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

761–770 of 968 posts

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#761

Post by kazinator »

RonanTheGrey wrote: post #741
AmericanChopper wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could show this comment to anybody from either of the general left/right tribes, and they’d think it was true. Whether you’d use this reasoning to deride Fox News, or CNN (or pretty much any other ‘news’ organisation), would boil down entirely to your tribal affiliation. When I was younger, having “critical thinker” or “anti-establishment” views would generally lead to the conclusion that politicians and mass-med…

The downvotes on your post demonstrate the left-leaning nature of this site. It's discouraging frankly. The thousands of conversations that occur daily on this site, without emotion or incident; but insult "the other side"'s politicians or news outlets as being biased? Downvote hell Yes, CNN and the like are just as bad as Fox news. The sooner you folks recognize that, the sooner we can have decent conversations abou…

> The downvotes on your post demonstrate the left-leaning nature of this site.

Not really. If you post something that certain people dislike for whatever reason, but which is unremarkable to others, the votes will never break even; you will not get enough upvotes from the latter group to make up for the former. (Even given the fact that not everyone can downvote.)

Whichever group's buttons you push then makes it seem like the site is overrun with that group. E.g. an atheistic comment might enrage theists, but to atheists it might just be "meh". Gee, what's with the downvotes? Boy, this site is just a haven for religious zealots!

I can't even begin to speculate about the grandparent comment. Maybe some users simply found it insubstantial? Shrug.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#762

Post by jchook »

tlrobinson wrote: post #691
jfrankamp wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The United States military could best be used to fight this by destroying (with warning) global fossil fuel infrastructure that wasn't voluntarily closed, bit by bit with a decade long schedule. The announcement alone would prompt a massive shift in energy production, use, investment etc. Our own legacy infrastructure would also have to be on the list. Call it a Paris accord with teeth. It will never happen, because…

That sounds like a good way to start World War III. The top oil producing countries after the US are: Saudi Arabia, Russia, Canada, China, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Iran, Kuwait https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=709&t=6

The US is well versed in "the lesser of two evils"

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#763

Post by nl »

jmckib wrote: post #694
_wwz4 wrote: post #548

Do people appreciate that denial of the severity of this virus came from all political quarters? Here's one showing the mistakes of left-leaning media I found in 2 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=36&v=wVDPVBZF2Xg It's just as easy to find supercuts of Pelosi, DeBlasio, and other prominent Democrats telling people that they didn't need to start social distancing or that the virus wasn't airborne c…

You can cherry-pick different opinions from all over the spectrum. For example, Tucker Carlson took the virus pretty seriously early on, but he was one of the only voices on Fox News to do so. Views on the left have been more mixed. At least that's been my observation, but I don't watch TV news; I just read about what's on it. I've been getting my news from WaPo and WSJ, both of which took the virus seriously from th…

Yes - it seems like Tucker Carlson was the person who convinced Trump to change his mind[1] and he deserves credit for it.

I wonder what it was that convinced him when many of the people he deals with day-to-day were of the complete opposite view?

[1] https://www.thedailybeast.com/tucker-carlsons-monologue-prom...

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#764

Post by pbourke »

ugh123 wrote: post #329

Its easy to focus on foxnews and pull all sorts of terrible content like that, but a more serious task is to look at a lot of the statements and confidence from the medical and scientific community early on - things around wearing masks in public and its inability to prevent spread, or UV light from the Sun and its ability to kill the virus (a popular statement projected by several doctors within the media), and seve…

> There has been confidence all around from seemingly credible sources - acting on too early and thin data about what measures were effective or non-effective, many of which have been reversed in the last couple of weeks.

This is true. In late February/early March there was a medical doctor who appeared in several local news segments here in Seattle. This doctor quoted a very misleading statistic about your chance of catching it ("you have a 0.5% chance of catching the virus").

I was intrigued by this obvious falsehood, and saw that it was also featured in a memo from one of our local hospital systems. Where did they get it from? A CDC study.

That CDC study looked at the first handful of patients to have confirmed COVID-19 in the US (all travel related) and traced their confirmed contacts. Sure enough - 0.5% of the contacts traced within this group acquired the virus.

Extrapolating this study to suggest that one's chance of catching the virus in the community, 6 weeks after the study was 0.5% was just a monstrous abdication of responsible communication.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#765

Post by hanoz »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #406
runeks wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the background global warming is a much greater threat to human life and has the exact same dynamic with the exact same players. No, global warming has a very different dynamic. With a virus, if you do the right thing and protect yourself, you’re more likely to survive. With global warming, if you get a lot of people to emit less CO2, you might just end up making CO2 emissions cheaper for everyone else.

That's a very reductive and defeatist way to view the problem, and potential solution. The reality is there is no silver bullet. Emissions have to be reduced by means of an energy revolution. Sure, some will benefit in the short term. But everyone will benefit in the long term.

It's not reductive and defeatist to point out that the global warming issue has a tragedy of the commons aspect, on both personal and national levels, which could hardly be more different to the current pandemic.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#766

Post by Uhhrrr »

_wwz4 wrote: post #548

Do people appreciate that denial of the severity of this virus came from all political quarters? Here's one showing the mistakes of left-leaning media I found in 2 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=36&v=wVDPVBZF2Xg It's just as easy to find supercuts of Pelosi, DeBlasio, and other prominent Democrats telling people that they didn't need to start social distancing or that the virus wasn't airborne c…

Fortunately good judgement is an occasional human virtue which also cuts across party lines.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#768

Post by dmitryminkovsky »

I've got a sort of morbid fascination with the COVID denial scene on Twitter. Every few days I check out this guy Bill Mitchell (@mitchellvii, 500k+ followers), and it's been interesting to see how he's adapted. This tweet captures it well:

https://twitter.com/classiclib3ral/status/124681200696072601...

Not sure if Paul is looking at this kind of thing, but from this essay I'm not sure he really grasps how fractured the media consumption landscape is at the moment. The tide hasn't come out from under many, if any, of these people. Their position is as strong as ever. They have their own moons, their own oceans and their own tides.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#769

Post by xenyal »

s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #710
cvlasdkv wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious as to why you think China is to blame for American politicians ignoring precautions and prioritizing their own wealth over the well-being of their citizens?

Because China covered it up and misled the experts.

Actually, China was thought to have covered it up because the whistleblower originally sent a message[1] to a WeChat group of his, telling group members that 7 people from the wet markets had been diagnosed with SARS. The government had no idea what it was and I'm sure nobody in the world knew what it was at the time, hence how it's a novel virus.

[1]: https://mmbiz.qpic.cn/mmbiz_jpg/jvumSxUR3OrjfcgXFibaich6y6Z6...

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#770

Post by MarkMc »

Lots of people here are pointing to Philip Tetlock's book Superforecasting which describes these forecasting problems, and also a more rigorous, scientific approach to forecasting.

Interestingly, Tetlock's 'superforecasters' predict a 30% chance of more than 350,000 coronavirus deaths in the US: https://goodjudgment.io/covid/dashboard/

This is up from 17% on March 21

Post reply on HN