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Comment by long_time_gone | Hacker News Reader

==She thinks they’re taking it down because they don’t want people to know the truth.==

Sounds like she has already made up her mind, in which case I’m not sure it matters if the content is moderated or not. It’s possible she will find whatever reinforces the decision she’s already made.

==The only thing worse than bad ideas is the suppression of bad ideas.==

This sounds good, but is it true? The bad idea exists today and is spreading, does limiting that spread actually cause more harm? Is there evidence of this or a study to support it? In schools, we suppress all sorts of bad ideas. Take eugenics, has suppressing that idea made the belief in eugenics worse?

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> Sounds like she has already made up her mind

Exactly. My experience with people taught me that once an adult made up his/her mind with some belief, it is extremely difficult to shake. Confirmation bias will be in effect most of the time. The only chance to change it is when someone really close to the person (who he/she trusts), or someone this person admire/worship says otherwise. And in this case, since it's Youtube, it will never happen.

> In schools, we suppress all sorts of bad ideas

No, fortunately that is not worldwide practice. "Challenge", possibly, «suppress», not everywhere.

Would suppressing the discussion about eugenics worsen the matter: yes, for example by having to restart the discussion from stage one. The naïve would retain naïve ideas, unchallenged.

> Take eugenics, has suppressing that idea made the belief in eugenics worse?

Ideas like eugenics clearly have something to them that resonates with people, at least until they think hard enough about the ethics or logistics involved. There's a reason eugenics cropped up in the first place. So yes, insofar as you suppress a dangerously seductive idea, you do make it worse, because it takes actually explaining what the flaws were with the idea to shake people out of it.

> Sounds like she has already made up her mind

If that's the case, did she make up her mind before or after consuming the anti-vaccine content?

In my experience, most people who are hesitant about the vaccine are that way because they distrust the government. The anti-vaccine content didn't cause their hesitancy. They only consumed it because it confirmed their pre-existing bias.

If the anti-vaccine content isn't the underlying cause of people not wanting to get the vaccine, censoring that content will not fix anything. I know many people who, like OP's wife, simply see the censorship as further justification for their pre-existing bias. We are likely killing free speech with nothing to show for it.

...News just in: there's an article today on The Conversation about eugenetic practices having been carried on in the USA in the past hundred years, and still ongoing: they involve forced sterilization of a considerable number of people.

So, since the "idea" has actual current practice, you may want it to be in the foreground, not «suppress[ed]».

https://theconversation.com/forced-sterilization-policies-in...

And again about school, we were taught about the eugenetic effort of mid century in primary school, when we were eight years old: relatively "mature" content, but is it possible (yes, it is) that "if you treat children like children (and adults like children), they will behave like children?".

> The bad idea exists today and is spreading, does limiting that spread actually cause more harm? Is there evidence of this or a study to support it? In schools, we suppress all sorts of bad ideas.

So this is sort of meta isn't it? The easy phrase that sounds good gets a lot of traction, but actually proving whether it's true, long term, is a difficult problem!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law - I'm not calling BS on the phrase we're discussing, just that we don't know!

Meanwhile back in the real world, a friend of ours died of COVID yesterday, leaving behind a husband and son. Pretty sure she was not vaccinated. She was relatively young and in good shape.

There's no simple answers. American has some of the strongest free speech rights, but also a scarily large anti vaxx population. (It's also worth noting that what YouTube decides to allow isn't a First Amendment issue.)

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