@cstross As a uni professor I can't get behind that distinction. The huge issue is: Who decides what's true or valid in nonfiction?

That's folded into the battle right now, actually. The people wanting book bans in K-12 schools object most strenuously to the availability of books with (IMO) factual information about sex and gender. They've decided this is not factual; I disagree.

This will come back to basic values, no matter what. I mean by that, it will come back to critical thinking and epistemology.

@guyjantic @cstross My point would be that it's not the same "banning" as "disallowing free access", and hence I would keep hate propaganda in a special section you'd need a "maturity" test to get in, just as we don't allow just anyone to drive two+ ton automobile machines or handle weapons just like that*.

*For a certain geographical value of "we".

@cstross @Illuminatus Well, yes. Excellent point. It is broken. Under that is a deeply effed-up social and intellectual system, due to some really nasty forces and actors.

I guess my ideas about political systems, rules, etc. are that I want them to be as robust as possible (recognizing they can't ever guarantee best outcomes), in a society in which plenty of people are not rational.

@guyjantic @cstross The thing is that humans (at least for the time being and for our present form of what we consider the species) are <not> 100% rational and the emotional discourse takes precedence for a lot in the decision process, so any political system cannot be built to the assumption of 100% rational humans*.

*Something economists should consider far more in their models.

@Illuminatus @cstross Oh, now we are once again in complete agreement (and Tversky and Kahneman FTW!).

That's the point I was trying to make: suggesting rules like "ban the dangerous books presented as nonfiction" is suggesting additions to the political system, and that particular rule (by itself) seems like it would only work with a highly rational group of humans.

I'm in the USA. I do not have a super high opinion of the average level of commitment to (or even grasp of) rationality among my countryfolk, broadly speaking.

I think the work of making rules is the work of politics and policy, which--as I keep discovering--is always about modifying systems that apply to populations of mixed rationality and morality, and is really hard. I don't claim to be good at this at all.

I am sometimes good, however, at seeing potential problems and not knowing how to fix them.