7 ms·

Let people draw their own conclusions and don’t censor or otherwise penalize them for questioning one interpretation of data vs another. Encourage people to do

Let people draw their own conclusions and don’t censor or otherwise penalize them for questioning one interpretation of data vs another. Encourage people to do their own research and investigate who is funding the sources used for that research. There is no need for conspiracy theories when financial incentives exist.

1270018080 5y ago
Do you mean "Do their own research" like make up conspiracy theories out of thin air and parrot nonsense deep state rhetoric? Completely divorcing yourself from reality? You want more of that?
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  The world will always have heathens and heretics. Some people will always come to the wrong conclusion some of the time. Skepticism of any claims is a pretty good heuristic, but should be equally applied to counter claims.
  - rob_c 5y ago
    Amen!
  - rgrieselhuber 5y ago
    Right. Why do we care so much if everyone agrees?
    - fragmede 5y ago
      Thing is, to a large degree, we haven't had to before. If someone random person wants to believe the moon landing is hoax, it doesn't affect my life in the slightest. What's changed is that random person walking around with no mask and no vax. Now, a random person in a Target market a thousand miles away from me isn't literally a threat, but where that attitude is supported online and a random someone walks into my local Target, it causes me to need to care. Someone can chime in to question the underlying beliefs on the matter of Covid, but the point is this is an example of an issue where we care. There are extremist views like white supremacy or similar violent ideology that are a bit further outside the scope of discussion but are another example of why we care that enough everyones agree.
      - rgrieselhuber 5y ago
        Ok, in your threat model, a person who doesn't wear masks or take vaccines represents (even though the vaccine you took should keep you safe?) an existential threat to you, and therefore you should have the right to dictate their beliefs and actions. However, they may view your actions as an existential threat to them. How to resolve?
      - throwaway22032 5y ago
        Isn't the fact that we (as in, society) don't agree that it does affect your life an indication that it's actually a borderline issue, though? Everyone would agree that a person wandering around the street firing live rounds into targets is acting in a dangerous manner. No-one would agree that a person drinking a cup of tea in their own house is acting in a dangerous manner. But coronavirus isn't one of those things. It's genuinely a borderline issue, and not because of the science, but because it's almost exactly on the line in which some people consider it to be a disaster and others consider it to be a bit of a nothing burger. As a result, you end up in a situation as described by rgrieselhuber below. Some people think that we need to close (e.g.) schools to stop coronavirus. Other people think that we need to stop caring so much about coronavirus, so that we can go to (e.g.) school. The question of whether there's misinformation is almost tangential to the point because there are huge numbers of people who do not doubt official statistics or modelling but also believe that data or those models are not severe enough to require us to 'stop the world' so to speak. I guess my thoughts are that, if we can't even convince each other (and from what I can tell neither of us have really fallen for misinformation), what hope is there for the actual 'vaccines cause 5g' nutjobs?
        immibis 5y ago
        There were people during every atrocity (e.g. genocide) who argued the atrocity didn't affect their lives. Did that make it a borderline issue? No, it did not.
        throwaway22032 5y ago
        I like chocolate. Do you like chocolate? What does this have to do with the price of fish?
- rob_c 5y ago
  This is often people not understanding the technical details of the science so fall for the logical mistake of "person on YouTube explained it so simply it must be true"... Obviously this isn't helped when the people who are supposed to be trustworthy and unbiased in presenting the science to people are repeatedly caught lying that drives people to that simpler world view.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  You have it backwards. Discussing controversial issues in the clear minimizes conspiracy theories (no, it doesn't completely eliminate them). The volume of conspiracy theories was driven up precisely because our epistemological institutions (e.g., media, academy, etc) abandoned the pursuits of objectivity and neutrality. To get back to a semi-rational state of affairs, we need to get the ideology out of our institutions (or at least diversify it).
  - 1270018080 5y ago
    Do you think there would be less moon landing deniers if the media talked about it earnestly? If legitimate scientific journals published "research"? Honest question.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      No, because there's some margin of people who won't be convinced no matter what. If you've failed to persuade that 2% (or whatever the floor might be) then there's no need to discuss further--those 2% are inconsequential. But if you're at double-digit percentages you can be sure that you're not near the floor. Moreover, it's not just about the media's coverage of COVID or the moon landing, but about their overall credibility during the prior decade. For example, the media has reliably and brazenly lied and mislead on racial justice protests from ~2014 through 2020, which almost certainly affects its credibility on other issues (e.g., covid). Of course, the same applies to the academy and other institutions.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - fragmede 5y ago
