Hacker News Reader

Comment by hackerlight | Hacker News Reader

I think psychology and history is quite clear that sunlight isn't the best disinfectant. Ideas are like viruses, the more exposure they get the more they spread, irrespective of their truth value. Repetition and social proof directly cause idea contagion.

  "negative consequences on a free society, making it less free"

This is an overly myopic and ideological view of freedom, in many respects. It privileges negative freedoms (right to spew hatred) at the expense of positive freedoms (right to not be genocided when hate speech consumes a society). And it ignores that bandwidth is limited, so kicking off crackpots can actually improve the negative freedom of everyone else to communicate.

View on HN

> I think psychology and history is quite clear that sunlight isn't the best disinfectant

It doesn't seem quite clear to me. Would you care to provide some more information on the topic?

> And it ignores that bandwidth is limited, so kicking off crackpots can actually improve the negative freedom of everyone else to communicate.

And who exactly should have the authority to decide which ideas are allowed and which are not?

I agree with what you said mostly

> And who exactly should have the authority to decide which ideas are allowed and which are not?

This is the scariest part, because in the end everyone has their own bias.

However, don’t you agree that things like speech can soon become an ideology at some point? Which we already blocked anyway i.e communism, nazism

It is indeed a hard problem to solve and hard decision for the leader of big tech companies tbh

  "It doesn't seem quite clear to me. Would you care to provide some more information on the topic?"

There are a few areas of study that tease this out. The study of social contagion primarily. Studies of memetics. Studies of influence and persuasion that show the impact of social proof and repetition. Cultural histories that look at how fact-free mind viruses (such as nationalism or antisemitism) shaped societies. Studies about the neurological underpinnings of what kind of content people seek out (it's a part of the brain that's involved in pain). Studies into human tribalism and how our beliefs just mimic that of our in group.

  "And who exactly should have the authority to decide which ideas are allowed and which are not?"

There's no easy risk free way to draw a line, but at the same time drawing no line poses incredibly large downsides, so I'd say something like Canada's approach where democratically elected people decide is the best.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com