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I understand what you're saying, but I think there's some "both sides"-ism at play here. Yes, there is a level of scientific ignorance displayed when people ha

I understand what you're saying, but I think there's some "both sides"-ism at play here. Yes, there is a level of scientific ignorance displayed when people hand wave and claim "the science" is on their side without actually understanding the science. However, there is a huge qualitative difference here, illustrated even by your example of quarantine recommendations. If we approximate an answer to "What is the optimal quarantine strategy?" through the combined efforts of various sciences--statistics, biology, etc--then while the results are not guaranteed, the recommendation is certainly not unfounded. It may be incomplete, but it is built off of decades of empirical evidence. Conversely, outright ignoring recommendations about COVID or climate or something similar, simply because "science isn't always right" or because you "aren't a scientist" is a different thing altogether.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bjt2n3904 6y ago
> outright ignoring recommendations Have you ever wondered why it's not terribly controversial to "recommend" seat belts and airbags? But when your "recommendation" is to join a large organization and funnel millions of dollars into it, or to levy massive taxes to prevent "the end of the world as we know it"? Pardon me, but I'm deeply skeptical. Do you remember Solyndra? $500 million loan from the government. Went bankrupt. I will not accept this straw man re-framing of the issue. Yes, "some people" say "but science isn't always right", and that is a poor argument indeed. But I am not.
- ghaff 6y ago
  >why it's not terribly controversial to "recommend" seat belts Yet this was not always the case. Growing up wearing seatbelts was the exception, not the norm. Much less the law in some places.
  - bjt2n3904 6y ago
    Yes, and I remember having discussions on whether airbags caused more injuries than they prevented! But the fact of the matter is the issue is largely settled in the public eye. How did we get here? The answer is simple. The approach was a dispassionate search for the best solution. There were no "scientists" claiming hyperbolic doomsday scenarios if we didn't pass specific legislation by a certain date. The collapse of our transportation infrastructure due to Kessler Syndrome -- but for highways. This should cause any rational person to be skeptical. There were no fund raising rallies held by highly influential "scientists" who refused to wear seat belts themselves. This too, should cause any rational person to be skeptical. People did not start with a chosen solution, and selected evidence to back it. They started with evidence, and searched for the best solution. In effect? Seatbelts and airbags weren't a cargo cult driven by celebrity "scientists" that relied on emotional appeal. If you want your politicians to "listen" to "science", then you must divest the emotions, the desire for power, and the appeal to authority from it.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      I assume it was a combination of incremental laws and public safety campaigns. It's also true that, in the US and I assume many other countries, there's been a general and incremental shift towards safer behaviors and products of which airbags and seatbelts are just two examples. Increasing automobile safety even at increased cost, etc. wasn't exactly swimming against the tide.
- zaarn 6y ago
  When seatbelts were introduced, there was indeed a number of people opposed to it and just like with COVID19, claiming it infringed on their rights and refusing to wear seatbelts out of spite. The reason it's not controversial nowadays is because it's (almost) universally accepted as a good idea (though people do buy fake seatbelt plugs to disable the alarms)
mistermann 6y ago
> I understand what you're saying, but I think there's some "both sides"-ism at play here. Why do these conversations "always" go like this, even on a site as rational as HN? If we can't even discuss these very real issues here without rhetoric, how do we expect politicians and the masses (and here I include literal deniers) to do so? Because that is what we are asking of them, is it not? To stop being stupid (which they are doing, to a very large degree), and to start being rational? Also: why is an article as reasonable as this [flagged] (and therefore removed from the public discourse here)? We ask others to stop living in an information bubble, yet are we willing to do so ourselves? Might this flagging (of which this is but one of who knows how many instances - HN users shall not know such things) hint at some underlying human characteristic that is a root cause of why we cannot have nice things? Obviously speculative, but it seems reasonable to me.
- Balgair 6y ago
  > even on a site as rational as HN? This site is made up of people, just like all the other sites out there. As a group, HN is no more or less susceptible to biases and irrationality than any other group of people or any other website. Our starting lemma should be that we are flawed, not that we are inherently less flawed. Acknowledging our biases and irrationalities is the first step toward overcoming them.
  - mistermann 6y ago
    > This site is made up of people, just like all the other sites out there. As a group, HN is no more or less susceptible to biases and irrationality than any other group of people or any other website. From a binary perspective, agreed. From this non-comprehensive perspective, you are correct. But the reality here is more complex than a binary. From a continuum perspective, is it actually correct that HN is "just like all the other sites out there", that they are "no more or less susceptible to biases and irrationality than any other group of people or any other website"? This level of precise consistency across any arbitrary grouping of people seems rather unlikely to occur in reality, and if it was like this, you'd think someone would have noticed it. Also, this take on it seems rather contrary to my "feel" for the aggregate self-evaluation that the individuals members of this community have voiced. I'm fine with either one, but perhaps it might be useful for us to decide on which it is. If you think about it, if superior rationality is literally impossible, then are we not completely wasting our time on discussing where flaws exist in society, and which groups need to be focused on and improved (which is a very common topic of conversation around here)? If nothing can be done, why do we not just abandon the entire topic of improving the world and devote the remainder of our short lives to enjoying ourselves?
thu2111 6y ago
Conversely, outright ignoring recommendations about COVID or climate or something similar, simply because "science isn't always right" or because you "aren't a scientist" is a different thing altogether. Isn't that a strawman though? How many people actually give an answer like "science isn't always right" when choosing to ignore recommendations about COVID? Perhaps it's the circles I move in, but most people who think COVID recommendations are junk (which doesn't mean they don't follow them) can give far more reasoned and deep explanations for their views than the people they disagree with. Absolutely standard to get an answer like "because I trust the experts" (i.e. "I have no idea") from people who are the most passionately in favour of masks, lockdowns etc. You don't see that in reverse, because people disagreeing with authority by definition can't make an appeal to authority.
- Tainnor 6y ago
  This is not my experience at all. I've seen many people opposing masks and lockdowns due to dangerous half-knowledge and appealing to "that one doctor is also saying that the recommendations are junk (but they are shunned by the mainstream press)". Of course, we usually find our own reasoning valid and logical and tend to think that the other side can't give "reasoned and deep explanations". I can't claim to be unbiased here. I'll just note that, from a Bayesian perspective, "trusting experts" is usually not the worst idea and something we're basically forced to do every day anyway. I listen to quite a lot of what some of the experts way, but of course, I am completely unable to independently verify that what they say is valid - without decades of experience in the field, this is simply impossible.
  - thu2111 6y ago
    I think they're just using a different definition of "expert" to you. Your reply alludes to this; your definition of an expert involves whether journalists say they're experts. How would journalists know? Trusting experts is definitely a good policy from a Bayesian perspective given the dictionary definition of expert, i.e. "a person who is very knowledgeable about or skilful in a particular area" to quote Google's top result for the definition. The problem we have with COVID is the people journalists present to us as experts (invariably academics) keep saying incredibly dumb stuff that's totally wrong, and by now many of us have concluded these "experts" don't actually know any more about disease than the man on the street does. This is an inevitable problem with how academia is structured. Academics aren't financially rewarded for being correct, like private sector experts are. They're rewarded for writing things their peers find interesting. That's a totally different thing. We hope that being interesting and being correct are strongly correlated, but the replication crisis and general low standards observable in research papers are strong evidence they actually aren't. I am completely unable to independently verify that what they say is valid - without decades of experience in the field, this is simply impossible. The people you're disagreeing with also disagree about this. I've read a lot of epidemiology papers this year. The field is a joke: epidemiology is a piece of piss. The Gender Studies of medicine. It's just stats and some basic programming. I've not once had to look up any biology when reading these papers (microbiology being a genuinely hard field) because none of them use any. It's absolutely straightforward to find major, severe defects in these papers without decades of experience in this field. There's definitely a huge gulf in how difficult and deep different fields are, certainly, not all scientific endeavours are the same.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

