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Her earlier two related posts on metaepistemology were amazing as well: https://zeynep.substack.com/p/lessons-from-a-pandemic-anniversary https://zeynep.substa

Her earlier two related posts on metaepistemology were amazing as well: https://zeynep.substack.com/p/lessons-from-a-pandemic-anniversary https://zeynep.substack.com/p/lessons-from-a-pandemic-annive... https://zeynep.substack.com/p/critical-thinking-isnt-just-a-process https://zeynep.substack.com/p/critical-thinking-isnt-just-a-...

epistasis 6y ago
Zeynep is one of the best possible writers out there for a HN crowd, IMHO. Super intelligent, dives deep into the relevant data, and thinks things through.
- timr 6y ago
  You have to be careful with her writing. She overgeneralizes quite a bit, and conveys anecdotes as if they're definitive evidence. There's a lot of 20-20 hindsight bias going on. For example, this article is basically -- when you reduce it to non-redundant claims -- the opinions of a few people, and two examples: the diamond princess, and the Washington choir. The diamond princess is presented as if it were a definitive example of aerosol spread. But even Japanese experts were debating it at the time, as -- despite the implication of "lockdown" as used in the piece -- the people on the ship were still mingling on a regular basis to eat. It's simply misleading to present this as an obvious-at-the-time counterfactual. In fact, NHK did a whole documentary discussing it (no longer available [1]), and did this re-enactment to show how it might have happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGQEuuv9R6E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGQEuuv9R6E The debates about fomite transmission at the choir are simply dismissed as ridiculous by a single researcher -- an aerosol researcher who has been vocal since the beginning of the pandemic that aerosols are responsible. So you have to consider the source. He's entitled to his opinion, but others weren't gaslighting by having the temerity to disagree with him. There were actually legitimate scientific questions at play, and the opinion of a single person doesn't negate those questions, even if that person turns out to be right in retrospect. If I had to pick a broad "scientific" trend from the pandemic that disturbs me, it's the over-reliance on anecdote and canonizing of opinion. This seems very much like another example of that broader trend: taking opinions, cherry-picking the ones that look right in retrospect, and anointing those opinions as heroic, while all other opinions are somehow deliberately misleading. That isn't how science works. [1] https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/documentary/20200509/4001358/ https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/documentary/20200509/4...
  - oezi 6y ago
    Yes! I can clearly remember the early publications on how long the virus can survive on various surface types. In hindsight these might turn out to be not relevant, but if we consider that all public health guidances still emphasize hand washing, I think this really is a failure of science to perform the relevant experiments and ensure results are disseminated properly. With a lot of pieces of knowledge we got stuck and a follow-up never really happened. Seems as if our capacity for adding more information to a complex area is limited.
    - timr 6y ago
      Oh, 100% yes. So much of the stuff being tossed around as "fact", even today, is simply lore. Once something gets printed in the New York Times, people just believe it -- even "experts" who should really know better. But good science takes time, and opinions can be printed instantly, so here we are.
Sniffnoy 6y ago
Not clear to me why she refers to this as "metaepistemology" rather than just "epistemology". Seems to me the latter would fit fine.
- shalmanese 6y ago
  Metaepistomology is reasoning about the knowledge of other people in order to understand what is true.
  - Sniffnoy 6y ago
    That just sounds to me like a particular sort of epistemology, not a separate thing above it.

epistasis 6y ago

Zeynep is one of the best possible writers out there for a HN crowd, IMHO. Super intelligent, dives deep into the relevant data, and thinks things through.

timr 6y ago
You have to be careful with her writing. She overgeneralizes quite a bit, and conveys anecdotes as if they're definitive evidence. There's a lot of 20-20 hindsight bias going on. For example, this article is basically -- when you reduce it to non-redundant claims -- the opinions of a few people, and two examples: the diamond princess, and the Washington choir. The diamond princess is presented as if it were a definitive example of aerosol spread. But even Japanese experts were debating it at the time, as -- despite the implication of "lockdown" as used in the piece -- the people on the ship were still mingling on a regular basis to eat. It's simply misleading to present this as an obvious-at-the-time counterfactual. In fact, NHK did a whole documentary discussing it (no longer available [1]), and did this re-enactment to show how it might have happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGQEuuv9R6E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGQEuuv9R6E The debates about fomite transmission at the choir are simply dismissed as ridiculous by a single researcher -- an aerosol researcher who has been vocal since the beginning of the pandemic that aerosols are responsible. So you have to consider the source. He's entitled to his opinion, but others weren't gaslighting by having the temerity to disagree with him. There were actually legitimate scientific questions at play, and the opinion of a single person doesn't negate those questions, even if that person turns out to be right in retrospect. If I had to pick a broad "scientific" trend from the pandemic that disturbs me, it's the over-reliance on anecdote and canonizing of opinion. This seems very much like another example of that broader trend: taking opinions, cherry-picking the ones that look right in retrospect, and anointing those opinions as heroic, while all other opinions are somehow deliberately misleading. That isn't how science works. [1] https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/documentary/20200509/4001358/ https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/documentary/20200509/4...
- oezi 6y ago
  Yes! I can clearly remember the early publications on how long the virus can survive on various surface types. In hindsight these might turn out to be not relevant, but if we consider that all public health guidances still emphasize hand washing, I think this really is a failure of science to perform the relevant experiments and ensure results are disseminated properly. With a lot of pieces of knowledge we got stuck and a follow-up never really happened. Seems as if our capacity for adding more information to a complex area is limited.
  - timr 6y ago
    Oh, 100% yes. So much of the stuff being tossed around as "fact", even today, is simply lore. Once something gets printed in the New York Times, people just believe it -- even "experts" who should really know better. But good science takes time, and opinions can be printed instantly, so here we are.

Sniffnoy 6y ago

Not clear to me why she refers to this as "metaepistemology" rather than just "epistemology". Seems to me the latter would fit fine.

shalmanese 6y ago
Metaepistomology is reasoning about the knowledge of other people in order to understand what is true.
- Sniffnoy 6y ago
  That just sounds to me like a particular sort of epistemology, not a separate thing above it.