[cornholio]

And because mass culture needs to appeal to pre-existing ideas and sensibilities, it's exactly why it can't really spread fundamentally new ideas. Netflix will never air a show that questions the Holocaust because it could result in it's bankruptcy.

While I'm not a Holocaust denier, I do believe everything can in principle be questioned, including our most sacred beliefs, or especially those - and perpetually reaffirmed. To expunge critical inquiry from any topic, as long as it's not disguised propaganda, means to live on a flat Earth where everything was revealed and there is nothing more to know. And to do that in Academia - by definition a space shielded from popular pressure exactly to give it the freedom it needs in pursuit of knowledge and truth - is a cultural crime Amazon just can't fix.

[jolux]

You must like Descartes.

Though I think what you're saying is actually that everything should be questioned, as your sentence appears to change its meaning halfway through. ("While I'm not a Holocaust denier, I do believe everything can in principle be questioned, including our most sacred beliefs, or especially those - and perpetually reaffirmed.")

Holocaust denial is not a "fundamentally new idea," it's a fundamentally false idea. You don't need to question and perpetually reaffirm facts. It's simply not a matter of opinion whether or not the holocaust occurred.

[PavlovsCat]

> It's simply not a matter of opinion whether or not the holocaust occurred.

Not that it actually occured, no. However, I think this is obligatory, if a bit obvious:

> "If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?"

You know who :) George also wrote this ( http://www.openculture.com/2014/01/george-orwell-explains-in... )

> Already history has in a sense ceased to exist, ie. there is no such thing as a history of our own times which could be universally accepted, and the exact sciences are endangered as soon as military necessity ceases to keep people up to the mark. Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become official history. He can’t say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is the direction in which we are actually moving, though, of course, the process is reversible.

Remember, you don't have to convince everybody. You have to convince (or force, or brainwash by force) a few million people, and then you simply need weapons and robots to slaughter all the rest. We have no serious safeguards against this, it would require everybody to be able to think critically, to be able to choose their jobs freely, and other things we don't have (not for everybody). I'd wager we have more than few million people who'd be up for it, given half a chance and one order, and given current trends, I'm fully expecting a big purge "at some point" (even in 500 years it would be like it happening tomorrow, compared to the near-infinite empire that might follow it) that might make Stalin and Hitler look like choir boys. Pessimistic, sure, paranoid, we'll see, and I guess off-topic for sure. But alas, it's the one fear in my heart. We tend to take the best people in their brightest moments as the standard, instead of thinking of it like security: it's the weakest links that really matter. Being right didn't help the people killed by brownshirts for being right. Also see this bit from "Mortals and Others" by Bertrand Russel: http://russell-j.com/0583TS.HTM