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Comment by sofal | Hacker News Reader

I think you have some interesting points. I'm going to play Devil's advocate:

An assumption that you make there is that all forms of social control used for discouraging debates/speculation on certain topics are inherently bad or stem from dishonesty. It could be that knowing in advance the emotional, legal, political, or otherwise time-wasting repercussions that a certain type of debate causes justifies avoiding the discussion altogether. None of us go after truth in a completely unbiased manner with no agendas whatsoever, though we may fool ourselves in thinking so.

There doesn't seem to be any disagreement about the social rule of not discussing politics or religion in this forum. We don't think of this as a moral rule, but then what are morals?

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> It could be that knowing in advance the emotional, legal, political, or otherwise time-wasting repercussions that a certain type of debate causes justifies avoiding the discussion altogether

So person A, and B and C are interested in having a debate.

Person X "knows" that persons A,B,and C (and some bystanders) would be better off if they don't even speculate or speak on the topic.

...so person X responds "People need to stop writing shit like this" ?

My objections:

* Why should I accept person X's assertion that he knows - better than I do - what will make me happy, or what will waste my time ?

* If person X truly thinks that, he should make a compelling case, put it on up a website, and respond not with "People need to stop writing shit like this", but with "I think that this debate is fruitless and time-wasting - check out this blog post for why".

* Even if person X is right, for a large percent of people, trying to shut down speech "for someone's own good" is un-American, and illiberal. If it's done under the color of law it's called "prior restraint".

* Even if person X is right given the conditions on the ground, conditions change, and over time his flawless heuristic for when to force people to "to stop writing shit like this" will become more and more disconnected from reality. What's needed is a constant feedback loop that keeps in touch with reality. ...and "ongoing debate" is the name of the ongoing feedback loop.

Agreed. As Sophocles famously wrote: "Knowledge must come through action; you can have no test which is not fanciful, save by trial."

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