7 ms·

Well, yes, when it comes to knowledge I'd say that it is a good thing to remove those supporting fringe content. Consensus amongst those who generally care abou

Well, yes, when it comes to knowledge I'd say that it is a good thing to remove those supporting fringe content. Consensus amongst those who generally care about a topic is probably better for ensuring largely correct data than the alternative of a large number of voices, each with a questionable level of actual subject matter expertise.

synecdoche 3y ago
Plenty of assumptions there. There is nothing to say that correctness is a function of size or homogeneity. The claim is cause for concern in itself.
- stuartjohnson12 3y ago
  Wikipedia's goal isn't correctness, it is to aggregate the consensus of reliable sources. Wikipedia isn't reliable because it is agreed upon, it is reliable because determining truth values is outsourced to publishers who can mostly be depended on due to the value of reputation amongst experts in the information distribution sector. Publishers have their own biases which Wikipedia will aggregate. This is still, in my experience, a better bar than any others I've come across.
  - nvm0n2 3y ago
    They mostly outsource to a large variety of very unreliable sources and then exclude others based purely on politics, to the extent that people can't even get false statements about themselves corrected, let alone false statements about other people or topics.
    - stuartjohnson12 3y ago
      There is no "they". Wikipedia can be edited by anyone.
      - laverya 3y ago
        And reverted by anyone, if the edit doesn't meet standards - like relying on an unapproved source to correct a claim. And that's if the article isn't locked or otherwise restricted!
      - Uhhrrr 3y ago
        In practice, there is a hivemind of extremely active editors which will rules lawyer you to death if you introduce a fact they don't like.
VancouverMan 3y ago
While it was already obvious to some people before then, after everything that happened from early 2020 through most of 2022, it should be completely clear to everyone now that "expert consensus" has absolutely nothing to do with being factually correct. Time and time again, from the lockdowns/restrictions to the forced masking to the forced shots to the censorship to pretty much everything in between, the "expert consensus" from the medical, political, and mass media communities was wrong. Even worse than being wrong, so many of the ideas that were deemed "correct" by "expert consensus" often ended up being overtly harmful, and caused far worse outcomes and far more problems than were already being dealt with at the time. In hindsight, we can see that correct and useful information tended to come from the "fringe voices" that were drawing upon much wider and diverse knowledge and experience, while correct and useful information tended to not come from the highly-centralized and highly-controlled "experts".
- VMG 3y ago
  Of course the contrarian will only defend the "fringe voices" up to the point that he agrees with. Once it goes into 5G-activated magnetic microchip implants, the contrarian will defer to experts without the quotes.
  - gunapologist99 3y ago
    That doesn't mean that the contrarian tries to silence those he disagrees with.
- vladms 3y ago
  These are some strong statements without any reference. Haven't you personally dealt with any situation in which you have to take a decision based on incomplete information? That was covid for most part of it. You could compare it with a bet, and some bets look retrospectively "bad" (although we have no way to check, don't we?) There were also plenty of "fringe voices" with ideas that were proven wrong over time, so not sure how you imagine "someone" would have selected "the right ones".
  - 3y ago
bko 3y ago
I disagree. Science faces a similar problem with homogeniety, specifically in regards to funding usually coming from the state and in general state influence in research. To take an obvious example, the debate on the impact of sex and physical ability. It's obvious that males have an advantage over women on most physical tasks. I can't find a single event with an objective comparable scoring (e.g. how fast you finished, how high you jumped etc) where males don't outperform at every level by a significant degree. For instance, high school boy records beat pretty much all female world records in track [0]. And this is fine. We adapt societally by having women's leagues. And every scientist would admit this up until maybe 5 years ago. But now there is a growing "scientific consensus" that really it's some other societal effect. Humans knew this to be true for thousands of years, but in the last 5 years we're beginning to upturn that for some reason. So maybe some deference to the past is warranted. If thousands of years from now the "consensus" still says sex doesn't really matter, then I'll grant you that. But for now the "scientific consensus" doesn't make something true [0] https://boysvswomen.com/ https://boysvswomen.com/ [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/to-understand-sex-we-need-to-ask-the-right-questions/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/to-understand-sex...
- nickelpro 3y ago
  The problems of homogeneity among hard sciences is in no way bettered or solved by introducing quackery and conspiracy theories to the mix. The rest of your post is insane, "War on Christmas"-style. No one reputable is claiming men and women are biologically equivalent in all things.
  - bko 3y ago
    Is scientific American not reputabl? Here are a number of articles suggesting various arguments that there is no physical advantage of males in sports https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trans-girls-belong-on-girls-sports-teams/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trans-girls-belon... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hormone-levels-are-being-used-to-discriminate-against-female-athletes/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hormone-levels-ar... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/to-understand-sex-we-need-to-ask-the-right-questions/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/to-understand-sex... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the-idea-of-2-sexes-is-overly-simplistic1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the...
soundnote 3y ago
So when a topic like the Hunter Biden laptop comes up right before an election, could clearly impact it and... the mainstream media just refuses to report, or uncritically calls it a hoax. Wikipedia claims NYPost is an unreliable source, and social media sites blackout the topic. Turns out, "fringe" thing that was definitely not true was true. Was the consensus better? Doesn't seem so, and it's not an isolated instance.
ruszki 3y ago
Some of the commenters under your comment shows that Hacker News is not a “good place”. Pseudoscience is strong here. At least we got answer to that, but not to your question.
gunapologist99 3y ago
Do you also support removing the question you replied to?

