The Crime of Curiosity • Hacker News Board

Re: The Crime of Curiosity

#191

Post by concordDance » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 12:53 PM UTC

ausbah wrote: post #141

people need to trust science because the average person doesn't have the scientific background necessary, much less the time, to evaluate the accuracy of everything scientific they deal with - especially in the realm of medicine like it's great you want to make things accessible and help people take charge of more things in life, but I don't think most people want that - and even of those who do say they want that, f…

> people falling prey to snake oil salesman and downright harmful products in the marketplace.

Just have institutions enforce labelling rather than banning.

If COVID vids had big banners put underneath them saying "disputed"/"unproven"/"speculative"/"known false"/"likely false" I'd be happy (as long as it includes a link to what standards they are using). Similarly, the FDA should be able to enforce accurate labelling stating what level of verification a treatment has had, not be able to ban it.

If people still want to buy the snake oil (maybe they like how it feels on their skin?) let them!

Re: The Crime of Curiosity

#192

Post by concordDance » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 1:00 PM UTC

Imnimo wrote: post #22

I do sympathize with him, and I think his specific content should be available on YouTube, but I can also see why YouTube would want to ban him. If I'm YouTube, and I don't really understand anything about biohacking, do I really want to take the risk of promoting material about making your own vaccines? Sure, this guy's content is informative and valuable, but it wouldn't be long before you have someone less compete…

It would be good if YouTube weren't held responsible for the content they host (by both media and regulators). Its not fair to blame the transmitter for the content.

Re: The Crime of Curiosity

#193

Post by kloch » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 1:23 PM UTC

The line between genius and crackpot is often very blurry. It seems most of his problems are from "guilt by association" and the rest are from doing serious work in very unconventional ways.

Re: The Crime of Curiosity

#194

Post by jpeloquin » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 1:55 PM UTC

ramblenode wrote: post #159

jpeloquin wrote: post #156

Biohacking in the sense of making E. coli grow on a different substrate, like in the ODIN kit, is pretty tame and unobjectionable. Promoting the manufacture and administration of homemade vaccines, though, is human subjects research, or _very_ close to it. The current manner in which society handles human subjects research came about through reaction to specific offenses, the main ones being Nazi experiments, governm…

> Promoting experimental (biohacked) treatments and guiding people through administering them is not compatible with the currently accepted ethical framework for protection of human subjects, _especially_ if it's done with intent of generating scientific knowledge. > Extension of current approaches to human subjects research to accommodate a public DIY biology / biohacking community may be possible but seems tricky t…

Yes, the fact that current regulations apply only to institutions is the point! When (unregulated) individuals function like scientific institutions, conflict results, because the current system was not designed with this in mind.

The ethical framework does not apply only to institutions. Ethics are for everyone.

Edit: If the prevailing attitude is that doing human subjects research as an individual ("biohacker") means research ethics can be ignored, because current regulations cannot punish you, it makes total sense that Paypal etc. would simply run away from it. Keep in mind that the article frames the biohacking effort as an equal alternative to institutional science. If it is to be seen as a legitimate and equal scientific enterprise, it needs to develop equivalent ethical governance.

Re: The Crime of Curiosity

#195

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 1:55 PM UTC

loup-vaillant wrote: post #173

kbenson wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's the definition of censorship, and then there's people's perception of censorship as something the government does. Beyond that, it's not just that many people can't distinguish the two, but that they've merged aspects of each into the same thing in their head. Censorship is natural and expected in many, many contexts. Any time a parent punishes their child for saying something they feel is unacceptable, that'…

> YouTube does not control all expression through video. There are both other video streaming platforms, For almost all intents and purposes, the audience is on YouTube only. Use anything else, and you are basically guaranteed to divide your audience by two orders of magnitude. Such is their monopoly on videos that are over 1 minute long. This makes YouTube deplatforming very close to actual government censorship. Th…

This is even worse logic than some arguments in this sphere.

The audience is wherever there's a link to click on. Anyone who can watch YT can watch vimeo or peertube or even a self-hosted video. There's no problem with that click - the problem is getting people to click.

