Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online • Hacker News Board

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#281

Post by vimacs2 » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 1:36 AM UTC

russdill wrote: post #230

omosubi wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best diet is the one eaten for 1000s of years by your ancestors

Because they all lived long healthy lives I'm sure /s

Sarcasm nonwithstanding, it took over 12000 years of technological advances for agricultural societies to catch up to their palaeolithic bretheran in terms of average life expectancy and even metrics like height.

I'm not a primitivist by any means (I'm using a pc right now as it so happens) but we continue to have a lot to learn from modern hunter gatherer societies both in terms of social organisation and food consumption.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#282

Post by throwaway22032 » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 1:36 AM UTC

jhallenworld wrote: post #248

throwaway22032 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's difficult to understand why someone would trust someone with a popular podcast so much more than licensed professionals. I'm less convinced that this is a matter of trust, I think it's more about value systems and priorities. I trust my dentist to recommend me the best filling or crown material for my teeth, even in the face of financial incentives. But his advice does not tell me, in an absolute sense, whethe…

Well I agree that there are actual valid arguments about priority, by which I mean the math works out- the costs are significant either way. Excess deaths vs. broader economic impact or even questioning how much economic benefit from allaying fear by an otherwise dubious activity (cloth masks..). But in the US, we have this extreme irrational vaccine skepticism where the math just does not work out. People believe th…

I personally think that a lot of vaccine scepticism comes from the perceived force involved. For example, via passports and mandates.

I think once you get into the situation in which people think "I'm being forced to do X", you've created an impossible catch-22 and you've basically ensured that some % double down.

It's hard for me to explain because it just seems intuitively obvious. I really enjoy a beer after work. But if you forced me to drink one, and made me document the fact in order to go on holiday or whatever, I would feel less inclined to do so because I'd instinctively think that something fishy must be going on.

I've personally had the generally recommended number of vaccines at the right times etc, but when it comes to stuff like showing barcodes to get into places, I've faked it on principle, I think it's a dystopian horror and it doesn't surprise me at all that a lot of people have responded by just tuning out and refusing everything.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#283

Post by lovecg » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 1:38 AM UTC

xmprt wrote: post #200

AussieWog93 wrote: post #87

Just throwing my 2c into the well, as someone who used to be highly "pro-science" but lost confidence in much of academia and the validity of scientific research in general after starting a PhD and seeing how the sausage is made. The biggest problem science is facing is not an external threat from a rabble of ignorant science deniers, but the complete degradation of quality within the scientific institutions themselv…

Really interesting research isn't done because of the risk of a negative result that can't be published.

I thought pre-registration is a thing? Though I don’t really know how (or how well) any of this works in detail.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#284

Post by tbrownaw » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 1:38 AM UTC

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?

I'm pretty sure I've heard that part of the reason to block "disinformation" is so that people don't get "misled" into voting the wrong way.

For example you can Ctrl-F "disinformation" on this Time article: https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#285

Post by newbie789 » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 1:39 AM UTC

lettergram wrote: post #133

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Along the way, everyone knew and when people tried to bring up concerns higher ups in the institution suppressed the knowledge. As you are doing here. I don't see a name or any specifics anywhere in your comment. Of course not including any names or specifics also means you could be making it up for a good story. We have no way of knowing.

Much of this was told to me in confidence (via their lab-mates, etc) I’m not going to betray their trust.

This website is pretty easy to post on anonymously. It takes five seconds to make a throwaway and another three to post a name.

While I agree that there are frauds out there in academia and elsewhere, I have no reason to believe that you’re not yourself some sort of fraud. You’ve essentially posted “I have direct knowledge of [unspecified academic fraud in which somebody claimed to have direct knowledge of [unspecified academic fraudulent conclusion] but can’t back it up] but won’t back it up”

Your overall point is… what? Fraud of perpetuated by cowardice? Self interest? An overall sense of apathy towards the truth? Your comment could be construed as any of those.

There are people that love to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt without having to rely on being truthful. People that are intentionally misleading with the sole intent of leveraging people’s biases and emotions to confirm folks notions and whip people up into an artificially-created frenzy make statements yours.

Serious questions: 1. Do you actually give a shit about this big fraud you’ve brought up but not revealed? And 2. Why did you post?

