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Coronavirus and Credibility

paulgraham.com

381–390 of 968 posts

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a deliberately built political philosophy, one of the results of Karl Rove's "reality-based community" [1] idea, from over 15 years ago. Whether or not the label was actually coined by Rove is debated, but essentially this idea is that some people lived in a world that was "reality-based" and that others were not limited by reality and thus were better/stronger politicians. In practice, what this means is the…

to an outsider, americas left vs right hostility and mutual disrespect are becoming painful to watch. lets make a counter example to they one you provided, does the nyt "create reality" for their readers? they did publish their fare share of dangerously incorrect material about the virus, pandemic, the countermeasures,you name it.

This is false equivalency.

When you have to seek to find bad examples from other side, and it's the every day modus operandi the other side there is no comparison.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#383
post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Central America ( https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/eye-of-the-storm/fifth-... ), Syria ( https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096262981... ), Australia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Australian_bus... ), and Alaska https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/sockeye-salmon-and-cli... might beg to differ, among others. It is happening now. It's happening in line with predictions by IPCC. I…

> Very nearly 100% of experts in this field agree it's happening None of these "experts" have a track record of correct predictions that justifies taking their current predictions seriously. Remember we are not talking about the fact that the climate changes: yes, it does, it always has, and it always will (unless at some point in the distant future we learn how to control it accurately). We are talking about the dir…

>A prediction that "this will happen, some time in the future" is not very useful

Yes it is, if taken seriously.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like a lot more outlets got it wrong: https://twitter.com/standwithPrager/status/12454088056907694...

What's the timeline of media outlets figuring this out? Fox was downplaying / claiming this was a hoax as late as March 10 [1], whereas other outlets woke up early February (eg, the WaPo headline in your screenshot is from Jan 31). 1 - https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/on-fox-news-s...

De Blasio was telling people you couldn't get the virus on the subway and other nonsense well into March.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Unfortunately now it's more like picking a sport team ("Team CNN" or "Team Fox"), or Apple vs/ Google vs/ Microsoft than actually finding, or learning about, facts. Tribalism at it's finest. The only alternative I've found (I'm open to helpful suggestions) is to ignore that noise and read actual briefings and original sources. But, that defeats the point of news being an honest and straight forward source of…

I've found a well-curated Twitter feed of smart sources from various ideological and media camps helps to find interesting and informative info which would otherwise take a great deal of time to find. You do get misinfo and bad takes sometimes, but if you set it up right it's no worse than mainstream sources. Lists are useful as well to avoid Twitter's feed curation algos. Just specifically for COVID-19, this led me…

It sometimes feels like there is the perception that twitter is worthless and devoid of meaningful information, but like you I've been increasingly relying on it for news. I'm not sure where else you can collect so many different perspectives on any given piece of news. Overtime, you learn how many grains of salt to take with each person in your timeline, and you get a sense of their personal biases. And if you can brush off the trolls, it's instructive to read the arguments that happen in the replies.

The way I use twitter, it serves the same purpose as hacker news, but with a much broader scope.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#386

Why focus only on the low-hanging fruits at one end of the spectrum? How about all the scientists who made doomsday predictions that failed to materialize?

Err on the side of caution works quite well when modelling things that are rare but that can have devastating effects.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#387
There is still a concerted, coordinated effort to signal boost reckless armchair epidemiologists arguing that COVID-19 is "just the flu" and the response is destroying the economy for nothing and/or a prelude to totalitarian police state.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a deliberately built political philosophy, one of the results of Karl Rove's "reality-based community" [1] idea, from over 15 years ago. Whether or not the label was actually coined by Rove is debated, but essentially this idea is that some people lived in a world that was "reality-based" and that others were not limited by reality and thus were better/stronger politicians. In practice, what this means is the…

"like him or hate him, his administration is using it skillfully" I couldn't agree more. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-recorded-havin... Not many people could survive this, then become president.

Politicians have survived worse.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Central America ( https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/eye-of-the-storm/fifth-... ), Syria ( https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096262981... ), Australia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Australian_bus... ), and Alaska https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/sockeye-salmon-and-cli... might beg to differ, among others. It is happening now. It's happening in line with predictions by IPCC. I…

> Very nearly 100% of experts in this field agree it's happening, have agreed for quite a while, and think the impact will be dire and potentially irreversible in the timeframe of human lifetimes. The consensus regarding climate change (and human's role in it) has been exagerated[0] [0] https://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2014/02/a-climate-falseh...

You really posted a link to some random blog post, not a peer reviewed journal, not even an expert on the subject? In the year 2020? I'm not even sure where to start because there is just... not enough here to even.. oh forget it.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#390

If you're getting your "news" from CNN/Fox/MSNBC, or "gathering evidence" to promote one the two permitted narratives, that's your problem. This is stuff is low effort "Presidential Level Politics" 24x7. Real news died when reporters stopped having to craft a story so that the Associated Press or United Press International picked it up and made it available to the varied local newspapers of America, both liberal and…

>> CNN/Fox/MSNBC One of those is not like the other two. CNN and MSNBC may not be as high quality as WaPo/NYTimes in terms of depth and quality of journalism, but they also don't maliciously and cynically and shamelessly lie to their viewers.

Do you think the Red Sox are not like the Yankees?

They're just different teams playing the same game.

Fans always defend their team and vilify the other. Always. With every dispute they're able to convince themselves it's the other side that are the cheaters. They can't both be right, but yet each side feels equally certain of their position.

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