> It allows them to be refuted - which hopefully stems at least some of the indoctrination that would otherwise occur only in private. This does not appear to

> It allows them to be refuted - which hopefully stems at least some of the indoctrination that would otherwise occur only in private. This does not appear to be the case. Consider the math, if nothing else: Bad Idea Public convinces .1% of those who hear it and those people are irrationally convinced. Bad Idea Private convinces 10% of those who hear it and those people are likewise irrationally convinced. I'm assuming the private bad idea is 100 times as effective, which may or may not be accurate. Even so, as long as your private circles are smaller than ten million people or so, we're better off than we would be if your bad idea was hitting a billion people on the Internet. I'm still not arguing about the difficulty of telling which ideas are good and which are bad.