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There's so much blind speculation in this comment section. The kind that's intriguing and fun when it's about engineering/math/whatever, but dangerous when it's
by cowpig 7y ago
There's so much blind speculation in this comment section. The kind that's intriguing and fun when it's about engineering/math/whatever, but dangerous when it's about the health effects of an ongoing pandemic.
I hope moderators do something about it.
- jpxw 7y agoCan you explain how exactly it is “dangerous”?
- freehunter 7y agoSpeculation on treatments for Covid-19 has already killed people: https://ktla.com/news/arizona-man-dies-after-taking-form-of-chloroquine-used-for-aquariums-in-apparent-attempt-to-treat-coronavirus/amp/ https://ktla.com/news/arizona-man-dies-after-taking-form-of-...
- Cthulhu_ 7y agoSpeculation is fine; this guy died from self-medicating. There is a difference. We shouldn't resort to censoring to protect stupid people.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- trentnix 7y agoGuess what? ALL discussion about treatments for Covid-19 is speculation. That a Darwin award winner and his insane, political activist wife, neither of whom had Covid-19, ingested toxic chemicals (probably after indulging in mind altering chemicals) is not very good evidence that discussion on Hacker News should be curtailed in any way.
- PaulHoule 7y agoDon't mess with pet meds no matter how tempting it may be. We have horses so we have phenylbutazone which is tempting to use instead of aspirin, ivermectin which you might be tempted to use instead of otc parental for roundworms, also a huge jar of thyroid hormone that might help you lose weight. I stay away.
- jpxw 7y agoThis man was killed because he drank fish tank cleaner. Frankly, I don’t believe his death is causally linked to certain people speculating that hydroxychlorouine might be an effective treatment.
- freehunter 7y agoSo he came up with the idea of drinking this chemical by himself?
- catalogia 7y agoCensoring comment sections on HN just because one moron in a million might take it upon themselves to do something stupid and get themselves killed? Have you heard of the expression "the cure is worse than the disease"? It applies as much to what you and cowpig are proposing as it does to what that man chose to do.
- jshevek 7y agoAll events are the result of a complex web of causal histories. The choice of which factors to focus on sometimes depend on the biases of the speaker. In this case, a Darwin award seems more appropriate to me than blaming anyone for speculating based on low quality data.
- cowpig 7y agoSpeculating about how the virus works on the internet, especially in the confident kind of tone I'm seeing in this comment section, leads people to take that speculation as fact, repeat it, and then you have misinformation spreading on an ongoing health crisis that people use to inform decisions they make in their lives which affect themselves and others. I am not a doctor myself, but I am dating one, and helped her prepare for her (likely endless) shift in the COVID-19 unit at the hospital two weekends ago. I was shocked at how much more serious the health effects were than the internet had led me to believe, and I don't use facebook avoid low-quality journalism.
- jpxw 7y agoThere’s definitely some danger in people downplaying this virus, I totally agree. But I don’t see that happening in this comment section. I see people discussing how the virus might work, and trying to explain why these examples have been observed.
- cowpig 7y agoThat is the HN-equivalent of the same thing. I've heard multiple doctors tell me their worst patients are the smartest ones, because they're used to thinking for themselves and then make dangerous modifications to their advice without understanding all of the reasoning and context behind it (which they cannot explain in a sitting).
- claytongulick 7y agoThere's a possibly equal danger of exaggerating the severity of the virus, which we may be experiencing right now. Bias towards either direction is still bias. Educated discussion and critical thought are all we can rely on. If that leads us to the conclusion (as it has led me) that the severity of this disease has been inflated, I think that's a worthy topic of debate and evaluation. Not a taboo subject to be avoided "because someone somewhere might not take it seriously enough and then do something stupid".
- saiya-jin 7y agoThis could be said about any time, any disease, or well... anything ever on internet. I for one am glad folks share their opinions here, if one can't distinguish between speculations, opinions and facts then problem lies elsewhere. I too have my wife a doctor, and I was shocked how little and behind-the-curve their covid infection information is. Most specialist doctors here treated covid in 'what the heck are people worried about, just another flu, right' fashion till maybe 2 weeks ago. Mind you, we talk about Switzerland here with northern italy 50-100km from here, and experts in their (non-virology) fields like urology surgeon, nephrologist, radiologist, emergency doctor(!) and so on. For once, thank you internet and (also) HN users!
- Cthulhu_ 7y agoI don't get it either; it's a comment section on the internet, not people writing medical scientific papers about the subject.
