This is total BS. Theories are dangerous. If they weren't, nobody would ever care about them. They are dangerous because they can be inspiring, sometimes inspiring action. You can say you don't want to ban the theory, only the actions, and that's a legitimate position. It reduces you to post-facto behavior only, however (which may be just fine for you). Many societies and people within them over time have not been fine with that. What they've done about it varies, from draconian bans on theories and punishment for those advocating them, to much milder versions such as "you can no longer use the services of a private company to talk about your ideas".

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).

> The general population is not equipped with enough information or enough time to meaningfully distinguish between bullshit and non-bullshit.

How certain are you that you're not part of that particular subset of the 'general population'?

I'm absolutely certain that I am part of the general population and share this characteristic.

[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. ]

A clear majority of people are more ready to reject things that are true than things that are false.

Roughly a third of the population believes in astrology and doesn't believe in global warming or evolution. A good proportion also believes that Democrats drink the blood of children.

Do any of these facts support your point?

I think social media has proven pretty conclusively that giving the general population unfiltered information and enabling everyone to promote whatever they want is in fact a terrible idea

How so? Social media only started being a societal problem after it became heavily filtered.

I believe that is not correct. Social media is fine in basic forms, such as Reddit/HN style forum threads, and Facebook's keeping-in-touch-with-old-friends and arranging events.

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.

> Mixing news into social media, sharing stories to Facebook, turned it from a coffee shop into a town square with a million soap boxes.

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 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."

That's a great point, I hadn't considered that. Thank you!

>You're assuming that the general population is too stupid to be trusted with unfiltered information.

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?