You want YT to do more than host videos, you want them to market videos to their users. If YT was a completely passive video host (i.e. when you watched a video, there were no links to other videos at all), saying "the audience is on YT" would be meaningless - people could watch YT videos all day and would never ever see a link to any video that they didn't learn about via some other mechanism. What you seem to object to is YT removing material from participating in "the algorithm", which is essentially a marketing process.

Re: The Crime of Curiosity

#196

Post by notriddle » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 2:33 PM UTC

dvdkon wrote: post #179

lolc wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mails that make it to your spambox are a pithy few compared to the mass of dropped mail. You'd be very unhappy with your spambox if the filters weren't so judgmental.

I haven't actually set up my mail server to move mail flagged as spam to a separate folder, and I've gotten roughly 4 spam emails in the year or so I've had this address. My mail server also doesn't drop anything unless it fails DMARC. I've had to deal with Microsoft outright dropping everything from a domain (not on this server), so I do know it happens, I'm just not convinced it's necessary.

Yeah, because there’s less email spam now than there used to be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_spam#Statistics_and_esti...

Re: The Crime of Curiosity

#197

Post by concordDance » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

drumhead wrote: post #187

exporectomy wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are people still repeating that private company nonsense? Your same argument was used against civil rights back when private companies were allowed to discriminate based on race. It's an appeal to the existing law and implies you believe the law is correct by default - whatever it might be - and needs no justification.

So facebook and twitter should unban Trump?

Yes?

Re: The Crime of Curiosity

#198

Post by marcosdumay » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 3:43 PM UTC

bloopernova wrote: post #189

marcosdumay wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? Social media only started being a societal problem after it became heavily filtered.

I believe that is not correct. Social media is fine in basic forms, such as Reddit/HN style forum threads, and Facebook's keeping-in-touch-with-old-friends and arranging events. Mixing news into social media, sharing stories to Facebook, turned it from a coffee shop into a town square with a million soap boxes. Bad actors then seized that format and used it to spread propaganda and disinformation. That's not to say t…

> Mixing news into social media, sharing stories to Facebook, turned it from a coffee shop into a town square with a million soap boxes.

That only happened after Facebook decided to editorialize everybody's main view. People were not even used to sharing news at that point, but it was the only thing that Facebook allowed to spread.

Anyway, I'm not sure about causality. But claiming that fake news spreading through a heavily editorialized medium is proof that people can not handle self selecting their information is a complete non-sequitur.

Re: The Crime of Curiosity

#199

Post by loup-vaillant » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 3:45 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #195

loup-vaillant wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> YouTube does not control all expression through video. There are both other video streaming platforms, For almost all intents and purposes, the audience is on YouTube only. Use anything else, and you are basically guaranteed to divide your audience by two orders of magnitude. Such is their monopoly on videos that are over 1 minute long. This makes YouTube deplatforming very close to actual government censorship. Th…

This is even worse logic than some arguments in this sphere. The audience is wherever there's a link to click on. Anyone who can watch YT can watch vimeo or peertube or even a self-hosted video. There's no problem with that click - the problem is getting people to click. You want YT to do more than host videos, you want them to market videos to their users. If YT was a completely passive video host (i.e. when you wat…

> The audience is wherever there's a link to click on.

This is where the audience could be.

I don't know the solution to be honest. But the reality is, if a video is not on YouTube, it will not reach a wide audience. If a popular channel gets removed from YouTube, few people will ever watch it again. In most cases this means short term bankruptcy.

People could click. People could follow. But they don't.

Re: The Crime of Curiosity

#200

Post by NoGravitas » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 4:20 PM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #133

bserge wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A motivated party can deploy and detonate several bombs in places with a lot of people any day, Covid rules notwithstanding. It's laughably/terrifyingly easy, the hardest part is building or buying the bombs. But you don't see it done regularly at all. Granted, a single nuclear or bio attack would affect way more people.

It is far, far easier (and perfectly safe!) to get there by selling a popular product that poisons millions of people. All the lead paint and tobacco company executives retired to their yachts, scot free. The fats hydrogenation people responsible for millions of heart failures are walking around loose to this day. Nobody currently responsible for slow, painful deaths via liver damage from sugar poisoning, in the hund…

The fossil fuel company executives are still walking free, too. As is Ted Cruz (who I have no factual reason to believe is the Zodiac Killer).