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I'm surprised that people on HN accept this new era of scientific denialism. Regressing back to the era where scientists were prosecuted and jailed for saying t

I'm surprised that people on HN accept this new era of scientific denialism. Regressing back to the era where scientists were prosecuted and jailed for saying things like 'geocentrism is wrong and the earth is not flat' is not a good idea. And make no mistake, for all the complaints about the poor climate change deniers being censored, those same people are harassing scientists with the backing of the fossil fuel industry. But it seems people are more concerned about a teenage talking about climate change than they are the companies and conspiracy theorists harassing scientists.

mikaeluman 7y ago
The issue is that you seem to not be able to abstract the fact that you may very well find yourself on the "wrong" side of the debate at one point in time. When that happens, you desperately need channels to communicate what's true and break through so we get a better world to live in. And in fact, this has been the case for many rights we today hold as self-evident such as abolishment of slavery and the equality of the sexes. This is not a debate about science, it's a meta-debate about science and a debate about philosophy and the liberal arts. Even your example with geocentrism is actually a counter-argument to yourself. At that time, the consensus view was geocentrism and so naturally anything that went against the consensus was dangerous and scorned, resulting in being put in prison and silenced. That's what you are suggesting we regress to...