4 ms·

At what point to we discern fact from fiction? We're currently discussing this issue on a site that caters to the tech community, an industry and culture based

At what point to we discern fact from fiction? We're currently discussing this issue on a site that caters to the tech community, an industry and culture based on solid science and facts. I doubt anyone in the industry would argue unsubstantiated fanciful opinions stand on equal ground as the established and proven scientific facts that underlie everything we do in stark terms. If we did, we would get nowhere. Why would this principle not apply to anything else? Yes of course there are no shortage of divergent opinions and theories within our science and any other science for that matter. Questioning withing reason leads to innovation but there is no valid argument to be made that any opinion is equal to established facts and should be treated as such. Our industry and culture would simply not exist if that were the case or any other science. Should the wild opinions of people who think the Earth is flat hold the same scientific weight as millennia of established and proven math, science and observation? Our opinions of reality do not change reality. I'm sorry, your assertion only tries to poison the well by arguing emotion and unsupported opinions somehow carries equal weight to established and provable truths. The arbitrator of truth is reality.

nec4b 6y ago
Why does it bother you so much if somebody believes in flat earth? And why do you want to prevent them to discuss their silly theories? Are you so insecure in your own knowledge? A bunch of people believing in flat earth does not diminish our science in any way.
- 542354234235 6y ago
  Beliefs inform actions. I believe the building I am in is not on fire and I am conducting myself accordingly. If I believed the building was on fire, my actions would be quite different. It is naïve at best, disingenuous at worst, to pretend that someone’s beliefs exist in some magic bubble that does not have any effect on the world around them. When people believed in witchcraft, real people were burned. Even before the pandemic, people that did not believe in the science supporting vaccinations led to real outbreaks of real disease that killed real people.
  - nec4b 6y ago
    I believe procrastinating on HN makes me less productive and here I am still procrastinating. I'm not acting on my own belief. And yes beliefs do mostly exist in "magic bubbles" without any special impact on the world at large. I hope you realize a lot of people have also died because of unscientific beliefs that seemed scientific at the time. The idea of censoring of wrongthink is nothing new. There are still many countries today which still practice such policies and I don't think you'd want to live in such places.
    - 542354234235 6y ago
      > And yes beliefs do mostly exist in "magic bubbles" without any special impact on the world at large. > I hope you realize a lot of people have also died because of unscientific beliefs that seemed scientific at the time. “Beliefs mostly don’t effect the world…people are dead because of false beliefs” Which is it? What people believe mostly doesn’t matter, or people’s incorrect beliefs have been life or death matters often? > I believe procrastinating on HN makes me less productive and here I am still procrastinating. I'm not acting on my own belief You are acting on it by talking about it to other people. But good job picking a belief so low stakes that you can try to pretend that your beliefs that are literally your map of the world, don’t determine how you act in the world. > The idea of censoring of wrongthink is nothing new. Neither I nor the parent comment talked about that. Just that what people believe is important and has real world ramifications. It isn’t being “insecure” in my science to worry about people that think physics isn’t real, or vaccines aren’t real, or that killing someone that doesn’t believe in their god is required, or people with certain skin colors are biologically predisposed to violence, or that there is a vast global conspiracy going back hundreds of years to trick people about the shape of the earth.
      - nec4b 6y ago
        If majority of humans acted upon majority of their beliefs, the humanity would have destroyed itself several times over. You cannot have good ideas without bad ones. How would you learn anything otherwise. I don't know what are you talking about then if not about censorship? Are you only asserting: bad people do bad things? I don't know why, but it seems that of all the silly ideas out there, flat-earthers have a special place in the minds of some people here on HN, since they are brought up so many times.
