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For there to be democracy, there must be accountability. For there to be accountability, there must be some sense of truth, and under that some sense of trust o

For there to be democracy, there must be accountability. For there to be accountability, there must be some sense of truth, and under that some sense of trust of each other. What we have seen happen over the past decade is quite similar what happened in Russia in decades before it: complete dismantling of trust, of the idea of truth, of the idea of honesty or integrity. And in that space of uncertainty, a new sort of ruling class is enabled to control the population. Anti-vaxxers used to be a tiny minority, and living in a crunchy leftish area, they were concentrated around me, and I got into arguments with them all the time. Now, they are no longer leftists, they are MAHA/MAGA, because their fundamental view of the world is not left/right, it's authority/antiauthority. Vaccines were rejected as much because of the idea of an authority "knowing stuff" as it is about the ickiness of something impure being injected into the body, as much as they love the idea of "everything natural" including "natural" infectious disease. We've destroyed the idea of expertise and authority based on knowledge that's open to anybody who wants to put in the time to learn, and replaced it with authority that exists merely because it hated the past authority, and became what it hated.

NotGMan 11mo ago
[flagged]
- hiddencost 11mo ago
  [flagged]
- javier2 11mo ago
  No, it wasn't, and these extremely marginal results got way too much attention compared to the millions of results showing all the valuable results from broad vaccination.
- epistasis 11mo ago
  You are not being honest, but you are trying to your best to undermine the idea of honesty. Every vaccine safety study was questioned and examined, thoroughly. Introducing this idea of "mocked and ostracized," is a rhetorical tactic to try to establish the idea of some sort of mistreated people that other mistreated people can identify with. It's not based in truth of how the scientific community worked. If there's "mocking and ostracization" then it's in some sort of other social space, not in the evaluation of the vaccine safety studies. And by trying to conflate these two areas, you are trying to undermine the very idea of truth seeking, and replace it with this weird vibes-based in-group/out-group emotionally-based judgements. We need to pivot to rationality, and away from in-group/out-group analysis. Let's evaluate claims on their merits, not based on who is making them.
  - BriggyDwiggs42 11mo ago
    > Introducing this idea of "mocked and ostracized," is a rhetorical tactic to try to establish the idea of some sort of mistreated people that other mistreated people can identify with. It's not based in truth of how the scientific community worked. If there's "mocking and ostracization" then it's in some sort of other social space, not in the evaluation of the vaccine safety studies. And by trying to conflate these two areas, you are trying to undermine the very idea of truth seeking, and replace it with this weird vibes-based in-group/out-group emotionally-based judgements. Well put
    - ryandrake 11mo ago
      Religious groups often employ the same rhetoric: Pretend to be victims, mocked and ostracized, which pulls at the heartstrings of people who themselves are (or believe they are) mocked and ostracized. Some of the largest and most powerful organized religions in the world have this exact kind of persecution complex at the heart of their scripture and sermons.
      - BriggyDwiggs42 11mo ago
        Yup. I’m not sure who downvoted me but I meant my comment as a genuine compliment.
  - CWuestefeld 11mo ago
    > It's not based in truth of how the scientific community worked. If there's "mocking and ostracization" then it's in some sort of other social space, not in the evaluation of the vaccine safety studies. You seem to be doing just what the OP is complaining about. You've set up the scientific establishment as some sort of priesthood, which the great unwashed masses should not question. That's not how science should work, at least in a functional system. If only insiders have the privilege of asking "why?", then we'll be forever trapped in orthodoxy, or worse, trapped in authoritarianism. Unfortunately, the insurance policy against that trap - that annoying people will keep asking "why?" - itself has a steep price, sometimes almost turning into a heckler's veto. It's a tough problem.
- arunabha 11mo ago
  You know, unsurprisingly these claims are almost always heavy on rhetoric but offer no references or data to back up the assertion beyond a had wavy 'everyone knows'.
- dwoldrich 11mo ago
