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> even getting COVID vaccines out to people because there's disinformation. During the last year, we have seen the following claims from public health authorit

> even getting COVID vaccines out to people because there's disinformation. During the last year, we have seen the following claims from public health authorities affiliated with well-regarded scientific institutions: - Vitamin D does nothing - Vitamin D helps - You should wear masks - Masks are not actually that helpful - The Trump attempts to stop travel from China are racist and terrible (Schumer, Pelosi) - We need to shut down most transportation and not just airports - We need to lockdown all non-essential businesses - Hollywood is an essential business, but churches and restaurants aren't - Lethality of COVID-19 is 2-5% - Lethality of COVID-19 is ~0.2-0.4% And just in the last couple days (highly coincidentally with no bearing at all to politics), there has been a flood of reports that Chicago, NY, and San Francisco are using to justify full openings of their economy. Those scientific reports say that the lockdowns are at best useless. At what point have the "experts" been right this year? Which of those things should we have labelled misinformation? Attempting to install a technocratic version of truth has never worked, and we should have the grace to allow "wrong" things to be said. The experts, so-called, have been inconsistent and wrong through this whole debacle.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
It's certainly not a good idea to identify anything that deviates from the public expert consensus as "misinformation", but that doesn't mean there isn't a problem of verifiably wrong claims spreading. For example, Chicago and San Francisco have not fully opened their economy. I'm skeptical that the resolution to this problem looks anything like "information control", but it seems terribly naive to expect the problem will resolve itself when it's so easy to be ensnared by it.
throwaway9980 6y ago
The grace to be wrong has been increasing replaced by some sort of fight or flight response to being challenged. It’s not wrong to say that there are life and death consequences w/r/t to the important issues. That said, the increasingly emotional response to that is detrimental to discourse. The more hysterical people become advocating their point of view, the more difficult it is to hear their arguments. When someone is extremely emotional it triggers a natural skepticism. Not because we think they are wrong per se, rather because we know that when we are emotionally distressed it is more difficult to be rational. Basically: everyone needs to calm down.
- abernard1 6y ago
  > The more hysterical people become advocating their point of view All the examples I provided have been very calmly, very thoroughly promulgated in popular, mainstream media. They're not a matter of my opinion (and my opinion on them was not stated). According to their own standards, the experts have been spreading misinformation this year. The same people saying one thing and then retracting a few months later.
- cle 6y ago
  This is a part of the positive feedback loop. People have isolated bubbles of sensational information, lots of little positive reinforcements for consuming it (social proof, widgets, dings and badges, etc), and it all feeds back into their personal and political identity. In terms of the drug analogy, telling someone to “calm down” is like telling a junkie to “just quit”. It’s not going to break the feedback loop.
zug_zug 6y ago
I think there's a very clear line between "Best guess" political policies with imperfect information and Q-anon.
h2odragon 6y ago
Another log for your fire: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/01/many-scientists-citing-two-scandalous-covid-19-papers-ignore-their-retractions https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/01/many-scientists-citi...
nemothekid 6y ago
Institutions and experts have always been inconsistent. Just look at nutrition science - we've gone from fats are bad, to no carbs are bad, to no wine is actually good. The expectation that the scientific community would find consensus on a novel virus in a matter of months is unreasonable. Personally I've taken @nntaleb reasoning on it - whether or not masks work with certainty is irrelevant; we have good enough data to suggest it works so we take the insurance and wear them. There is nothing wrong with a healthy amount of skepticism; and claims are often muddied through the low pass filter that is Twitter (ex. experts warned that singling out China was racist when American cases came from Italy; we needed far more policy than single out the Chinese). That said, there a mountainous gap between "we are unsure if masks work" to "the president is fighting an underground shadow cabal of pedophiles and blood drinkers." COVID deniers aren't suggesting we don't take vaccines because they are unsure of the effectiveness of vaccines - they are suggesting we don't take vaccines because they are actually microchips by Bill Gates designed to track us. There is a clear difference between misinformation and just plain being wrong - there's a difference between telling me LeBron James is going to win a championship next year and telling me LeBron is actually an alien from Mars who came here to trick us into watching basketball so they could steal all our water. If the President was wrong about LeBron James winning, he would be wrong. If the President was trying to convince me of the latter, then I think that is misinformation.
- joe_91 6y ago
  Some good points! I do think that most people are not used to how science can change over time and that what most science is is just what the majority of scientists have come to conclude from their independent studies. Most people have not had to deal with greys and prefer things to be black and white. We need a shift towards understanding that the best available information is better than nothing and that the information can change as more better information comes to light. Another thing we need to move away from is crucifying people for getting things wrong - this just doesn't help in the long run. People are fallible and make mistakes. Granted, don't let them make to many in a row but once in a while needs to be acceptable.
  - UncleOxidant 6y ago

