Kindly inquisitors

What Hacker News says

1. trogdorSep 2023
   One of my favorite books is “Kindly Inquisitors” by Jonathan Rauch. Highly recommended. Among its core messages is that accusations of bias are often used to stop discourse. The strongest response against a factual claim is that it’s wrong. Not that it’s racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, etc.

   “If there be time to expose through discussion, the falsehoods and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

   -Justice Louis Brandeis

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2. nemo44xSep 2020
   Read "Kindly Inquisitors" if you'd like a very thoughtful defense of Enlightenment ideas as it pertains to knowledge and speech. If you're impressed with someones prediction from 2012 then you'll be more amazed with someones analysis from 1995. This book is a classic and the author, Jonathan Rausch is highly respected.

   https://www.amazon.com/Kindly-Inquisitors-Attacks-Free-Thoug...

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3. nemo44xAug 2020
   Read “Kindly Inquisitors” by Johnathan Rausch and then read it again. It should be required reading in schools which, ironically, would be against his entire argument.
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4. nemo44xAug 2020
   I agree - people are probably not always rational and people are indeed subject to manipulation. But it changes nothing. If anything it’s BECAUSE of this that we need to agree all ideas are fallible and subject to debate and that no one owns the truth. An appeal to a fundamental authority cant work precisely because we are not rational and are subject to manipulation. We just don’t know. We have a right to opinion, beliefs, and debate but not much more. No one is above this. No one is an oracle.

   The thought that came from The Enlightenment to philosophers like Karl Popper to modern authors like Johnathan Rausch explain this better than I can here. I’d read “Kindly Inquisitors” if you have a bit of time (pretty short overall) to get a better understanding of these ideas.

   We have a series of liberal democracies in the West for a reason and it isn’t a fluke. Countless wars, inquisitions, and pointless suffering led to it. We are still struggling to fulfill the potential today and have to constantly fight off regressive philosophy but that’s the price.

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5. ericdykstraSep 2018
   This article seems a bit sensationalized. The examples they give are a single video with 500,000 views, and a couple of channels whose views average 20-30k. If YouTube is recommending "extreme" channels so often, why aren't they getting more views?

   > “Lies, propaganda and manipulation are harmful for society, but on their own are not illegal — and so our hands are often tied,” said Mr. Ipsen, of the government-linked internet monitor.

   Good. I think it's insane that the German government is even trying to establish a Ministry of Truth.

   It seems now more than ever, we are getting biased reporting from mainstream media outlets, and I guarantee that any government crackdown would not include these mainstream news sources.

   Here's an example from just a couple of days ago: CNN's Chris Cuomo as well as a number of major news outlets reported on Judge Brett Kavanaugh "snubbing" Fred Guttenberg, father of a victim of the Parkland shooting, by not shaking his hand at the event. None of these outlets bothered to mention that the day before on Twitter, Guttenberg said:

   "I will be at Kavanaugh hearings and I hope to play a role in ensuring that this man does not become the next Supreme Court Justice." (https://twitter.com/fred_guttenberg/status/10366004607261614...)

   They also didn't mention that Guttenberg was the only one trying to approach Kavanaugh, or that Kavanaugh's kids were removed from the room for safety concerns shortly prior. That seems like manipulation to me.

   I don't say this because I want CNN banned, or anything like that. I'm just completely against any censorship, especially government censorship, of ideas. I believe in the liberal values of free exchange of ideas (or "Liberal Science" as Jonathan Rauch calls it, in his excellent book, Kindly Inquisitors).

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6. boonaSep 2017
   > they should have a place where they can speak

   I agree completely. The alternative is that the bad ideas get hidden away, and not seeing the light of day, they begin to fester sort of like social rot. Or worst, people turn to violence. Free speech is not only about being heard, but about weeding out bad ideas.

   A great book on the subject is Kindly Inquisitors by Jonathan Rauch. He can explain the importance of free speech much gooderer than I ever could. :)

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