10 ms·

> [...] lots of people see what looks like the "story changing", and distrust anything coming out of their government, [...]. Changing and updating our beliefs

by avz 5y ago

> [...] lots of people see what looks like the "story changing", and distrust anything coming out of their government, [...]. Changing and updating our beliefs as evidence comes in is a fundamental ability that underlies numerous activities from scientific research to debugging software to driving on a congested road network. Why is it a problem for public health officials to update and change policy as we learn more about the virus? Would it really be preferable if policy remained frozen to whatever people thought best on day one?

AwaAwa 5y ago
Changing your beliefs on the words of your "betters", under pressure, umpteen times is not conducive to trust. Perhaps if our masters in government had heeded the story of "the boy who cried wolf", then things might have been different.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
derekp7 5y ago
The problem is that the a large chunk of the population aren't scientist so they don't understand the principles of the scientific method. And they aren't software developers, they don't have the mindset for it. And have you seen the way many people drive? There is a reason why the term "defensive driving" was coined.
- GuB-42 5y ago
  I think a good understanding of the scientific method, skepticism and fact checking should be taught in school as early as possible. The only thing students get is material presented as the truth that they have to faithfully accept. They are almost never taught how to deal with unreliable material. It made sense in the pre-internet age where finding information was the hard part, but now, it is the opposite: too much information. So we should focus more on how to filter it. We had a "general knowledge" class in college and it was an important part of it. We had to make essays and presentations about random subjects and we were judged by our ability to synthesize and verify information. Copy-pasting was actually encouraged, and long as it was from a good source and presented in a way that isn't misleading. The unfortunate thing is that we should have done exercises like that in primary school and not wait until college.
  - mywittyname 5y ago
    > I think a good understanding of the scientific method, skepticism and fact checking should be taught in school as early as possible. It is taught in schools, and taught young. The people who understand the scientific method have been doing it every year since the sixth grade. They did science fair projects, etc. I just looked up modern educational standards, and kids are taught in grade six the scientific method and how to execute experiments using it. The problem is, lots of people suck at school. They didn't care about it and their parents didn't care about it, so they didn't retain anything. There are an awful lot of adults in society that couldn't pass a fifth grade math test.
    - tehwebguy 5y ago
      Yeah it was taught very strangely IMO in my schools. There was always such a goofy focus on the dumbest science fair projects that were probably just as likely to reach a completely wrong conclusion instead of relating the process to the real world and how we as a society continue to learn how the world works in any scenarios newer than Redi’s meat / maggots experiment from 1668!
- berkes 5y ago
  You don't need to be a scientist to acknowledge that knowledge evolves. You don't even need to follow a 'scientific method' for that. The ability to embrace uncertainty is hard to learn, but one that we all should strive for. One that should be praised and lauded. A politician, leader or CEO making a bad decision on a wrong premis, and publicly acknowledges the mistake (and learns from it), is now often end-of-career. This is toxic. Because such mistakes are a fact of life and the best teacher.
  - topranks 5y ago
    100% agree. I think the inability to accept uncertainty in the world is, unfortunately, a big reason conspiracies thrive. Too frightening to grok that a random virus can emerge and maybe kill us all or at least turn society upside down? There’s a conspiracy that makes it an easy “good guys vs. bad guys” story for you.
- ta988 5y ago
  I know scientists and software developpers that believe all kind of weird stories (I even knew one that believed in perpetual motion).
- wildmanx 5y ago
  Enrico Weigelt whom Linus responded to is at least one of those things.
jader201 5y ago
By that logic, who’s to say “things won’t change” again, such that they find there is cause for concern after all? I’m not saying that’s what I believe, but if you’re admitting that we’re “changing and updating our beliefs as evidence comes in”, that also implies that we didn’t — and may still not — have all the data in front of us to make decisions.
- foogazi 5y ago
  > that also implies that we didn’t — and may still not — have all the data in front of us to make decisions. We surely don’t - but we have more data than a year ago. And a year from now we’ll have even more
- topranks 5y ago
