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Comment by djbebs | Hacker News Reader

Given the information currently available, probably not, but that doesn't mean they should be silenced.

Given all information that has ever been observable, absolutely not… and while that doesn’t mean they should be silenced, it absolutely means they shouldn’t be allowed to present their idiot ideas as facts, absent opposition and loud disclaim.

People are free to hold stupid ideas, and they’re free to state those ideas in public, and the rest of us are free to jeer them for doing so… freedom of speech does not imply freedom from being laughed at and abused for holding on to such manifestly stupid ideas.

That’s just it: I believe they must be allowed to present their (manifestly stupid) ideas as facts. The rest of us must also be allowed to present evidence and data to prove their ideas are wrong, but they have to, in moments and mediums they choose, be able to say “yup, the earth is definitely flat.”

Not to their children, or to anyone else’s, in any context in which there isn’t an overwhelming voice of opposition always present. Allowing someone infected with stupidity to willfully infect those who cannot consent in an informed manner is unethical in the extreme.

Are you proposing that we interfere with parents teaching their children their beliefs? That is more unethical and fraught with peril than the alternative, IMO.

If someone believes in a powerful sky wizard who oversees all of humanity, they can teach their children of this magical being. They can even take them once a week to a place of education about this belief. IMO, it’s none of my or your business or right to be constantly present to present alternative points of view.

In every part of the world that has developed public education standards the public good already interferes with parents teaching kids their beliefs about physics, math, basic world history, economics, etc, and for a very good and entirely ethical reason… a basically functioning and employable human being must be capable of basic arithmetic and the usage of technology that rises above simple machines in order to survive within a modern society. That’s why home-schooled children raised to hold their parents non-falsifiable beliefs — ie belief in particular sky wizard(s) — still have to be able to pass qualification tests that demonstrate that they have sufficient exposure to the facts that belie their falsifiable ones — ie belief that they live on a constantly accelerating disk, possibly atop elephants and a turtle — to at least handle the minimum cognitive dissonance required to both actually live on an oblate spheroid around which satellites travel and promote their parents’ fictional ideas using technology that depends in its entirety on the entirely self-evident and easily observable fact that the world isn’t flat.

Personally I’d go further… teaching children that the world is flat should be considered criminal child abuse, as you’re intentionally impairing a child’s ability to function in any society, including your own echo chamber.

I don’t mind (and in fact come close to insisting that we) have adequate public education to help mold our future society members.

What I do object to is insisting that there is never a time when parents can teach their children arbitrary topic X without always having someone from the societal ministry of truth to be there to fact-check/align it.

Depends in its entirety on the specifics of arbitrary topic X… for instance, if X involves putting ethic group Y in to gas chambers, then send in the ministry, post haste.

This does go both ways, doesn't it? Especially since a ministry was the main proponent of putting people into gas chambers once. They even killed anyone that would advocate for peace or provide help in this case.

There seems to be a significant power imbalance between the ministry and a parent.

That particular ministry was, of course, composed of those who’d been infected by rightly unpopular ideas that were allowed to grow and fester until the Overton Window had shifted to the far right, encouraged by parents and not sufficiently discouraged by the state.

A state of affairs that’s now pretty much been replicated, about a century after we first tried to learn the lesson that Fascism is a bad idea.

Should we lock parents up for "abusing" children because they lie about the existence of Santa Claus too? Or do you think it's possible that those children might grow up one day and become capable of forming their own conclusion in whether Santa exists or not?

If you're answer to that question is, "no, because those children were abused by others lying about Santa, they will never be capable of overcoming that lie and will continue to propagate that lie" then it begs the question: what right does anyone have to tell anyone anything since all of us have experienced some sort of indoctrination at some point? Are we not all "broken" in that sense?

Amen.

Does that mean their speech should be considered equally authoritative as those whose model of the earth's shape you prefer?

The entire point is that popularity is not a relevant factor in this decision.

After all both opinions are or were popular so which one are we supposed to pick among the popular options?

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