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Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

royalsociety.org

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Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#41

Post by tempnow987 »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #35
tempnow987 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anti mask, anti N95 masks with exhalation valve stuff has been the worst here I think. If you would let folks wear N95 with exhalation valves (highly comfortable) it just makes it easier for folks to protect themselves (and indirectly others). And for those who don't care, let's distinguish slightly between making sure those who want to protect themselves as much as possible can, and the need to force people down…

I don't get it. Exhalation valves are great if you're using the mask to filter external dust. Here you're trying to filter outgoing and ingoing droplets. Filtering is still going to be most effective at the source, even if you are wearing N.95. Adding a valve is going to reduce the utility of the mask a lot for this application.

My personal interest is filtering on ingress. I can feel the pressure when I breathe in, the air is going through the mask for sure.

On egress, just a quick look at the valve, it's going to stop the velocity and either block or drop particles - however ineffective that might be on egress there is NO WAY it is worse then what I see others wearing (surgical / thin cloth etc), mask off the nose, mask off while they eat etc.

Finally - folks historically have a natural "self interest" motivation. Ie, if you let folks act in a self interested way - personal protection, personal comfort - you are likely going to be better off policy wise.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#42

Post by throwaway22032 »

Gravityloss wrote: post #36
throwaway22032 wrote: post #9

The issue that plagues us is a lack of trust in long-standing societal authorities. We can't follow the entire scientific proof chain for every piece of information we encounter, because we don't have time. So we rely on authority to some extent, whether that be peer review, government, independent bodies, etc. We need to be able to trust that these bodies are telling us the truth and aren't seeking to mislead us. Be…

For long term scientific correctness, what the hacker news crowd could help with tremendously is reproducibility and that means versioning and continuous integration with data, for research software. In context of a paper or doing research, you have to write software anyway. The other one that pops to mind is probably statistical calculation helping services. Maybe there are lots of other things as well - I haven't b…

The main thing I think is lacking is representing data in helpful and actionable ways.

A theoretical climate change example might be:

Car A emits 10% less CO2 than car B.

Driving is 30% of your annual emissions (i.e. it's significant and one of the low hanging fruit).

That 30% of your annual emissions if multiplied by 7 billion people is likely to cause X.

If everyone drives car B instead of car A, Y will happen instead.

Y is better than X, because we end up with a more verdant Earth, cheaper food, better weather, less war (insert reason here).

Therefore, our overall quality of life is higher if we switch to car A.

Without the whole information chain, you just have isolated statistics that don't really mean anything.

Convincing argumentation is not only about mathematics, it's about appealing to the things that matter to people.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#43

Post by donw »

blix wrote: post #40
throwaway22032 wrote: post #9

The issue that plagues us is a lack of trust in long-standing societal authorities. We can't follow the entire scientific proof chain for every piece of information we encounter, because we don't have time. So we rely on authority to some extent, whether that be peer review, government, independent bodies, etc. We need to be able to trust that these bodies are telling us the truth and aren't seeking to mislead us. Be…

The interesting thing about trust is it takes much longer to build than to spend. Given the level scientific institutions have been spending trust over the past few years I'm not sure how this problem can be alleviated within our current framework.

It can’t be.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#44

Post by ozfive »

maskil wrote: post #5
ozfive wrote: post #2

[flagged]

"excuse to argue against it" is a very slippery slope. There should be no excuses required to exercise free speech and free inquiry. All you've attempted to do here is impugn the motives of those holding a position contrary to your own without addressing their arguments.

So share the argument against if you are so compelled to reject it.

Please also reject all other scientific advanced that have made it possible for you to live a longer life no matter how small those advancements seem to be. For if you choose to reject the scientific community and their solutions than you should then refuse the rest right down to the safety of the roads you drive on now. Making this argument is a luxury of people who are privileged beyond their abilities.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#45

Post by toolz »

tempnow987 wrote: post #37
toolz wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit of a tangent, but I don't understand generalized masking. At best they flatten the curve, which I think at this point I believe flattening the curve is dangerous. We have pretty well defined risk demographics and if we could have covid seasons come and go quickly I think it gives the high risk demographics the best chance of applying multi-layered defenses against a shorter season of risk. There is of c…

The issue for me is I have elderly parents one of which does have a health condition (serious) that makes some breathing and other issues hard. They wanted to fly out to visit me. The absolute best way to avoid covid for yourself in my view is an N95 masks with a vent, because you can actually wear that thing for hours comfortably. I have friends who treated folks with covid wearing N95's and did not get covid. So I…

Personally I don't think any kind of mask works on people who don't want to wear them. I hypothesize the reason general population shows little or no benefit with masks is because wearing masks effectively is significantly more tedious than just having one on most of the time where people require them.

People who don't want masks aren't getting fitted properly for n95's, they aren't shaving, they aren't behaving consciously in the many ways you can behave that render masking ineffective.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#46

Post by loceng »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #9

The issue that plagues us is a lack of trust in long-standing societal authorities. We can't follow the entire scientific proof chain for every piece of information we encounter, because we don't have time. So we rely on authority to some extent, whether that be peer review, government, independent bodies, etc. We need to be able to trust that these bodies are telling us the truth and aren't seeking to mislead us. Be…

Edit to add: I found out what happens when you present a video testimonial strongly calling into question vaccine clinical trials - it gets downvoted.

So what happens when you present a video testimonial like this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2GKPYzL_JQ - and people just dismiss it, people not understanding that with clinical trials you're meant to keep track of and report all outcomes, and not only that - by limiting the scope via an app that has limited options, and no free form input, you're crafting a very narrow scope of outcome, literally doctoring the outcome by minimizing the potential range and severity of adverse events? (If the people even watch the video or understand the implications of what Maddie's mother has shared; and if not, then you're not able to educate or inform them further - probably because it's a counter-mainstream narrative point, arguably the mainstream and government captured, regulatory capture from industrial complexes, etc)

Does the video described build or harm trust of our institutions? Does that this happened with this clinical trial, does that not automatically extrapolate that all of the other clinical trials were ignored, not given proper oversight, nor having integrity to them?

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#48

Post by Barrin92 »

zzyzz wrote: post #22

I always think about this. If you can't trust people with the ability to see or hear certain information, how can you even trust them to vote?

because people don't need to be scientifically literate to express their desires in the form of a vote, which is mainly concerned with tasking representatives with what people want, not how they're going to get it.

It's perfectly coherent to think that voting is a good mechanism to express preferences while at the same time thinking that your average person can't really validate scientific claims.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#49

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #9

The issue that plagues us is a lack of trust in long-standing societal authorities. We can't follow the entire scientific proof chain for every piece of information we encounter, because we don't have time. So we rely on authority to some extent, whether that be peer review, government, independent bodies, etc. We need to be able to trust that these bodies are telling us the truth and aren't seeking to mislead us. Be…

[deleted]

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#50

Post by rgrieselhuber »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #9

The issue that plagues us is a lack of trust in long-standing societal authorities. We can't follow the entire scientific proof chain for every piece of information we encounter, because we don't have time. So we rely on authority to some extent, whether that be peer review, government, independent bodies, etc. We need to be able to trust that these bodies are telling us the truth and aren't seeking to mislead us. Be…

Let people draw their own conclusions and don’t censor or otherwise penalize them for questioning one interpretation of data vs another. Encourage people to do their own research and investigate who is funding the sources used for that research. There is no need for conspiracy theories when financial incentives exist.
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