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Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

> I don’t need to be told what to think.

You maybe not, but a sizable part of your population is literally dumb enough to drink bleach to "cure cancer" or whatever [1], and around half the US can barely read at 6th grade level [2].

The root problem is not that science and journalism have their issues, there is no such thing as a "perfect system". The root problem is that the American population is, at large, too incompetent to keep up with the rapid changes in modern life, and that there are a lot of malicious actors exploiting this.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_Mineral_Supplement

[2] https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/08/02/us-literacy-rate/

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> The root problem is that the American population is, at large, too incompetent to keep up with the rapid changes in modern life

Too incompetent by what definition? That presupposes that there's some level of competency that's mandated at-large. If you're dumb enough to believe drinking bleach will cure cancer, especially with the internet at your fingertips, you kinda deserve whatever consequences come from that. It's not yours, mine, or the government's job to prevent that.

Taken to its logical conclusion, this kind of thinking builds laws and societies catering to the lowest common denominator which is a preposterous suggestion. You hit the nail on the head in the sentence right before—there is no perfect system. But one that caters to the lowest possible subset of mental cognition is definitely not a step in the right direction.

The people do not need to be told what to believe.

> It's not yours, mine, or the government's job to prevent that.

That's where we disagree. A government's entire raison d' etre is to reasonably protect its citizens from harm, at least that's the conventional European ideal. And that includes keeping them safe from demagogues of all kind - I'm German, believe me if there's one thing we know it is just how much devastation it can bring in the end if left unchecked.

Americans see the world differently, but they haven't had a war on their home turf in like, what, 200 years (and haven't learned much of it either, given how absurdly popular Confederate flags seem to be). Here, we have people still alive who got shipped off to concentration camps in their youth!

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