  Indeed but what should we do? Nothing??? We have to make the best decision for ourselves and the society around us based on the best knowledge we have. Yes science always allows for things to be disproven, but if we follow your logic we’d not use any medicines or treatments. Come on.
  - jader201 5y ago
    Certainly not. Just saying that we can’t be too hard on the folks that are a little hesitant with the vaccine as things evolve. Simply have a bit of empathy, at least for folks that are simply uncertain about how to handle things for themselves and their family (vs. those trying to stop the world from getting vaccinated). I’m fully vaccinated, but I know some that I wouldn’t consider “antivaxx” but are just not sure about this one for them/their families, and I’m trying not to be judgmental of them.
  - daddylongstroke 5y ago
    Yes, nothing. Especially when you see the mortality rate is as low as it has turned out to be; there is very little reason for even 50% of the world to be vaccinated. Why would states be holding lotteries for only the vaccinated? Bizarre incentives if you ask me; dubious and unethical as well, since this is effectively a massive human trial. Most of the people I know that won't be getting a vaccine, feel the risk of serious complications from Covid19 are low for them and their families. Many of them have already had it and found it to have the same effects as all of the previous corona-viruses we've experienced. We have immune systems for a reason (as poor as they've grown in the Western world over the last 80 years or so), and believing that vaccinating against every bug that comes along, seems to be aligned with negative natural selection, which effectively sets us all up for a super bug extinction level event. At the least 50% of the world should stay clear of all vaccines if we want to survive long-term as a species. I would also like you to consider, that many of the anti-vaxx community, as virologists by profession. Many find the risks associated with vaccines (not just Covid19 but all), as often outweighing the benefits they purport to provide. My family and I won't be getting the vaccine for many reasons (we have several professional medical practitioners in the family by the way). One being, we know someone directly involved in creating a mRNA-based vaccine at a large gov-funded biotech co.: their job on the project was based on proving that their employer did undertake the burden of attempting to get the compound that surrounds the mRNA bits and keeps them stable inside the solution, to pass through the human or other mammalian system. Here's the kicker, they can't, and everybody in the business knows they can't (at least not yet), as they've been unable to get this compound out of the blood and organs once introduced. It is synthesized largely from plants, so they consider it "natural". :-D But the truth is, we don't have any data on long term exposure and retention of this compound inside of our blood stream, organs, and other tissues. The mRNA-based vaccines would not have passed scrutiny had they not been granted emergency approval, and yes they've been working on them for a decade+.
dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
Unfortunately in some places they did it when they already knew it was untrue but continued anyway "to prevent panic and shortage of masks supply". Then they turned 180 and made masks obligatory, even outside at all times, which is another extreme.
xiphias2 5y ago
Public health officials knew perfectly that masks give some protection against viruses in general, it was already known 100 years ago. They lied so that the masks don't get bought up instead of just coordinating the distributions using govenmental channels.
- topranks 5y ago
  No they were wrong about the virus’ ability to stay airborne. They didn’t lie, they made a mistake. And when it became apparent they changed the advice. https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwu...
quanticle 5y ago
The problem isn't that our authorities are changing their beliefs based on new evidence coming in. The problem is that our authorities are changing beliefs based on the current political situation, pretending that that reflects shifting evidence and, worst of all, not admitting that they've changed their views. Let's take the current debate over the "lab leak" hypothesis as an example. A large amount of the evidence, both for and against the lab leak hypothesis dates back to March/April/May of 2020. Yet, when the lab leak hypothesis was raised around that time period, it was immediately and vociferously dismissed by the media as a racist ploy to distract from the government's shambolic handling of the pandemic. When the hypothesis was raised again, this year, it was treated as a serious possibility that deserved a full and thorough investigation. What changed? It wasn't the evidence -- the evidence has been present all along. What changed was the political environment that suddenly made it possible to speak of a lab leak without sounding like tinfoil-hatted crackpot. As a result, now this previously unmentionable hypothesis is now