bjt2n3904 6y ago

> outright ignoring recommendations Have you ever wondered why it's not terribly controversial to "recommend" seat belts and airbags? But when your "recommendation" is to join a large organization and funnel millions of dollars into it, or to levy massive taxes to prevent "the end of the world as we know it"? Pardon me, but I'm deeply skeptical. Do you remember Solyndra? $500 million loan from the government. Went bankrupt. I will not accept this straw man re-framing of the issue. Yes, "some people" say "but science isn't always right", and that is a poor argument indeed. But I am not.

ghaff 6y ago
>why it's not terribly controversial to "recommend" seat belts Yet this was not always the case. Growing up wearing seatbelts was the exception, not the norm. Much less the law in some places.
- bjt2n3904 6y ago
  Yes, and I remember having discussions on whether airbags caused more injuries than they prevented! But the fact of the matter is the issue is largely settled in the public eye. How did we get here? The answer is simple. The approach was a dispassionate search for the best solution. There were no "scientists" claiming hyperbolic doomsday scenarios if we didn't pass specific legislation by a certain date. The collapse of our transportation infrastructure due to Kessler Syndrome -- but for highways. This should cause any rational person to be skeptical. There were no fund raising rallies held by highly influential "scientists" who refused to wear seat belts themselves. This too, should cause any rational person to be skeptical. People did not start with a chosen solution, and selected evidence to back it. They started with evidence, and searched for the best solution. In effect? Seatbelts and airbags weren't a cargo cult driven by celebrity "scientists" that relied on emotional appeal. If you want your politicians to "listen" to "science", then you must divest the emotions, the desire for power, and the appeal to authority from it.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    I assume it was a combination of incremental laws and public safety campaigns. It's also true that, in the US and I assume many other countries, there's been a general and incremental shift towards safer behaviors and products of which airbags and seatbelts are just two examples. Increasing automobile safety even at increased cost, etc. wasn't exactly swimming against the tide.
zaarn 6y ago
When seatbelts were introduced, there was indeed a number of people opposed to it and just like with COVID19, claiming it infringed on their rights and refusing to wear seatbelts out of spite. The reason it's not controversial nowadays is because it's (almost) universally accepted as a good idea (though people do buy fake seatbelt plugs to disable the alarms)

