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And who decides what is and isn't a silly idea? For 40 years, Americans were told by the government to believe that low fat high carb diets were the key to a he

And who decides what is and isn't a silly idea? For 40 years, Americans were told by the government to believe that low fat high carb diets were the key to a healthy life. Not only is that not true, but it's never been true. There was never any evidence to support that stance. And yet, that was the official government policy and subsequently the commonly held belief for 40 years. "It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." - Not Mark Twain

yifanl 8y ago
If the problem is "what determines truth", then there isn't an organization out there that could resolve the issue (barring something like the Chinese government, I suppose)
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
  Did you just organically come up with the Ministry Of Truth?
  - qu4z-2 8y ago
    I think their point was that unless you're willing to accept Minitrue you don't have an authoritative source of truth to check against.
mrguyorama 8y ago
That's all fine and dandy, but is there actual factual standing behind the positions I listed?
- lylecubed 8y ago
  You posted them as examples of "bad ideas." Shouldn't you be able to tell me the factual standing behind the positions you hold?
  - mrguyorama 8y ago
    Are you asking me to go through each of them and give a thorough post about the background of the issue, the facts as they lay, the most reasonable conclusions, the possible influences/biases from each side and their possible agendas etc etc etc? And you're saying that I should do this each and every single time someone wants to discuss a (IMO) discredited study or blog post or something? Do you not see how easy that is to abuse by people acting in bad faith? It's a pretty classic DDOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
    - lylecubed 8y ago
      Isn't that what you tried to do to me? You asked me this: "is there actual factual standing behind the positions I listed?" First of all, why are you asking me about the factual standings of your examples? And second, you didn't just allege that the ideas you listed were 'silly'. You said they do "actual damage" despite being out in the open and actively refuted. Is it so much to ask that you provide proof? Had you just said "I think these are silly ideas" we wouldn't be having this conversation.
      - scarejunba 8y ago
        Hang on, just to check, which of the specific things called out as "bad ideas" do you take issue with?
  - ubernostrum 8y ago
    Well, this sort of gets to the heart of it, doesn't it? A lot of what's being called a problem is basically people who go Gish galloping; they spew easily-refuted statements, rarely if ever offer any evidence or anything else to back them up, but if you so much as hint at the possibility that perhaps they might have said something a little bit mistaken, they come down on you like a ton of bricks with demands for citations and evidence. And on a platform like Twitter, it's not even one person who does that; wade into the wrong thread and you might have hundreds or thousands of people mobbing you with "citation needed" and ignoring any evidence you don't personally direct at them and them alone (and that's being charitable; most of them ignore evidence, period). This wears people down quickly to the point that they just give up on challenging incorrect information, and then the people who spew it win by default and take over whatever platform they're on. Why shouldn't platforms have the freedom to put a stop to that if they choose? What value is there in claiming "neutrality" on this (and really, there is no "neutral" -- there's only enabling it, or not enabling it, the platform's owners don't get to claim they're just bystanders when they're, y'know, providing the platform)?
anigbrowl 8y ago
And who decides what is and isn't a silly idea? This is a bad faith argument. I say so because the purported mechanism for such decision-making is actually spelled out upthread, and because this rhetorical question is then followed by a glaring fallacy of composition that seeks to draw a general conclusion from a single and highly over-simplified example.
- will_dev_4_food 8y ago
  It’s not a silly example but rather a common one. Many years ago it was only the fat that were attractive because they were the financially secure. Many believed that royalty were th only form of legitimate government, and colonial activity among “savages” was doing them all a favor. Science, academics, and even personal experience vary with time. Not all variance that follows is truthful...some is exaggerated purposefully or accidentally, though most is considered good information at the time.
  - anigbrowl 8y ago
    I didn't say it was silly. Please try to differentiate between the quotation that I'm responding to and what I said in response.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- partiallypro 8y ago
  So, the anti-GMO movement, far and away has more blood on its hands than even Alex Jone's dumb theories (see golden rice.) Should we police that speech? I believe anti-GMO is a silly idea, and a deadly one. Far more deadly that Jones claiming Sandy Hook wasn't real, far more deadly than a 9/11 conspiracy theory. Yet, we allow it, in fact in many cases we encourage it on the corporate/company level (see Chipotle.) There are tons of "mom blog" type pages on Facebook that push this crap, it's a much much bigger industry than Jones. Where is the outrage there? Is it ok to ban their speech from a corporate platform? It does way more societal damage. Gwyneth Paltrow pushes things with her company "Goop" that can cause serious health problems. Should we ban her from Facebook? I just wonder where you draw the line, because if we're talking raw statistics on society damage, InfoWars or virtually any form of "hate speech" isn't even in the top 10.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> And who decides what is and isn't a silly idea? Any private, non-common-carrier party that is asked to relay it. That is what freedom of speech/press means: people are free to evaluate content and decide for themselves whether to participate in spreading it.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
BryantD 8y ago
I think that's the core question right there. For a while, various governmental bodies got to be the authority figure deciding which ideas were widely propagated. It's interesting to consider the outsized influence of Texas school boards here; the people who decided which textbooks would be used in Texas were elected officials. Texas has a huge textbook market. Accordingly, textbook vendors were incentivized to publish textbooks which fit Texas standards, and other states who didn't have the same influence wound up with those textbooks. So: "who decides what is and isn't a silly idea?" Texas elected officials. That's suboptimal in my view. It is also not great that four or five major companies have the same decision-making power. Fixing the problem is difficult, but I take some comfort in knowing that it's not actually a new problem.