- ModernMech 6y ago
  The problem isn't that some people believe the Earth is flat. The problem is that it's no longer disqualifying. If one person believes the Earth is flat, that's not an issue. The problem is that much of the country has organized itself into information bubbles. Those bubbles can be large enough to span entire congressional districts and even entire states. Those states elect representatives and senators. These days, the Senate and House can be split by a single vote on some issues. We live in a world where there's a very real possibility that a state will elect someone to office who believes things as wild as "the Earth is flat" and they will be the deciding voice on critical issues facing us today.
- kaba0 6y ago
  Believing that the Earth is flat is mostly harmless. Believing that vaccines cause autism, that covid is a hoax, etc is actively harmful to society and actually kills people (more often then not not the one who believe it in the first place).
tim333 6y ago
The assertion >True balance by taking account of both sides will include rebuttals of the sides against the other side. isn't the same and giving both equal weight. With stuff like flat earth it's quite easy to rebut for example.
belorn 6y ago
Flat earth conspiracies has not poisoned any well. When Mythbusters tested some of the theories we also gained as society a bit by showing the scientific process in the face of conspiracy theories. A corner stone in science, which goes far back in history, is trust. In order to understand anything we have to put trust in established facts, in experts and common understanding. Part of building science is building trust, and censorship has a strong negative impact on trust. If we go back to the analogy of poisoning the well of knowledge, censorship destroys people trust in the water itself. To take an example of why this new Youtube policy might be problematic, could we still have a video about the risk in Postal voting? In the UK election in 1990, it was estimated that 50% of postal voting arriving from Ireland was fraudulent. Trust in the voting system was at an all time low. As a response the voting system was changed and identification became a requirement in order to vote. Trust in the election system went massively up, and suspicion of fraud went down. A decade later the UK government removed some parts of the requirements, but for Ireland the requirement still remain today. Should an opinion that the US could learn from the UK past experience with postal votes and voter trust be censored, or would it poison the ability to discern fact from fiction?
- adamsea 6y ago
  What if the President of the United States suddenly started supporting flat earthers? I think suddenly then they would be able to poison the well. Science is a bad example because the process of science can be quantified. We can argue about it but basically can quantify what is or isn’t a valid scientific experiment. This creates a “good faith” environment because everyone has to play by the same rules. Outside of science this is harder to achieve. If one side argues in bad faith, they can just keep making shit up or doing things to undermine the discourse itself, like talk over someone else or bully them. Freedom of speech kind of both depends on and is in conflict with culturally enforced norms and restrictions around who is able to say what when, and how loud. Bear in mind that when our classic idea of free speech was developed, it was simply assumed by most that it would be white, propertied men doing the talking. Point being there are assumptions behind these conceptions with are important to consider. Most of us don’t want white, properties dudes to be the only ones talking, but no one who cared about any form of democracy or equality would want to hang out in a town square where everyone is just yelling all the time and beating up other people so they can be the only one talking. Restriction per se isn’t bad. It’s all about how it’s done, and why. What we are seeing now is a shifting both of cultural norms and the infrastructure of our media environment which means that “free speech” no longer has some of the constraints and restrictions which enabled it to perform the truth-seeking function we desire it to.