getting its due consideration by the media. However, the media isn't admitting that a change occurred. Instead, what the average person is seeing is mainstream media outlets shifting seamlessly from, "The lab leak hypothesis is a racist lie," to "The lab leak hypothesis is a serious allegation that deserves a thorough investigation." It's like the scene from 1984, where the Inner Party representative switches seamlessly mid-speech from discussing the ongoing war against Eurasia to the ongoing war against Eastasia. We saw a similar phenomenon take place last year over masks. There were warnings about the virus being airborne as far back as January of 2021. As late as March, you had Time magazine saying that wearing a mask was "superstitious behavior" [1]. Over the next two to three weeks, the advice rapidly shifted, from "masks are a sign of unreasonable paranoia" to "masks are mandatory, and anyone not wearing them is putting everyone around them in danger". Was that due to a shift in the evidence? No. As noted above, there was ample warning that the virus was airbone, and many people were taking appropriate precautions even in the absence of official guidance. What shifted was the political environment. Moreover, then, just as now, no media outlet ever admitted that it had given incorrect advice. There were individual journalists who (to their credit) admitted a certain level of responsibility, but, as far as I know, no major mainstream media outlet has come forward and said, "You know what? We screwed up, and we apologize." Instead , we see silent corrections that rewrite the past without admitting any kind of fault. Heck, just compare the headline on the Time article today [2] to the headline on the archived version. The headline was silently updated with a much more moderate point, and a caveat about changing CDC guidance was added. But there was no formal correction published anywhere that said, "You know that article we printed last week about masks being bogus? Yeah, that was wrong, and we're sorry." Honestly, after seeing the performance of the media in its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, I'm surprised that more people aren't as cynical about the "official story" as the cashier in the sibling thread. [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20200305052928/https://time.com/5794729/coronavirus-face-masks/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200305052928/https://time.com/... [2]: https://time.com/5794729/coronavirus-face-masks/ https://time.com/5794729/coronavirus-face-masks/
sneak 5y ago
> Why is it a problem for public health officials to update and change policy as we learn more about the virus? Because when it comes to persuading hundreds of millions of people, it is often better to be certain than to be right or to flip-flop. That's a fact of leadership, regardless of whether you or I as scientists like it. Also, they didn't just revise their statements with new information, they actively lied (the no masks thing) in a paternalistic way to deceive people into thinking they didn't need masks (so the masks would stay available for front-line medical staff). That plan obviously backfired terribly.
- wildmanx 5y ago
  What's the alternative? Be honest? The moment a governor goes in front of cameras saying "no need to hoard toilet paper" is the moment right when everybody rushes and hoards toilet paper. So they tried saying "toilet paper does not work". (Not literally, but I'm using it as a metaphor for masks, obviously.) That strategy backfired a bit, but worked better than outright saying "Don't buy masks cause front-line workers need them". Had they said that then next day front-line workers wouldn't have gotten any. The only alternative I see is to remove the necessary supplies from the free market and put them under government control so that front line workers get them no matter what the mob does. But in freedom land, the free market is holy, so that doesn't work over there.
lodi 5y ago
> Why is it a problem for public health officials to update and change policy as we learn more about the virus? That's not the problem. Arrogance is the problem. We were led to believe that X was established scientific consensus one week and ¬X the next. Real science has error bars and confidence intervals. If you're projecting from a small amount of data, the responsible thing to do is to disclose how uncertain your conclusions are. (Edit: maybe the real science did have confidence intervals; the public communication certainly didn't though.) Secondly, we had many clear contradictions over the past year. How can it be dangerous to attend an outdoor soccer game but safe to attend a BLM protest? How can it be shamefully unsafe to walk past someone in a corridor without masks and 6ft of social distancing but totally fine to sit and eat in a restaurant for an unbounded amount of time? Also it really doesn't help public trust when for example Fauci openly admits that he lied to the public about mask efficacy to preserve supplies for hospitals, but of course now you can trust him to be telling the truth on this other thing here.

