4 ms·

Those people exist? This world, man ...

by kmfrk 13y ago

seiji 13y ago
They show up here every so often: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5317157 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5317157 and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=231238 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=231238 There's even a wikipedia page with a horrible URL that made me think wikipedia suddenly had hierarchical categories: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_denialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_denialism Gotta keep speaking truth to crazy.
- mikeash 13y ago
  Some people have a strong contrarian streak which naturally leads them toward the minority position on many controversial subjects. It's often the exact same people saying that AIDS isn't caused by HIV, that global warming is a fraud, that oil reserves are infinite, that evolution is impossible, etc. etc. I've witnessed this firsthand. I can't explain why they are this way, but it looks like a general attitude of "the popular opinion is more likely to be wrong than right".
  - altero 13y ago
    There are also some paranoid people who use encryption because secret services could be spying on them. We have no idea how aids causes hiv, cannot even predict weather for next week, but we are 110% sure some theories are right. No wonder, it is waste of money to get phd today
    - alanh 13y ago
      In case you wonder why you are being downvoted, it’s because you are, yourself, denying recent (and less recent) news regarding federal monitoring; engaging in HIV/AIDS denialism; reversing HIV and AIDS; conflating weather prediction with scientific understanding; and ending with a non-sequitur.
      - mikeash 13y ago
        Thus providing a wonderful illustration of my point.
      - DominikR 13y ago
        I think his point is that people who believed that government was constantly monitoring everyone a few weeks ago were also seen as paranoid crazy persons who believed in conspiracy theories, and he is sarcastic about that.
        parasubvert 13y ago
        I don't think people using SSL before a few weeks ago due to spying and/or hacking would be considered paranoid or crazy. We've known about domestic spying since 2006, some people just were not paying attention. Now people on HN can't seem to get enough paranoia for breakfast.
  - frogpelt 13y ago
    You can lump all of your anti-favorite topics together and pretend they are similar. Just know that there are also people lumping you into their groups of crazy people based on one or two things that you believe and they don't. Humans (scientists, doctors, politicians, internet commenters) like to pretend that we know so much about the universe and we just need to fill in a few details to fully grasp everything. This kind of thinking is dangerous at best. It seems to me every time mankind fixes one problem they create a new one that they have to figure out how to solve.
hawkw 13y ago
Kary Mullis, the inventor of polymerase chain reaction, is an HIV denialist.
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  Serge Lang as well. I don't know enough about the topic to evaluate his critiques, but they certainly don't sound crazy. http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/hiv/slquestions.htm http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/hiv/slquestions.htm
  - wisty 13y ago
    It doesn't sound crazy, because he spends 90% of the essay more or less arguing semantics. As he says, AIDS isn't a disease. It's a syndrome. And the diseases which do the damage aren't caused by the HIV virus. He just points that out like it's something which no-one else is brave enough to mention, when he's really just attacking strawmen. The really crazy bits are when he talks about whether or not HIV can damage the immune system, by killing T-Cells. I counted 8 mentions of the word "immune", and 7 mentions of the word "T-cell"; and he only mentions them halfway through the document. Because of the complicated chain of causality (untreated HIV eventually wipes out the immune system, which causes a whole bunch of weird diseases to take hold), it's easy to write thousands of words about why rare diseases (which are called AIDS, in HIV positive patients) are only correlated with HIV, not necessarily caused by it. But in the middle of the article, the crazy bits are there. It's like reading a long rambling article about why CO2 doesn't necessarily cause global warming (which has a grain of truth to it - it's a little more complicated than that with the role of positive and negative feedback effects), and halfway through the article the author suddenly mentions the greenhouse effect for the first time, then says it's unfounded (which changes the article from slightly crackpot to stark raving mad) .
- altero 13y ago
  Using word 'denialist' in connection with scientific hypothesis seems somehow wrong.
  - kennywinker 13y ago
DanBC 13y ago
Those people have had positions of power in the South African government and have caused very great harm. Admittedly, this is mostly mid-2000s, and not today, but still. Estimates suggest over 300,000 people died because of delays in introducing anti-retrovirals. (http://www.irinnews.org/report/73892/south-africa-new-report-confirms-nutrition-no-substitute-for-treatment http://www.irinnews.org/report/73892/south-africa-new-report...) (http://www.irinnews.org/report/93411/africa-the-crazy-things-they-say-politicians-and-hiv http://www.irinnews.org/report/93411/africa-the-crazy-things...) EDIT: Anyone interested in AIDS / HIV in the developing world might like to read PlusNews (http://www.irinnews.org/theme/hiv/hiv/aids http://www.irinnews.org/theme/hiv/hiv/aids)
- camperman 13y ago
  Those people have had positions of power in the South African government and have caused very great harm. Including the President. Even his press secretary very embarrassingly dying in his mid-30s from AIDS couldn't change his mind at the time.
makomk 13y ago
Oh yes, they exist. There were even a few gay activist groups that were HIV/AIDS-denialist; they no longer exist due to all the members dying of AIDS.
beedogs 13y ago
Yes. The Foo Fighters once did a concert for a group of them, in fact. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2000/02/foo-fighters-hiv-deniers http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2000/02/foo-fighters-hiv...