  I know the mocking, wicked tone is why a response on this comment was flagged and dead. > Your head is so far up your --- you can see daylight. They were mocked for being wrong, not for questioning orthodoxy. There is a well understood epistemology for these things, and you need basic competence to apply it. So, I have trouble anyone is so cocksure about vaccines and the shot rollout and the general response to covid like lockdowns, etc. I hope this is some consensus shaping bot, but in the case it is not and a real human wrote that, I just want to respond. Your loud, semi-religious devotion to a consumer product is disgusting. Your outrage fuels my resolve. There are different safety profiles for any drug, not all are equal. The covid vaxxes all have an atrocious safety profile, at least one was pulled in the states after wide distribution, all were experimental in nature and were generally rushed out to market. There needs to be jail time for the scoundrels that ignored safety signals. And on top of that the damn things didn't work and didn't stop the spread. Beyond that, the vaxxes were publicly funded corporate welfare, there was broad public-private collusion to force people to get it (no jab, no job), there were 1st amendment violations by businesses forcing employees to disclose medical statuses. You will not listen to reason, there are a million other sus things you all ignore about 2020-2022. I just hope everyone rebukes you and whatever neo-paganism has a death grip on your mind.
  - jimmaswell 11mo ago
    Do you have a source on those safety profiles and the "didn't work" claim?
    - dwoldrich 11mo ago
      [flagged]
      - jimmaswell 11mo ago
        You're either mistaking me for someone else or massively projecting - that was my only comment in this thread, and it was nothing but a neutral request for sources. You can't expect to win anyone over with personal attacks followed by "it's obvious". If you were to give me a truly compelling argument/source, I would still consider it, as with anything. I don't trust the government and I don't put it past the "establishment" to systematically lie about something, but that doesn't mean there's no burden of proof on the other side.
- dmm 11mo ago
  Sincere request: Can you provide some specific examples of doctors being mocked or ostracized for criticizing studies?
mhb 11mo ago
[flagged]
- whateveracct 11mo ago
  > who thought people were too stupid to understand any nuance of a situation Americans have already proven they are too stupid for such nuance over the last decade or so.
- IncreasePosts 11mo ago
  Why wouldn't someone who studied public health and led public health organizations for years know more about public health than everyone else?
- arunabha 11mo ago
  >> Or maybe he was as arrogant as he seemed and believed he knew better than everyone else. Do you have any references for this? Our understanding of Covid evolved pretty rapidly during the pandemic and as usual hindsight is 20/20. I have no doubt that *you* are convinced of your statement. I'd just like to understand what data you based your conviction on.
  - mhb 11mo ago
    "So, why weren't we told to wear masks in the beginning? 'Well, the reason for that is that we were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply. And we wanted to make sure that the people namely, the health care workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in a harm way, to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected.'"[1] [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20250501225159/https://www.thestreet.com/video/dr-fauci-masks-changing-directive-coronavirus https://web.archive.org/web/20250501225159/https://www.thest...
    - epgui 11mo ago
      And?
api 11mo ago
“Trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback.” In my life there have been two huge destructions of public trust. The first was the Iraq war, which could only be the result of either bald faced lies or gross incompetence or both. We blundered into the desert and set a trillion dollars and countless lives on fire and have nothing to show for it. Tons of people across the spectrum knew this was a terrible idea and were silenced or ignored. The other was the 2008 bank bailouts. The problem isn’t that the state stepped in to avert a depression. The problem is that they did it by handing the very people who caused the crash a bonus and a promotion and then proceeded to reinflate the housing bubble to lock two generations out of home ownership. The response was that the Eastern establishment saved itself at the expense of the country, or that’s how it looked to a ton of people all across the country and the political spectrum including myself. There have been smaller cuts but those are the big obvious ones. You could never get a Trump or an RFK Jr without these two things. Unfortunately these two characters are not reformers. They are vultures. They are frauds and con men dining on the corpse of trust. I’m not Russian but I imagine that the failure of the Soviet regime and the hollowness of its propaganda did a number on trust over there, and that Putin and his allies are likewise vultures.
- whateveracct 11mo ago
  uhh I think various parts of Trump's presidency seem to be tantamount to those things. Jan 6, for instance.
