5 ms·

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 e

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".
- whatwhaaaaat 3y ago
  Claiming things to be true that had no evidence is not the same thing as making decisions with partial information. The mRNA shots were not tested at all for transmissibility yet we were told they prevented transmission. Thank goodness some people have a memory longer than 2 weeks.
  - didibus 3y ago
    > The mRNA shots were not tested at all for transmissibility yet we were told they prevented transmission Data that has come out since does seem to indicate it lowers transmission. But I'm unclear if you're trying to say that this turned out to be false (the reduction in transmission), or that you're pointing out how some policies were driven by claims that didn't yet have strong enough evidence backing them up?
    - pessimizer 3y ago
      > Data that has come out since does seem to indicate it lowers transmission. You can't retroactively justify a lie. If I think Bob is in jail and I tell you he's not in jail, it doesn't matter later if he turned out never to have been in jail. The claims that were being made, and being used to push policy, were at the time something that hadn't even been tested.
      - didibus 3y ago
        I was asking clarification, because it all depends what we mean about truth and lie here. If we're saying that reduction in transmission is a lie, well that might be false, as data now seem to indicate it does cause reduced transmission. But if we're saying people claimed that they ran a trial specifically to investigate the effect on transmission, when no such trial took place, than I agree, this would be a lie. Now I never felt like "official" sources said there were trials about transmission conducted and that proved massive reduction in transmission. But I can believe maybe there was one somewhere. I do agree though that policies were made with claims that had sometimes poor evidence or incomplete data and experimentation. And we should all wonder and discuss what could have been done policy wise that would have been better. Was acting fast on low confidence better than waiting for high confidence? Would more educating and less regulating have had better results? Etc.
didibus 3y ago
> 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 If you take all fringe hypothesis and claims posted online, you'll find time and time again that so many of them are wrong, and not just by a margin, but often times ridiculously far off. And you'll find that a lot of more "official" claims were right. It leaves us with some of the outliers, where fringe claims were right and "official" claims were wrong. Now someone would need to tally them up and all to actually see how often. But that impression you have seems to be misjudging this. The other issue in your judgement in my opinion is that you're focusing entirely on this particular event. But the expert process was being interfered with, due to the extensively political nature of it, and the strong pressures from everyone else to get answers before it's possible to do so with high confidence. And finally, the only basis we're even using to assess which ones were "right" or "wrong" after the fact is a form of consensus, and primarily an "expert consensus" that has simply had more time to settle.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  > If you take all fringe hypothesis and claims posted online, you'll find time and time again that so many of them are wrong, and not just by a margin, but often times ridiculously far off. This isn't something you should do, because it is not sensible. If you ask 10,000 people what two plus two equals, then write out a list of all of the unique answers you get, 99% of them will be wrong.
  - didibus 3y ago
    Yes, that's my point. So if you need to predict which conclusion is more likely the actual reality, picking the one made by more experienced individuals on the subject, who have spent more time studying, experimenting and observing the matter, and for which a multitude of those individuals all independently arrive at a similar conclusion, and where they provide extensive rationale through published papers for why and how they arrive at that conclusion (expert consensus), is more sensible, than trying to randomly pick from all the fringe conclusions posted online, or even from picking to the one that went the most "viral" and got reposted most. Even if, much later, those same experts realize they were wrong, and it turned out one of those fringe conclusions online was actually right.

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".

whatwhaaaaat 3y ago
Claiming things to be true that had no evidence is not the same thing as making decisions with partial information. The mRNA shots were not tested at all for transmissibility yet we were told they prevented transmission. Thank goodness some people have a memory longer than 2 weeks.
- didibus 3y ago
  > The mRNA shots were not tested at all for transmissibility yet we were told they prevented transmission Data that has come out since does seem to indicate it lowers transmission. But I'm unclear if you're trying to say that this turned out to be false (the reduction in transmission), or that you're pointing out how some policies were driven by claims that didn't yet have strong enough evidence backing them up?
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    > Data that has come out since does seem to indicate it lowers transmission. You can't retroactively justify a lie. If I think Bob is in jail and I tell you he's not in jail, it doesn't matter later if he turned out never to have been in jail. The claims that were being made, and being used to push policy, were at the time something that hadn't even been tested.
    - didibus 3y ago
      I was asking clarification, because it all depends what we mean about truth and lie here. If we're saying that reduction in transmission is a lie, well that might be false, as data now seem to indicate it does cause reduced transmission. But if we're saying people claimed that they ran a trial specifically to investigate the effect on transmission, when no such trial took place, than I agree, this would be a lie. Now I never felt like "official" sources said there were trials about transmission conducted and that proved massive reduction in transmission. But I can believe maybe there was one somewhere. I do agree though that policies were made with claims that had sometimes poor evidence or incomplete data and experimentation. And we should all wonder and discuss what could have been done policy wise that would have been better. Was acting fast on low confidence better than waiting for high confidence? Would more educating and less regulating have had better results? Etc.

didibus 3y ago

> 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 If you take all fringe hypothesis and claims posted online, you'll find time and time again that so many of them are wrong, and not just by a margin, but often times ridiculously far off. And you'll find that a lot of more "official" claims were right. It leaves us with some of the outliers, where fringe claims were right and "official" claims were wrong. Now someone would need to tally them up and all to actually see how often. But that impression you have seems to be misjudging this. The other issue in your judgement in my opinion is that you're focusing entirely on this particular event. But the expert process was being interfered with, due to the extensively political nature of it, and the strong pressures from everyone else to get answers before it's possible to do so with high confidence. And finally, the only basis we're even using to assess which ones were "right" or "wrong" after the fact is a form of consensus, and primarily an "expert consensus" that has simply had more time to settle.

pessimizer 3y ago
> If you take all fringe hypothesis and claims posted online, you'll find time and time again that so many of them are wrong, and not just by a margin, but often times ridiculously far off. This isn't something you should do, because it is not sensible. If you ask 10,000 people what two plus two equals, then write out a list of all of the unique answers you get, 99% of them will be wrong.
- didibus 3y ago
  Yes, that's my point. So if you need to predict which conclusion is more likely the actual reality, picking the one made by more experienced individuals on the subject, who have spent more time studying, experimenting and observing the matter, and for which a multitude of those individuals all independently arrive at a similar conclusion, and where they provide extensive rationale through published papers for why and how they arrive at that conclusion (expert consensus), is more sensible, than trying to randomly pick from all the fringe conclusions posted online, or even from picking to the one that went the most "viral" and got reposted most. Even if, much later, those same experts realize they were wrong, and it turned out one of those fringe conclusions online was actually right.