they shouldn't be able to talk about it.

> I don't know why it's right to ban conspiracies. Conspiracies are to be debunked, not banned.

No one is threatening to kill an elected official over grassy knolls.

Times change.

That’s hate speech, and it’s illegal to threaten a person with death. It’s different from banning conspiracy theory

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