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By your reasoning, it should be illegal to deny that the moon landing ever happened, or to deny that Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin of JFK, or even to deny

By your reasoning, it should be illegal to deny that the moon landing ever happened, or to deny that Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin of JFK, or even to deny that human beings are the product of biological evolution. The first two don't need to be illegal, because they don't do much damage. There is little emotional attachment, making the controversy less influential or dangerous. The last one is trickier: the education of children is certainly impaired by withholding facts from them. Everyone is entitled to every conviction, but no one is entitled to spreading lies about contrary convictions, not even to their own children. If we could reasonably make that illegal, I'd go for it, but I don't think we could write up a law in such a way that it would work. Those are the trade-offs that have to be considered.

tptacek 18y ago
So you'd allow conspiracy theorists, but outlaw Catholicism.
- Confusion 18y ago
  Catholics don't lie, do they? >:)
  - tptacek 18y ago
    Catholics do many of the same things that human beings do. They're quite similar species.
philwelch 18y ago
"The first two don't need to be illegal, because they don't do much damage. There is little emotional attachment, making the controversy less influential or dangerous." Well that's rather ad hoc of you. If holocaust denial causes "harm" by convincing people that the Jews are liars, wouldn't Oswald denial cause harm by convincing people the American government covered up a coup it instituted against its own president, shattering all social stability? Wouldn't moon-landing denial do the same thing? I seem to remember Buzz Aldrin getting real angry and punching a moon-landing denier in the face for calling him a liar. Do you think Buzz had a legal case for defamation there? Wouldn't moon-landing-denial hurt sales of Buzz Aldrin's books? Why can't you just accept the fact that we have to share the world with a bunch of cranks?
- Confusion 18y ago
  You are right that there is harm done in all cases, but the amount of harm differs and even breaking the law comes in degrees (at the discretion of the cop or judge). I'm not arguing in favor of actually making this behaviour illegal, as it is simply not possible to formulate a proper law covering the exact behaviour you'd want to prevent. Any attempted law would be extremely prone to abuse. I merely wanted to argue in favor of Facebook banning what they judge to be unwanted examples of holocaust denial, without fearing the wrath of people waving the 1st amendment around. What's good for facebook isn't necessarily good for a country :).
  - philwelch 18y ago
    And if Facebook was banning them for being cranks, that would be one thing. I usually downvote crank comments on Hacker News because we're a specialized community that values rational thought. To me, singling out Holocaust denial as the one prohibited form of crankism on Facebook smacks of exceptionalism. You can have conspiracy theories or contrary opinions about any other historical event, no matter how many people were killed—just not that one. Notably, you can become a "fan" of Ataturk or Genghis Khan or Andrew Jackson or Christopher Columbus on Facebook, but not Hitler.

tptacek 18y ago

So you'd allow conspiracy theorists, but outlaw Catholicism.

Confusion 18y ago
Catholics don't lie, do they? >:)
- tptacek 18y ago
  Catholics do many of the same things that human beings do. They're quite similar species.

philwelch 18y ago

"The first two don't need to be illegal, because they don't do much damage. There is little emotional attachment, making the controversy less influential or dangerous." Well that's rather ad hoc of you. If holocaust denial causes "harm" by convincing people that the Jews are liars, wouldn't Oswald denial cause harm by convincing people the American government covered up a coup it instituted against its own president, shattering all social stability? Wouldn't moon-landing denial do the same thing? I seem to remember Buzz Aldrin getting real angry and punching a moon-landing denier in the face for calling him a liar. Do you think Buzz had a legal case for defamation there? Wouldn't moon-landing-denial hurt sales of Buzz Aldrin's books? Why can't you just accept the fact that we have to share the world with a bunch of cranks?

Confusion 18y ago
You are right that there is harm done in all cases, but the amount of harm differs and even breaking the law comes in degrees (at the discretion of the cop or judge). I'm not arguing in favor of actually making this behaviour illegal, as it is simply not possible to formulate a proper law covering the exact behaviour you'd want to prevent. Any attempted law would be extremely prone to abuse. I merely wanted to argue in favor of Facebook banning what they judge to be unwanted examples of holocaust denial, without fearing the wrath of people waving the 1st amendment around. What's good for facebook isn't necessarily good for a country :).
- philwelch 18y ago
  And if Facebook was banning them for being cranks, that would be one thing. I usually downvote crank comments on Hacker News because we're a specialized community that values rational thought. To me, singling out Holocaust denial as the one prohibited form of crankism on Facebook smacks of exceptionalism. You can have conspiracy theories or contrary opinions about any other historical event, no matter how many people were killed—just not that one. Notably, you can become a "fan" of Ataturk or Genghis Khan or Andrew Jackson or Christopher Columbus on Facebook, but not Hitler.