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Comment by tifadg1 | Hacker News Reader

> "Somehow, such critics missed the successful conclusion of the Cold War, the abundance of food to the point that we subsidize farmers, the creation of medicines..."

I'm not sure what the answer is, but it's such a fundamental problem that it's solution will have to step on the rights of some people, as you can't have respect to authority on one side and social bubbles reinforcing the opposite view on another. And they can't be equally worthy of respect. Case in point - how the hell did antivaxers become a significant portion of the population, in a pandemic, of all times?

.. But once you start censoring, it inevitably will end with overreach, because power is corrupting.

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I don't think the answer is to step on the rights of people, I think it's that culturally we have to expend a lot more effort on challenging ignorance and elevating the voices of reason.

I also think we have to stop promoting ignorance and bad faith actors at the same level of people coming to the table with real knowledge and a good faith desire to engage. The current media landscape features a lot of promotion of people promoting misinformation to argue with actual experts because it's entertaining. But the effect is corrosive. On the personal level more people have to push back on the same phenomenon.

how the hell did antivaxers become a significant portion of the population

Some people see Jenny McCarthy as a great model and assume she's knows more about health than she does. People put misplaced respect into a guy like Novak Djokovic. It's OK to respect his stance on backhands, but why does anyone care about his stance that he's against vaccines?

This. Reverence for celebrity also engenders a weird trust in celebrity viewpoints even when they are wildly misguided and completely divorced from a particular celebrity's training/knowledge/experience.

Not to say a tennis player and former MTV host started the anti-vax movement, but celebrities can fan the flames of ignorance pretty easily because of how much people pay attention to and trust them.

Of course some peoples "rights" will have to be stepped on. In order to have and maintain a civilization that civilization requires people who are competent at the skills needed in that civilization. These people are the most necessary. The obvious targets for suppression should be the people who provide the least value to society. No other method is practical. It is important to remember that "rights" are imaginary despite grandiose titles such as Universal Human Rights. The universe provides no such framework. Pragmatism has to come first. Providing for the least is a luxury. As far as corruption goes, there is no passive method to prevent overreach. it needs to be actively rooted out. Think of this as error correction. I also think that only small groups of humans could achieve such a system. Expecting this at the country or planetary level at this time in history is delusional.

The problem here, as always, is to define value.

Do poor people provide the least value, because they don't work or only do menial jobs?

Do rich people provide the least value, because they keep most money to themselves or invest in their own interest?

Value here is defined as the NECESSARY tasks required to maintain the civilization whether they be menial or intellectual. Needs not wants. Tasks that provide food, shelter and the basic life sustaining requirements so that other ventures can be pursued. No civilization can exist without these. People that don't or cannot work are not as valuable. This is harsh but is in tune with reality. People that choose to invest in their own interest form a split. Some when investing in their own interests create value for their civilization. Others do not and in fact drain value from civilization. They do this because they can. Any civilization will have a given amount of drainers and can indeed sustain a certain amount of drainers unless they drain enough resources to collapse the civilization. The other consideration is that while what I have said uses logic, many humans rely of emotional reasoning over logic. In order to make these people provide value a certain amount of emotional manipulation is also necessary,

I read the GP as meaning that people spreading lies provide less value than people spreading truth.

Of course, deciding what is a lie isn't trivial, so system that enforces that will be complex and unstable. But that does not automatically means it's a bad system.

> The obvious targets for suppression should be the people who provide the least value to society.

Ah, eugenics, and utilitarianism. Smells like .. the 1930's and 40's.

Yeah, I admit it does use some of those elements. However this is reality. Trying to provide to those less fortunate is a luxury. The idea of creating an equitable society is only possible if the members of that society are ever-learning and hardworking. In our reality people like this are drained from two sides 1) the less fortunate and 2) the greedy. This is pragmatism. The main difference between my views and what you are referencing is that I'm not picking the membership arbitrarily. Competent people HAVE to come first BECAUSE they are needed. You can't drain what you need and give to less fortunate. You can only build your civilization until you can afford to help out others. We are not in that situation currently. Harsh reality cannot be ignored forever.

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