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

The media's lab leak fiasco

slowboring.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

511–520 of 736 posts

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#511

Post by mapme »

asdff wrote: post #176
arduinomancer wrote: post #137

I hate how it feels like there's such a "collective narrative" for everything now days with the internet. Whenever I talk to people about recent news stories in real life it feels like everyone is just repeating talking points they read online. Its like we've been absorbed into the internet consciousness and talking to a person is like talking to "the internet brain".

People stopped reading the source material, and started just parroting the talking points. It's even gotten to the point where people are even convinced the talking points are the source material.

Genuine question: were people ever reading the source material? Seems like a dubious claim that folks of yesteryear read deeply into original sources. Most people read headlines and attention grabbing quotes and this was just as true 100 years ago. I recently read about the Russian revolution and it was similar to today.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#512

Post by wpietri »

temp8964 wrote: post #309
wpietri wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can criticize the Chinese government. But if we do we should have facts, not wild speculations. I agree automatically linking Asian-looking people to the actions of China's government is racist. And there are a lot of racists out there. Given the ongoing spike in anti-Asian hate crimes [1] and online anti-Asian hate tied specifically to coronavirus [2] I think we should be unusually careful about excited speculati…

I don't understand your logic. Are you saying if the lab leak theory is proved to be true, then the racists turn out to be more justified racists? The rightful racists? If the lab leak theory is proved to be false, then the racists turn out to be less justified racists? The wrongful racists? How does criticizing the Chinese government has anything to do with racism? Because we can't give racists ideas to be racists,…

I am not saying any of those things. I am saying that because fact-free speculation about Chinese responsibility for something many were already calling the "china virus" could drive mob violence against Asians, we should be especially careful about it.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#513

Post by [deleted] »

iammisc wrote: post #503
CiceroCiceronis wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A recently released meta—analysis from the British Medical Journal suggests that the evidence base for ivermectin’s efficacy in treating COVID-19 is low. https://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2021/05/26/bmjebm-2021-111...

You have to be careful though because we've seen medical journals engage in deceptive practices recently around drugs that could potentially treat COVID. For example, the data showing hydroxychloroquine to be harmful to COVID patients was completely made up or non-existent. Unfortunately, medical academia, in some failed attempt to 'stick to the facts', have led themselves to have a lower a priori assumption of corre…

[deleted]

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#514

Post by emmelaich »

wombatmobile wrote: post #69
bsder wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that this is Standard Operating Procedure(tm) for China for anything which might upset the hoi-polloi. Trying to predict what China will execute people for is like reading entrails.

> The problem is that this is Standard Operating Procedure(tm) for China When you say "China", do you mean the Department of Health, or the Department of Defense, or the Department of Trade, or the Chinese government, or the Chinese people, or some Chinese guy? It makes as much sense to attribute a Standard Operating Procedure to "China" as it does to attribute something like that to "America", or to say "Americans t…

Baotao Xiao's paper from Feb 2020 titled "The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus" was removed after publication.

Apparently it was available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339070128 too but not there now.

I found it here: https://img-prod.tgcom24.mediaset.it/images/2020/02/16/11472...

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#515

Post by triceratops »

beaner wrote: post #471
jjoonathan wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that contrary? MSM got one wrong in the same time that alternative media has gotten hundreds wrong. MSM isn't just better at rejecting misinformation, it's a lot better.

Wrong. The things it does get wrong have more impact. Russiagate is just one prior example. It was patently false from the outset, but led to mass delusions, promotions of fake news propagandists to the point that they are now embedded within and celebrated by the MSM, the discrediting of the media and the intelligence community, breakdown of trust of those institutions by those who had been clear-headed, and fever-d…

> Russiagate is just one prior example. It was patently false from the outset

What is "Russiagate"? What about it was "patently false"?

