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People shake their heads and wonder how the Catholic church could have been so backwards, dogmatic, and ignorant as to jail Copernicus. Yet, here we are. "At t

by 99_00 5y ago

People shake their heads and wonder how the Catholic church could have been so backwards, dogmatic, and ignorant as to jail Copernicus. Yet, here we are. "At the time, it was scarier to be associated with Trump and to become a tool for racists, so people didn't want to publicly call for an investigation into lab origins." https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/559050-harvard-scientist-says-trump-hatred-motivated https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-c... Censoring commentary on scientific data because it doesn't fit with the a political narrative is anti-science. The rationale that well intentioned speech should be censored because may be used by people to spread misinformation in a way the speaker never intended is a horrible standard to uphold. When scientists openly and freely admit to self censorship for political reasons, it erodes the credibility of scientists.

api 5y ago
Who is the modern Copernicus? Alex Jones? The church that advocates drinking bleach? Nazis? Neo-Stalinists? I used to be absolutely on the “free speech at any cost” side. I guess if you pinned me to the wall I sort of still would be, but my heart is just not in the fight. First they came for the Nazis, and I didn’t do anything because I wasn’t a Nazi. Then they came for the medical quacks telling people not to get vaccinated and to treat COVID by drinking bleach… during a global pandemic… Then they came for the people who thought the Earth was flat. Then they came for the misogynists and the advocates of sexual persecution. Then they came for the cult of personality that wanted a reality TV star and the My Pillow guy to stage a fascist coup. Oh no… who are they coming for next?!? If it were just a bunch of liars and fools yelling into the wind I wouldn’t care. The really terrifying thing is how gullible people are. It seems like 1/3 of the population roughly will believe literally anything if it plays to their biases. Anything. There seems to be no bottom of the barrel. I picture a future with hordes of millions of gullible fools who can be commanded like armies by social media demagogues. This is exactly how the Rwandan genocide worked except it was talk radio commanding those machete wielding armies not Facebook. We used to poke fun at places like that for being superstitious and barbaric. After seeing things like flat Earth and Qanon I don’t think anyone can ever point fingers again.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  "Who is the modern Copernicus?" History being what it is, we may know around the year 2300. Let us hope the longevity science is onto something ...
  - api 5y ago
    I would put my money on the game theorists and complexity scientists, maybe even Stephen Wolfram. None of these have been deplatformed.
- uniqueid 5y ago
  I picture a future with hordes of millions of gullible fools who can be commanded like armies by social media demagogues. I watched a stream of a London anti-lockdown protest the other day, and that's more or less what occurred to me. https://youtu.be/hy7bmdDGKZ8 https://youtu.be/hy7bmdDGKZ8 The stream is six hours long, but it's packed with moments such as: 35m — Crowd listens to some conspiracy theorist blame all the world's ills on 'Kabalah' 1h 26m — A face-spitting street altercation breaks out between an anti-masker and an alarmed doctor who apparently got caught in the demonstration. 2h 13m — Some insane woman with a bullhorn explains that WiFi and 5g will 'destroy your ovaries' with 'Communism' (or something to that effect, anyways).
  - api 5y ago
    It’s depressing as hell. My political DNA is libertarian but I am starting to wonder if there isn’t a subset of humanity that simply can’t handle this level of unfiltered access to information. Even worse I am having a tough time putting my finger on what the shortcoming of these people is. It’s not IQ as I’ve seen and met quite a few gullible sheep of this sort who would undoubtedly score high. I don’t see a strong correlation either way with intelligence. It doesn’t even seem to be one’s metaphysics or epistemology. I know devoutly religious people as well as mystics and occultist types who are nonetheless not gullible in the way that this crowd is gullible, and I have seen atheists and people with scientific backgrounds who are. Race, nationality, even educational attainment doesn’t seem to map. All that is a bit anecdotal. Maybe there are patterns if you look at enough data. But from what I can see there is just this subset of humanity who easily falls for bullshit when it’s framed in the right way. Anyone can be conned of course, but I mean people who seem to just fill up a syringe with this kind of kool aid and bang it into a vein. A friend of mine thinks it’s a desperate desire to be special that’s rooted in some kind of narcissism. Another less generous opinion I heard on a podcast is that these people know exactly what is being dog whistled in this stuff and they are closet genocidal racists hoping for their revolution.
spfzero 5y ago
We seem to be moving to the idea that people can not think for themselves and so need to be told what to do by "experts", who cannot be questioned. Your ability to think critically about what you see and hear, is being marginalized and ignored, in favor of gaining your obedience. Holding out examples of people who make bad decisions, is used to gain acceptance for the idea that no one can make good decisions, except these few ones, who you now have to obey. This is the new religion. Unfortunately, the experts and dogma of the day tend to turn out to be wrong, at huge harm. I'd rather accept that there is some small fraction of the population that can be easily mislead by manipulative misinformation, with all of the risk that entails. That's better than the coercive thought policing we're starting to see.
- SantalBlush 5y ago
  Except no one is actually policing your thoughts or forcing you to have certain thoughts. You are here on HN, freely expressing your dissenting opinion. The problem is that decision makers and possibly the majority of the public disagrees with you and are also free to express their opinion, and you think that makes you a victim. This post is absurdly dramatic.
  - username90 5y ago
    So if the 0.1% disagrees with people and just removes posts related to stuff that hurts them then it is fine? Facebook interfering with elections is just Mark Zuckerberg using his free speech? So you want to move the world towards a corporate dystopia? And no, it doesn't really matter that we can talk here, as long as they can control the narrative of 90% of people they can just label everyone who disagrees as ignorant conspiracy theorists. There is a reason the Church could control Europe for such a long time without being an actual government, as long as you control the beliefs of the people then turning all of those people against an individual is essentially the same thing as the government labeling them a criminal, power over belief is therefore very similar to power as a government.
mdoms 5y ago
Yeah Bret Weinstein is just like Copernicus.
- 99_00 5y ago
  I strongly disagree.