Those people exist? This world, man ...

by kmfrk 13y ago

Those people exist? This world, man ...

seiji 13y ago

They show up here every so often: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5317157 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5317157 and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=231238 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=231238 There's even a wikipedia page with a horrible URL that made me think wikipedia suddenly had hierarchical categories: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_denialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_denialism Gotta keep speaking truth to crazy.

mikeash 13y ago
Some people have a strong contrarian streak which naturally leads them toward the minority position on many controversial subjects. It's often the exact same people saying that AIDS isn't caused by HIV, that global warming is a fraud, that oil reserves are infinite, that evolution is impossible, etc. etc. I've witnessed this firsthand. I can't explain why they are this way, but it looks like a general attitude of "the popular opinion is more likely to be wrong than right".
- altero 13y ago
  There are also some paranoid people who use encryption because secret services could be spying on them. We have no idea how aids causes hiv, cannot even predict weather for next week, but we are 110% sure some theories are right. No wonder, it is waste of money to get phd today
  - alanh 13y ago
    In case you wonder why you are being downvoted, it’s because you are, yourself, denying recent (and less recent) news regarding federal monitoring; engaging in HIV/AIDS denialism; reversing HIV and AIDS; conflating weather prediction with scientific understanding; and ending with a non-sequitur.
    - mikeash 13y ago
      Thus providing a wonderful illustration of my point.
    - DominikR 13y ago
      I think his point is that people who believed that government was constantly monitoring everyone a few weeks ago were also seen as paranoid crazy persons who believed in conspiracy theories, and he is sarcastic about that.
      - parasubvert 13y ago
        I don't think people using SSL before a few weeks ago due to spying and/or hacking would be considered paranoid or crazy. We've known about domestic spying since 2006, some people just were not paying attention. Now people on HN can't seem to get enough paranoia for breakfast.
- frogpelt 13y ago
  You can lump all of your anti-favorite topics together and pretend they are similar. Just know that there are also people lumping you into their groups of crazy people based on one or two things that you believe and they don't. Humans (scientists, doctors, politicians, internet commenters) like to pretend that we know so much about the universe and we just need to fill in a few details to fully grasp everything. This kind of thinking is dangerous at best. It seems to me every time mankind fixes one problem they create a new one that they have to figure out how to solve.

hawkw 13y ago

Kary Mullis, the inventor of polymerase chain reaction, is an HIV denialist.

yummyfajitas 13y ago
Serge Lang as well. I don't know enough about the topic to evaluate his critiques, but they certainly don't sound crazy. http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/hiv/slquestions.htm http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/hiv/slquestions.htm
- wisty 13y ago
  It doesn't sound crazy, because he spends 90% of the essay more or less arguing semantics. As he says, AIDS isn't a disease. It's a syndrome. And the diseases which do the damage aren't caused by the HIV virus. He just points that out like it's something which no-one else is brave enough to mention, when he's really just attacking strawmen. The really crazy bits are when he talks about whether or not HIV can damage the immune system, by killing T-Cells. I counted 8 mentions of the word "immune", and 7 mentions of the word "T-cell"; and he only mentions them halfway through the document. Because of the complicated chain of causality (untreated HIV eventually wipes out the immune system, which causes a whole bunch of weird diseases to take hold), it's easy to write thousands of words about why rare diseases (which are called AIDS, in HIV positive patients) are only correlated with HIV, not necessarily caused by it. But in the middle of the article, the crazy bits are there. It's like reading a long rambling article about why CO2 doesn't necessarily cause global warming (which has a grain of truth to it - it's a little more complicated than that with the role of positive and negative feedback effects), and halfway through the article the author suddenly mentions the greenhouse effect for the first time, then says it's unfounded (which changes the article from slightly crackpot to stark raving mad) .
altero 13y ago
Using word 'denialist' in connection with scientific hypothesis seems somehow wrong.
- kennywinker 13y ago

DanBC 13y ago

Those people have had positions of power in the South African government and have caused very great harm. Admittedly, this is mostly mid-2000s, and not today, but still. Estimates suggest over 300,000 people died because of delays in introducing anti-retrovirals. (http://www.irinnews.org/report/73892/south-africa-new-report-confirms-nutrition-no-substitute-for-treatment http://www.irinnews.org/report/73892/south-africa-new-report...) (http://www.irinnews.org/report/93411/africa-the-crazy-things-they-say-politicians-and-hiv http://www.irinnews.org/report/93411/africa-the-crazy-things...) EDIT: Anyone interested in AIDS / HIV in the developing world might like to read PlusNews (http://www.irinnews.org/theme/hiv/hiv/aids http://www.irinnews.org/theme/hiv/hiv/aids)

camperman 13y ago
Those people have had positions of power in the South African government and have caused very great harm. Including the President. Even his press secretary very embarrassingly dying in his mid-30s from AIDS couldn't change his mind at the time.

makomk 13y ago

Oh yes, they exist. There were even a few gay activist groups that were HIV/AIDS-denialist; they no longer exist due to all the members dying of AIDS.

beedogs 13y ago

Yes. The Foo Fighters once did a concert for a group of them, in fact. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2000/02/foo-fighters-hiv-deniers http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2000/02/foo-fighters-hiv...