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#286

Post by jimkleiber » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 1:39 AM UTC

thwarted wrote: post #214

jimkleiber wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think we may learn a lot by studying whom someone distrusts and the underlying causes. I imagine we would find that most of the times, the distrust is projected distrust—in other words, I distrust X person in my life because they did A thing and person Y is like X therefore I distrust person Y as well. For example, I think many distrust Fauci less because of Fauci himself and his behaviors and more because…

And yet few people want to hear "your family is not fine". Many people don't want honesty, they want comfort, and they (wrongly, IMO) look to experts for comfort. This puts doctors in a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-dont situation. It's easy to translate "doctor was honest" to "bad bedside manner".

I think people want both—I believe I do. I want people to be honest with me and considerate. I don't think it has to be one or the other, yet we often haven't learned how to communicate with both.

I can say, "I want to be honest with you, your relative may only have a few weeks left. I imagine that might feel really scary to hear or perhaps you might even feel angry, I don't know. I wanted to be honest with you and to let you know that my team and I will be here for you and your family."

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#287

Post by TameAntelope » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 1:40 AM UTC

overgard wrote: post #86

I think the US has caught this cancerous idea that the average person can't be trusted to think for themselves. The amount of condescension in that thought process is disgraceful. They think, someone has to tell the average person how to think. And the baffling thing is that supposed liberals think that thoughts should be policed by corporations, government, and self styled intellectuals (which seems so much against…

The entire country is founded on the notion that the average person shouldn't be trusted to decide any individual issue, and instead should elect trusted representatives to do the research to understand the individual issue and decide according to how the voter would have decided, if they had researched the issue.

Joe Rogan, Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald; these are the cancers, not the concept of representative democracy. Attempting to spread lies and unconsidered science on other people's platforms, and then pretending like they're entitled to those platforms is arrogant, completely wrong, and degrades what it means to own property. If you have to let people use your services, your property is no longer your own; it is owned by the government, it is nationalized.

I want private companies to be able to decide how their platforms get used. If Spotify doesn't want to deplatform Joe Rogan, that's fine, but they should deal with the consequences, which is also fine.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#288

Post by stereoradonc » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 1:40 AM UTC

lettergram wrote: post #113

AussieWog93 wrote: post #87

Just throwing my 2c into the well, as someone who used to be highly "pro-science" but lost confidence in much of academia and the validity of scientific research in general after starting a PhD and seeing how the sausage is made. The biggest problem science is facing is not an external threat from a rabble of ignorant science deniers, but the complete degradation of quality within the scientific institutions themselv…

> Most research is flawed or useless, but published anyway because it's expedient for the authors to do so. For the record I now know a professor at one of the premier institutions in the world, who is a total fraud. Their research was fraudulent in grad school. Their lab mates tried to raise concerns and nothing happened. That person graduated, with everyone on the committee knowing the issues. Then they got a premi…

Thanks for the book suggestion! Going to read it soon.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#289

Post by amcoastal » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 1:40 AM UTC

skissane wrote: post #188

urthor wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the vast rate at which things are improving every decade is really dramatic. Compare now to ten years ago, before me too. Things are hugely different. I fully expect that if you give it a long time, things will be markedly better. In a hundred years for example.

Are things "improving every decade" at a "vast rate"? What exactly is improving? Doesn't that depend on one's values as to what counts as "better"? Do you mean technological progress, economic progress, social progress? Perceptions of progress seem to depend a lot on (a) where in the world you are, (b) what things you value, (c) whether you choose to optimistically focus on the positive developments (from the viewpoi…

You can be philosophical about "improving", but in the context of the thread and the post, I think we are talking about technological improvement over the last few years as an example of tangible scientific improvement, even if a lot of papers that are published suck.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#290

Post by bmc7505 » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 1:41 AM UTC

pronlover723 wrote: post #253

bmc7505 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that banning general purpose computers only makes sense if you believe AI cannot be controlled. A more reasonable approach would be to design the program in such a way that by its very nature, fulfills certain criteria that cannot be escaped. Think of a linear type system or substructural logic. You have a core calculus which keeps track of resources and effects so that computation has no way to propagate out…

It doesn't seem possible to me to ban general purpose computers. Any society that tries would at best, lose to the ones that don't. It seems impossible to me to have enough surveillance to both prevent unauthorized code and also still allow effective/competitive software development.

It may not be technically possible, but that won't stop misguided people from trying to regulate Turing machines and exploit their vulnerabilities. Rather than putting so much energy into in regulation, surveillance and offensive measures, I suspect the "winning" strategy is to focus on secure, verifiable computing. Whoever masters this first will grow an immunity to (human and AI) cyber-threats and gain a significant competitive advantage in the digital economy.