The Mueller investigation got multiple indictments against Russian nationals. They also obtained convictions of people working in the Trump campaign or administration for election-related offenses. They found evidence of Russian attempts to influence voters in swing states by illegally buying ads on social media. That Russia attempted to meddle in the 2016 elections isn't in doubt - only whether the meddling worked.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#516

Post by triceratops »

enaaem wrote: post #195
generalizations wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we accept that taking action against misinformation is good, then this sort of mistake will inevitably happen. If you're in favor of taking action against misinformation, then you should be willing to accept this situation as an acceptable failure. I'm not willing to accept that.

I believe that censorship is more harmful than misinformation. Censorship is a bottom down initiative. It requires a few bad actors or 'mistakes' to completely change the information landscape. Misinformation is bottom up. It still needs to compete with a whole bunch of other ideas and it requires far more effort to spread. You also don't create a pretence that all available information is correct. Censorship carries…

> Misinformation is bottom up. It still needs to compete with a whole bunch of other ideas and it requires far more effort to spread

Lmao no, the truth needs effort to spread. Because the truth is usually boring and lame.

Lies, misinformation, conspiracy theories are juicy. They make the reader feel smart - either by confirming their biases, or giving them the feeling of being "in" on something that's not widely known. People love being the first to pass on some hot goss to their group.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#517

Post by wpietri »

monoideism wrote: post #343
wpietri wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thing they aren't monopolies, then. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, and Reddit are are all very popular places for people to post their views. And that's not counting the myriad lesser places like the one we're using now. And of course anybody can drop a few bucks on a blog of their own. I also disagree that sites moderating is against the intent. Freedom of speech is one right, but so is freedom of…

I'm more or less in agreement with you on all of those companies except Twitter. Twitter is a notable exception and absolutely does have a monopoly on the social media sector as a "public square" - one which features almost every major politician, journalist, analyst, and activist on the platform, including at times, the US President and many other heads of state. And because of the network effect, this monopoly is u…

If Twitter's so incredibly powerful and important, why is it worth 5% of Facebook or 2% or Amazon (which owns Twitch) or Google (which owns YouTube)? That doesn't sound like a dominant market position to me.

A large proportion of the people you mention are active on multiple platforms. Some of them aren't active on Twitter at all. Twitter does have a particular market niche, but it's only the 16th most popular platform in terms of global active users: https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-net...

And freedom of association is a right that Twitter's owners also have. They are not obliged to serve anybody they don't want to.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#518

Post by mcphage »

Moodles wrote: post #345
Dma54rhs wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incredible comment, is this is the level of discourse now in America?

Yeah, incredible. He knows nothing about me except what I wrote above and he's convinced I'm from the "MAGA-verse".

> There are a number of other replies that come straight from MAGA-verse

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#519

Post by moralestapia »

Animats wrote: post #417
neither_color wrote: post #34

There’s a question as to why that fake consensus emerged. But I think the more troubling question is: How did people let the original story of what Tom Cotton even said go so badly awry? Essentially Cotton said something that was then transformed into a fake claim of a Chinese bio-attack, then the fake claim was debunked, and then the debunking was applied to the real claim with little attention paid to ongoing disag…

Each site seemed to be funneling you into a single source of truth and way of not only thinking, but FEELING about an event. Which is a big problem. In the intelligence community, people are taught to distinguish between data items from different sources, which may indicate confirmation, and data items from the same source via different paths, which don't.

>In the intelligence community

What do you mean by this? And I'm not being snarky, really.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#520

Post by wpietri »

gowld wrote: post #420
wpietri wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thing they aren't monopolies, then. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, and Reddit are are all very popular places for people to post their views. And that's not counting the myriad lesser places like the one we're using now. And of course anybody can drop a few bucks on a blog of their own. I also disagree that sites moderating is against the intent. Freedom of speech is one right, but so is freedom of…

> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Corporations do not have inalienable rights. Only their human members do. They are chartered by the government, to promote the General Welfare. If the CEO of YouTube wants to flex her rights, she should do it…

Companies do face more constraints than individuals, but the government can't just do whatever it wants. One obvious reason being that companies have owners, and they do have rights.
Post reply on HN