[deleted]
Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
351–360 of 421 posts
Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
>You'll be downvoted for being off-topic, excessively contrarian and uttering non-sequiturs. Thanks for once again proving my actual point; which had nothing to do with climate change.
Nah. If you had sincerely posted something critical of climate change (on a more relevant article) that wasn't nonsensical at first sight, and were downvoted without being responded to, then sure. Call HN an echo chamber. But you were just being a contrarian troll.
>Nah. If you had sincerely posted something critical of climate change (on a more relevant article) that wasn't nonsensical at first sight, and were downvoted without being responded to, then sure. Call HN an echo chamber.
No accusations needed. HN is far less likely to be an echo chamber on these subjects; which is why I had to pull a big gun out like climate change; which was referenced multiple times in the article.
>But you were just being a contrarian troll.
Still further proof of the point of the article.
Climate Change A United Nations panel of climate scientists says it is at least 95 percent certain that human activity is the dominant cause of climate change since the mid-20th century. Climate sceptics challenge that consensus daily on social media, arguing that fluctuations in global temperatures have occurred in previous era and are natural events.
The article absolutely talked about climate change in depth and even brought up climate skeptics. I simply brought up a single point of discussion.
The point of the article is that it has become toxic to talk about subjects like climate change.
I simply provided the example and you come call me a troll. Literally proving the point.
Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
#353Point of the article is that it's becoming toxic to discuss issues; they brought up climate change in the article. I posted a climate skeptic point of view and literally said I was testing to see how toxic it really is.
Absolutely nobody actually responded to the point I made. They called me a contrarian, a troll, being off-topic, using fallacies, and being insincere.
This is the point of the article and I literally showed it.
Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
#354Over the next 20 or so years, expect a lot of syndromes/conditions to be reclassified, as Michael Sharpe puts in the article, as "biological condition[s] that can be perpetuated by social and psychological factors.". I struggled with RSI for a couple of years until I read John Sarno's "The Mind-Body Connection" on the recommendation of someone from HN. Sarno's thesis is that many chronic pain conditions (those withou…
The harassment in general might be good and scientists would be compelled to think "how will general audience read and understand my research" question before writing "academia speak".
People are not in general evil, academia on other hand is a bit arrogant and engages in needless jargons and complications leading.
Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Placebo doesn’t actually help you What? The first definition of the placebo effect I found was this: " a beneficial effect produced by a placebo drug or treatment, which cannot be attributed to the properties of the placebo itself, and must therefore be due to the patient's belief in that treatment" My highlight.
He means that most of the placebo is covered by a statistical effect, regression to the mean, etc. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-placebo-myth/
> "Aint no such thing as a placebo effect, only a change in perception"
I find that statement disingenuous. Is the author really claiming that "a change in perception" isn't real?
Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
He means that most of the placebo is covered by a statistical effect, regression to the mean, etc. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-placebo-myth/
That may be most of the effect on the group taking the placebo. But it is not the placebo effect. Were there no placebo effect, then we could test the effectiveness of drugs by simply observing one group and giving the other our proposed treatment.
There are drug candidates that make it all the way to phase 3 trials before they fail. One of the (surprisingly?) common reasons for failure at this stage is turning out to be less effective than placebo
https://www.nuventra.com/resources/blog/placebo-response-pha...
https://seekingalpha.com/article/256697-why-phase-3-trials-f...
Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
When people call your place of business and complain to your boss about your methods and mental state, when they lobby the government to open investigations into your research under the accusation of child abuse, and when they use every available method to discredit your life's work, I don't think that simply opting-out of Twitter is likely to make a meaningful difference unfortunately.
Seems like scientists at that point have little choice but to bring legal action against those activists for slander. Unfortunately, and apropos of your point, most scientists likely won't be that aggressive in their action and I think the activists know it.
> little choice but to bring legal action
Huh? A legal campaign would severely escalate the problem, cost time and money, and prevent the scientists from doing their work.
Besides, the international aspect of the issue:
"TARGET: Oxford University professor Michael Sharpe"
"INVESTIGATOR: David Tuller at his home in San Francisco": he blogs, sends hundreds of letters and emails, and travels the world giving speeches and holding meetings as supporters send him donations and praise for his CFS/ME campaign.
Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
Definitely. The now [flagged] comment I was responding to was completely over-the-top and utterly lacking in nuance hence my dismissive response of a similar nature.
You cunts need to stop saying that physical symptoms can not be caused by mental illness. It's fucking stupid and it makes you look fucking stupid.
Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
#359I'm not seeing anybody else suggest what seems to me to be the obvious solution: opt out of twitter (which seems like a self-abuse platform) and filter your email. Part of why communication works is because we can't hear everybody's opinion on everything. People earn the right to our ear through networking and earning our company. Twitter undoing this is not progress.
> opt out of twitter (which seems like a self-abuse platform) and filter your email.
Putting on blinders doesn't always work. As it turns out, I was involved in an incident on LambdaMOO many years ago that rather famously illustrates the point. Both Sherry Turkle and Amy Bruckman wrote about it IIRC.
Basically I'd gotten tired of one person's nonsense, so I "gagged" them. They knew I couldn't hear them, so they'd follow me into a public "room" within that virtual environment and talk to me. They knew I couldn't "hear" them but everyone else could. My lack of a response to them, though I was active in the more general conversation, was interpreted as either assent or cowardice. Including when the person started accusing me of being a child molester. I eventually became aware of the shenanigans through others' reactions, but it was still an ugly situation. Refusing to hear what others had to say about me was not a solution.
You know what they say: for every problem there's a solution that is simple, obvious, and WRONG. "You just need to..." is almost as bad as "actually..." in conversations among techies.
Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
See anyone who has touched "differences of iq between races".
The conflict here is one side thinks this is some kind of political correctness scheme when in reality, IQ and race are just terribly unscientific social constructs. You'll get much less push back from something like "genetic marker found to influence spatial thinking in young children.
I think the problem is that people conflate race and genetics. Race is much more of a socio-economic marker than a genetic one.
When race is correlated with some condition, it's important to first correct for socio-economic status, then environmental factors, then look at potential genetic factors. Since race is a much stronger proxy for the former than the latter.