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What you are implicitly proposing is that whenever there is disagreement within the scientific community, that disagreement should be kept behind closed doors a

• weaksauce 5y ago
  There are two things there... the lab leak thing has always been consistent and regardless of that we didn't really need to know the origin of it at the time; it changed nothing material of how to handle a large pandemic which was killing thousands of people daily. Yeah there has always been the possibility that the lab accidentally leaked it but there wasn't much evidence of that other than coincidence. masks have been similar in general outside of a few fringe idiots speaking out of turn. they know and knew that well fitted n95 masks were effective in slowing the spread and should be used in the hospital settings. the advice was not to buy masks. they didn't know the efficacy of general cloth masks at the time and weather or not having them on would be a net detriment because it might cause people to touch their face more often while adjusting the masks and cause contaminated hands to come in contact with the face more often. the data showed that those fears were not fruitful and thus the recommendation changed. there is also the disastrous TB paper that took the conclusion from a miner's lung paper as gospel and misinterpreted the results of that and then every subsequent paper used that erroneous data in their papers. (mining paper said that the nose was very good at blocking out everything down to 5 microns and aerosolized particles could be 100 microns or smaller but since the nose was effective at blocking particles larger than 5 microns you needed to worry about masks that block the small stuff. well the TB paper used the 5 micron aerosol particles as TB only infects you if you get the particles deep in your lungs. The problem is that aerosol particles greater than 5 microns can infect you with other diseases if the receptors for those are not deep in the lungs. in the end 5 micron was chosen as a magical aerosol particle threshold when the actual threshold is 100 microns and one scientist finally got the WHO et al to understand this after doing much research and advocacy) in the end science is messy even when done with rigor.
• wwweston 5y ago
  > until some Institution (CDC/WHO/etc) decides on a Consensus of Truth, and that this Consensus of Truth No need to draw unfounded "implicit" proposals. I explicitly invoked a body of everyone with domain expertise to evaluate claims, not a singular institution. Those people often do connect via institutionS created to support and benefit from their work and its utility, like professional associations, journals and trade publications, domain-specific forums, research arms, university departments. The emphasized plural in institutionS should underscore the point that as neat a rhetorical flourish the invocation of an oppressive capital-I Institution is, it's actually substantially wrong as a way of engaging this topic. The actual truth is not going to be somehow hamstrung or stamped out if the stewards of a large public platform like YouTube follow the conversations in these communities of expertise on some topics rather than letting Lone Gunmen lead them into controversy-view battle against it. Like Paul Graham recently said "Most implausible-sounding ideas are in fact bad and could be safely dismissed. But not when they're proposed by reasonable domain experts." The first best way to tell if someone is a domain expert is to become one; the second best is to see if the maverick can convince other domain experts. If collective expertise itself sounds oppressive to you, wait until you try the oppression from giving authority to collective ignorance. > the efficacy of wearing masks? If this is talking about the surgeon general's take circa Feb/Mar 2020, I welcome its admission to this discussion, because it's actually an illustration about the problems of mass communication and how someone can say something where every last word is defensible and most of it holds up over a year later ... and yet harmful mass misunderstanding (and a handle for disinformation) can follow. And that should encourage people towards more cautious use/responsibility when it comes to media reach. And still, even with all the problems with that... the official narrative that you seem eager to characterize as potentially misleading or oppressive had actually fixed itself, accompanied with accessible arguments and demonstrations within months. > As for YouTube being “mass media”, come on—it’s filled with random crap uploaded by members of the public. Walter Cronkite broadcast on narrow-producer mass-audience media. Youtube is both mass-audience AND mass-producer. Some videos on the long tail see a few dozen views. Some videos have reached more of the world than Cronkite ever did and may still be doing so long after everyone who ever heard his voice live or even remembers his name is dead. Seems to me that doesn't make YouTube any less "mass."
  • 5y ago
• mam3 5y ago
  Yeah, considering the boom of consipiracy theories / flat earther, it's indeed probably better that way. Sorry but put it more clearly we definetely should treat non expert as children, for their own good.
  • brlewis 5y ago
    To clarify, what you want is a benevolent intellectual dictator?
    • mam3 5y ago
      It has always been that way