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To be clear, he’s saying the wildly successful mRNA covid vaccines, given to hundreds of millions of people, “don’t work”. Based on “science” without any actua
by tw04 1y ago
To be clear, he’s saying the wildly successful mRNA covid vaccines, given to hundreds of millions of people, “don’t work”. Based on “science” without any actual citation* of a study to be seen.
It’s absurd this administration can now just say “we used science” and not be held accountable for the bald faced lies.
- mzajc 1y agoAbsurd, but unsurprising. I've seen their voters, in bad faith, compare science to religion, either because the distinction between pure faith and a scientific process is too alien to them or because they pretend that it is. This is yet another manifestation of this "misunderstanding".
- o11c 1y agoTo be fair, there often isn't as much a distinction as we'd like. Even ignoring soft sciences ... how often is there an HN post linking to a paper about some great new battery technology? When the in-group fails to police itself sufficiently, it is inevitable that the out-group will do so coarsely.
- Teever 1y agoPeople posting astroturfed links on HN about new battery tech is not directly comparable to people refusing to vaccine their children against measles because of religious reasons.
- eggnet 1y agoThis comment is too indirect to be useful. Can you be more explicit?
- o11c 1y agoTo the people at large, a lot of "science" consists entirely of "hey look, a blessed paper says so; anyone who disagrees is a heretic", which is exactly what the atheists (and other-religion-ists) see for insert-religion-here.
- schmidtleonard 1y agoTheir schooling taught them better than that. They choose to forget.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- cloverich 1y agoReligion is dogmatic about its static, mutually exclusive, non falsifiable position(s) over extremely long periods of time. The topics you are alluding to are usually novel, complex, changing, and subject to healthy debate. They are quite different. I agree there is an aspect of belief amongst lay persons that they both share which i feel is the more subtle but valid aspect of your argument, but separating it from the initial part of my comment i feel invalidates its usefulness.
- schmidtleonard 1y agoNope. Experiments are the opposite of faith, and a collection of social mechanisms to encourage experimentation, long-form debate, and useful + correct results is fundamentally different from a collection of social mechanisms to encourage faith and obedience.
- pstuart 1y agoThe weasel wording around "belief" doesn't help. The two use cases of the words are not the same: 1. belief: a world view that exists without needing external validation (i.e., "faith") 2. belief: an understanding of some kind, based on some collection of evidence Some of that confusion is just ignorance and lack of critical reasoning skills, but it's also done in bad faith to muddy the waters to discredit the other side.
- o11c 1y agoA believer might say there's no difference at all: "just because there's not enough proof that you will accept doesn't mean there's no evidence." Though I'd actually use a different definition still: 3. belief: an idea upon which you have the confidence to act
- schmidtleonard 1y agoSo a sufficiently confident idiot is equivalent to https://xkcd.com/54/ https://xkcd.com/54/ ?
- o11c 1y agoWell, I would have suggested an experiment, but if we're still at the "idiot" phase that might be a bit premature. Instead, I'll offer some general questions that can be answered without experiments, only research. For each faith X: 0. Note that each line depends on previous lines. 1. Who and what defines X-ism? 2. How exactly do you determine if someone is an X-ist? 3. What immediate claims does X-ism make about you, me, X-ists, non-X-ists, people at large, the world in general, etc. 4. What are the greater (long-term, conceptual, metaphysical, etc.) implications of 3? 5. If X is true, what prior assumptions and values will I have to discard? Am I willing to do so? 6. What kind of signal-to-noise ratio can I expect due to uncertainties when calculating the above in practice?
- linotype 1y agoSagan called this in the 90s if not before.
- schmidtleonard 1y agoYeah, it goes way back, but it has definitely flared up recently. "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'" - Asimov, 1980
- theturtle 1y ago1980 was barely the start of "celebration of the stupid." Reagan and Bush turbocharged it. "Yore stoopid? Well, good fer yew, yer what Murka's all about!!!"
- shreezus 1y agoUniversity research grants that have the word "mRNA" present are currently being flagged and frozen, even though mRNA technology has been used for things like cancer vaccine research for years. Politicizing a technology is incredibly absurd and will have long-term repercussions on science & medicine. I know of a professor at one university that had grants frozen due to being flagged as "woke" gender discourse. His lab researches...(wait for it)... immunotherapy treatments for breast cancer in women.
- rockemsockem 1y agoAnd here I thought the right liked boobs, smh
- atmavatar 1y agoThey apparently only like boobs when they're heads of federal agencies.
- senectus1 1y agoThis administration and the congress to go with it are going to end up being recorded as more damaging to human progress than covid or the GFC.
- OCASMv2 1y ago[flagged]
- lvspiff 1y agoA podcast or tweet from RichNipples isnt an ACTUAL scientific citation??? Next you’ll tell me DogDookie69 isn’t the women’s reproductive specialist he’s made himself out to be.