It's worth mocking purely because of the source in this case. Anything that legitimises scientology is bad and should be avoided. If it is as you say and it's sort of a generally distributed idea that exists in a bunch of different forms we can come up with an example that doesn't involve humans preying on other humans (actively, and without intervention).
There's no need advocate for or against an idea for ideological reasons here.
We're not here to promote some ridiculous cult, obviously, you don't need to worry about that.
If there is a neat idea somewhere, then that's fine, even if it's from a weird source.
Cable News is a giant stream if narrative and advocacy misrepresentation, and everything is fully distorted 'because the source' and 'because we don't want to legitimize such and such'.
It's nice to have places where adults have conversations about things and can assume people act in good faith given the information at hand, instead of having to worry about how suppressive some people are going to be because they 'don't want to legitimize/delegitimize' some group or source.
Right now there is an HN thread on Bret Weinstein's supposed 'Theory of Everything' and nobody seems to be able to get past their personal views of the man. It'd be better to assume a shred of good faith and discuss his 'new concept' as either worthy or quackery on it's own merits, and not based on whether or not we like him because he works with Peter Thiel.
I do believe I also proposed avenues of approach that didn't involve using Scientology as an example. More broadly, I'm not sure I agree every idea deserves it's just due, especially when it comes from a source that's unquestionably terrible. I'll follow along with you that there is some gray area and we should be able to have a conversation about that (much as we're doing now), I just don't agree that this is such a gray area.
