10 ms·

Never thought we'd see wide support for book restriction or censorship again. Are people not reading history or considering the second order effects? Heck, you

by Reedx 6y ago

Never thought we'd see wide support for book restriction or censorship again. Are people not reading history or considering the second order effects? Heck, you don't even have to go back that far. Just look how badly "official sources" handled Covid-19. For example, remember what the official word was, even despite being a self-contradiction: masks don't work, but save them for health workers. You may say that's a noble lie, but it destroys credibility and covers for the fact officials failed to prepare for the known threat of pandemics.

benjohnson 6y ago
Yep.. now people to can say "They" don't wan't you to know the truth.
- mcguire 6y ago
  There was an article on the front page yesterday about the retraction of one of the hydroxychloroquine papers; all of the comments on the original article were of the "they don't want you to know the truth" sort. You cannot win against true believers.
  - Will_Parker 6y ago
    > You cannot win against true believers I'm a true believer in the drug's seventy year safety record when given as a prophylactic for malaria prevention millions of times and over the counter in many places.
    - Hnrobert42 6y ago
      I think you are missing the point.
whoisjuan 6y ago
Free flow of information is not the same as misinformation. Lack of understanding is not the same as misinforming. I 100% support restricting distribution of material that is based on conjecture and bullshit info. Especially when that information comes with a for-profit motive. This person can easily put their book for free on their own website if they really feel they have important information to share. Amazon can decide what goes on their platform. It always baffles me that people think that free speech comes with a right to have an audience. That's not what free speech is.
- zepto 6y ago
  ‘who decides what is bullshit’ Is the usual problem with this.
  - lol139189 6y ago
    It's not really a problem - obviously, the hacker news hive mind (aka those of you who don't get shut down by mr. dang) decides what's bullshit.
  - whoisjuan 6y ago
    Well, with ideas like the one that claims COVID is spread to 5G networks, it's pretty easy to draw the line. But I get what you're saying. The closer you get to a rational argument the harder it is to scrutinize it.
    - lol139189 6y ago
      Oh, go lie down in a fucking ditch, you censorship-hungry cunt. It's only easy to draw the line because you think you're the one who gets to do it.
    - offmycloud 6y ago
      Can you please provide a quote from the book in question?
      - Dylan16807 6y ago
        That comment isn't about the book in question so I'm not sure why you're asking them?
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    I don't buy the argument that bullshit exists on a perpetually grey gradient. There are things that are clearly bullshit.
    - 6y ago
GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
In the history books, having a printing press was expensive and only a few large organizations could publish books. Now I can write a politics book with GPT2 and upload it to Amazon and it'll be listed alongside New York Times Best Sellers. There were plenty of official non-American organizations saying that masks worked, they had years of peer reviewed studies to back their claims up. I don't think these books are upheld to the same rigor.
irq11 6y ago
”Remember what the official word was...masks don’t work, but save them for health workers.” Three things: One, nobody’s recommendations have changed with regard to “saving” masks: you should not be using medical-grade equipment, such as N95 masks or surgical masks. There is a shortage, and hospitals need it more. Two, the CDC changed recommendations. The WHO still says they’re necessary only if you’re sick or caring for someone who is sick. Recommendations vary wildly by country, and there is far from consensus. Three, the science is far from clear on the effectiveness of masks for the general public. At this point, it’s become more religion than science: https://www.oralhealthgroup.com/features/face-masks-dont-work-revealing-review/ https://www.oralhealthgroup.com/features/face-masks-dont-wor... https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/commentary-masks-all-covid-19-not-based-sound-data https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/commenta... (pre-emptive rebuttal: the WHO report which came out last week was a meta-review, and was very clear that there is no significant evidence supporting the use of non-medical masks for the general public. The review freely mixed source-control and PPE studies, which is questionable, at best. It showed that there may be a small effect if people wear medical equipment...the effect was actually about the same as for eye protection. The only new papers with new, non-review data on masks since the beginning of the year are Leung, et al., which was statistically insignificant for all but one experiment, which was barely significant, and based on <10 data points. The other paper was about separating cages of hamsters with surgical mask material, which while interesting, is not a paper about masks.)
wwweston 6y ago