yifanl 8y ago

If the problem is "what determines truth", then there isn't an organization out there that could resolve the issue (barring something like the Chinese government, I suppose)

SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
Did you just organically come up with the Ministry Of Truth?
- qu4z-2 8y ago
  I think their point was that unless you're willing to accept Minitrue you don't have an authoritative source of truth to check against.

mrguyorama 8y ago

That's all fine and dandy, but is there actual factual standing behind the positions I listed?

lylecubed 8y ago
You posted them as examples of "bad ideas." Shouldn't you be able to tell me the factual standing behind the positions you hold?
- mrguyorama 8y ago
  Are you asking me to go through each of them and give a thorough post about the background of the issue, the facts as they lay, the most reasonable conclusions, the possible influences/biases from each side and their possible agendas etc etc etc? And you're saying that I should do this each and every single time someone wants to discuss a (IMO) discredited study or blog post or something? Do you not see how easy that is to abuse by people acting in bad faith? It's a pretty classic DDOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
  - lylecubed 8y ago
    Isn't that what you tried to do to me? You asked me this: "is there actual factual standing behind the positions I listed?" First of all, why are you asking me about the factual standings of your examples? And second, you didn't just allege that the ideas you listed were 'silly'. You said they do "actual damage" despite being out in the open and actively refuted. Is it so much to ask that you provide proof? Had you just said "I think these are silly ideas" we wouldn't be having this conversation.
    - scarejunba 8y ago
      Hang on, just to check, which of the specific things called out as "bad ideas" do you take issue with?
- ubernostrum 8y ago
  Well, this sort of gets to the heart of it, doesn't it? A lot of what's being called a problem is basically people who go Gish galloping; they spew easily-refuted statements, rarely if ever offer any evidence or anything else to back them up, but if you so much as hint at the possibility that perhaps they might have said something a little bit mistaken, they come down on you like a ton of bricks with demands for citations and evidence. And on a platform like Twitter, it's not even one person who does that; wade into the wrong thread and you might have hundreds or thousands of people mobbing you with "citation needed" and ignoring any evidence you don't personally direct at them and them alone (and that's being charitable; most of them ignore evidence, period). This wears people down quickly to the point that they just give up on challenging incorrect information, and then the people who spew it win by default and take over whatever platform they're on. Why shouldn't platforms have the freedom to put a stop to that if they choose? What value is there in claiming "neutrality" on this (and really, there is no "neutral" -- there's only enabling it, or not enabling it, the platform's owners don't get to claim they're just bystanders when they're, y'know, providing the platform)?

anigbrowl 8y ago

And who decides what is and isn't a silly idea? This is a bad faith argument. I say so because the purported mechanism for such decision-making is actually spelled out upthread, and because this rhetorical question is then followed by a glaring fallacy of composition that seeks to draw a general conclusion from a single and highly over-simplified example.

will_dev_4_food 8y ago
It’s not a silly example but rather a common one. Many years ago it was only the fat that were attractive because they were the financially secure. Many believed that royalty were th only form of legitimate government, and colonial activity among “savages” was doing them all a favor. Science, academics, and even personal experience vary with time. Not all variance that follows is truthful...some is exaggerated purposefully or accidentally, though most is considered good information at the time.
- anigbrowl 8y ago
  I didn't say it was silly. Please try to differentiate between the quotation that I'm responding to and what I said in response.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
partiallypro 8y ago
So, the anti-GMO movement, far and away has more blood on its hands than even Alex Jone's dumb theories (see golden rice.) Should we police that speech? I believe anti-GMO is a silly idea, and a deadly one. Far more deadly that Jones claiming Sandy Hook wasn't real, far more deadly than a 9/11 conspiracy theory. Yet, we allow it, in fact in many cases we encourage it on the corporate/company level (see Chipotle.) There are tons of "mom blog" type pages on Facebook that push this crap, it's a much much bigger industry than Jones. Where is the outrage there? Is it ok to ban their speech from a corporate platform? It does way more societal damage. Gwyneth Paltrow pushes things with her company "Goop" that can cause serious health problems. Should we ban her from Facebook? I just wonder where you draw the line, because if we're talking raw statistics on society damage, InfoWars or virtually any form of "hate speech" isn't even in the top 10.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> And who decides what is and isn't a silly idea? Any private, non-common-carrier party that is asked to relay it. That is what freedom of speech/press means: people are free to evaluate content and decide for themselves whether to participate in spreading it.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

BryantD 8y ago

I think that's the core question right there. For a while, various governmental bodies got to be the authority figure deciding which ideas were widely propagated. It's interesting to consider the outsized influence of Texas school boards here; the people who decided which textbooks would be used in Texas were elected officials. Texas has a huge textbook market. Accordingly, textbook vendors were incentivized to publish textbooks which fit Texas standards, and other states who didn't have the same influence wound up with those textbooks. So: "who decides what is and isn't a silly idea?" Texas elected officials. That's suboptimal in my view. It is also not great that four or five major companies have the same decision-making power. Fixing the problem is difficult, but I take some comfort in knowing that it's not actually a new problem.