Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by n4r9 1400 days ago
That's a great example, much better than the one I thought of.

The line has to be somewhere, right? Even if someone dismisses your example, you can make it more and more extreme to the point of "if this knowledge becomes public, a maniac will 99% likely destroy the rest of the earth".

1 comments

Which is more likely:

1. These censorship policies will be used to save the world from 99% certain destruction at the hands of a maniac.

2. These censorship policies will be used to crush evidence that [GROUP X] is overrepresented in [FAVORABLE SITUATION Y] due to [FAVORABLE TRAIT Z], thus legitimizing policies unjustly punishing [GROUP X].

Even if you think this censorship is righteous and good, how will you deal with folks no longer trusting the scientific basis of what you claim? Why should anyone believe there is no genetic difference between [GROUPS D and E] when you're confessing that you'd never admit it?

Once you realize that censorship is a defensive action, not an offensive one, it becomes clear.

You don’t censor to get more people on your side. You censor to defend the people you’ve already collected (ie prevent losing them to the other side).

Which of the guidelines do you think would prevent the discovery of genetic differences between two groups?