When your technological intrastructure is powered entirely by Tinkerbell, then freedom of belief is not something that anyone can ethically support.Shrieking Banshee wrote: The complication is of course that somewhere along the top technocrats just thought "Wouldn't this be easier if everybody had the exact same opinion? Yeaaaah". And in thats always a bad deal.
In the real world, it's pokay for someone to post a crazy conspiracy website explaining how the moon landing was fake and human space travel is actually impossible. Because my crazy conspiricy website won't change reality no matter how many people buy it.
In the old World of Darkness, my crazy conspiricy website can change reality if enough people buy it. If people start believing me then NASA rockets start exploding due to paradox. And that's bad.
In reality, vaccines don't cause autism no matter what some people believe. If the old World of Darkness, if enough people believe that vaccines cause Autism, then vaccines really do cause Autism. And then you get massive spikes in Autism rates due to childhood vaccinations.
In reality, if the Flat Earth Society convinces enough people that they're right, the Earth will still be round at the end of the day.
In the old World of Darkness, if the Flat Earth Society convinces enough people that they're right then all the satellites will immediately fall out of the sky and planes attempting to circumnavigate the globe will instead by besieged by demons when they cross the ice wall.
Old Mage presents a setting where belief must be controled. Because belief is dangerous. And because belief is the foundation of all of our technological infrastructure. Electricity is tinkerbell. Whenever someone yells "I don't believe in electrons" an turbine dies.