mistermann 6y ago

> I understand what you're saying, but I think there's some "both sides"-ism at play here. Why do these conversations "always" go like this, even on a site as rational as HN? If we can't even discuss these very real issues here without rhetoric, how do we expect politicians and the masses (and here I include literal deniers) to do so? Because that is what we are asking of them, is it not? To stop being stupid (which they are doing, to a very large degree), and to start being rational? Also: why is an article as reasonable as this [flagged] (and therefore removed from the public discourse here)? We ask others to stop living in an information bubble, yet are we willing to do so ourselves? Might this flagging (of which this is but one of who knows how many instances - HN users shall not know such things) hint at some underlying human characteristic that is a root cause of why we cannot have nice things? Obviously speculative, but it seems reasonable to me.

Balgair 6y ago
> even on a site as rational as HN? This site is made up of people, just like all the other sites out there. As a group, HN is no more or less susceptible to biases and irrationality than any other group of people or any other website. Our starting lemma should be that we are flawed, not that we are inherently less flawed. Acknowledging our biases and irrationalities is the first step toward overcoming them.
- mistermann 6y ago
  > This site is made up of people, just like all the other sites out there. As a group, HN is no more or less susceptible to biases and irrationality than any other group of people or any other website. From a binary perspective, agreed. From this non-comprehensive perspective, you are correct. But the reality here is more complex than a binary. From a continuum perspective, is it actually correct that HN is "just like all the other sites out there", that they are "no more or less susceptible to biases and irrationality than any other group of people or any other website"? This level of precise consistency across any arbitrary grouping of people seems rather unlikely to occur in reality, and if it was like this, you'd think someone would have noticed it. Also, this take on it seems rather contrary to my "feel" for the aggregate self-evaluation that the individuals members of this community have voiced. I'm fine with either one, but perhaps it might be useful for us to decide on which it is. If you think about it, if superior rationality is literally impossible, then are we not completely wasting our time on discussing where flaws exist in society, and which groups need to be focused on and improved (which is a very common topic of conversation around here)? If nothing can be done, why do we not just abandon the entire topic of improving the world and devote the remainder of our short lives to enjoying ourselves?

thu2111 6y ago

Conversely, outright ignoring recommendations about COVID or climate or something similar, simply because "science isn't always right" or because you "aren't a scientist" is a different thing altogether. Isn't that a strawman though? How many people actually give an answer like "science isn't always right" when choosing to ignore recommendations about COVID? Perhaps it's the circles I move in, but most people who think COVID recommendations are junk (which doesn't mean they don't follow them) can give far more reasoned and deep explanations for their views than the people they disagree with. Absolutely standard to get an answer like "because I trust the experts" (i.e. "I have no idea") from people who are the most passionately in favour of masks, lockdowns etc. You don't see that in reverse, because people disagreeing with authority by definition can't make an appeal to authority.

Tainnor 6y ago
This is not my experience at all. I've seen many people opposing masks and lockdowns due to dangerous half-knowledge and appealing to "that one doctor is also saying that the recommendations are junk (but they are shunned by the mainstream press)". Of course, we usually find our own reasoning valid and logical and tend to think that the other side can't give "reasoned and deep explanations". I can't claim to be unbiased here. I'll just note that, from a Bayesian perspective, "trusting experts" is usually not the worst idea and something we're basically forced to do every day anyway. I listen to quite a lot of what some of the experts way, but of course, I am completely unable to independently verify that what they say is valid - without decades of experience in the field, this is simply impossible.
- thu2111 6y ago
  I think they're just using a different definition of "expert" to you. Your reply alludes to this; your definition of an expert involves whether journalists say they're experts. How would journalists know? Trusting experts is definitely a good policy from a Bayesian perspective given the dictionary definition of expert, i.e. "a person who is very knowledgeable about or skilful in a particular area" to quote Google's top result for the definition. The problem we have with COVID is the people journalists present to us as experts (invariably academics) keep saying incredibly dumb stuff that's totally wrong, and by now many of us have concluded these "experts" don't actually know any more about disease than the man on the street does. This is an inevitable problem with how academia is structured. Academics aren't financially rewarded for being correct, like private sector experts are. They're rewarded for writing things their peers find interesting. That's a totally different thing. We hope that being interesting and being correct are strongly correlated, but the replication crisis and general low standards observable in research papers are strong evidence they actually aren't. I am completely unable to independently verify that what they say is valid - without decades of experience in the field, this is simply impossible. The people you're disagreeing with also disagree about this. I've read a lot of epidemiology papers this year. The field is a joke: epidemiology is a piece of piss. The Gender Studies of medicine. It's just stats and some basic programming. I've not once had to look up any biology when reading these papers (microbiology being a genuinely hard field) because none of them use any. It's absolutely straightforward to find major, severe defects in these papers without decades of experience in this field. There's definitely a huge gulf in how difficult and deep different fields are, certainly, not all scientific endeavours are the same.