  - terminalshort 11mo ago
    The Jan 6 mob isn't a public institution that ever had any public trust to lose.
    - whateveracct 11mo ago
      I am talking about Trump's handling of it. Both day of and subsequently (e.g. pardoning them because they're "his people.") Not to mention public officials being fired due to calling it a "mob" as you just did.
- 11mo ago
conradev 11mo ago
We also subjected a lot of the population to vaccine mandates in order to retain their employment. That makes sense for some workers, sure, but it bred a lot of resentment toward authority.
- epistasis 11mo ago
  It wasn't the CDC doing vaccine mandates, it was some employers, by their own choice. If the mandates were the problem, wouldn't people hate their employers for doing that, not the CDC? It's certainly not the first time people have been required to be vaccinated. I remember talking to some people in the military, who were very upset about the COVID vaccine, yet they get so many more vaccines all the time. Why would they be upset about vaccine mandates for COVID out of nowhere, when they get far more vaccines as a matter of course and have for decades? There's something new in the information space, specifically about COVID and vaccines, and maybe it is such an irrational thing as trying to destroy the CDC because of some employers' mandates for vaccines, because under this all its irrationality, but I don't understand it.
- Arainach 11mo ago
  It didn't for decades until bad actors spewing lies worked to spread distrust in the system.
- croes 11mo ago
  Doesn’t the military mandate vaccines for decades
  - conradev 11mo ago
    Yes! The DoD uses the military to test novel vaccines with service members. That is part of the “some workers” because you’re being deployed worldwide to new situations. Historically, though, I believe the DoD started it because of the threat of biological/chemical warfare, i.e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthrax_Vaccine_Immunization_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthrax_Vaccine_Immunization_P... From 2001: In Court, it was ruled that vaccination could not be forced on military personnel without a special order by the president. Thereafter it ran into and judicial obstacles (mainly concerning the methods and viability of the vaccine).
abe_m 11mo ago
The alternate take is that improved information publishing and distribution platforms (the internet) have allowed the exposure of some pretty corrupt and questionable relationships between the authorities and the industries they regulate (regulatory capture). Previously people only got their information from the authorities and newspapers. Newspapers were owned by the industries (either directly, or via advertising). Now we can see diverse view points from others in various fields, and it is clear when "doctors say ..." that doesn't mean that all doctors believe that to be true. We can now see that NIH scientists that approve drugs are allowed to approve drugs where they have a patent and commercial interest in the drugs they are approving, which is mind-bendingly wild that level of corruption is allowed. People can also question where the studies are to back guidelines from authorities. Like what is the scientific basis of the food pyramid? Turns out that was created by the Department of Agriculture to support grain farmers, not because it is a good diet for humans. Or that the deaths and injuries for many infectious diseases had significantly declined before their respective vaccines hit the market, and that the authorities have been cherry picking the points of the graph to hide how much of the improvement happened before vaccines were available. The biggest change is the availability of diverse voices in an industry being able to be heard, rather than just a select few chosen by "authority", aka power, aka money.
- ryandrake 11mo ago
  Unfortunately, for every "questionable relationship between the authorities and the industries they regulate' being exposed by citizen journalists and the power of the internet, there are 10 wild conspiracy theories with no basis in fact being spread. And for every 1 of those conspiracies being spread, there are 10 grifters out there making a buck selling products and services based around them. The Internet was a great idea that has not held up against stupidity and greed.
  - abe_m 11mo ago
    That is unfortunate, but also, I'd rather choose the situation where truth about abuses of power by authorities can spread with the trade off that some wing nuts are also making up stories out of whole cloth, than the one where truth is crushed under power of authority.
danaris 11mo ago
> because their fundamental view of the world is not left/right, it's authority/antiauthority Except that (given the vagaries of the English language) that sounds like they would be "anti-authoritarian", but they're exactly the people cheering on the current authoritarian government. However, I suspect that the sense of "authority" you mean is more like "expertise", or "intellectual", with a dash of "perceived establishment" thrown in. (No shade on you for this—like I said, English is frequently ambiguous and tricky to clearly word things in.)