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

It's certainly not a good idea to identify anything that deviates from the public expert consensus as "misinformation", but that doesn't mean there isn't a problem of verifiably wrong claims spreading. For example, Chicago and San Francisco have not fully opened their economy. I'm skeptical that the resolution to this problem looks anything like "information control", but it seems terribly naive to expect the problem will resolve itself when it's so easy to be ensnared by it.

throwaway9980 6y ago

The grace to be wrong has been increasing replaced by some sort of fight or flight response to being challenged. It’s not wrong to say that there are life and death consequences w/r/t to the important issues. That said, the increasingly emotional response to that is detrimental to discourse. The more hysterical people become advocating their point of view, the more difficult it is to hear their arguments. When someone is extremely emotional it triggers a natural skepticism. Not because we think they are wrong per se, rather because we know that when we are emotionally distressed it is more difficult to be rational. Basically: everyone needs to calm down.

abernard1 6y ago
> The more hysterical people become advocating their point of view All the examples I provided have been very calmly, very thoroughly promulgated in popular, mainstream media. They're not a matter of my opinion (and my opinion on them was not stated). According to their own standards, the experts have been spreading misinformation this year. The same people saying one thing and then retracting a few months later.
cle 6y ago
This is a part of the positive feedback loop. People have isolated bubbles of sensational information, lots of little positive reinforcements for consuming it (social proof, widgets, dings and badges, etc), and it all feeds back into their personal and political identity. In terms of the drug analogy, telling someone to “calm down” is like telling a junkie to “just quit”. It’s not going to break the feedback loop.

zug_zug 6y ago

I think there's a very clear line between "Best guess" political policies with imperfect information and Q-anon.

h2odragon 6y ago

Another log for your fire: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/01/many-scientists-citing-two-scandalous-covid-19-papers-ignore-their-retractions https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/01/many-scientists-citi...

nemothekid 6y ago

Institutions and experts have always been inconsistent. Just look at nutrition science - we've gone from fats are bad, to no carbs are bad, to no wine is actually good. The expectation that the scientific community would find consensus on a novel virus in a matter of months is unreasonable. Personally I've taken @nntaleb reasoning on it - whether or not masks work with certainty is irrelevant; we have good enough data to suggest it works so we take the insurance and wear them. There is nothing wrong with a healthy amount of skepticism; and claims are often muddied through the low pass filter that is Twitter (ex. experts warned that singling out China was racist when American cases came from Italy; we needed far more policy than single out the Chinese). That said, there a mountainous gap between "we are unsure if masks work" to "the president is fighting an underground shadow cabal of pedophiles and blood drinkers." COVID deniers aren't suggesting we don't take vaccines because they are unsure of the effectiveness of vaccines - they are suggesting we don't take vaccines because they are actually microchips by Bill Gates designed to track us. There is a clear difference between misinformation and just plain being wrong - there's a difference between telling me LeBron James is going to win a championship next year and telling me LeBron is actually an alien from Mars who came here to trick us into watching basketball so they could steal all our water. If the President was wrong about LeBron James winning, he would be wrong. If the President was trying to convince me of the latter, then I think that is misinformation.

joe_91 6y ago
Some good points! I do think that most people are not used to how science can change over time and that what most science is is just what the majority of scientists have come to conclude from their independent studies. Most people have not had to deal with greys and prefer things to be black and white. We need a shift towards understanding that the best available information is better than nothing and that the information can change as more better information comes to light. Another thing we need to move away from is crucifying people for getting things wrong - this just doesn't help in the long run. People are fallible and make mistakes. Granted, don't let them make to many in a row but once in a while needs to be acceptable.
- UncleOxidant 6y ago