The general population is not equipped with enough information or enough time to meaningfully distinguish between bullshit and non-bullshit. Just yesterday, there was a post about a new long article/paper/publication by Stephen Wolfram, and the comments there made it clear that even among the academic community relevant to what he writes about, there's widespread disagreement about whether he's an egotistical empty vessel or the second coming of Einstein and Newton's lovechild (with a possible bias towards the former).
I'm all for elevating the agency and capabilities of "the general population", but pretending that a random discoverer of a video on self-use of CRISPR is going to be able to sensibly identify what may be of value and what may be dangerous is just incredibly naive.
And note: the problems do not arise with the general member of the public who decides to do their own deep dive after coming across an idea. If that was the universal response to encountering unfamiliar or controversial ideas, we might be in good shape. The problem is that most people have neither the time nor the inclination to do this, and so stuff just ends up floating around in their impressions of the world, unresolved, but perhaps casting doubt on stuff that is almost certainly true (or false).
How certain are you that you're not part of that particular subset of the 'general population'?
[EDIT: because of the work I've done, there are a handful of areas where I think my BS detection abilities would exceed those of an average person. But that's likely true for the average person too. Overall though, we're all a lot less able to detect BS than we think. ]
Do any of these facts support your point?
Mixing news into social media, sharing stories to Facebook, turned it from a coffee shop into a town square with a million soap boxes.
Bad actors then seized that format and used it to spread propaganda and disinformation.
That's not to say that the basic forms of social media were perfect, far from it. They're just as susceptible to manipulation. There's just something about Facebook's link to (mostly) real identities that elevates it to a hugely effective propaganda platform.
That only happened after Facebook decided to editorialize everybody's main view. People were not even used to sharing news at that point, but it was the only thing that Facebook allowed to spread.
Anyway, I'm not sure about causality. But claiming that fake news spreading through a heavily editorialized medium is proof that people can not handle self selecting their information is a complete non-sequitur.
That's a great point, I hadn't considered that. Thank you!
I'm saying that bombarding the general population with low-quality, dangerous information from sources that appear authoritative (what the tech giants are suppressing) is a bad idea. People take the information seriously and use it to cause harm to themselves and others.
There are a certain group of people that like to fuck around with conceptual arguments for the fun of it, but the public square is not the place for that kind of play.
>But theories aren't dangerous. Actions are dangerous.
Ideologies absolutely are dangerous. They've started wars, genocides, and cults. When does a theory stop being a theory and become an ideology?
I was banned on HN after questioning of QM and BB theories. 240 downvotes in one day, then ban.
The irony is that many of the people who claim to be free-speech see nothing wrong with this platform blacklisting people who don't share in the groupthink.
However, good discussion ultimately requires respect for one another, and it seems maybe that thinking is not bilateral in your case. I’d encourage you to introspect on why you may be finding resistance wherever you look.
What was read: "I've seen mods censoring stuff because of good discussion".
Sometimes you just want to give up.
I think the keyword that, in my mind, justifies the censorship here is "on most major tech platforms". Nobody is banning the discussion of these ideas in academic journals or HN or other places where curious people can go to discuss things - it's just making sure unverified, potentially dangerous theories aren't spreading like wildfire amongst the general population who _aren't_ curious and will assume whatever they're reading is absolute truth.