- tstrimple 11mo ago
  I think this gets lost somewhat in the distance between how conservatives describe themselves and how they actually behave. They cry the loudest about some vague "FREEDOM!" but are actively cheering on the blatant violation of human rights in the country. They pretend to be "individualists" but go out of their way to make fun of and ostracize people who don't conform to their version of "normal". Practically every position they state is directly contradicted by the things they support. They get to carry this "fiscally responsible" badge despite never once being accountable for delivering on that promise. Their entire ideology is based on lies and bad faith and it shows by the people they keep electing.
Izkata 11mo ago
No, their concern was specifically over mRNA and how it might screw with the body. Over 2021 and 2022 it very much felt like the pro-vaccine crowd was the anti-science crowd: While they were dismissing all concerns with things like the overly-simplistic "that's not how it works, it's DNA -> RNA -> proteins like we learned in school", the MAGA crowd was talking about reverse-transcriptase enzymes and sharing studies like https://www.mdpi.com/1467-3045/44/3/73 https://www.mdpi.com/1467-3045/44/3/73 Their concerns were never addressed, just ignored. It's not surprising they stopped trusting authorities like the CDC.
intended 11mo ago
Form what its worth, I urge people to pick up Network Propaganda. Online speech, moderation and regulation are things I am focused on, and this book does a better job of putting all the parts together. You can often hear someone on HN talk about “I would rather have many voices than let someone decide what is true.” Thing is, that is standing up at a battle line which has been flanked entirely. In the simplest sense - the information economy is no longer functional. Its been co-opted by private=government mutations. None of the old hacker culture rhetoric is graded to combat it. The current shtick is to promote a fringe theory. Have a talking head state the fringe theory on Fox. Then have a government functionary state that the Fox mentioned said theory. Then have Fox state that a government functionary mentioned said theory. If you are someone who has a counter theory, you just don’t get platformed.
- wakawaka28 11mo ago
  >Thing is, that is standing up at a battle line which has been flanked entirely. If you think for yourself, this doesn't really matter. >If you are someone who has a counter theory, you just don’t get platformed. You keep mentioning this stuff from a liberal perspective but conservatives and free thinkers have been fighting this fight on social media for years as policies they disagreed with were promoted unilaterally and everything else was censored and suppressed. People were at risk of losing their jobs and being sent into exile over not wanting to take a vaccine. "My body, my choice" doesn't count when it comes to that. The information economy is full of shills and AI bots, but that does not in and of itself prevent you from finding your own reliable sources of information. Censorship would stop you from finding it, however. Mandatory online ID would also hurt the flow of sincerely communicated information.
  - intended 11mo ago
    > but conservatives and free thinkers have been fighting this fight on social The mechanism I described is what is happening on Fox and the current admin. > that does not in and of itself prevent you from finding your own reliable.. Your positions seem to believe in the power of the individual overcoming. An economy of 1. You are free to do this. The counter party is going to work on the rest of your compatriots.
wakawaka28 11mo ago
>We've destroyed the idea of expertise and authority based on knowledge that's open to anybody who wants to put in the time to learn Let me stop you right there. Actual credentialed experts who disagreed with the mainstream narratives put forth by other experts were censored, had their careers threatened, and were lumped in with "anti-vaxxers". Social media was censored. If you want to win people over and get them to trust you, you need to accept that they may not agree with you, and you don't get to silence them. The financial interests of pharmaceutical companies further muddy the waters. There exists a large set of "experts" in every field of interest who want you to know that their work is absolutely essential and if you disagree with them, you're wrong. Some of these fields have massive epistemological issues and conflicts of interests. These experts are often proven to be extremely wrong. Sometimes, the best thing you can do in life is to disregard the "experts" and trust your own personal interpretation of a situation, and "do your own research"... If nobody ever thought different from "experts" we would still be in the dark ages thinking that the sun revolves around a flat Earth.