synecdoche 3y ago

Plenty of assumptions there. There is nothing to say that correctness is a function of size or homogeneity. The claim is cause for concern in itself.

stuartjohnson12 3y ago
Wikipedia's goal isn't correctness, it is to aggregate the consensus of reliable sources. Wikipedia isn't reliable because it is agreed upon, it is reliable because determining truth values is outsourced to publishers who can mostly be depended on due to the value of reputation amongst experts in the information distribution sector. Publishers have their own biases which Wikipedia will aggregate. This is still, in my experience, a better bar than any others I've come across.
- nvm0n2 3y ago
  They mostly outsource to a large variety of very unreliable sources and then exclude others based purely on politics, to the extent that people can't even get false statements about themselves corrected, let alone false statements about other people or topics.
  - stuartjohnson12 3y ago
    There is no "they". Wikipedia can be edited by anyone.
    - laverya 3y ago
      And reverted by anyone, if the edit doesn't meet standards - like relying on an unapproved source to correct a claim. And that's if the article isn't locked or otherwise restricted!
    - Uhhrrr 3y ago
      In practice, there is a hivemind of extremely active editors which will rules lawyer you to death if you introduce a fact they don't like.

VancouverMan 3y ago

While it was already obvious to some people before then, after everything that happened from early 2020 through most of 2022, it should be completely clear to everyone now that "expert consensus" has absolutely nothing to do with being factually correct. Time and time again, from the lockdowns/restrictions to the forced masking to the forced shots to the censorship to pretty much everything in between, the "expert consensus" from the medical, political, and mass media communities was wrong. Even worse than being wrong, so many of the ideas that were deemed "correct" by "expert consensus" often ended up being overtly harmful, and caused far worse outcomes and far more problems than were already being dealt with at the time. In hindsight, we can see that correct and useful information tended to come from the "fringe voices" that were drawing upon much wider and diverse knowledge and experience, while correct and useful information tended to not come from the highly-centralized and highly-controlled "experts".

VMG 3y ago
Of course the contrarian will only defend the "fringe voices" up to the point that he agrees with. Once it goes into 5G-activated magnetic microchip implants, the contrarian will defer to experts without the quotes.
- gunapologist99 3y ago
  That doesn't mean that the contrarian tries to silence those he disagrees with.
vladms 3y ago
These are some strong statements without any reference. Haven't you personally dealt with any situation in which you have to take a decision based on incomplete information? That was covid for most part of it. You could compare it with a bet, and some bets look retrospectively "bad" (although we have no way to check, don't we?) There were also plenty of "fringe voices" with ideas that were proven wrong over time, so not sure how you imagine "someone" would have selected "the right ones".
- 3y ago

bko 3y ago

I disagree. Science faces a similar problem with homogeniety, specifically in regards to funding usually coming from the state and in general state influence in research. To take an obvious example, the debate on the impact of sex and physical ability. It's obvious that males have an advantage over women on most physical tasks. I can't find a single event with an objective comparable scoring (e.g. how fast you finished, how high you jumped etc) where males don't outperform at every level by a significant degree. For instance, high school boy records beat pretty much all female world records in track [0]. And this is fine. We adapt societally by having women's leagues. And every scientist would admit this up until maybe 5 years ago. But now there is a growing "scientific consensus" that really it's some other societal effect. Humans knew this to be true for thousands of years, but in the last 5 years we're beginning to upturn that for some reason. So maybe some deference to the past is warranted. If thousands of years from now the "consensus" still says sex doesn't really matter, then I'll grant you that. But for now the "scientific consensus" doesn't make something true [0] https://boysvswomen.com/ https://boysvswomen.com/ [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/to-understand-sex-we-need-to-ask-the-right-questions/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/to-understand-sex...

nickelpro 3y ago
The problems of homogeneity among hard sciences is in no way bettered or solved by introducing quackery and conspiracy theories to the mix. The rest of your post is insane, "War on Christmas"-style. No one reputable is claiming men and women are biologically equivalent in all things.
- bko 3y ago
  Is scientific American not reputabl? Here are a number of articles suggesting various arguments that there is no physical advantage of males in sports https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trans-girls-belong-on-girls-sports-teams/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trans-girls-belon... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hormone-levels-are-being-used-to-discriminate-against-female-athletes/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hormone-levels-ar... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/to-understand-sex-we-need-to-ask-the-right-questions/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/to-understand-sex... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the-idea-of-2-sexes-is-overly-simplistic1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the...

soundnote 3y ago

So when a topic like the Hunter Biden laptop comes up right before an election, could clearly impact it and... the mainstream media just refuses to report, or uncritically calls it a hoax. Wikipedia claims NYPost is an unreliable source, and social media sites blackout the topic. Turns out, "fringe" thing that was definitely not true was true. Was the consensus better? Doesn't seem so, and it's not an isolated instance.

ruszki 3y ago

Some of the commenters under your comment shows that Hacker News is not a “good place”. Pseudoscience is strong here. At least we got answer to that, but not to your question.

gunapologist99 3y ago

Do you also support removing the question you replied to?