by 99_00 5y ago

api 5y ago

Who is the modern Copernicus? Alex Jones? The church that advocates drinking bleach? Nazis? Neo-Stalinists? I used to be absolutely on the “free speech at any cost” side. I guess if you pinned me to the wall I sort of still would be, but my heart is just not in the fight. First they came for the Nazis, and I didn’t do anything because I wasn’t a Nazi. Then they came for the medical quacks telling people not to get vaccinated and to treat COVID by drinking bleach… during a global pandemic… Then they came for the people who thought the Earth was flat. Then they came for the misogynists and the advocates of sexual persecution. Then they came for the cult of personality that wanted a reality TV star and the My Pillow guy to stage a fascist coup. Oh no… who are they coming for next?!? If it were just a bunch of liars and fools yelling into the wind I wouldn’t care. The really terrifying thing is how gullible people are. It seems like 1/3 of the population roughly will believe literally anything if it plays to their biases. Anything. There seems to be no bottom of the barrel. I picture a future with hordes of millions of gullible fools who can be commanded like armies by social media demagogues. This is exactly how the Rwandan genocide worked except it was talk radio commanding those machete wielding armies not Facebook. We used to poke fun at places like that for being superstitious and barbaric. After seeing things like flat Earth and Qanon I don’t think anyone can ever point fingers again.

inglor_cz 5y ago
"Who is the modern Copernicus?" History being what it is, we may know around the year 2300. Let us hope the longevity science is onto something ...
- api 5y ago
  I would put my money on the game theorists and complexity scientists, maybe even Stephen Wolfram. None of these have been deplatformed.
uniqueid 5y ago
I picture a future with hordes of millions of gullible fools who can be commanded like armies by social media demagogues. I watched a stream of a London anti-lockdown protest the other day, and that's more or less what occurred to me. https://youtu.be/hy7bmdDGKZ8 https://youtu.be/hy7bmdDGKZ8 The stream is six hours long, but it's packed with moments such as: 35m — Crowd listens to some conspiracy theorist blame all the world's ills on 'Kabalah' 1h 26m — A face-spitting street altercation breaks out between an anti-masker and an alarmed doctor who apparently got caught in the demonstration. 2h 13m — Some insane woman with a bullhorn explains that WiFi and 5g will 'destroy your ovaries' with 'Communism' (or something to that effect, anyways).
- api 5y ago
  It’s depressing as hell. My political DNA is libertarian but I am starting to wonder if there isn’t a subset of humanity that simply can’t handle this level of unfiltered access to information. Even worse I am having a tough time putting my finger on what the shortcoming of these people is. It’s not IQ as I’ve seen and met quite a few gullible sheep of this sort who would undoubtedly score high. I don’t see a strong correlation either way with intelligence. It doesn’t even seem to be one’s metaphysics or epistemology. I know devoutly religious people as well as mystics and occultist types who are nonetheless not gullible in the way that this crowd is gullible, and I have seen atheists and people with scientific backgrounds who are. Race, nationality, even educational attainment doesn’t seem to map. All that is a bit anecdotal. Maybe there are patterns if you look at enough data. But from what I can see there is just this subset of humanity who easily falls for bullshit when it’s framed in the right way. Anyone can be conned of course, but I mean people who seem to just fill up a syringe with this kind of kool aid and bang it into a vein. A friend of mine thinks it’s a desperate desire to be special that’s rooted in some kind of narcissism. Another less generous opinion I heard on a podcast is that these people know exactly what is being dog whistled in this stuff and they are closet genocidal racists hoping for their revolution.

spfzero 5y ago

We seem to be moving to the idea that people can not think for themselves and so need to be told what to do by "experts", who cannot be questioned. Your ability to think critically about what you see and hear, is being marginalized and ignored, in favor of gaining your obedience. Holding out examples of people who make bad decisions, is used to gain acceptance for the idea that no one can make good decisions, except these few ones, who you now have to obey. This is the new religion. Unfortunately, the experts and dogma of the day tend to turn out to be wrong, at huge harm. I'd rather accept that there is some small fraction of the population that can be easily mislead by manipulative misinformation, with all of the risk that entails. That's better than the coercive thought policing we're starting to see.

SantalBlush 5y ago
Except no one is actually policing your thoughts or forcing you to have certain thoughts. You are here on HN, freely expressing your dissenting opinion. The problem is that decision makers and possibly the majority of the public disagrees with you and are also free to express their opinion, and you think that makes you a victim. This post is absurdly dramatic.
- username90 5y ago
  So if the 0.1% disagrees with people and just removes posts related to stuff that hurts them then it is fine? Facebook interfering with elections is just Mark Zuckerberg using his free speech? So you want to move the world towards a corporate dystopia? And no, it doesn't really matter that we can talk here, as long as they can control the narrative of 90% of people they can just label everyone who disagrees as ignorant conspiracy theorists. There is a reason the Church could control Europe for such a long time without being an actual government, as long as you control the beliefs of the people then turning all of those people against an individual is essentially the same thing as the government labeling them a criminal, power over belief is therefore very similar to power as a government.

mdoms 5y ago

Yeah Bret Weinstein is just like Copernicus.

99_00 5y ago
I strongly disagree.