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Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

I agree in general. But what if I did want to know if vaccines are dangerous, so I search "are vaccines dangerous". If I want to find an anti-vaccine site, I should be able to do so, but the search term "are vaccines dangerous" should be viewed neutrally, in which case I would find links from cdc or .gov sites to be more useful that anti-vaccines sites

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That's fair; I suppose it's inevitable that search engines move more in a similar direction to what we know as the main high street when it comes to high profile searches, keeping more mainstream stuff while losing the off the wall areas but it does seem a shame to loose some of the weirder side streets in the process (the sort of weirdness from the early 2000s internet for example).

It's a bad idea. There are examples where mainstream was wrong. Usually when it's about big money. E.g. decades of anti-cannabis propaganda.

Now you mention it, the official position on the correct response to coronavirus flip flopping and changing from location to location is a good recent example too.

We go to school in the US for usually at least 12 years. Any person should already be educated on topics such as anti vaccination. In particular in my state you can’t even go to school if you haven’t had your vaccines. Not only that but we learn how to learn in school. The argument for censorship against stupidity assumes exactly that, that the majority of people are stupid which they are not.

> The argument for censorship against stupidity assumes exactly that, that the majority of people are stupid which they are not.

It's not censorship against stupidity. It's censorship against bullshitters who spread medical misinformation that may put people in danger; factually untenable opinions, expressed in an assertive manner, in a context which seems authoritative to the layperson.

Nobody says the majority is stupid, nor it is relevant. Protecting a minority is as good an excuse as it is protecting the majority, don't you think?

My point was that we should and can understand the difference between sources of bad information and good information, this is and should be taught in schools. I don’t think we should protect the minority by limiting everyone. We could make a safety vs security argument but in my opinion we should protect children only and allow adults to make stupid mistakes. This is why we have drinking age, smoking age and drivers license ages. At some point we need to assume a level of intelligence in the population and in accordance allow freedom to make mistakes.

> Any person should already be educated on topics such as anti vaccination.

The quality of US public schools can vary immensely, especially for students in poor areas where the community can't put up much money and education budgets are the first thing to be slashed.

Additionally, many states allow outright lies such as creationism or abstinence-only sex ed to be taught - both of this is further evidence that it cannot be assumed automatically that a person educated in the US is well educated.

Yes there are stupid people out there but it is not the majority, even in poor areas as you are claiming. Let’s say you are even correct that poor people now are too stupid to understand anti vaccination groups are not science based. The solution is not censorship of anti vaccination groups, it is education campaigns to counter this. Education in schools, commercials, websites and social media. Not censorship of bad information.

That would require that people are actively interested in being educated. And to be honest most people aren't even in school, much less when they're grown up.

To make it worse, antivaxxers explicitly mistrust science and only trust the blogs and "mama groups" and other crap. How is anything the government, scientists, the media, anyone supposed to overcome that mistrust?

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