Maybe the known presence of censorship actually trains & increases citizens' ability to question information and search for the truth?

For example, many Chinese know about Tiananmen, and the burying of the high speed rail accident, even though those were heavily censored

Would be an interesting causal relationship.

Holy shit. I never thought of this but that's such an interesting idea.

> As much as I love being relatively unrestricted on the internet, is there actually any evidence that censorship decreases trust in institutions?

> China is notorious for censorship but from speaking to friends there it seems everyone is totally on board with vaccines and very few people doubt climate science.

A consideration: could it be that acts of censorship decrease trust in a society that is already divided?

Yeah I can definitely see how this could be true in the current political climate.

More generally though, it seems to me that:

1. A minimal censorship information environment is essential to scientific progress

2. The average person lacks the epistemological foundations to handle a minimal censorship information environment

If these are both true, it seems like we should either:

1. Invest massively in improving people's epistemological models or

2. Apply a censorship gradient (i.e unrestricted for the purpose of academic exploration but have minimum standards for wide-reaching, publicly shared information)