by avz 5y ago

AwaAwa 5y ago

Changing your beliefs on the words of your "betters", under pressure, umpteen times is not conducive to trust. Perhaps if our masters in government had heeded the story of "the boy who cried wolf", then things might have been different.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

derekp7 5y ago

The problem is that the a large chunk of the population aren't scientist so they don't understand the principles of the scientific method. And they aren't software developers, they don't have the mindset for it. And have you seen the way many people drive? There is a reason why the term "defensive driving" was coined.

GuB-42 5y ago
I think a good understanding of the scientific method, skepticism and fact checking should be taught in school as early as possible. The only thing students get is material presented as the truth that they have to faithfully accept. They are almost never taught how to deal with unreliable material. It made sense in the pre-internet age where finding information was the hard part, but now, it is the opposite: too much information. So we should focus more on how to filter it. We had a "general knowledge" class in college and it was an important part of it. We had to make essays and presentations about random subjects and we were judged by our ability to synthesize and verify information. Copy-pasting was actually encouraged, and long as it was from a good source and presented in a way that isn't misleading. The unfortunate thing is that we should have done exercises like that in primary school and not wait until college.
- mywittyname 5y ago
  > I think a good understanding of the scientific method, skepticism and fact checking should be taught in school as early as possible. It is taught in schools, and taught young. The people who understand the scientific method have been doing it every year since the sixth grade. They did science fair projects, etc. I just looked up modern educational standards, and kids are taught in grade six the scientific method and how to execute experiments using it. The problem is, lots of people suck at school. They didn't care about it and their parents didn't care about it, so they didn't retain anything. There are an awful lot of adults in society that couldn't pass a fifth grade math test.
  - tehwebguy 5y ago
    Yeah it was taught very strangely IMO in my schools. There was always such a goofy focus on the dumbest science fair projects that were probably just as likely to reach a completely wrong conclusion instead of relating the process to the real world and how we as a society continue to learn how the world works in any scenarios newer than Redi’s meat / maggots experiment from 1668!
berkes 5y ago
You don't need to be a scientist to acknowledge that knowledge evolves. You don't even need to follow a 'scientific method' for that. The ability to embrace uncertainty is hard to learn, but one that we all should strive for. One that should be praised and lauded. A politician, leader or CEO making a bad decision on a wrong premis, and publicly acknowledges the mistake (and learns from it), is now often end-of-career. This is toxic. Because such mistakes are a fact of life and the best teacher.
- topranks 5y ago
  100% agree. I think the inability to accept uncertainty in the world is, unfortunately, a big reason conspiracies thrive. Too frightening to grok that a random virus can emerge and maybe kill us all or at least turn society upside down? There’s a conspiracy that makes it an easy “good guys vs. bad guys” story for you.
ta988 5y ago
I know scientists and software developpers that believe all kind of weird stories (I even knew one that believed in perpetual motion).
wildmanx 5y ago
Enrico Weigelt whom Linus responded to is at least one of those things.

jader201 5y ago

By that logic, who’s to say “things won’t change” again, such that they find there is cause for concern after all? I’m not saying that’s what I believe, but if you’re admitting that we’re “changing and updating our beliefs as evidence comes in”, that also implies that we didn’t — and may still not — have all the data in front of us to make decisions.

