This is insanity. How did this study pass an ethics council? They admit to exposing people to negative emotional cues at random? Their N is 689K. At this point, they are certainly responsible for some number of suicides. The authors should be ashamed of themselves. Their salary is being paid by manipulating people's emotions on purpose. Something is wrong with that.
Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion thru social networks (2014)
31–40 of 66 posts
Re: Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion thru social networks (2014)
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
ICU filled up fast in Houston after the lockdown ended. How does that fit with your idea here?
correlation not causation. the end of lockdown unleashed pent-up frustration and disregard for even simple yet effective distancing precautions--a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater behavior as backlash.
>correlation not causation.
>the end of lockdown unleashed pent-up frustration and disregard*
The debate totally set aside, realize that you proposed a causal relationship one sentence after saying "correlation not causation."
Re: Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion thru social networks (2014)
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
ICU filled up fast in Houston after the lockdown ended. How does that fit with your idea here?
correlation not causation. the end of lockdown unleashed pent-up frustration and disregard for even simple yet effective distancing precautions--a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater behavior as backlash.
Arguing this at the level of "What should individuals do?" makes no sense, because we have little-to-no data on how effective masks or social distancing are at that level. We're really at the infancy stages of understanding this virus--keep in mind up until a few weeks ago we thought spread from high traffic surfaces was a major transmission vector.
At the level of "What should government recommend?"--that's a fundamentally different question from "What should individuals do?" because governments have secondary effects such as people throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Policy decisions have to take into account this effect, so saying that this effect is the real cause of a sudden spike in cases after lockdown ended, is irrelevant. At a policy level, lockdown is more effective than social distancing and masks, and that's because when you lift the lockdown, people don't social distance or wear masks.
I live in a town where businesses that attract tourism have reopened. People are wearing masks as chin straps and congregating, and that wasn't happening during lockdown.
And to be clear, there are other factors: a country which creates numerous hurdles to access for even the miniscule aid it provides to the poor cannot be surprised when the poor don't want to give up what little income they have to comply with a lockdown. But we have to admit, lockdowns work. That's a fact. The fact that our economy is so fragile that it can't handle the only effective countermeasure to this virus is a separate fact.
Re: Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion thru social networks (2014)
#34> "It's just that the faster mirroring, feedback and propagation of digits over atoms are generating waves rather than ripples. Beware of tsunamis." that's how the hysteria concerning corona has crashed all over our economy and social infrastructure. as in, lockdowns won't stop the virus and they're immaterially better than distancing (with masks for when you can't), but the economic and social costs (including the p…
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23839314.
Re: Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion thru social networks (2014)
#35Are studies of this sort still being done, perhaps privately at Fb or other social networks?
This study was unethical, and revealed something very scary about the potential of social networking, but I haven't heard much since then. Did they stop all research into social behavior, find ethical ways to do it, or just stop publishing publicly?
Re: Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion thru social networks (2014)
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
correlation not causation. the end of lockdown unleashed pent-up frustration and disregard for even simple yet effective distancing precautions--a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater behavior as backlash.
> correlation not causation. > the end of lockdown unleashed pent-up frustration and disregard* The debate totally set aside, realize that you proposed a causal relationship one sentence after saying "correlation not causation."
yes, but "undistancing->more cases" is a simpler if subtler explanation than "unlockdown->more cases", and thereby invalidating the implied causation of the question via occam's razor.
Re: Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion thru social networks (2014)
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not completely, we still have a few active cases as far as I'm aware. We also basically shut down our borders, which I don't think is that feasible for a lot of other countries.
There have been weeks-long stretches within the past month where New Zealand has had no active cases. Currently, there are 2, apparently new, according to this: https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/... This is about as close to "eliminated" as you can get; the new cases are all from incoming international travel. This directly refutes the OP's statement that lockdowns "won't stop the virus."
Lucky for them to be a tiny island nation with totally controlled borders. Long Island alone is almost twice as big.
Early on when New York was surging and Trump suggested limiting inter-state travel Cuomo suggested that would be akin to a federal declaration of war. [1]
It can be true that strategies that might work for New Zealand could never possibly work for the continental US.
Hawaii has a similar situation, got new case count down to zero for a few days, but are dealing with a few cases per day recently.
[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/28/donald-trump...
Re: Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion thru social networks (2014)
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
correlation not causation. the end of lockdown unleashed pent-up frustration and disregard for even simple yet effective distancing precautions--a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater behavior as backlash.
Arguing this at the level of "What should individuals do?" makes no sense, because we have little-to-no data on how effective masks or social distancing are at that level. We're really at the infancy stages of understanding this virus--keep in mind up until a few weeks ago we thought spread from high traffic surfaces was a major transmission vector. At the level of "What should government recommend?"--that's a fundam…
no, the point is that lockdowns, being basically a superset of distancing, don't add enough protection/reduction on top of distancing for it's enormous cost.
Re: Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion thru social networks (2014)
#39What's old is new again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusion...
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is an early study of crowd psychology by Scottish journalist Charles Mackay, first published in 1841 under the title Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions.[1] The book was published in three volumes: "National Delusions", "Peculiar Follies", and "Philosophical Delusions".[2
Re: Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion thru social networks (2014)
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
There have been weeks-long stretches within the past month where New Zealand has had no active cases. Currently, there are 2, apparently new, according to this: https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/... This is about as close to "eliminated" as you can get; the new cases are all from incoming international travel. This directly refutes the OP's statement that lockdowns "won't stop the virus."
Lucky for them to be a tiny island nation with totally controlled borders. Long Island alone is almost twice as big. Early on when New York was surging and Trump suggested limiting inter-state travel Cuomo suggested that would be akin to a federal declaration of war. [1] It can be true that strategies that might work for New Zealand could never possibly work for the continental US. Hawaii has a similar situation, got…
The good thing about the scientific method is you can decide what you are doing isn't working and try something else.