> Remember what the official word was for all too long: masks don't work, but save them for health workers. Who said masks don't work? What I recall people saying is: * most masks provide marginal protection to the wearer * the masks that provide effective protection should be saved for those in situations where they need them (and can be knowledgeably used) * most people probably don't need those masks There's a worthwhile criticism in noting some seem to have taken longer to get on board with the idea that marginally effective masks (a) reduce spread and (b) are a low-cost intervention, but people who are going to make that criticism probably should doing it from a standpoint where they're asking themselves why they flattened the above multi-point conception into "masks don't work." And if this is all about using the initial misunderstanding as a jumping off point to the difficulty of getting non-trivial information out to the public, that actually underscores the importance of curation. > Does no one read history or think about second order effects? Are you suggesting that this is the milestone of history where someone decided not to publish or distribute material because they thought it was irresponsible? Because I'd bet that's happened before, even inside societies that cultivate robust discourse. Maybe even a lot. Who is thinking about the second order effects of a no-responsibility no-curation approach?
- dahdum 6y ago
  Asymptomatic spread was confirmed as significant the end of Feb when they tested the cruise passengers, and most of Asia already had some form of mandatory mask order in place. Widespread mask usage was shown in at least a few NIH studies to reduce transmission, though most looked at getting a virus versus transmitting it IIRC. To me it looks like CDC/WHO hubris caused them to completely disregard Asia's approach until they could "discover" it themselves.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  The US Surgeon General: https://twitter.com/surgeon_general/status/1233725785283932160 https://twitter.com/surgeon_general/status/12337257852839321... "Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus..."
  - 6y ago
GloriousKoji 6y ago
This isn't censorship. Are we going to get mad at a children's book store refusing to carry explicit adult literature? Amazon has put in place publicly know and clearly defined policies for a specific and unique situation. This is not a slippery slope. The second they step out of that boundary there will be severe backlash.
- jcims 6y ago
  Unless it's for another good reason.
  - soganess 6y ago
    There is always another good reason.
- djsumdog 6y ago
  This is a journalist with credentials with a fully sourced and referenced book. It is censorship because of Amazon's absolutely dominance over the market. Their marketshare means they literally control the medium for the majority of people in this world who read e-books. You can say the same thing about Google/Youtube: it's their platform, but when 90% of people in the world go there first for videos, any removal does turn into censorship. Yes, we should all be running our own peer-tube instances and authors running their own sites to distribute DRM free books, but until we actually get there (and we won't because people are sheep and don't like putting in effort when so much is in front of them on their 1984 distraction device), then Google, Amazon and others will continue to be The Ministry of Truth. I wrote about this in 2017: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/the-new-era-of-corporate-censorship/ https://battlepenguin.com/politics/the-new-era-of-corporate-...
  - JackFr 6y ago
    Anyone can sell the book themselves. Routinely you will see people on HN self publishing technical titles on Leanpub etc. No one is shouting them down or deplatforming them. Amazon is a private company and they can sell what they want. That seems to bother you, because of a de facto monopoly they hold, but that is beside the point. Why do you think it is an author’s right to have any third party sell their book?
pret 6y ago
It's not censorship you can buy the book if you want too just not from amazon. It's like your german jewish bookstore didn't want to feature "Mein Kampf", until the Reichskristallnacht they had every right to do so and so does now amazon.
zarkov99 6y ago
Also, go ahead and celebrate Chinese New Year in NY. Nothing to fear.
throwawy990 6y ago
Been thinking about this for a couple hours. Decided to make a throwaway to post. Not to call you out specifically but you asked about thinking about second order effects. It got me to thinking this is a hypocritical for social media users to question OTHERS inability to consider them. The machines Ycom and often this audience rely on, the energy, are terribly destructive to a stable environment for humans. And the obvious distraction they create from government. It’s unwise, imo, to be so distracted from the groups that claim monopoly on violence. All the looking away these last decades lead us here. This isn’t a spontaneous result. You, we, as part of society didn’t bring that effort we brought this other one. Utilitarian work is one thing. Surrounding ourselves with hyperbole, spectacle, and disposable gadgets and effort... ...contemporary society has pretty much destroyed its credibility with noble lies about the mess, value of our effort to future. What a shock the power structure itself would behave just like society as a whole. Considering the national past time is “not my economics problem so I don’t care”, what real credibility is there?

