Hacker News Reader

Well, you see, for my side it’s Different…

More seriously, are we going to have a put disclaimers on an all encyclopedic articles that “standards of conduct were much different then”? How much pretext then becomes necessary?

View on HN

Considering that encyclopedias are meant to be pedagogical in nature since they were invented during the Illustration, yes, that would be helpful; if a teenager would come off with the wrong impression from reading an encyclopedia, it doesn't serve the function of one.

Material for people who are knowledgeable in the area are specialized books that can assume more background knowledge or journal articles meant for people keeping up with the state of the art.

There should be a separation between historicism and ethics and factual data. If you want to blame the school curriculum because they dont teach ethics or morals, im fine with that but moralizing what should be a factual recount of some events is another thing. This is like me opening a chemistry book and reading, the formulation and process of synthesizing cyanide, despite its multiple uses in crime and assasinations by the soviet union, is .....

Reply on news.ycombinator.com