> I'd love to know if there's a sensible option somewhere between "anyone is free to believe any untrue thing they want" and "thought police".
i think that depends on two things - do you believe objective truths exist, and do you believe society should prefer objective truths over falsehoods? Or in a more abstract sense, should freedom of speech simply allow all speech (and by extension all beliefs) without question, or seek to discriminate truth from speech, as best it can?
"thought police" has a specific malevolent implication meant to equate the authoritative control of certain memes (in the original Dawkins sense) to fascistic thought control but does that implication apply to truth, or only minsinformation?
Again - because Hacker News loves this rabbithole - the assumption here is that truths exist and can be discovered. The infinite nihilistic regress of "but who decides what is is and who watches the watchers" is already discarded, if for no other reason than being uninteresting.
Maybe teaching people the earth is round isn't 'thought policing,' and if it is, maybe 'thought policing' isn't always harmful.
i think that depends on two things - do you believe objective truths exist, and do you believe society should prefer objective truths over falsehoods? Or in a more abstract sense, should freedom of speech simply allow all speech (and by extension all beliefs) without question, or seek to discriminate truth from speech, as best it can?
"thought police" has a specific malevolent implication meant to equate the authoritative control of certain memes (in the original Dawkins sense) to fascistic thought control but does that implication apply to truth, or only minsinformation?
Again - because Hacker News loves this rabbithole - the assumption here is that truths exist and can be discovered. The infinite nihilistic regress of "but who decides what is is and who watches the watchers" is already discarded, if for no other reason than being uninteresting.
Maybe teaching people the earth is round isn't 'thought policing,' and if it is, maybe 'thought policing' isn't always harmful.