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Comment by throwaway0a5e | Hacker News Reader

>Unless you're pre-informed on the issues, whoever presents it to you can just pick the side that gets you to the answer they want.

You don't need to be "pre-informed".

You just need to be skeptical. Some knowledge of history is a good start.

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Hence the recent crackdown on “misinformation”. Skepticism and dissent can’t be prevented, but its spread can be suppressed. Many otherwise good people have fallen hook line and sinker for the “misinformation pandemic” propaganda campaign.

There's a huge difference between skepticism (expressing some contrary opinion) and misinformation (putting forward lies as facts), although I have to admit the spreaders of misinformation have gotten very good at innocently claiming they're "just asking questions."

Skepticism is not "expressing some contrary opinion". It is a rationalist discipline, very much rooted in logic. A true skeptic will do one of two things:

- put forward sound arguments why a specific viewpoint or presented fact could be wrong

- reserve judgement altogether

Expressing a contrary opinion is not in the skeptic's playbook, because it would be self-defeating: they would be making the same categorical error as they're arguing against.

That isn't a viable critique. You have to prepare the right answers and bad faith questions are easy to counter. Or maybe not, but you still have to be able to do that. I have seen much more instances where no answers could be provided when people asked legitimate questions that weren't in bad faith at all.

Yes, they are different, but it’s extremely easy to conflate them if the skepticism is contrary to the interests of the powerful and you hold the power to censor.

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