      Moon landing deniers won't read, nevermind believe, legitimate scientific journal investigations. What's needed is Buzzfeed-esque, at that level of writing, top ten reasons why moon landing hoaxers are wrong.
  - maskil 5y ago
    There are far more MRNA vaccine skeptics than moon landing deniers.
slg 5y ago
>There is no need for conspiracy theories when financial incentives exist. Why do you assume that the financial incentive is for the truth rather than for the conspiracy theory?
- rgrieselhuber 5y ago
  I don't. My point is that we should always be aware of the financiers behind any piece of research, prescribed solution, etc. and teach people to think critically about this.
  - slg 5y ago
    But someone with an invested interest in research funding that research doesn't inherently mean the conclusion is wrong. If anything your suggestion would lead to more conspiracy theories and not less as people are now more focused on the motives for the research rather than the body of that research.
    - rgrieselhuber 5y ago
      It doesn't mean that but it should always be treated as a possible factor, and analyzed in light of other connections. Collusion is very real when billions of dollars are on the line and it is naive to assume otherwise.
      - slg 5y ago
        >It doesn't mean that but it should always be treated as a possible factor, and analyzed in light of other connections. But do you not see how this will result in conspiracy theories? You are no longer engaging with the merits of a study and are instead questioning the motivations and source behind that study. You are shifting from a more objective argument to a more subjective one allow more room for conspiracy theories. >Collusion is very real when billions of dollars are on the line and it is naive to assume otherwise. Yes, which is why "do your own research" is often misleading because those billions of dollars have greatly impacted what research is available to you.
librarianscott 5y ago
But people should be helped to draw their own conclusions with annotations where every time some crazy idea is repeated it is automatically flagged with "This idea has repeatedly been debunked by 37 national societies of medicine and 19 meta analyses of 2,000 peer-reviewed studies with a quality deemed high or superb," etc.
- rgrieselhuber 5y ago
  Here’s one better: show people how to reproduce the same results given the same set of controls. Reproducibility should be the standard, not committees of debunkers.
- gruez 5y ago
  >every time some crazy idea is repeated it is automatically flagged with [...] This is basically "fact checking". In theory it's good, but it inevitably degrades into a farce with stuff like [1] or [2]. [1] https://twitter.com/msnbc/status/785299708730339328 https://twitter.com/msnbc/status/785299708730339328 [2] https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o95 https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o95
- strangeattractr 5y ago
  This is a commonly suggested solution that fundamentally misunderstands the problem. Most of these people aren't believing falsehoods because they don't have access to better information. It's because they don't trust the institutions that they believe drive science. Additionally, as these annotations only represent an opinion and are subject to change when they aren't correct they likely cause even greater distrust.
- skinkestek 5y ago
  All the time those fact checkers are provably biased (haven't seen none of them fact checking the early statements that masks were useless) they are useless. If however fact checkers were a pain in the butt for mainstream media and politicians as well they would be much easier to listen to.
rob_c 5y ago
I think unfortunately we also need to protect science from idiots making very bad conclusions based on not understanding a paper... That's how we end up with 'bacon cures cancer' headlines in the daily fail...
- rgrieselhuber 5y ago
  How do you protect science from idiots? Is science going to stop working if some people think that bacon cures cancer?
  - 1270018080 5y ago
    No, but science won't have the opportunity to work when people are passing up vaccines for invermectin.
    - rgrieselhuber 5y ago
      Science is a tool for falsifying hypotheses, not dictating policies or individual choices.
    - rob_c 5y ago
      And wearing a mask in the same confined space with no air circulation for about 20min is pointless but still enforced by idiotic govt policies... Unfortunately "bad science" cuts both ways when it comes to miscommunication.
  - rob_c 5y ago
    OK so to counter, Do you think 'scientific research' is in a great position from a funding perspective right now? Have you looked at the press or out the window as to how "science" is portrayed due to covid? The lack of sanity in both political directions is alarming and depressing all at the same. Both sides of the public on this are both, equally, damagingly, wrong. However, they pick up and throw around scientific papers as though it gives them the right to be the next pope... If science is paraded around like nonsense in the press there's a matter of time until we end up with politicians who make the decisions sit there and say "I don't see any public benefit in researching this". That day will only come sooner if things carry on as we head into a recession. Edit: My proposal to fix, as I've suggested elsewhere, keep scientific papers behind some (non-for-profit) walled access, obviously that has damaging impacts when you say X from country Y can't read paper on Z, but frankly maybe the public isn't grown up enough for completely open discourse when they can't understand the material.
immibis 5y ago
Should I be penalized if my interpretation of the Israel data is that Jews are dirty and should be exterminated? That would be a pretty outlandish interpretation! I would HOPE I would be censored for that!