NotGMan 11mo ago

[flagged]

hiddencost 11mo ago
[flagged]
javier2 11mo ago
No, it wasn't, and these extremely marginal results got way too much attention compared to the millions of results showing all the valuable results from broad vaccination.
epistasis 11mo ago
You are not being honest, but you are trying to your best to undermine the idea of honesty. Every vaccine safety study was questioned and examined, thoroughly. Introducing this idea of "mocked and ostracized," is a rhetorical tactic to try to establish the idea of some sort of mistreated people that other mistreated people can identify with. It's not based in truth of how the scientific community worked. If there's "mocking and ostracization" then it's in some sort of other social space, not in the evaluation of the vaccine safety studies. And by trying to conflate these two areas, you are trying to undermine the very idea of truth seeking, and replace it with this weird vibes-based in-group/out-group emotionally-based judgements. We need to pivot to rationality, and away from in-group/out-group analysis. Let's evaluate claims on their merits, not based on who is making them.
- BriggyDwiggs42 11mo ago
  > Introducing this idea of "mocked and ostracized," is a rhetorical tactic to try to establish the idea of some sort of mistreated people that other mistreated people can identify with. It's not based in truth of how the scientific community worked. If there's "mocking and ostracization" then it's in some sort of other social space, not in the evaluation of the vaccine safety studies. And by trying to conflate these two areas, you are trying to undermine the very idea of truth seeking, and replace it with this weird vibes-based in-group/out-group emotionally-based judgements. Well put
  - ryandrake 11mo ago
    Religious groups often employ the same rhetoric: Pretend to be victims, mocked and ostracized, which pulls at the heartstrings of people who themselves are (or believe they are) mocked and ostracized. Some of the largest and most powerful organized religions in the world have this exact kind of persecution complex at the heart of their scripture and sermons.
    - BriggyDwiggs42 11mo ago
      Yup. I’m not sure who downvoted me but I meant my comment as a genuine compliment.
- CWuestefeld 11mo ago
  > It's not based in truth of how the scientific community worked. If there's "mocking and ostracization" then it's in some sort of other social space, not in the evaluation of the vaccine safety studies. You seem to be doing just what the OP is complaining about. You've set up the scientific establishment as some sort of priesthood, which the great unwashed masses should not question. That's not how science should work, at least in a functional system. If only insiders have the privilege of asking "why?", then we'll be forever trapped in orthodoxy, or worse, trapped in authoritarianism. Unfortunately, the insurance policy against that trap - that annoying people will keep asking "why?" - itself has a steep price, sometimes almost turning into a heckler's veto. It's a tough problem.
arunabha 11mo ago
You know, unsurprisingly these claims are almost always heavy on rhetoric but offer no references or data to back up the assertion beyond a had wavy 'everyone knows'.
dwoldrich 11mo ago
I know the mocking, wicked tone is why a response on this comment was flagged and dead. > Your head is so far up your --- you can see daylight. They were mocked for being wrong, not for questioning orthodoxy. There is a well understood epistemology for these things, and you need basic competence to apply it. So, I have trouble anyone is so cocksure about vaccines and the shot rollout and the general response to covid like lockdowns, etc. I hope this is some consensus shaping bot, but in the case it is not and a real human wrote that, I just want to respond. Your loud, semi-religious devotion to a consumer product is disgusting. Your outrage fuels my resolve. There are different safety profiles for any drug, not all are equal. The covid vaxxes all have an atrocious safety profile, at least one was pulled in the states after wide distribution, all were experimental in nature and were generally rushed out to market. There needs to be jail time for the scoundrels that ignored safety signals. And on top of that the damn things didn't work and didn't stop the spread. Beyond that, the vaxxes were publicly funded corporate welfare, there was broad public-private collusion to force people to get it (no jab, no job), there were 1st amendment violations by businesses forcing employees to disclose medical statuses. You will not listen to reason, there are a million other sus things you all ignore about 2020-2022. I just hope everyone rebukes you and whatever neo-paganism has a death grip on your mind.
- jimmaswell 11mo ago
  Do you have a source on those safety profiles and the "didn't work" claim?
  - dwoldrich 11mo ago
    [flagged]
    - jimmaswell 11mo ago
      You're either mistaking me for someone else or massively projecting - that was my only comment in this thread, and it was nothing but a neutral request for sources. You can't expect to win anyone over with personal attacks followed by "it's obvious". If you were to give me a truly compelling argument/source, I would still consider it, as with anything. I don't trust the government and I don't put it past the "establishment" to systematically lie about something, but that doesn't mean there's no burden of proof on the other side.
dmm 11mo ago
Sincere request: Can you provide some specific examples of doctors being mocked or ostracized for criticizing studies?

mhb 11mo ago

[flagged]

whateveracct 11mo ago
> who thought people were too stupid to understand any nuance of a situation Americans have already proven they are too stupid for such nuance over the last decade or so.
IncreasePosts 11mo ago
Why wouldn't someone who studied public health and led public health organizations for years know more about public health than everyone else?
arunabha 11mo ago
>> Or maybe he was as arrogant as he seemed and believed he knew better than everyone else. Do you have any references for this? Our understanding of Covid evolved pretty rapidly during the pandemic and as usual hindsight is 20/20. I have no doubt that *you* are convinced of your statement. I'd just like to understand what data you based your conviction on.
- mhb 11mo ago
  "So, why weren't we told to wear masks in the beginning? 'Well, the reason for that is that we were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply. And we wanted to make sure that the people namely, the health care workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in a harm way, to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected.'"[1] [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20250501225159/https://www.thestreet.com/video/dr-fauci-masks-changing-directive-coronavirus https://web.archive.org/web/20250501225159/https://www.thest...
  - epgui 11mo ago
    And?

