[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by eppythacher

In terms of banning books, I think you can look to the past to see how the future will judge you.

No, you really can't.

There is absolutely no way to ensure that future individuals or societies will hold the values you expect.

For example, it is always possible that today's democracies could morph into totalitarian states, much in the same way the Roman Republic lurched into an Empire largely commanded by a single man, or Nazi Germany went from a representative democracy to fascist state in a few short years.

Or in the modern world, a series of food and energy crises could easily knock most of humanity into a pre-industrial state, replete with a return to feudal states and repressive theocratic injunctions on behavior (made all the more persuasive due to a lack of resources).

History does not aim to turn the entire planet into a series of liberal democracies, and such beliefs are equivalent to wearing blinders.

Originally Posted by eppythacher

In the ~3000? years of written human history, when a government or company has banned a book do we look back and think that was a good idea?

Some do, some don't. Plenty of imams, Hindu politicians and Chinese Communist bureaucrats have no qualms about suppressing content and expression.

There is absolutely no way to guarantee that social mores will become increasingly liberal in the future.

Originally Posted by eppythacher

It seems like banning is Always a bad idea, (but I might be wrong, please show when banning a book was a good idea for a company or government.)

I do not support bans. (Nor can we set up accurate counterfactuals of what would happen if certain texts were or were not banned.)

However, that's completely irrelevant.

The point is simply that the future is utterly unknown. If the United States turns into a theocracy in 2060 years, outlaws homosexuality and bans pornography, is it valid for them to look at individuals in 2010 as a pack of godless debauched degenerates wallowing in sin and vice? Should we describe ourselves that way based on the mere possibility this is how the future will turn out?

The world is not "progressing" uniformly to highly liberalized democracies. Ascribing such a teleological necessity to the mechanics of history has far more basis in bad Hegelianism (as if there is any other kind...) and a fundamental misunderstanding of evolution than in facts.