foogazi 5y ago
> that also implies that we didn’t — and may still not — have all the data in front of us to make decisions. We surely don’t - but we have more data than a year ago. And a year from now we’ll have even more
topranks 5y ago
Indeed but what should we do? Nothing??? We have to make the best decision for ourselves and the society around us based on the best knowledge we have. Yes science always allows for things to be disproven, but if we follow your logic we’d not use any medicines or treatments. Come on.
- jader201 5y ago
  Certainly not. Just saying that we can’t be too hard on the folks that are a little hesitant with the vaccine as things evolve. Simply have a bit of empathy, at least for folks that are simply uncertain about how to handle things for themselves and their family (vs. those trying to stop the world from getting vaccinated). I’m fully vaccinated, but I know some that I wouldn’t consider “antivaxx” but are just not sure about this one for them/their families, and I’m trying not to be judgmental of them.
- daddylongstroke 5y ago
  Yes, nothing. Especially when you see the mortality rate is as low as it has turned out to be; there is very little reason for even 50% of the world to be vaccinated. Why would states be holding lotteries for only the vaccinated? Bizarre incentives if you ask me; dubious and unethical as well, since this is effectively a massive human trial. Most of the people I know that won't be getting a vaccine, feel the risk of serious complications from Covid19 are low for them and their families. Many of them have already had it and found it to have the same effects as all of the previous corona-viruses we've experienced. We have immune systems for a reason (as poor as they've grown in the Western world over the last 80 years or so), and believing that vaccinating against every bug that comes along, seems to be aligned with negative natural selection, which effectively sets us all up for a super bug extinction level event. At the least 50% of the world should stay clear of all vaccines if we want to survive long-term as a species. I would also like you to consider, that many of the anti-vaxx community, as virologists by profession. Many find the risks associated with vaccines (not just Covid19 but all), as often outweighing the benefits they purport to provide. My family and I won't be getting the vaccine for many reasons (we have several professional medical practitioners in the family by the way). One being, we know someone directly involved in creating a mRNA-based vaccine at a large gov-funded biotech co.: their job on the project was based on proving that their employer did undertake the burden of attempting to get the compound that surrounds the mRNA bits and keeps them stable inside the solution, to pass through the human or other mammalian system. Here's the kicker, they can't, and everybody in the business knows they can't (at least not yet), as they've been unable to get this compound out of the blood and organs once introduced. It is synthesized largely from plants, so they consider it "natural". :-D But the truth is, we don't have any data on long term exposure and retention of this compound inside of our blood stream, organs, and other tissues. The mRNA-based vaccines would not have passed scrutiny had they not been granted emergency approval, and yes they've been working on them for a decade+.

dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago

Unfortunately in some places they did it when they already knew it was untrue but continued anyway "to prevent panic and shortage of masks supply". Then they turned 180 and made masks obligatory, even outside at all times, which is another extreme.

xiphias2 5y ago

Public health officials knew perfectly that masks give some protection against viruses in general, it was already known 100 years ago. They lied so that the masks don't get bought up instead of just coordinating the distributions using govenmental channels.

topranks 5y ago
No they were wrong about the virus’ ability to stay airborne. They didn’t lie, they made a mistake. And when it became apparent they changed the advice. https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwu...