nec4b 6y ago

Why does it bother you so much if somebody believes in flat earth? And why do you want to prevent them to discuss their silly theories? Are you so insecure in your own knowledge? A bunch of people believing in flat earth does not diminish our science in any way.

542354234235 6y ago
Beliefs inform actions. I believe the building I am in is not on fire and I am conducting myself accordingly. If I believed the building was on fire, my actions would be quite different. It is naïve at best, disingenuous at worst, to pretend that someone’s beliefs exist in some magic bubble that does not have any effect on the world around them. When people believed in witchcraft, real people were burned. Even before the pandemic, people that did not believe in the science supporting vaccinations led to real outbreaks of real disease that killed real people.
- nec4b 6y ago
  I believe procrastinating on HN makes me less productive and here I am still procrastinating. I'm not acting on my own belief. And yes beliefs do mostly exist in "magic bubbles" without any special impact on the world at large. I hope you realize a lot of people have also died because of unscientific beliefs that seemed scientific at the time. The idea of censoring of wrongthink is nothing new. There are still many countries today which still practice such policies and I don't think you'd want to live in such places.
  - 542354234235 6y ago
    > And yes beliefs do mostly exist in "magic bubbles" without any special impact on the world at large. > I hope you realize a lot of people have also died because of unscientific beliefs that seemed scientific at the time. “Beliefs mostly don’t effect the world…people are dead because of false beliefs” Which is it? What people believe mostly doesn’t matter, or people’s incorrect beliefs have been life or death matters often? > I believe procrastinating on HN makes me less productive and here I am still procrastinating. I'm not acting on my own belief You are acting on it by talking about it to other people. But good job picking a belief so low stakes that you can try to pretend that your beliefs that are literally your map of the world, don’t determine how you act in the world. > The idea of censoring of wrongthink is nothing new. Neither I nor the parent comment talked about that. Just that what people believe is important and has real world ramifications. It isn’t being “insecure” in my science to worry about people that think physics isn’t real, or vaccines aren’t real, or that killing someone that doesn’t believe in their god is required, or people with certain skin colors are biologically predisposed to violence, or that there is a vast global conspiracy going back hundreds of years to trick people about the shape of the earth.
    - nec4b 6y ago
      If majority of humans acted upon majority of their beliefs, the humanity would have destroyed itself several times over. You cannot have good ideas without bad ones. How would you learn anything otherwise. I don't know what are you talking about then if not about censorship? Are you only asserting: bad people do bad things? I don't know why, but it seems that of all the silly ideas out there, flat-earthers have a special place in the minds of some people here on HN, since they are brought up so many times.
ModernMech 6y ago
The problem isn't that some people believe the Earth is flat. The problem is that it's no longer disqualifying. If one person believes the Earth is flat, that's not an issue. The problem is that much of the country has organized itself into information bubbles. Those bubbles can be large enough to span entire congressional districts and even entire states. Those states elect representatives and senators. These days, the Senate and House can be split by a single vote on some issues. We live in a world where there's a very real possibility that a state will elect someone to office who believes things as wild as "the Earth is flat" and they will be the deciding voice on critical issues facing us today.
kaba0 6y ago
Believing that the Earth is flat is mostly harmless. Believing that vaccines cause autism, that covid is a hoax, etc is actively harmful to society and actually kills people (more often then not not the one who believe it in the first place).

tim333 6y ago

The assertion >True balance by taking account of both sides will include rebuttals of the sides against the other side. isn't the same and giving both equal weight. With stuff like flat earth it's quite easy to rebut for example.

belorn 6y ago

Flat earth conspiracies has not poisoned any well. When Mythbusters tested some of the theories we also gained as society a bit by showing the scientific process in the face of conspiracy theories. A corner stone in science, which goes far back in history, is trust. In order to understand anything we have to put trust in established facts, in experts and common understanding. Part of building science is building trust, and censorship has a strong negative impact on trust. If we go back to the analogy of poisoning the well of knowledge, censorship destroys people trust in the water itself. To take an example of why this new Youtube policy might be problematic, could we still have a video about the risk in Postal voting? In the UK election in 1990, it was estimated that 50% of postal voting arriving from Ireland was fraudulent. Trust in the voting system was at an all time low. As a response the voting system was changed and identification became a requirement in order to vote. Trust in the election system went massively up, and suspicion of fraud went down. A decade later the UK government removed some parts of the requirements, but for Ireland the requirement still remain today. Should an opinion that the US could learn from the UK past experience with postal votes and voter trust be censored, or would it poison the ability to discern fact from fiction?

adamsea 6y ago
What if the President of the United States suddenly started supporting flat earthers? I think suddenly then they would be able to poison the well. Science is a bad example because the process of science can be quantified. We can argue about it but basically can quantify what is or isn’t a valid scientific experiment. This creates a “good faith” environment because everyone has to play by the same rules. Outside of science this is harder to achieve. If one side argues in bad faith, they can just keep making shit up or doing things to undermine the discourse itself, like talk over someone else or bully them. Freedom of speech kind of both depends on and is in conflict with culturally enforced norms and restrictions around who is able to say what when, and how loud. Bear in mind that when our classic idea of free speech was developed, it was simply assumed by most that it would be white, propertied men doing the talking. Point being there are assumptions behind these conceptions with are important to consider. Most of us don’t want white, properties dudes to be the only ones talking, but no one who cared about any form of democracy or equality would want to hang out in a town square where everyone is just yelling all the time and beating up other people so they can be the only one talking. Restriction per se isn’t bad. It’s all about how it’s done, and why. What we are seeing now is a shifting both of cultural norms and the infrastructure of our media environment which means that “free speech” no longer has some of the constraints and restrictions which enabled it to perform the truth-seeking function we desire it to.