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I'm all over the thread with comments like these since the whole charade is ridiculous and is only getting undue attention here since Patrick is popular on Hack

I'm all over the thread with comments like these since the whole charade is ridiculous and is only getting undue attention here since Patrick is popular on Hacker News and very few commenters have familiarity with Japan, either as a whole or especially regarding the pandemic response. I've never met Patrick personally but also had a lot of respect for him from past writings; that's probably why I was so disappointed with what he did here. If I weren't knowledgeable about Japan, maybe I'd also just assume he's right because he feels like someone I know, but I do know better and that's why I'm commenting. My shots aren't at his arguments about pandemic modeling, but everything he's done surrounding that. As plenty of other comments here mention; everything is heavily self-promotional and smug. And I agree under normal circumstances the above comment would be flag-worthy, but he specifically staked his reputation on this with extreme language, so I mirrored that. So I apologize for the poor tone; but I think it's appropriate in the context of referencing that Tweet. A friend showed me the tweet last month and asked if it was about the pandemic in Japan. I said it can't possibly be that since everyone here sees it coming and knows the government is just dragging their feet. And I don't mean "everyone" in a smugly exclusive sense; all of the top comments on every article on the Japanese news sites were saying the same thing. So maybe there's novel work in the white paper; that's great, but my "best shots" are that it's ridiculous to claim that no one else saw this coming, this paper influenced Japan to shift their strategy, and being public is going to get him persecuted in Japan (those last two even seem contradictory). These would all be obvious to anyone living here, and make it seem like Patrick is using this information asymmetry and his existing reputation to blow this into something it's not in the eyes of a foreign community.

tptacek 7y ago
Not only does this article not say that "nobody saw this coming", but it in fact says the exact opposite thing.
- aikinai 7y ago
  Sorry I don't know how to quote so maybe my comment was confusing between what I wrote and what Patrick wrote. Here's his Tweet claiming that and explicitly staking his reputation on this: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1241553311024603140?s=20 https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1241553311024603140?s=20
aikinai 7y ago
To mention one more thing, I think what really frustrates me about this and incited me to comment a lot here is that to make his effort seem like a big deal, Patrick is presenting everyone else in Japan as fools and building up this white savior narrative. His post implies that the Japanese experts and officials are both so inept that they couldn't keep up with his overnight-expert pandemic modeling and so malicious that they would persecute him for doing a better job. That's completely untrue, but with his reputation on Hacker News, it looks like a lot of people here are taking those characterizations at face value. As someone who knows Japan and respects the community here, that's a very upsetting development. Unfortunately this thread blew up in the middle of the night in Japan. I happen to be awake, but it's so late I might be the only person in Japan in this thread before it dies.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  > To mention one more thing, I think what really frustrates me about this and incited me to comment a lot here is that to make his effort seem like a big deal, Patrick is presenting everyone else in Japan as fools and building up this white savior narrative. Whatever about any legitimate criticisms you may have this is just being one or both of being an asshole or a racist. If Patrick had spent his entire adult life in Sweden and he was writing about how the Swedish government had messed up you wouldn’t be calling him anything equivalent.
- tptacek 7y ago
  You have to want this "white savior" thing to see that as a narrative. Corrupt and/or inept government responses to pandemics is something people of all colors seem to share right now. I'm not interested in debating it, but if your argument is that Patrick is playing "white savior", yes, you should make that more explicitly, rather than expressing it subtly through being a jerk.
- wglb 7y ago
  > Patrick is presenting everyone else in Japan as fools and building up this white savior narrative. He really did no such thing. And I think your comments would be better if they presumed good faith on the part of patio11.

tptacek 7y ago

Not only does this article not say that "nobody saw this coming", but it in fact says the exact opposite thing.

aikinai 7y ago
Sorry I don't know how to quote so maybe my comment was confusing between what I wrote and what Patrick wrote. Here's his Tweet claiming that and explicitly staking his reputation on this: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1241553311024603140?s=20 https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1241553311024603140?s=20

aikinai 7y ago

To mention one more thing, I think what really frustrates me about this and incited me to comment a lot here is that to make his effort seem like a big deal, Patrick is presenting everyone else in Japan as fools and building up this white savior narrative. His post implies that the Japanese experts and officials are both so inept that they couldn't keep up with his overnight-expert pandemic modeling and so malicious that they would persecute him for doing a better job. That's completely untrue, but with his reputation on Hacker News, it looks like a lot of people here are taking those characterizations at face value. As someone who knows Japan and respects the community here, that's a very upsetting development. Unfortunately this thread blew up in the middle of the night in Japan. I happen to be awake, but it's so late I might be the only person in Japan in this thread before it dies.

barry-cotter 7y ago
> To mention one more thing, I think what really frustrates me about this and incited me to comment a lot here is that to make his effort seem like a big deal, Patrick is presenting everyone else in Japan as fools and building up this white savior narrative. Whatever about any legitimate criticisms you may have this is just being one or both of being an asshole or a racist. If Patrick had spent his entire adult life in Sweden and he was writing about how the Swedish government had messed up you wouldn’t be calling him anything equivalent.
tptacek 7y ago
You have to want this "white savior" thing to see that as a narrative. Corrupt and/or inept government responses to pandemics is something people of all colors seem to share right now. I'm not interested in debating it, but if your argument is that Patrick is playing "white savior", yes, you should make that more explicitly, rather than expressing it subtly through being a jerk.
wglb 7y ago
> Patrick is presenting everyone else in Japan as fools and building up this white savior narrative. He really did no such thing. And I think your comments would be better if they presumed good faith on the part of patio11.