YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#51

Post by acituan » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:23 PM UTC

I don’t agree with the interview contents, nor think professorship alone gives sufficient credibility in the face of a novel pandemic, data of which is in the process of emerging. That said, I don’t want youtube to be in charge of deciding what is credible or not. They don’t have in-house experts on these domains, they don’t have a magic epistemology machine that spits out the “facts”. They are good at writing web services, they shouldn’t be in charge of things like sound epidemiology.

I always imagine past figures that had adversarial relationships with authority at their times like Socrates, Galileo or Jesus and realize how Youtube would definitely take their videos down, shut their channels down and Susan Wojcicki would say things like “on matters of geocentricity vs heliocentricity we will follow the expert opinion of Catholic Church”. Then I think how might we be hurting ourselves today in ways we don’t even know by letting these tech institutions be the ultimate arbiter of our meaning making machinery.

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#52

Post by throwawaysea » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:25 PM UTC

kerkeslager wrote: post #40

There are two separate issues here: 1. Non-science: calling Karol Sikora a "professor of medicine" hides the fact that he's an oncologist; if he ever had any expertise it was in cancer, not epidemics, and he has no business speaking outside his field. Sikora is also a fellow of The Princes Foundation For Integrated Health and a professional member of the generically-named College Of Medicine. Both of these organizati…

I agree with the idea of truth being the answer to lies, and echo chambers being dangerous for society in the long term. But I disagree with the notion that no one has business speaking outside their field of expertise. Experts can be wrong or change their views over time and they should be open to being challenged by others. No one has a monopoly on data or logic or free thought. If the line of correctness between specialists and others is so clear, then surely it must be easy to counter others views.

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#53

Post by alabaster_punt » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:26 PM UTC

DiffEq wrote: post #50

alabaster_punt wrote: post #39

Hardly surprising that a video full of dangerous misinformation has been pulled. It would be worth reading about this particular professor on Wikipedia, particularly his support for alternative medicine, his false claim to have been a professor at Imperial college, and his claim that the UK's NHS is "the last bastion of communism". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karol_Sikora

So what is so dangerous about it? Perhaps you need to consult a dictionary as to what danger really is. I don't know these people that made the video and I don't subscribe to magic crystals or whatever they are pushing/saying but I do know what Epidemiologist Neil Ferguson from Imperial college created in his flawed modeling - a world wide panic. That is what has been dangerous. Google is a private company I suppose…

What's dangerous about it is that it's encouraging people to demand that their government enact policies that will lead to unnecessary deaths.

Neil Ferguson's model was not flawed (at least, not in a significant way that would invalidate its conclusions)

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#54

Post by ppod » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:29 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #35

ppod wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think that such people should be banned from content distribution channels?

Yes. You have the right to say whatever you want but you don’t have the right to force someone else to publish it. If you want to publish what you want free of interference, pay for your own servers and bandwidth.

Of course, but I'm not asking about what rights distributors should have, I'm asking normatively whether a distributor should ban people like this.

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#55

Post by joshuamorton » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:30 PM UTC

throwawaysea wrote: post #52

kerkeslager wrote: post #40

There are two separate issues here: 1. Non-science: calling Karol Sikora a "professor of medicine" hides the fact that he's an oncologist; if he ever had any expertise it was in cancer, not epidemics, and he has no business speaking outside his field. Sikora is also a fellow of The Princes Foundation For Integrated Health and a professional member of the generically-named College Of Medicine. Both of these organizati…

I agree with the idea of truth being the answer to lies, and echo chambers being dangerous for society in the long term. But I disagree with the notion that no one has business speaking outside their field of expertise. Experts can be wrong or change their views over time and they should be open to being challenged by others. No one has a monopoly on data or logic or free thought. If the line of correctness between s…

No, complex topics that aren't simple and sometimes are counterintuitive are exactly the cases when deferral to experts is important because countering other views in lay explanations may not be possible.

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#56

Post by mindslight » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:31 PM UTC

DiffEq wrote: post #50

alabaster_punt wrote: post #39

Hardly surprising that a video full of dangerous misinformation has been pulled. It would be worth reading about this particular professor on Wikipedia, particularly his support for alternative medicine, his false claim to have been a professor at Imperial college, and his claim that the UK's NHS is "the last bastion of communism". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karol_Sikora

So what is so dangerous about it? Perhaps you need to consult a dictionary as to what danger really is. I don't know these people that made the video and I don't subscribe to magic crystals or whatever they are pushing/saying but I do know what Epidemiologist Neil Ferguson from Imperial college created in his flawed modeling - a world wide panic. That is what has been dangerous. Google is a private company I suppose…

The shape of your argument is why we are doomed to censorship. You could have kept to the abstract point about information itself not being dangerous, but instead you invoked the opposing team's narrative about what constitutes dangerous information. Eventually, we all lose.

