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Censoring is a losing battle. Because it attacks a symptom. The cure for ignorance is not trying to hide missinformation (that just empowers the spreaders, giv

Censoring is a losing battle. Because it attacks a symptom. The cure for ignorance is not trying to hide missinformation (that just empowers the spreaders, gives it credence (they wouldn't bother suppressing it if it weren't true), or drives it into dark places you can no longer detect how much of a problem it is). The cure is to educate people and teach them critical thinking (both of which are expensive and honestly most governments/companies/people in power don't really want a free thinking populace (they want a populace that believes their propaganda)) and to spread the truth (not that effective on populace who lacks high level of education and critical thinking skills)

logicslave 6y ago
Most people dont have the capacity for critical thought on every area of ambiguity/complexity. Its too wide a thought surface, and we have too few hours in a day. So we have things like dictionaries in our minds, filled with information via lots of sources from childhood, tv, peers, etc. Human brains arent logical, they are mostly look up systems.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mistermann 6y ago
  > Most people dont have the capacity for critical thought on every area of ambiguity/complexity. a) Is critical thinking on "every area of ambiguity/complexity" a true requirement, with respect to the article? b) How do you think you know what people are or not capable of, especially since we've made practically no effort whatsoever to teach these skills?
- godelski 6y ago
  > Most people don't have the capacity for critical thought on every area of ambiguity/complexity. I'd change that to "most people haven't been taught to think critically". It's clear that the average person has the mental capacity, genetic variations in intelligence aren't that large.
fatbird 6y ago
What's to be done, then, before we reach sufficient education and critical thinking skills? I mean, that's kind of a boil-the-ocean solution, as you observe. When Trump suggested that ingesting bleach could cure COVID-19, 30 people in NY state were hospitalized the next day for drinking bleach. Saying "we should all be sufficiently educated and critical thinkers that misinformation is harmless" is effectively no solution at all. What do we do NOW?
- a1369209993 6y ago
  > When Trump suggested that ingesting bleach could cure COVID-19, 30 people in NY state were hospitalized the next day for drinking bleach. You have a point in general, but that specific example sounds like natural selection doing a good job.
- mistermann 6y ago
  I suggest we start publicizing the problem and teaching these skills (critical thinking, epistemically sound thinking and speaking, etc), and using them here. > I mean, that's kind of a boil-the-ocean solution It may seem like that, but is it really? Is there some uncertainty involved in the problem space? > When Trump suggested that ingesting bleach could cure COVID-19, 30 people in NY state were hospitalized the next day for drinking bleach. If we were to go through the effort of decomposing and explicitly unpacking this sentence, do you think there may be a few epistemic flaws in it, even without taking into account the complexities involved in how others perceive and conceptualize the statement? > Saying "we should all be sufficiently educated and critical thinkers that misinformation is harmless" is effectively no solution at all. What do we do NOW? How about we see if the more capable than average minds here at HN are capable of it? This could provide some very valuable insight into how an eventual broader initiative targeting the general public should be designed. I'm curious to hear objections to this idea...why would doing this right here on HN, perhaps only on an occasional trial basis for designated threads, be a bad idea? And to be clear, I'm not asking whether this is "our responsibility" (it's not) or whether it would "cause us some problems or discomfort" (it surely would), I'm asking for honest, non-evasive answers for why shouldn't we do it? If everyone leaves a problem for someone else to solve, how do we expect it to be solved?
makomk 6y ago
I think part of the problem is that the official media-approved narrative on coronavirus-fighting tactics isn't exactly the truth. Like, if you believe the press, the lockdowns and social distancing are a well-established, century-old scientific approach to tackling pandemics and stepping away from them will massively increase the death toll and economic damage. The media position is that even allowing them to be questioned is dangerous and will kill people. In reality, they seem to be a new, previously untested, scientifically controversial approach with little precedent since about the Middle Ages: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/politics/social-distancing-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/politics/social-distan... This is why, even though anti-lockdown ideas are the realm of conspiracy theorists right now, you can't cure them with information even if their proponents did actually base their worldview on it. I can't see this ending well. There are just too many signs that the media narrative about what works, why, what we need to do, the evidence, and what the costs and consequences are is diverging from reality, and with challenging them so far beyond the pale that leaves conspiracy theorists tying their claims into opposition to vaccines and wild theories about Bill Gates as the main folks questioning it. It's also getting really ugly and partisan, and not just in the US or amongst Trump supporters.

