Yes, smugly mocking people's very valid concerns will surely win them over. Don't study the figures, just do as we say!
Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
81–90 of 248 posts
Re: Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
#82This reminds me of the sort of light poking of common "correlation is not the same as causation" and "beware of confounding factors" statistical failures behind the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster "clearly reduction in pirates has caused global warming!" [0]. But it's a major in modern public discourse, and one for once that I'm quite willing to lay heavily at the feet of the public education system. Easily on…
I agree that people could have a more effective BS filter, but I think there’s also some obligation to not publish BS in the first place at the risk of your trustworthiness reputation. People intentionally or repeatedly inadvertently publishing BS should be called out and their opinions down-weighted heavily. People having a good BS filter is one step in the chain towards this down-weighting, but isn’t the whole chai…
The post does exactly this, calling out Alex Berenson by name - but despite its best efforts, it will have very little impact on the people paying him to receive BS directly from his Substack.
I don't think your opinion is unpopular because it's wrong. It's unpopular because it's empirically impractical. People don't suffer a reputational hit for publishing BS, and saying "But they should" doesn't get us anywhere (as you yourself point out). How do you propose that we actually cause reputational hits for such people?
One way is to teach additional statistical literacy to the general public.
There are probably other proposals worth trying and I'd be interested in hearing your takes on what they are. (One that might be effective - though certainly controversial - is for the government to say that Alex Berenson is actively putting lives in danger with lies and that, if the untruth of his statements can be proven in court, he should be subject to criminal penalties, just like Elizabeth Holmes is on trial for lying about her blood tests. But that seems a lot less good for society as a whole than teaching statistical literacy.)
Re: Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
#83This reminds me of the sort of light poking of common "correlation is not the same as causation" and "beware of confounding factors" statistical failures behind the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster "clearly reduction in pirates has caused global warming!" [0]. But it's a major in modern public discourse, and one for once that I'm quite willing to lay heavily at the feet of the public education system. Easily on…
> But it's a major in modern public discourse, and one for once that I'm quite willing to lay heavily at the feet of the public education system.
Should the general population be better at such things? Yes, of course.
However, in nearly every case such things reach a broader audience via mainstream media. And how many times have we seen those entries confuse correlation with causation? We've seen it so many times that it's safe to assume it's intentional. Surely, after each incident of such negligence a teacher or professor or math savvy citizen reaches out to correct them. Yet? Never a correction or retraction?? Never a spark of "we need to educate our journalists"?
Repeat something often enough and it becomes truth in the minds of the receivers. Toss in confirmation bias and echo chambers and even if your better educated the masses, the media and those "journalists" would mitigate public's understanding.
Re: Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
#84Creatively using statistics happens on both sides. Example: "Case statistics show us that this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated!" But due to the 3g rule (access to events or buildings is granted to the vaccinated, recovered or people with a PCR test less than 24h ago ) in countries like Germany, guess which group is tested most: The unvaccinated. Other groups do not need tests!
Actually, the "pandemic of the unvaccinated" is also supported by their over-representation in hospital admissions and deaths.
https://lawrence-robinson.medium.com/vaxxed-vs-unvaxxed-hosp...
"A study done by the CDC in New York accounted for the following — “A total of 1,271 new COVID-19 hospitalizations (0.17 per 100,000 person-days) occurred among fully vaccinated adults, compared with 7,308 (2.03 per 100,000 person-days) among unvaccinated adults”."
Re: Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
#85There's no way on earth they can actually know the movie-viewing history of those who recently died. So the data must simply be fabricated. It undermines the point they're trying to make. They should have used a real example.
What are you talking about? Of course there's a way to know their history. You think Netflix, Prime, Hulu do not have a very detailed list of activity from their sites? This person also probably did not use cash for their recent theater visits, so their ticket purchases could be found as well. If they did it through a website, then the exact movie could be found. If they did it at the ticket booth at the theater (who…
Oh come on. Everyone else saying it's an obvious joke and now here you are claiming it's obviously a legitimate claim. Even though you can imagine a way that this information might have been collected, it obviously wasn't.
Re: Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
#86Yes, smugly mocking people's very valid concerns will surely win them over. Don't study the figures, just do as we say!
Did you study the figures in the blog post? On what basis do you believe the concerns are "very valid"?
I do agree with you that mockery is unlikely to win hearts and minds, but the whole problem here is that the concerns are not valid and the people with concerns are not studying the figures and the people they're arguing against are not saying "just do as we say," and yet the concerns persist.
Re: Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
#87This sort of thing is why "do your own research" is simply not plausible advice for 99% of people, even highly educated intelligent people with time on their hands. Most of the high level problems in our civilization require years of study to even be capable of formulating a valid opinion. The thing people have to do is to instead focus on evaluating people and deciding who probably knows who they are talking about.…
Take the "Do your own research" slogan for what it is - an attack on expertise. It is an attempt to lower the status, and presumably power, of "the elites" (credentialed experts), mostly perpetrated by the real (monied) elites.
On the contrary, most of the people making the "do your own research" attack on expertise are not "elites" in any sense. They're the same people who say, "I could have been an X except for all the pointless math/science".
The wealthy or semi-wealthy are either riding the wave for their own benefit or don't like what the expertise says.
Re: Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
#88This reminds me of the sort of light poking of common "correlation is not the same as causation" and "beware of confounding factors" statistical failures behind the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster "clearly reduction in pirates has caused global warming!" [0]. But it's a major in modern public discourse, and one for once that I'm quite willing to lay heavily at the feet of the public education system. Easily on…
I agree that people could have a more effective BS filter, but I think there’s also some obligation to not publish BS in the first place at the risk of your trustworthiness reputation. People intentionally or repeatedly inadvertently publishing BS should be called out and their opinions down-weighted heavily. People having a good BS filter is one step in the chain towards this down-weighting, but isn’t the whole chai…
Yup, it is called establishing a reputation, positive or negative, trustworthy or untrustworthy
This works well naturally in small communities, but once the society becomes too large, BSers, liars, and scammers can just move on to a new gullible crowd.
So we got social media with review & reputation management systems, and these are now, of course, promptly gamed to the max. Moreover, this gaming is being done by the very people who should be most de-amplified, in order to amplify their BS, inlcuding everyone from just trolls to professional RUS dezinformatsiya shops (that'll gather a lot of downvotes).
So yes, a huge part of the solution is to de-amplify the crowd that spews Bs or deliberate lies.
Sure, freedom of speech is a right, but no one has to be required to amplify you on their platform - that takes away the freedom of speech of the platform owner (e.g., if HN were required to amplify everyone, then moderation would become effectively illegal).
Why does this view gain downvotes so frequently? IDK, but it seems to be mostly readers with no nuance who think that freedom of speech requires zero restrictions, so any shadow of moderation or restriction rankles them, and they are not articulate enough to state a reason, but can still hit the down-arrow.
Re: Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
#89I'm not sure why this sort of thing impresses people, it's obvious the 1984 ghostbuster group skews old.
Re: Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are you talking about? Of course there's a way to know their history. You think Netflix, Prime, Hulu do not have a very detailed list of activity from their sites? This person also probably did not use cash for their recent theater visits, so their ticket purchases could be found as well. If they did it through a website, then the exact movie could be found. If they did it at the ticket booth at the theater (who…
Oh come on. Everyone else saying it's an obvious joke and now here you are claiming it's obviously a legitimate claim. Even though you can imagine a way that this information might have been collected, it obviously wasn't.
Really? This was able to be read without a tounge being firmly planted in cheek?