- trentnix 7y agoIf you think there's a lot of blind (and wild!) speculation happening here, you should see what's happening in hospitals by physicians and infectious disease experts! We're just seeing how the sausage is made in a medical crisis. And it is never pretty.
- cowpig 7y agoSure, but those people know a bunch of things we don't, and are not speculating on an internet message board for thousands of random people to read.
- trentnix 7y agoWe? My experience has been that Hacker News is filled with world-class experts on all manner of subjects. I've no doubt infectious diseases is one of those subjects, as well.
- cowpig 7y agoSupposing for a second that you're right, you still need the average upvoter/downvoter to be able to tell the difference between the opinions of world-class experts and convincing but baseless speculation for the whole system not to become a misinformation machine. And even if you have that, there's always a risk that someone out there reads the most dangerously stupid comments and interpret them as gospel no matter how downvoted.
- Nuzzerino 7y agoSince when did the goal of the Internet become to protect people from harmful information? This has been used as a justification for mass censorship and it needs to stop.
- lbeltrame 7y ago> and are not speculating on an internet message board for thousands of random people to read. I don't know about the USA, but on TV here (Italy), yes they do. EDIT to avoid sounding too snarky: there are plenty of experts many times on TV, however the public is not aware of the unknowns and the constant challenging of ideas that usually occurs in scientific settings (and so the press). The result is that there are often contradictory statements which confuse the general population (also the press is not helping at all), which considers "science" as "truth".
- PaulHoule 7y agoThe medical literature is itself a shot in the dark right now. For instance it is good that hydrochloroquone is being trialled, I might want it myself, but it is notorious that antiparasite and antibiotic drugs kill viruses in vitro but kill patients if they do anything at all in vivo. The truth will out but it will take a while.
- guscost 7y agoThe article is mostly blind speculation too. Just going with the flow.
- jmull 7y agoI think the right place to draw the line is: speculation is fine, medical advice is not. Of course, we can argue about what constitutes medical advice. I think there needs to be a call to be a call to action (IMO, an implicit call to action would qualify if it's strong enough).
- quotemstr 7y agoNobody who tries to shape public discussion is ever working in my interest. If a system is so fragile that it can't withstand people talking about it, poking at it, and suggesting alternatives, that system deserves to fail. The impulse to reach for censorship is the same impulse that has created historical abominations. I categorically reject all censorship, even of medical speculation.
- pvaldes 7y agoSpeculation lies half-way to understanding correctly any complex problem from all sides. As long as is filtered by logic and including the known facts falling in its place, speculation is a good thing, not bad. Heart arrest can be also external (deliberate crime or medical error) so is important to discuss and understand any anomaly. Physicians and nurses are about at the end of their forces (and incredibly upset) in many places.
- jshevek 7y agoWhat would you want moderators to do?
- downerending 7y agoArguably there's a lot of blind speculation on HN about engineering/math/whatever as well, some of it quite dangerous. That's the price we pay for open discourse.
- _bxg1 7y ago> That's the price we pay for open discourse. I don't think this is true. It's entirely possible to have open discourse without over-selling one's own loosely-informed speculation.
- kd0amg 7y agoThat danger is contingent on credulous readers being in position to act on the misinformation. When people here speculate about an airliner's flight envelope, misled readers generally aren't going to go crash 737s.
- downerending 7y agoNothing will save the credulous other than hard experience. The problem with censorship is that you often just end up substituting one set of nonsense for another.
- im3w1l 7y agoI remember a schooltrip we made to a museum. Some old guy told us an anecdote about mushroom books. How was it determined how many skulls a mushroom should get? Well, he explained there was this guy who had eaten poisonous mushrooms for the purposes of rating them. One mushroom he had eaten made him very sick and he was all alone, and apparently barely made it out alive. That one got three skulls. Buyers beware, and if you are not, thank you for your sacrifice.
- autokad 7y agoits your train of thought that's the problem. that's why health officials were telling us not to use masks, not just because supply is short and they need them for health workers but probably more so because: - viral load is important and that's far too complicated for people to understand, just talk about it in binary sick/not sick. - having better protection incentivizes people taking more risk, better not do that - people might not comprehend that masks are imperfect and can fail, better just to tell them they don't work. health is important, and the way you learn about things is by talking about them. treating it like a special scary topic that only experts should be able to talk about not only leads to disinformation, it leads to lack of trust.