logicslave 6y ago

Most people dont have the capacity for critical thought on every area of ambiguity/complexity. Its too wide a thought surface, and we have too few hours in a day. So we have things like dictionaries in our minds, filled with information via lots of sources from childhood, tv, peers, etc. Human brains arent logical, they are mostly look up systems.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mistermann 6y ago
> Most people dont have the capacity for critical thought on every area of ambiguity/complexity. a) Is critical thinking on "every area of ambiguity/complexity" a true requirement, with respect to the article? b) How do you think you know what people are or not capable of, especially since we've made practically no effort whatsoever to teach these skills?
godelski 6y ago
> Most people don't have the capacity for critical thought on every area of ambiguity/complexity. I'd change that to "most people haven't been taught to think critically". It's clear that the average person has the mental capacity, genetic variations in intelligence aren't that large.

fatbird 6y ago

What's to be done, then, before we reach sufficient education and critical thinking skills? I mean, that's kind of a boil-the-ocean solution, as you observe. When Trump suggested that ingesting bleach could cure COVID-19, 30 people in NY state were hospitalized the next day for drinking bleach. Saying "we should all be sufficiently educated and critical thinkers that misinformation is harmless" is effectively no solution at all. What do we do NOW?

a1369209993 6y ago
> When Trump suggested that ingesting bleach could cure COVID-19, 30 people in NY state were hospitalized the next day for drinking bleach. You have a point in general, but that specific example sounds like natural selection doing a good job.
mistermann 6y ago
I suggest we start publicizing the problem and teaching these skills (critical thinking, epistemically sound thinking and speaking, etc), and using them here. > I mean, that's kind of a boil-the-ocean solution It may seem like that, but is it really? Is there some uncertainty involved in the problem space? > When Trump suggested that ingesting bleach could cure COVID-19, 30 people in NY state were hospitalized the next day for drinking bleach. If we were to go through the effort of decomposing and explicitly unpacking this sentence, do you think there may be a few epistemic flaws in it, even without taking into account the complexities involved in how others perceive and conceptualize the statement? > Saying "we should all be sufficiently educated and critical thinkers that misinformation is harmless" is effectively no solution at all. What do we do NOW? How about we see if the more capable than average minds here at HN are capable of it? This could provide some very valuable insight into how an eventual broader initiative targeting the general public should be designed. I'm curious to hear objections to this idea...why would doing this right here on HN, perhaps only on an occasional trial basis for designated threads, be a bad idea? And to be clear, I'm not asking whether this is "our responsibility" (it's not) or whether it would "cause us some problems or discomfort" (it surely would), I'm asking for honest, non-evasive answers for why shouldn't we do it? If everyone leaves a problem for someone else to solve, how do we expect it to be solved?

makomk 6y ago

I think part of the problem is that the official media-approved narrative on coronavirus-fighting tactics isn't exactly the truth. Like, if you believe the press, the lockdowns and social distancing are a well-established, century-old scientific approach to tackling pandemics and stepping away from them will massively increase the death toll and economic damage. The media position is that even allowing them to be questioned is dangerous and will kill people. In reality, they seem to be a new, previously untested, scientifically controversial approach with little precedent since about the Middle Ages: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/politics/social-distancing-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/politics/social-distan... This is why, even though anti-lockdown ideas are the realm of conspiracy theorists right now, you can't cure them with information even if their proponents did actually base their worldview on it. I can't see this ending well. There are just too many signs that the media narrative about what works, why, what we need to do, the evidence, and what the costs and consequences are is diverging from reality, and with challenging them so far beyond the pale that leaves conspiracy theorists tying their claims into opposition to vaccines and wild theories about Bill Gates as the main folks questioning it. It's also getting really ugly and partisan, and not just in the US or amongst Trump supporters.