3 ms·

Agreed. Fringe beliefs die when they are challenged, not when censored. Driving them underground makes them stronger if anything. Policing fringe beliefs is da

Agreed. Fringe beliefs die when they are challenged, not when censored. Driving them underground makes them stronger if anything. Policing fringe beliefs is dangerous. A free society must tolerate & even welcome such beliefs into the public sphere, not because they are good, but because the freedom to be wrong is the foundation of our ability to be right.

mapontosevenths 1y ago
The encyclopedia is not the place for debate.
- potato3732842 1y ago
  Because a false appearance of consensus is better? Why even have Wikipedia then? Why not just ask Reddit at that point?
  - bastawhiz 1y ago
    There's no such thing as consensus when you're talking about the scope of the encyclopedia. People will say that birds don't exist, that the sun is not a star because it's a space ship circling the globe with a big flashlight, and that Area 51 is a place where the government is hiding the mole people that we've enslaved to dig tunnels for the rich to evacuate into when WW3 happens. There will never be 100% consensus on anything—even on the most verifiable and proven universal truths—and so by saying there's "false consensus" is meaningless. If the bar is 100% agreement by everyone who cares to speak up, the encyclopedia can't say that anything is true. And if that's the case, what's the point of an encyclopedia?
    - mapontosevenths 1y ago
      At the end of the day the encyclopedia was always written through the consensus of experts. Early encyclopedias solved this problem by hiring experts. Wikipedia doesn't hire them, it just cites them. It has only been recently that our cynical postmodern internet hordes have decided experts are somehow only equally worthy of trust as the high-school dropout uncles of facebook and the brain-worm infested politicians on the news.
      - nemo44x 1y ago
        Being an expert, while nice and valuable, isn’t a claim to be a final arbiter. Authority is earned provisionally by surviving criticism. Citing experts is good practice, but invoking them to silence dissent is anti-scientific.
        mapontosevenths 1y ago
        > Citing experts is good practice, but invoking them to silence dissent is anti-scientific. That's not really what we're discussing here. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. The encyclopedia should report things that are widely regarded to be factual as facts. They should not give equal time to every looney tune with a pet theory. Noteworthy dissent about complex subjects doesn't come from the unqualified, it comes from other qualified people with differing ideas.
danaris 1y ago
But when a fringe belief has already been categorically, 100%, without the slightest doubt, been proven to be false, but a bunch of people keep claiming it's true anyway, the best thing to do is just to stop giving them a platform. They are not advancing science. They are not "challenging our orthodoxy". They are not doing anything positive for the world. We may never be able to convince them that they're wrong, but that doesn't mean we need to make it sound like anyone else thinks they might, with even a tiny probability, be right.
- nemo44x 1y ago
  I guess it depends on the topic. Flat Earthers - yeah I’d agree. Until someone comes up with compelling evidence. But those people have no real power - no ability to set policy based on their belief. Just cranks and harmless. But it’s not fair to cherry pick such an obvious straw man. There’s a million current examples that are much better. Covid origins which were summarily and aggressively rejected as unorthodox for example. A ton of climate science, etc. No one is an authority on truth. Requires consensus over painfully long times.
_DeadFred_ 1y ago
These discussions are used to suck the oxygen out of the room. There is no purposed served to have the same discussion over and over and over. No progress is made repeating the same discussion. But the people willing to argue for reality are slowly warn down, with the goal being to get them to remove themselves from the discourse. The goal is not honest discussion (of a discussion already had thousands of times). The goal is a state of apathy with regards to the truth, not a seeking of truth.
- nemo44x 1y ago
  Sometimes they’re right. Lab leak people dismissed by experts for example. I guess there’s a spectrum of fringe ideas. Some are ridiculous, true. Trolls. But they have no power of policy - flat earthers for example are harmless. The more dangerous threat are people with consensus based on political power who appeal to authority, like bad science by “experts”, to silence criticism or challenges.

mapontosevenths 1y ago

The encyclopedia is not the place for debate.

potato3732842 1y ago
Because a false appearance of consensus is better? Why even have Wikipedia then? Why not just ask Reddit at that point?
- bastawhiz 1y ago
  There's no such thing as consensus when you're talking about the scope of the encyclopedia. People will say that birds don't exist, that the sun is not a star because it's a space ship circling the globe with a big flashlight, and that Area 51 is a place where the government is hiding the mole people that we've enslaved to dig tunnels for the rich to evacuate into when WW3 happens. There will never be 100% consensus on anything—even on the most verifiable and proven universal truths—and so by saying there's "false consensus" is meaningless. If the bar is 100% agreement by everyone who cares to speak up, the encyclopedia can't say that anything is true. And if that's the case, what's the point of an encyclopedia?
  - mapontosevenths 1y ago
    At the end of the day the encyclopedia was always written through the consensus of experts. Early encyclopedias solved this problem by hiring experts. Wikipedia doesn't hire them, it just cites them. It has only been recently that our cynical postmodern internet hordes have decided experts are somehow only equally worthy of trust as the high-school dropout uncles of facebook and the brain-worm infested politicians on the news.
    - nemo44x 1y ago
      Being an expert, while nice and valuable, isn’t a claim to be a final arbiter. Authority is earned provisionally by surviving criticism. Citing experts is good practice, but invoking them to silence dissent is anti-scientific.
      - mapontosevenths 1y ago
        > Citing experts is good practice, but invoking them to silence dissent is anti-scientific. That's not really what we're discussing here. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. The encyclopedia should report things that are widely regarded to be factual as facts. They should not give equal time to every looney tune with a pet theory. Noteworthy dissent about complex subjects doesn't come from the unqualified, it comes from other qualified people with differing ideas.

danaris 1y ago

But when a fringe belief has already been categorically, 100%, without the slightest doubt, been proven to be false, but a bunch of people keep claiming it's true anyway, the best thing to do is just to stop giving them a platform. They are not advancing science. They are not "challenging our orthodoxy". They are not doing anything positive for the world. We may never be able to convince them that they're wrong, but that doesn't mean we need to make it sound like anyone else thinks they might, with even a tiny probability, be right.

nemo44x 1y ago
I guess it depends on the topic. Flat Earthers - yeah I’d agree. Until someone comes up with compelling evidence. But those people have no real power - no ability to set policy based on their belief. Just cranks and harmless. But it’s not fair to cherry pick such an obvious straw man. There’s a million current examples that are much better. Covid origins which were summarily and aggressively rejected as unorthodox for example. A ton of climate science, etc. No one is an authority on truth. Requires consensus over painfully long times.

_DeadFred_ 1y ago

These discussions are used to suck the oxygen out of the room. There is no purposed served to have the same discussion over and over and over. No progress is made repeating the same discussion. But the people willing to argue for reality are slowly warn down, with the goal being to get them to remove themselves from the discourse. The goal is not honest discussion (of a discussion already had thousands of times). The goal is a state of apathy with regards to the truth, not a seeking of truth.

nemo44x 1y ago
Sometimes they’re right. Lab leak people dismissed by experts for example. I guess there’s a spectrum of fringe ideas. Some are ridiculous, true. Trolls. But they have no power of policy - flat earthers for example are harmless. The more dangerous threat are people with consensus based on political power who appeal to authority, like bad science by “experts”, to silence criticism or challenges.