1270018080 5y ago

Do you mean "Do their own research" like make up conspiracy theories out of thin air and parrot nonsense deep state rhetoric? Completely divorcing yourself from reality? You want more of that?

s1artibartfast 5y ago
The world will always have heathens and heretics. Some people will always come to the wrong conclusion some of the time. Skepticism of any claims is a pretty good heuristic, but should be equally applied to counter claims.
- rob_c 5y ago
  Amen!
- rgrieselhuber 5y ago
  Right. Why do we care so much if everyone agrees?
  - fragmede 5y ago
    Thing is, to a large degree, we haven't had to before. If someone random person wants to believe the moon landing is hoax, it doesn't affect my life in the slightest. What's changed is that random person walking around with no mask and no vax. Now, a random person in a Target market a thousand miles away from me isn't literally a threat, but where that attitude is supported online and a random someone walks into my local Target, it causes me to need to care. Someone can chime in to question the underlying beliefs on the matter of Covid, but the point is this is an example of an issue where we care. There are extremist views like white supremacy or similar violent ideology that are a bit further outside the scope of discussion but are another example of why we care that enough everyones agree.
    - rgrieselhuber 5y ago
      Ok, in your threat model, a person who doesn't wear masks or take vaccines represents (even though the vaccine you took should keep you safe?) an existential threat to you, and therefore you should have the right to dictate their beliefs and actions. However, they may view your actions as an existential threat to them. How to resolve?
    - throwaway22032 5y ago
      Isn't the fact that we (as in, society) don't agree that it does affect your life an indication that it's actually a borderline issue, though? Everyone would agree that a person wandering around the street firing live rounds into targets is acting in a dangerous manner. No-one would agree that a person drinking a cup of tea in their own house is acting in a dangerous manner. But coronavirus isn't one of those things. It's genuinely a borderline issue, and not because of the science, but because it's almost exactly on the line in which some people consider it to be a disaster and others consider it to be a bit of a nothing burger. As a result, you end up in a situation as described by rgrieselhuber below. Some people think that we need to close (e.g.) schools to stop coronavirus. Other people think that we need to stop caring so much about coronavirus, so that we can go to (e.g.) school. The question of whether there's misinformation is almost tangential to the point because there are huge numbers of people who do not doubt official statistics or modelling but also believe that data or those models are not severe enough to require us to 'stop the world' so to speak. I guess my thoughts are that, if we can't even convince each other (and from what I can tell neither of us have really fallen for misinformation), what hope is there for the actual 'vaccines cause 5g' nutjobs?
      - immibis 5y ago
        There were people during every atrocity (e.g. genocide) who argued the atrocity didn't affect their lives. Did that make it a borderline issue? No, it did not.
        throwaway22032 5y ago
        I like chocolate. Do you like chocolate? What does this have to do with the price of fish?
rob_c 5y ago
This is often people not understanding the technical details of the science so fall for the logical mistake of "person on YouTube explained it so simply it must be true"... Obviously this isn't helped when the people who are supposed to be trustworthy and unbiased in presenting the science to people are repeatedly caught lying that drives people to that simpler world view.
throwaway894345 5y ago
You have it backwards. Discussing controversial issues in the clear minimizes conspiracy theories (no, it doesn't completely eliminate them). The volume of conspiracy theories was driven up precisely because our epistemological institutions (e.g., media, academy, etc) abandoned the pursuits of objectivity and neutrality. To get back to a semi-rational state of affairs, we need to get the ideology out of our institutions (or at least diversify it).
- 1270018080 5y ago
  Do you think there would be less moon landing deniers if the media talked about it earnestly? If legitimate scientific journals published "research"? Honest question.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    No, because there's some margin of people who won't be convinced no matter what. If you've failed to persuade that 2% (or whatever the floor might be) then there's no need to discuss further--those 2% are inconsequential. But if you're at double-digit percentages you can be sure that you're not near the floor. Moreover, it's not just about the media's coverage of COVID or the moon landing, but about their overall credibility during the prior decade. For example, the media has reliably and brazenly lied and mislead on racial justice protests from ~2014 through 2020, which almost certainly affects its credibility on other issues (e.g., covid). Of course, the same applies to the academy and other institutions.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - fragmede 5y ago
    Moon landing deniers won't read, nevermind believe, legitimate scientific journal investigations. What's needed is Buzzfeed-esque, at that level of writing, top ten reasons why moon landing hoaxers are wrong.
- maskil 5y ago
  There are far more MRNA vaccine skeptics than moon landing deniers.