api 11mo ago

“Trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback.” In my life there have been two huge destructions of public trust. The first was the Iraq war, which could only be the result of either bald faced lies or gross incompetence or both. We blundered into the desert and set a trillion dollars and countless lives on fire and have nothing to show for it. Tons of people across the spectrum knew this was a terrible idea and were silenced or ignored. The other was the 2008 bank bailouts. The problem isn’t that the state stepped in to avert a depression. The problem is that they did it by handing the very people who caused the crash a bonus and a promotion and then proceeded to reinflate the housing bubble to lock two generations out of home ownership. The response was that the Eastern establishment saved itself at the expense of the country, or that’s how it looked to a ton of people all across the country and the political spectrum including myself. There have been smaller cuts but those are the big obvious ones. You could never get a Trump or an RFK Jr without these two things. Unfortunately these two characters are not reformers. They are vultures. They are frauds and con men dining on the corpse of trust. I’m not Russian but I imagine that the failure of the Soviet regime and the hollowness of its propaganda did a number on trust over there, and that Putin and his allies are likewise vultures.

whateveracct 11mo ago
uhh I think various parts of Trump's presidency seem to be tantamount to those things. Jan 6, for instance.
- terminalshort 11mo ago
  The Jan 6 mob isn't a public institution that ever had any public trust to lose.
  - whateveracct 11mo ago
    I am talking about Trump's handling of it. Both day of and subsequently (e.g. pardoning them because they're "his people.") Not to mention public officials being fired due to calling it a "mob" as you just did.
11mo ago

conradev 11mo ago

We also subjected a lot of the population to vaccine mandates in order to retain their employment. That makes sense for some workers, sure, but it bred a lot of resentment toward authority.

epistasis 11mo ago
It wasn't the CDC doing vaccine mandates, it was some employers, by their own choice. If the mandates were the problem, wouldn't people hate their employers for doing that, not the CDC? It's certainly not the first time people have been required to be vaccinated. I remember talking to some people in the military, who were very upset about the COVID vaccine, yet they get so many more vaccines all the time. Why would they be upset about vaccine mandates for COVID out of nowhere, when they get far more vaccines as a matter of course and have for decades? There's something new in the information space, specifically about COVID and vaccines, and maybe it is such an irrational thing as trying to destroy the CDC because of some employers' mandates for vaccines, because under this all its irrationality, but I don't understand it.
Arainach 11mo ago
It didn't for decades until bad actors spewing lies worked to spread distrust in the system.
croes 11mo ago
Doesn’t the military mandate vaccines for decades
- conradev 11mo ago
  Yes! The DoD uses the military to test novel vaccines with service members. That is part of the “some workers” because you’re being deployed worldwide to new situations. Historically, though, I believe the DoD started it because of the threat of biological/chemical warfare, i.e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthrax_Vaccine_Immunization_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthrax_Vaccine_Immunization_P... From 2001: In Court, it was ruled that vaccination could not be forced on military personnel without a special order by the president. Thereafter it ran into and judicial obstacles (mainly concerning the methods and viability of the vaccine).

abe_m 11mo ago

The alternate take is that improved information publishing and distribution platforms (the internet) have allowed the exposure of some pretty corrupt and questionable relationships between the authorities and the industries they regulate (regulatory capture). Previously people only got their information from the authorities and newspapers. Newspapers were owned by the industries (either directly, or via advertising). Now we can see diverse view points from others in various fields, and it is clear when "doctors say ..." that doesn't mean that all doctors believe that to be true. We can now see that NIH scientists that approve drugs are allowed to approve drugs where they have a patent and commercial interest in the drugs they are approving, which is mind-bendingly wild that level of corruption is allowed. People can also question where the studies are to back guidelines from authorities. Like what is the scientific basis of the food pyramid? Turns out that was created by the Department of Agriculture to support grain farmers, not because it is a good diet for humans. Or that the deaths and injuries for many infectious diseases had significantly declined before their respective vaccines hit the market, and that the authorities have been cherry picking the points of the graph to hide how much of the improvement happened before vaccines were available. The biggest change is the availability of diverse voices in an industry being able to be heard, rather than just a select few chosen by "authority", aka power, aka money.

ryandrake 11mo ago
Unfortunately, for every "questionable relationship between the authorities and the industries they regulate' being exposed by citizen journalists and the power of the internet, there are 10 wild conspiracy theories with no basis in fact being spread. And for every 1 of those conspiracies being spread, there are 10 grifters out there making a buck selling products and services based around them. The Internet was a great idea that has not held up against stupidity and greed.
- abe_m 11mo ago
  That is unfortunate, but also, I'd rather choose the situation where truth about abuses of power by authorities can spread with the trade off that some wing nuts are also making up stories out of whole cloth, than the one where truth is crushed under power of authority.