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#57

Post by dhimes » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

kerkeslager wrote: post #40

There are two separate issues here: 1. Non-science: calling Karol Sikora a "professor of medicine" hides the fact that he's an oncologist; if he ever had any expertise it was in cancer, not epidemics, and he has no business speaking outside his field. Sikora is also a fellow of The Princes Foundation For Integrated Health and a professional member of the generically-named College Of Medicine. Both of these organizati…

Truth is the answer to lies.

I wish this was true. I hope it was true. But I'm losing faith. People have a hard time believing truth if it goes against what they want to believe if the lies can be framed in any plausible way at all. This applies to everything from cults to businesses to abusive spouses to, of course, politics.

Maybe I'm just getting old and cranky and tired of playing the long game of truth. Part of the problem is the liars are sometimes highly motivated to continue with the lies, and it takes a greater army of equally motivated truth "warriors" to come behind them and put out the fires. It's just so damn easy to spread bullshit.

The other issue is that smart people are way outnumbered- and the others now have a helluva voice.

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#58

Post by kerkeslager » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

alabaster_punt wrote: post #49

kerkeslager wrote: post #40

There are two separate issues here: 1. Non-science: calling Karol Sikora a "professor of medicine" hides the fact that he's an oncologist; if he ever had any expertise it was in cancer, not epidemics, and he has no business speaking outside his field. Sikora is also a fellow of The Princes Foundation For Integrated Health and a professional member of the generically-named College Of Medicine. Both of these organizati…

Sakora is the latter, and the problem with this viewpoint is publishing the truth elsewhere doesn't stop people from absorbing the lies here. Somebody consuming this content is not likely to seek out alternative viewpoints to correct themselves. The information is dangerous, it should not be available.

> Somebody consuming this content is not likely to seek out alternative viewpoints to correct themselves.

Which is why it's important that we present the truth right next to it, so people don't have to look elsewhere.

> The information is dangerous, it should not be available.

Well, it is available, in places where the truth isn't available, so I don't really know what you think taking it off YouTube has achieved.

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#59

Post by alabaster_punt » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:34 PM UTC

kerkeslager wrote: post #58

alabaster_punt wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sakora is the latter, and the problem with this viewpoint is publishing the truth elsewhere doesn't stop people from absorbing the lies here. Somebody consuming this content is not likely to seek out alternative viewpoints to correct themselves. The information is dangerous, it should not be available.

> Somebody consuming this content is not likely to seek out alternative viewpoints to correct themselves. Which is why it's important that we present the truth right next to it, so people don't have to look elsewhere. > The information is dangerous, it should not be available. Well, it is available, in places where the truth isn't available, so I don't really know what you think taking it off YouTube has achieved.

> Which is why it's important that we present the truth right next to it, so people don't have to look elsewhere.

This still assumes that people will be willing to watch it.

> Well, it is available, in places where the truth isn't available, so I don't really know what you think taking it off YouTube has achieved.

It has achieved a lower spread of misinformation. Now nobody browsing YouTube will happen upon this video by chance and start believing something that is false and dangerous. Of course, those who are already embedded in these communities will still be able to access the information elsewhere. It is not a perfect solution, I don't think there is a perfect solution, but it does reduce the impact.

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#60

Post by dekhn » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

kerkeslager wrote: post #45

thomasahle wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't that what people were predicting would happen in the summer since the beginning? And then probably with a rebound in autumn/next winter.

1. No, people weren't predicting that the virus would "get tired". 2. Even if we generously interpret this as meaning that the virus would be less infectious in warmer weather, the only evidence we had pointed to this as only a possibility , rather than something we could predict. 3. As summer has begun in the Northern hemisphere, we still don't have any good evidence that the virus is less infectious in warmer weath…

All predictions about seasonality were made using analogy to similar viruses which have shown that sort of behavior. I am not aware of any high quality scientific evidence supporting seasonality (or nonseasonality). I think that only really becomes available after several seasons; predictions aren't super helpful here.