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Comment by nbardy | Hacker News Reader

You get rid of bad ideas by engaging with them, not by shoving them out of sight.

I don't try to change people irl. If they don't understand in a couple of tries, it's better to ignore them and let them go their merry way. It's not my job to educate tons of willfully ignorant people. Something something, don't fight with a pig, it will drag you down to its own level and win with experience.

How many times. One time? A thousand times? The ideas have been engaged with. At what point can we stop?

> At what point can we stop?

What gave you the idea that there is an end-game? The social dialogue is never ending.

The comment they’re replying to said “get rid of”. That implies an end-game.

> What gave you the idea that there is an end-game? The social dialogue is never ending.

Then this is a denial-of-service attack. Bad-faith actors can hijack the public conversation forever by simply refusing the budge. The public conversation then becomes a free and indefinite platform for them to spread propaganda, and any attempt to change that is portrayed as a great evil.

You seem rather confident of that. Engaging bad ideas gives them volume, legitimacy, momentum. Sidelining them is a powerful response.

Until you are the one sidelined.

That sounds nice in practice, but in our post-truth, post-evidence world I am not sure what else we can do. It's impossible to dissuade some of these people and many people viewing YouTube are vulnerable to falling for their bullshit.

Great! I will then sideline all your ideas from now on.

You already do.

You can't consume every possible idea. You automatically filter them, most of it subconsciously, just like everyone else.

> You get rid of bad ideas by engaging with them

‘Never feed a troll’

Yet we still deal with Holocaust deniers.

Why not? Why does no longer publishing flat earth videos not kill the idea for the most part?

How do you think these critical masses around _specific ideas_ are formed? Qanon isn't a whisper campaign.

A thought experiment: we burn all books about Area 51 alien stuff. The whole myth would probably die along with our generation. There's no more stuff reinforcing it, no large traces. No more grainy photos.

That original quote might work for a general ideology but I don't think it works nearly as well when applied to specific narratives.

(Of course this works in all directions, see the obliteration of socialist movements in the 50s and 60s)

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