3 ms·

So are we just ignoring that troll farms have likely caused thousands of COVID deaths?

by walls 5y ago

pphysch 5y ago
Correlation is not necessarily causation. Anti-vaxxers and government mismanagement long predate online trolls.
- crazy_horse 5y ago
  There are absolutely covid misinformation campaigns. It would take very, very little for a single person influenced by one of those to have led to thousands of deaths. Correlation does not equal causation sounds like an argument that would be peddled on Reddit. HN gets close to crank territory on this. It's a nuanced, real-world situation.
  - pphysch 5y ago
    Yes, there are misinformation "campaigns", but can you prove they are a deciding cause rather than another parallel expression of the underlying anti-authoritarian angst?
    - crazy_horse 5y ago
      The point of the misinformation campaigns is to tap into that angst. You could create new issues if you want after you have a captive audience, but they start by looking for targets. How else would you do it?
- mikewarot 5y ago
  That's true, they firebombed the house of the first white person to vaccinate people in Boston back in 1721. Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    Out of curiosity, why "the first white person"? Were there other races practicing vaccination? What's the relevance of 'white' here (genuinely curious, not trying to reprimand, etc)?
    - thinkcontext 5y ago
      "Documentation of variolation in the Americas may be traced back to 1706 in Boston, where Puritan minister Cotton Mather learned of the technique from his West African slave Onesimus.[3]:45 Further research into the matter revealed to Mather that several other slaves had too been variolated." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation
      - throwaway894345 5y ago
        Ah, thanks.
dang 5y ago
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28445028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28445028.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

So are we just ignoring that troll farms have likely caused thousands of COVID deaths?

by walls 5y ago

So are we just ignoring that troll farms have likely caused thousands of COVID deaths?

pphysch 5y ago

Correlation is not necessarily causation. Anti-vaxxers and government mismanagement long predate online trolls.

crazy_horse 5y ago
There are absolutely covid misinformation campaigns. It would take very, very little for a single person influenced by one of those to have led to thousands of deaths. Correlation does not equal causation sounds like an argument that would be peddled on Reddit. HN gets close to crank territory on this. It's a nuanced, real-world situation.
- pphysch 5y ago
  Yes, there are misinformation "campaigns", but can you prove they are a deciding cause rather than another parallel expression of the underlying anti-authoritarian angst?
  - crazy_horse 5y ago
    The point of the misinformation campaigns is to tap into that angst. You could create new issues if you want after you have a captive audience, but they start by looking for targets. How else would you do it?
mikewarot 5y ago
That's true, they firebombed the house of the first white person to vaccinate people in Boston back in 1721. Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  Out of curiosity, why "the first white person"? Were there other races practicing vaccination? What's the relevance of 'white' here (genuinely curious, not trying to reprimand, etc)?
  - thinkcontext 5y ago
    "Documentation of variolation in the Americas may be traced back to 1706 in Boston, where Puritan minister Cotton Mather learned of the technique from his West African slave Onesimus.[3]:45 Further research into the matter revealed to Mather that several other slaves had too been variolated." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      Ah, thanks.

dang 5y ago

"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28445028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28445028.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]