by Reedx 6y ago

benjohnson 6y ago

Yep.. now people to can say "They" don't wan't you to know the truth.

mcguire 6y ago
There was an article on the front page yesterday about the retraction of one of the hydroxychloroquine papers; all of the comments on the original article were of the "they don't want you to know the truth" sort. You cannot win against true believers.
- Will_Parker 6y ago
  > You cannot win against true believers I'm a true believer in the drug's seventy year safety record when given as a prophylactic for malaria prevention millions of times and over the counter in many places.
  - Hnrobert42 6y ago
    I think you are missing the point.

whoisjuan 6y ago

Free flow of information is not the same as misinformation. Lack of understanding is not the same as misinforming. I 100% support restricting distribution of material that is based on conjecture and bullshit info. Especially when that information comes with a for-profit motive. This person can easily put their book for free on their own website if they really feel they have important information to share. Amazon can decide what goes on their platform. It always baffles me that people think that free speech comes with a right to have an audience. That's not what free speech is.

zepto 6y ago
‘who decides what is bullshit’ Is the usual problem with this.
- lol139189 6y ago
  It's not really a problem - obviously, the hacker news hive mind (aka those of you who don't get shut down by mr. dang) decides what's bullshit.
- whoisjuan 6y ago
  Well, with ideas like the one that claims COVID is spread to 5G networks, it's pretty easy to draw the line. But I get what you're saying. The closer you get to a rational argument the harder it is to scrutinize it.
  - lol139189 6y ago
    Oh, go lie down in a fucking ditch, you censorship-hungry cunt. It's only easy to draw the line because you think you're the one who gets to do it.
  - offmycloud 6y ago
    Can you please provide a quote from the book in question?
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      That comment isn't about the book in question so I'm not sure why you're asking them?
- reaperducer 6y ago
  I don't buy the argument that bullshit exists on a perpetually grey gradient. There are things that are clearly bullshit.
  - 6y ago

GaryNumanVevo 6y ago

In the history books, having a printing press was expensive and only a few large organizations could publish books. Now I can write a politics book with GPT2 and upload it to Amazon and it'll be listed alongside New York Times Best Sellers. There were plenty of official non-American organizations saying that masks worked, they had years of peer reviewed studies to back their claims up. I don't think these books are upheld to the same rigor.

irq11 6y ago

”Remember what the official word was...masks don’t work, but save them for health workers.” Three things: One, nobody’s recommendations have changed with regard to “saving” masks: you should not be using medical-grade equipment, such as N95 masks or surgical masks. There is a shortage, and hospitals need it more. Two, the CDC changed recommendations. The WHO still says they’re necessary only if you’re sick or caring for someone who is sick. Recommendations vary wildly by country, and there is far from consensus. Three, the science is far from clear on the effectiveness of masks for the general public. At this point, it’s become more religion than science: https://www.oralhealthgroup.com/features/face-masks-dont-work-revealing-review/ https://www.oralhealthgroup.com/features/face-masks-dont-wor... https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/commentary-masks-all-covid-19-not-based-sound-data https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/commenta... (pre-emptive rebuttal: the WHO report which came out last week was a meta-review, and was very clear that there is no significant evidence supporting the use of non-medical masks for the general public. The review freely mixed source-control and PPE studies, which is questionable, at best. It showed that there may be a small effect if people wear medical equipment...the effect was actually about the same as for eye protection. The only new papers with new, non-review data on masks since the beginning of the year are Leung, et al., which was statistically insignificant for all but one experiment, which was barely significant, and based on <10 data points. The other paper was about separating cages of hamsters with surgical mask material, which while interesting, is not a paper about masks.)

