[ImPostingOnHN]

> Simply depriving these people of airtime does NOT quash their views and make them go away.

> We should know by now that censoring information these days does not work

This argument (repeated) is a bit of a red herring. I haven't seen anyone saying we can make pseudoscience go away forever. We're just questioning the wisdom of embracing and amplifying it to reach people it wouldn't have before.

> It fuels conspiracy theories

This is kind of a corollary to the above point: People are going to theorize conspiracies no matter what. There are undoubtedly conspiracy theorists who think the exact opposite: that including pseudoscience is a conspiracy to make people think it isn't being censored in other ways.

Thus, that a given action might strengthen or weaken the conspiracy theories of at least 1 pseudoscientist isn't enough to justify doing the action or not. Neither choice will make conspiracy theories go away.

[wakawaka28]

>I haven't seen anyone saying we can make pseudoscience go away forever.

You must not have been looking. There are government and media officials coming out against "mis-, dis-, and mal-information" on a constant basis. These same people are the biggest liars around.

>We're just questioning the wisdom of embracing and amplifying it to reach people it wouldn't have before.

"You can have free speech as long as you only speak quietly in your own closet." The power to curate information or "amplify" it as you say is practically very hard to distinguish from censorship when you choose to show only things you agree with, or show only the worst straw men for the other side.

>There are undoubtedly conspiracy theorists who think the exact opposite: that including pseudoscience is a conspiracy to make people think it isn't being censored in other ways.

There are some "conspiracy theories" designed to discredit anyone who is skeptical of authority. The people who complain the most about conspiracy theories really just want people to stop thinking independently, and start accepting whatever their establishment says.

>Thus, that a given action might strengthen or weaken the conspiracy theories of at least 1 pseudoscientist isn't enough to justify doing the action or not. Neither choice will make conspiracy theories go away.

Conspiring to suppress conspiracy theories sure won't make them stop. Being right and showing positive results to the contrary is what wins the day.

[borski]

> "You can have free speech as long as you only speak quietly in your own closet." The power to curate information or "amplify" it as you say is practically very hard to distinguish from censorship when you choose to show only things you agree with, or show only the worst straw men for the other side.

No platform owes you the right to amplify nonsense. The government can’t make you stop, but individual platforms or individuals themselves? They’re free to do whatever, just like you. Don’t like it? Start a Truth Social and go yell at your adoring fans all you want.

> Conspiring to suppress conspiracy theories sure won't make them stop. Being right and showing positive results to the contrary is what wins the day.

While that’s a cute thought, conspiracy theorists are exceptionally good at one thing: theorizing conspiracies. “Being right” doesn’t happen, ever, because any positive results can simply be walked back as “part of another conspiracy.”

The way you kill conspiracy theories is not amplifying them as truth. That’s it.

[wakawaka28]

>No platform owes you the right to amplify nonsense. The government can’t make you stop, but individual platforms or individuals themselves? They’re free to do whatever, just like you. Don’t like it? Start a Truth Social and go yell at your adoring fans all you want.

Governments of the world, including the US government, have repeatedly been shown to order these "private" platforms around. So this argument is cooked.

>While that’s a cute thought, conspiracy theorists are exceptionally good at one thing: theorizing conspiracies. “Being right” doesn’t happen, ever, because any positive results can simply be walked back as “part of another conspiracy.”

You should ask yourself why conspiracy theories make more sense to people than "the truth". Hint: It's because real conspiracies are commonfare.

>The way you kill conspiracy theories is not amplifying them as truth. That’s it.

Again this "not amplifying" is code for "censoring" or "burying". The truth inevitably shines through, even when it comes to this bullshit. You think the reality of censorship is a conspiracy, yet people have been censored heavily in this country for years now at the behest of the US government and some NGOs. Sometimes for strictly political reasons. You can call me a crackpot if you want but I've seen the censorship itself and the evidence of government involvement.

Who, pray tell, is qualified to judge what is worthy of "not amplifying"? That word makes me cringe every time because it was chosen to sound innocuous and appealing to young people. It is pure doublespeak.

Liberals even 10-15 years ago knew better than to argue for censorship. Now the left can't stop singing the praises of censorship, keep trying to redefine words to suit the agenda, and basically dragged the political dialogue into dangerous territory that was conclusively settled hundreds of years ago by brilliant philosophers.

[ImPostingOnHN]

> You should ask yourself why conspiracy theories make more sense to people than the truth

While conspiracy theorists believe this to be the case, and they are people, they're a slightly-vocal minority, and thus it'd be disingenuous to represent what conspiracy theorists think as what "people" think, unless you clarify that you're using the term "people" to refer to 1+ persons, not any indicative majority.

As you and I both said upthread: there will always be greater than zero pseudoscience conspiracy theorists who view literally anything as confirmation of the conspiracy theory.

>> I haven't seen anyone saying we can make pseudoscience go away forever.

> You must not have been looking. There are government and media officials coming out against "mis-, dis-, and mal-information" on a constant basis.*

This is not evidence that they, or any significant amount of people, have said they can make conspiracy theories and pseudoscience go away forever. There's nothing wrong with "coming out against" disinformation.

[wakawaka28]

>While conspiracy theorists believe this to be the case, and they are people, they're a slightly-vocal minority, and thus it'd be disingenuous to represent what conspiracy theorists think as what "people" think, unless you clarify that you're using the term "people" to refer to 1+ persons, not any indicative majority.

Conspiracy theorists are everywhere. Just casually mention price fixing and you'll see endless speculation from just about everyone about how "they're out to get you". Mention politicians and lobbyists and they will readily speculate about who is on the take, based on stupid shit like physical traits of a person. These same people will then cry about a bunch of other conspiracy theories that don't jive with their preconceived notions.

>As you and I both said upthread: there will always be greater than zero pseudoscience conspiracy theorists who view literally anything as confirmation of the conspiracy theory.

This is true. Likewise, many "normies" regard the existence of nutty conspiracy theorists as evidence that any speculation about possible conspiracies is evidence of stupidity or even insanity.

>This is not evidence that they, or any significant amount of people, have said they can make conspiracy theories and pseudoscience go away forever. There's nothing wrong with "coming out against" disinformation.

First of all I didn't say that. Second of all, there is a lot wrong with trying to police speech, especially under the pretense of it being "disinformation". If you care about disinformation then you put out good information only, engage in debates, and so on. Basically stop treating your fellow citizens like children for merely disagreeing. Even if we want to suppress untrue information, it is extremely difficult to be 100% sure what is true, and the intellectual and popular discourse requires free expression of controversial ideas. If you don't want to have your worldview challenged, there are many ways to tune out the stuff you don't care for. The problem we have is that the authoritarians are threatened by the fact that someone out in the world disagrees with them. They can't handle that because their egos are too fragile. (Of course, some authoritarians do not care about the ideas at all. They just want power and the ideas are the tool they use to get it. We have this type in the West too.)