slg 5y ago

>There is no need for conspiracy theories when financial incentives exist. Why do you assume that the financial incentive is for the truth rather than for the conspiracy theory?

rgrieselhuber 5y ago
I don't. My point is that we should always be aware of the financiers behind any piece of research, prescribed solution, etc. and teach people to think critically about this.
- slg 5y ago
  But someone with an invested interest in research funding that research doesn't inherently mean the conclusion is wrong. If anything your suggestion would lead to more conspiracy theories and not less as people are now more focused on the motives for the research rather than the body of that research.
  - rgrieselhuber 5y ago
    It doesn't mean that but it should always be treated as a possible factor, and analyzed in light of other connections. Collusion is very real when billions of dollars are on the line and it is naive to assume otherwise.
    - slg 5y ago
      >It doesn't mean that but it should always be treated as a possible factor, and analyzed in light of other connections. But do you not see how this will result in conspiracy theories? You are no longer engaging with the merits of a study and are instead questioning the motivations and source behind that study. You are shifting from a more objective argument to a more subjective one allow more room for conspiracy theories. >Collusion is very real when billions of dollars are on the line and it is naive to assume otherwise. Yes, which is why "do your own research" is often misleading because those billions of dollars have greatly impacted what research is available to you.

librarianscott 5y ago

But people should be helped to draw their own conclusions with annotations where every time some crazy idea is repeated it is automatically flagged with "This idea has repeatedly been debunked by 37 national societies of medicine and 19 meta analyses of 2,000 peer-reviewed studies with a quality deemed high or superb," etc.

rgrieselhuber 5y ago
Here’s one better: show people how to reproduce the same results given the same set of controls. Reproducibility should be the standard, not committees of debunkers.
gruez 5y ago
>every time some crazy idea is repeated it is automatically flagged with [...] This is basically "fact checking". In theory it's good, but it inevitably degrades into a farce with stuff like [1] or [2]. [1] https://twitter.com/msnbc/status/785299708730339328 https://twitter.com/msnbc/status/785299708730339328 [2] https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o95 https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o95
strangeattractr 5y ago
This is a commonly suggested solution that fundamentally misunderstands the problem. Most of these people aren't believing falsehoods because they don't have access to better information. It's because they don't trust the institutions that they believe drive science. Additionally, as these annotations only represent an opinion and are subject to change when they aren't correct they likely cause even greater distrust.
skinkestek 5y ago
All the time those fact checkers are provably biased (haven't seen none of them fact checking the early statements that masks were useless) they are useless. If however fact checkers were a pain in the butt for mainstream media and politicians as well they would be much easier to listen to.

rob_c 5y ago

I think unfortunately we also need to protect science from idiots making very bad conclusions based on not understanding a paper... That's how we end up with 'bacon cures cancer' headlines in the daily fail...

rgrieselhuber 5y ago
How do you protect science from idiots? Is science going to stop working if some people think that bacon cures cancer?
- 1270018080 5y ago
  No, but science won't have the opportunity to work when people are passing up vaccines for invermectin.
  - rgrieselhuber 5y ago
    Science is a tool for falsifying hypotheses, not dictating policies or individual choices.
  - rob_c 5y ago
    And wearing a mask in the same confined space with no air circulation for about 20min is pointless but still enforced by idiotic govt policies... Unfortunately "bad science" cuts both ways when it comes to miscommunication.
- rob_c 5y ago
  OK so to counter, Do you think 'scientific research' is in a great position from a funding perspective right now? Have you looked at the press or out the window as to how "science" is portrayed due to covid? The lack of sanity in both political directions is alarming and depressing all at the same. Both sides of the public on this are both, equally, damagingly, wrong. However, they pick up and throw around scientific papers as though it gives them the right to be the next pope... If science is paraded around like nonsense in the press there's a matter of time until we end up with politicians who make the decisions sit there and say "I don't see any public benefit in researching this". That day will only come sooner if things carry on as we head into a recession. Edit: My proposal to fix, as I've suggested elsewhere, keep scientific papers behind some (non-for-profit) walled access, obviously that has damaging impacts when you say X from country Y can't read paper on Z, but frankly maybe the public isn't grown up enough for completely open discourse when they can't understand the material.

immibis 5y ago

Should I be penalized if my interpretation of the Israel data is that Jews are dirty and should be exterminated? That would be a pretty outlandish interpretation! I would HOPE I would be censored for that!