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Comment by 99_00 | Hacker News Reader

People shake their heads and wonder how the Catholic church could have been so backwards, dogmatic, and ignorant as to jail Copernicus. Yet, here we are.

"At the time, it was scarier to be associated with Trump and to become a tool for racists, so people didn't want to publicly call for an investigation into lab origins."

https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-c...

Censoring commentary on scientific data because it doesn't fit with the a political narrative is anti-science.

The rationale that well intentioned speech should be censored because may be used by people to spread misinformation in a way the speaker never intended is a horrible standard to uphold.

When scientists openly and freely admit to self censorship for political reasons, it erodes the credibility of scientists.

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We seem to be moving to the idea that people can not think for themselves and so need to be told what to do by "experts", who cannot be questioned. Your ability to think critically about what you see and hear, is being marginalized and ignored, in favor of gaining your obedience.

Holding out examples of people who make bad decisions, is used to gain acceptance for the idea that no one can make good decisions, except these few ones, who you now have to obey. This is the new religion.

Unfortunately, the experts and dogma of the day tend to turn out to be wrong, at huge harm.

I'd rather accept that there is some small fraction of the population that can be easily mislead by manipulative misinformation, with all of the risk that entails. That's better than the coercive thought policing we're starting to see.

Except no one is actually policing your thoughts or forcing you to have certain thoughts. You are here on HN, freely expressing your dissenting opinion. The problem is that decision makers and possibly the majority of the public disagrees with you and are also free to express their opinion, and you think that makes you a victim. This post is absurdly dramatic.

So if the 0.1% disagrees with people and just removes posts related to stuff that hurts them then it is fine? Facebook interfering with elections is just Mark Zuckerberg using his free speech? So you want to move the world towards a corporate dystopia?

And no, it doesn't really matter that we can talk here, as long as they can control the narrative of 90% of people they can just label everyone who disagrees as ignorant conspiracy theorists. There is a reason the Church could control Europe for such a long time without being an actual government, as long as you control the beliefs of the people then turning all of those people against an individual is essentially the same thing as the government labeling them a criminal, power over belief is therefore very similar to power as a government.

Yeah Bret Weinstein is just like Copernicus.

I strongly disagree.

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