quanticle 5y ago

The problem isn't that our authorities are changing their beliefs based on new evidence coming in. The problem is that our authorities are changing beliefs based on the current political situation, pretending that that reflects shifting evidence and, worst of all, not admitting that they've changed their views. Let's take the current debate over the "lab leak" hypothesis as an example. A large amount of the evidence, both for and against the lab leak hypothesis dates back to March/April/May of 2020. Yet, when the lab leak hypothesis was raised around that time period, it was immediately and vociferously dismissed by the media as a racist ploy to distract from the government's shambolic handling of the pandemic. When the hypothesis was raised again, this year, it was treated as a serious possibility that deserved a full and thorough investigation. What changed? It wasn't the evidence -- the evidence has been present all along. What changed was the political environment that suddenly made it possible to speak of a lab leak without sounding like tinfoil-hatted crackpot. As a result, now this previously unmentionable hypothesis is now getting its due consideration by the media. However, the media isn't admitting that a change occurred. Instead, what the average person is seeing is mainstream media outlets shifting seamlessly from, "The lab leak hypothesis is a racist lie," to "The lab leak hypothesis is a serious allegation that deserves a thorough investigation." It's like the scene from 1984, where the Inner Party representative switches seamlessly mid-speech from discussing the ongoing war against Eurasia to the ongoing war against Eastasia. We saw a similar phenomenon take place last year over masks. There were warnings about the virus being airborne as far back as January of 2021. As late as March, you had Time magazine saying that wearing a mask was "superstitious behavior" [1]. Over the next two to three weeks, the advice rapidly shifted, from "masks are a sign of unreasonable paranoia" to "masks are mandatory, and anyone not wearing them is putting everyone around them in danger". Was that due to a shift in the evidence? No. As noted above, there was ample warning that the virus was airbone, and many people were taking appropriate precautions even in the absence of official guidance. What shifted was the political environment. Moreover, then, just as now, no media outlet ever admitted that it had given incorrect advice. There were individual journalists who (to their credit) admitted a certain level of responsibility, but, as far as I know, no major mainstream media outlet has come forward and said, "You know what? We screwed up, and we apologize." Instead , we see silent corrections that rewrite the past without admitting any kind of fault. Heck, just compare the headline on the Time article today [2] to the headline on the archived version. The headline was silently updated with a much more moderate point, and a caveat about changing CDC guidance was added. But there was no formal correction published anywhere that said, "You know that article we printed last week about masks being bogus? Yeah, that was wrong, and we're sorry." Honestly, after seeing the performance of the media in its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, I'm surprised that more people aren't as cynical about the "official story" as the cashier in the sibling thread. [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20200305052928/https://time.com/5794729/coronavirus-face-masks/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200305052928/https://time.com/... [2]: https://time.com/5794729/coronavirus-face-masks/ https://time.com/5794729/coronavirus-face-masks/

sneak 5y ago

> Why is it a problem for public health officials to update and change policy as we learn more about the virus? Because when it comes to persuading hundreds of millions of people, it is often better to be certain than to be right or to flip-flop. That's a fact of leadership, regardless of whether you or I as scientists like it. Also, they didn't just revise their statements with new information, they actively lied (the no masks thing) in a paternalistic way to deceive people into thinking they didn't need masks (so the masks would stay available for front-line medical staff). That plan obviously backfired terribly.

wildmanx 5y ago
What's the alternative? Be honest? The moment a governor goes in front of cameras saying "no need to hoard toilet paper" is the moment right when everybody rushes and hoards toilet paper. So they tried saying "toilet paper does not work". (Not literally, but I'm using it as a metaphor for masks, obviously.) That strategy backfired a bit, but worked better than outright saying "Don't buy masks cause front-line workers need them". Had they said that then next day front-line workers wouldn't have gotten any. The only alternative I see is to remove the necessary supplies from the free market and put them under government control so that front line workers get them no matter what the mob does. But in freedom land, the free market is holy, so that doesn't work over there.

lodi 5y ago

> Why is it a problem for public health officials to update and change policy as we learn more about the virus? That's not the problem. Arrogance is the problem. We were led to believe that X was established scientific consensus one week and ¬X the next. Real science has error bars and confidence intervals. If you're projecting from a small amount of data, the responsible thing to do is to disclose how uncertain your conclusions are. (Edit: maybe the real science did have confidence intervals; the public communication certainly didn't though.) Secondly, we had many clear contradictions over the past year. How can it be dangerous to attend an outdoor soccer game but safe to attend a BLM protest? How can it be shamefully unsafe to walk past someone in a corridor without masks and 6ft of social distancing but totally fine to sit and eat in a restaurant for an unbounded amount of time? Also it really doesn't help public trust when for example Fauci openly admits that he lied to the public about mask efficacy to preserve supplies for hospitals, but of course now you can trust him to be telling the truth on this other thing here.