wwweston 6y ago

> Remember what the official word was for all too long: masks don't work, but save them for health workers. Who said masks don't work? What I recall people saying is: * most masks provide marginal protection to the wearer * the masks that provide effective protection should be saved for those in situations where they need them (and can be knowledgeably used) * most people probably don't need those masks There's a worthwhile criticism in noting some seem to have taken longer to get on board with the idea that marginally effective masks (a) reduce spread and (b) are a low-cost intervention, but people who are going to make that criticism probably should doing it from a standpoint where they're asking themselves why they flattened the above multi-point conception into "masks don't work." And if this is all about using the initial misunderstanding as a jumping off point to the difficulty of getting non-trivial information out to the public, that actually underscores the importance of curation. > Does no one read history or think about second order effects? Are you suggesting that this is the milestone of history where someone decided not to publish or distribute material because they thought it was irresponsible? Because I'd bet that's happened before, even inside societies that cultivate robust discourse. Maybe even a lot. Who is thinking about the second order effects of a no-responsibility no-curation approach?

dahdum 6y ago
Asymptomatic spread was confirmed as significant the end of Feb when they tested the cruise passengers, and most of Asia already had some form of mandatory mask order in place. Widespread mask usage was shown in at least a few NIH studies to reduce transmission, though most looked at getting a virus versus transmitting it IIRC. To me it looks like CDC/WHO hubris caused them to completely disregard Asia's approach until they could "discover" it themselves.
ceejayoz 6y ago
The US Surgeon General: https://twitter.com/surgeon_general/status/1233725785283932160 https://twitter.com/surgeon_general/status/12337257852839321... "Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus..."
- 6y ago

GloriousKoji 6y ago

This isn't censorship. Are we going to get mad at a children's book store refusing to carry explicit adult literature? Amazon has put in place publicly know and clearly defined policies for a specific and unique situation. This is not a slippery slope. The second they step out of that boundary there will be severe backlash.

jcims 6y ago
Unless it's for another good reason.
- soganess 6y ago
  There is always another good reason.
djsumdog 6y ago
This is a journalist with credentials with a fully sourced and referenced book. It is censorship because of Amazon's absolutely dominance over the market. Their marketshare means they literally control the medium for the majority of people in this world who read e-books. You can say the same thing about Google/Youtube: it's their platform, but when 90% of people in the world go there first for videos, any removal does turn into censorship. Yes, we should all be running our own peer-tube instances and authors running their own sites to distribute DRM free books, but until we actually get there (and we won't because people are sheep and don't like putting in effort when so much is in front of them on their 1984 distraction device), then Google, Amazon and others will continue to be The Ministry of Truth. I wrote about this in 2017: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/the-new-era-of-corporate-censorship/ https://battlepenguin.com/politics/the-new-era-of-corporate-...
- JackFr 6y ago
  Anyone can sell the book themselves. Routinely you will see people on HN self publishing technical titles on Leanpub etc. No one is shouting them down or deplatforming them. Amazon is a private company and they can sell what they want. That seems to bother you, because of a de facto monopoly they hold, but that is beside the point. Why do you think it is an author’s right to have any third party sell their book?

pret 6y ago

It's not censorship you can buy the book if you want too just not from amazon. It's like your german jewish bookstore didn't want to feature "Mein Kampf", until the Reichskristallnacht they had every right to do so and so does now amazon.

zarkov99 6y ago

Also, go ahead and celebrate Chinese New Year in NY. Nothing to fear.

throwawy990 6y ago

Been thinking about this for a couple hours. Decided to make a throwaway to post. Not to call you out specifically but you asked about thinking about second order effects. It got me to thinking this is a hypocritical for social media users to question OTHERS inability to consider them. The machines Ycom and often this audience rely on, the energy, are terribly destructive to a stable environment for humans. And the obvious distraction they create from government. It’s unwise, imo, to be so distracted from the groups that claim monopoly on violence. All the looking away these last decades lead us here. This isn’t a spontaneous result. You, we, as part of society didn’t bring that effort we brought this other one. Utilitarian work is one thing. Surrounding ourselves with hyperbole, spectacle, and disposable gadgets and effort... ...contemporary society has pretty much destroyed its credibility with noble lies about the mess, value of our effort to future. What a shock the power structure itself would behave just like society as a whole. Considering the national past time is “not my economics problem so I don’t care”, what real credibility is there?