danaris 11mo ago

> because their fundamental view of the world is not left/right, it's authority/antiauthority Except that (given the vagaries of the English language) that sounds like they would be "anti-authoritarian", but they're exactly the people cheering on the current authoritarian government. However, I suspect that the sense of "authority" you mean is more like "expertise", or "intellectual", with a dash of "perceived establishment" thrown in. (No shade on you for this—like I said, English is frequently ambiguous and tricky to clearly word things in.)

tstrimple 11mo ago
I think this gets lost somewhat in the distance between how conservatives describe themselves and how they actually behave. They cry the loudest about some vague "FREEDOM!" but are actively cheering on the blatant violation of human rights in the country. They pretend to be "individualists" but go out of their way to make fun of and ostracize people who don't conform to their version of "normal". Practically every position they state is directly contradicted by the things they support. They get to carry this "fiscally responsible" badge despite never once being accountable for delivering on that promise. Their entire ideology is based on lies and bad faith and it shows by the people they keep electing.

Izkata 11mo ago

No, their concern was specifically over mRNA and how it might screw with the body. Over 2021 and 2022 it very much felt like the pro-vaccine crowd was the anti-science crowd: While they were dismissing all concerns with things like the overly-simplistic "that's not how it works, it's DNA -> RNA -> proteins like we learned in school", the MAGA crowd was talking about reverse-transcriptase enzymes and sharing studies like https://www.mdpi.com/1467-3045/44/3/73 https://www.mdpi.com/1467-3045/44/3/73 Their concerns were never addressed, just ignored. It's not surprising they stopped trusting authorities like the CDC.

intended 11mo ago

Form what its worth, I urge people to pick up Network Propaganda. Online speech, moderation and regulation are things I am focused on, and this book does a better job of putting all the parts together. You can often hear someone on HN talk about “I would rather have many voices than let someone decide what is true.” Thing is, that is standing up at a battle line which has been flanked entirely. In the simplest sense - the information economy is no longer functional. Its been co-opted by private=government mutations. None of the old hacker culture rhetoric is graded to combat it. The current shtick is to promote a fringe theory. Have a talking head state the fringe theory on Fox. Then have a government functionary state that the Fox mentioned said theory. Then have Fox state that a government functionary mentioned said theory. If you are someone who has a counter theory, you just don’t get platformed.

wakawaka28 11mo ago
>Thing is, that is standing up at a battle line which has been flanked entirely. If you think for yourself, this doesn't really matter. >If you are someone who has a counter theory, you just don’t get platformed. You keep mentioning this stuff from a liberal perspective but conservatives and free thinkers have been fighting this fight on social media for years as policies they disagreed with were promoted unilaterally and everything else was censored and suppressed. People were at risk of losing their jobs and being sent into exile over not wanting to take a vaccine. "My body, my choice" doesn't count when it comes to that. The information economy is full of shills and AI bots, but that does not in and of itself prevent you from finding your own reliable sources of information. Censorship would stop you from finding it, however. Mandatory online ID would also hurt the flow of sincerely communicated information.
- intended 11mo ago
  > but conservatives and free thinkers have been fighting this fight on social The mechanism I described is what is happening on Fox and the current admin. > that does not in and of itself prevent you from finding your own reliable.. Your positions seem to believe in the power of the individual overcoming. An economy of 1. You are free to do this. The counter party is going to work on the rest of your compatriots.

wakawaka28 11mo ago

>We've destroyed the idea of expertise and authority based on knowledge that's open to anybody who wants to put in the time to learn Let me stop you right there. Actual credentialed experts who disagreed with the mainstream narratives put forth by other experts were censored, had their careers threatened, and were lumped in with "anti-vaxxers". Social media was censored. If you want to win people over and get them to trust you, you need to accept that they may not agree with you, and you don't get to silence them. The financial interests of pharmaceutical companies further muddy the waters. There exists a large set of "experts" in every field of interest who want you to know that their work is absolutely essential and if you disagree with them, you're wrong. Some of these fields have massive epistemological issues and conflicts of interests. These experts are often proven to be extremely wrong. Sometimes, the best thing you can do in life is to disregard the "experts" and trust your own personal interpretation of a situation, and "do your own research"... If nobody ever thought different from "experts" we would still be in the dark ages thinking that the sun revolves around a flat Earth.