Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Coronavirus and Credibility

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 968 posts

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#81

Post by cool_dude85 »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #30
djaychela wrote: post #5

From what I'm reading, I think there are still a significant minority of people who think this isn't an issue. I've had to learn to just walk away from comments on a variety of media where comments such as 'psychosomatic', 'less dangerous than the flu that kills 50,000 each year', 'patented by the illuminati', 'caused by 5G masts', and so on. I ended up deleting my twitter account as I dared try to engage with one UK…

What's amusing to be is how anyone can look at the incompetence of governments across the world, and conclude they'd be capable of any kind of organized conspiracy against the general population.

Things like wholesale NSA data collection were organized conspiracies against the population. There are plenty of examples, even just considering the US.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#82

Post by INGELRII »

> They didn't realize there was any danger in making false predictions.

Is there any danger for them? PG seems to have very idealistic view of politics.

As far as I know, any amount of fact checking in politics don't change political views.

Will Fox News lose any viewers over this? Politicians may lose jobs because bad economy, but will they lose votes because they were wrong and ignorant?

H. L. Mencken wrote:

> No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby. The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.

I think there is great Mencken experiment going on. Always underestimate public and see how far you can go.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#83

Post by pritovido »

bsaul wrote: post #10
djaychela wrote: post #5

From what I'm reading, I think there are still a significant minority of people who think this isn't an issue. I've had to learn to just walk away from comments on a variety of media where comments such as 'psychosomatic', 'less dangerous than the flu that kills 50,000 each year', 'patented by the illuminati', 'caused by 5G masts', and so on. I ended up deleting my twitter account as I dared try to engage with one UK…

i've been saying "not more dangerous than the flu" before it started really going to shxt in europe, because to be honest, the epidemic doesn't look that dangerous if you're in general good health, just by looking at the numbers from a distance. The fact that most people seem to not have anything worse than a few days of fever (some having even nothing at all), while at the same time others simply die very quickly to…

I probably had covid19 in February(in Asia), only in retrospect I could differentiate it from the flu.

The main difference was it took the superior part of the throat instead of the inferior. Talking with doctors they tell me I had all the symptoms.

The problem with it is that at first it is "benign"(I had high fever for "just" two days) if your body stops it before getting into the lungs. Once it gets there it could be nasty(as it produces cytokine storm syndrome there) very fast.

So it is very easy to get confident.

Even the flu could get very dangerous is you get it combined with something else like a bacteria at the same time.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#84

Post by collyw »

watwut wrote: post #23
collyw wrote: post #7

Wasn't Elon Musk going to make a website that rated the credibility of journalism somehow? What happened to that?

His idea of credibity and mine are not the same. At minimum, he himself is not trustworthy.

That doesn't mean that the concept is a bad idea, or that he won't come up with something that can be demonstarted to be trustworthy.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#85

Post by markvdb »

Paul, you're absolutely right about the corona virus being the clearest credibility test fail for these people yet.

But you also write: "These people constantly make false predictions, and get away with it, because the things they make predictions about either have mushy enough outcomes that they can bluster their way out of trouble, or happen so far in the future that few remember what they said."

I'm not so sure about that. These politicians and journalists have consciously a/b tested their audiences into tribes of absolute uncritical loyalty. They feed on anti-intellectualism and cheap gut reactions.

At a certain level of responsibility, incompetence becomes malice. These people are far beyond that threshold. They will soon have the blood of thousands on their hands.

I'm not sure the people of the US will be able to keep them to account, but I certainly hope so.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#86

Post by nullc »

elorant wrote: post #80
djaychela wrote: post #5

From what I'm reading, I think there are still a significant minority of people who think this isn't an issue. I've had to learn to just walk away from comments on a variety of media where comments such as 'psychosomatic', 'less dangerous than the flu that kills 50,000 each year', 'patented by the illuminati', 'caused by 5G masts', and so on. I ended up deleting my twitter account as I dared try to engage with one UK…

I think that a lot of the people who are deniers are afraid of the economical consequences from the lockdown because they will be hit harder than others. So in their mind they choose to underplay the epidemic in order to justify their insecurity.

Meh. I'm extremely dubious, often in politics we often see the public arguing against their own economic self-interest. Why should this be any different?

It's tempting to give ignorance and fear a complicated explanation couched in the suspicion of greedy forces. It's not parsimonious. Plain ignorance and distrust is sufficient.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#87

Post by atomashpolskiy »

paulgb wrote: post #70
atomashpolskiy wrote: post #65

What a ridiculous zeal. Hardly anyone at this point is arguing that there actually is an issue. After all, flu is still a dangerous illness, esp. for certain groups of people, so even plainly calling this COVID thing "just a flu" is not equivalent to saying that it's not an issue. It's your framing of the phrase "just a flu", that makes it look like some kind of heresy or insult. And, most importantly, why do you cal…

"just the flu" to me implies that we can treat it like the flu, i.e. go about life as usual and stay home if we catch it. It seems beyond obvious at this point that that's not the case. (Hopefully soon there will be a vaccine and it will become the case.)

But it literally is a strain of flu. And staying at home, sleeping and drinking a lot of water is exactly what the majority of people who contracted COVID are doing at the moment. Or do you believe that there are 1.3 million people in hospitals or cemeteries right now?

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#88

Post by akvadrako »

nullc wrote: post #19
bsaul wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i've been saying "not more dangerous than the flu" before it started really going to shxt in europe, because to be honest, the epidemic doesn't look that dangerous if you're in general good health, just by looking at the numbers from a distance. The fact that most people seem to not have anything worse than a few days of fever (some having even nothing at all), while at the same time others simply die very quickly to…

Just goes to show that people will continue to ignore an exponential trend until it eats their lunch personally . FWIW, totally aside from that, CDC numbers for the "flu" are actually a combined "flu and pneumonia", and according to the NHS in the UK-- which doesn't bin the same way-- no more than 1/3rds of those deaths are due to the flu. Other estimates have put the flu well under 10% of flu+pneumonia, though with…

> CDC numbers for the "flu" are actually a combined "flu and pneumonia"

That's just like Covid though - they are counting everyone who dies with the virus even though most have other conditions.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#90

Post by dntbnmpls »

Someone wrote: post #45
jgrahamc wrote: post #3

Most humans have a really hard time with exponential processes. They are hard for them to spot and truly understand. So when something goes 1, 2, 4, 8 they see it as linear and when it's doubling with larger numbers they suddenly get it. And then it's too late.

1, 2, 4, 8 isn’t that different from 1, 3, 5, 7. You need more sample points, larger multipliers, or prior expectation of seeing an exponential curve to see that as exponential growth.

> 1, 2, 4, 8 isn’t that different from 1, 3, 5, 7.

What? The former is exponential and the latter is linear. They are the definition of different.

The 30th number in the first series is 536870912.

The 30th number in the second series is 59.

Post reply on HN