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CDC data are disappearing

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Re: CDC data are disappearing

#571

Post by _heimdall »

hackyhacky wrote: post #474
_heimdall wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but that anyone can broadcast their favored view of facts Some blame, if not a majority, belongs on whoever actually hears those views and facts though. Knowing someone's intent is extremely hard, it really shouldn't matter whether they intend to mislead or believe what they are saying. Just because someone shares what they may honestly believe to be a fact doesn't mean we have to take it as fact. We lack critical…

> Some blame, if not a majority, belongs on whoever actually hears those views and facts though. Knowing someone's intent is extremely hard, it really shouldn't matter whether they intend to mislead or believe what they are saying. Just because someone shares what they may honestly believe to be a fact doesn't mean we have to take it as fact. I don't think that casting blame on individuals here is productive. I agree…

Oh there are societal issues here as well, no argument there. They all roll down hill from individuals' choices though.

Society didn't force Walter Cronkite on us. People chose to listen to him and a small number of other trusted sources, and they began choosing to take what was said by those sources at face value. I'm not even saying that was a bad thing or wrong, at the time news did seem to be reported in better faith.

We choose our sources though, and we choose how deeply to consider what they say. I don't see how this could have started as a societal issue rather than individual choice first.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#572

Post by hackyhacky »

lucb1e wrote: post #538
selfmodruntime wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They sometimes are. If you're using a biased source to fact-check, you're just transitively applying that bias.

I do feel like there is a limit to how biased a source can be when it tries to be based in evidence, though. Nobody would disagree that 1+1=2, basic physics tells one that COVID is not spread by 5G towers, the climate has warmed enough that you can dump weather records into a spreadsheet and see the effect without needing to measure CO2 at all. That COVID causes disease and a warming climate causes more extreme weath…

> Nobody would disagree that 1+1=2, basic physics tells one that COVID is not spread by 5G towers,

But yet people believe these things, and will believe a source that supports them. What's obvious to you is not obvious to others.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#573

Post by hackyhacky »

_heimdall wrote: post #439
arunabha wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But surely, the answer to 'data can be twisted' is not to remove the data? We have enough of a problem already with wilful misinformation. Having the data is the first step towards a reasonable discussion. Otherwise, you have to resort to 'I feel ....' vs 'Based on this interpretation....' I agree that the first kind of debate is already the dominant form today, however I think we can all agree that it's not been goo…

This isn't a new problem unfortunately. Data and research during the pandemic response was being horribly mishandled, largely by the Democrats at the time. This isn't a one party or one person problem. It sure seems like a problem more correlated with our government structure and/or climate, or authority structures themselves.

> largely by the Democrats at the time.

Who was president in 2020?

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#574

Post by eCa »

Xunjin wrote: post #556
JKCalhoun wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still now following. Are you saying something like, "You know I hate everything Musk stands for, everything he does publicly — but he might be an okay guy as a person"?

I think Musk was a bad example, I mean for example, people wants better health care, and some public person and/or politician proposes better prices in prescriptions drugs at a mid term, then that person who was elect does not only holds the power but also is obligated to follow that project. It's literally to detach the person from the projects, of course times changes and the elected project can not be achieved by…

(I did the, slightly snarky, original sibling comment, but this comment was better to reply to.)

My understanding of your original comment was similar to how 'JkCalhoun understood it, but this comment reads more like "the country show follow through on decided changes" regardless of who is in power. That I agree more with, with exceptions of course. (One example is maybe Obamas connection with "Obamacare" that is still a thing even though he is not in power.) Perhaps another way to put it is to detach the project from the person, but the person will still be linked (in some way) to the project.

Especially when it comes to international policies. For one, international relations and agreements are (normally) much slower moving and longer lasting than internal ones, and if countries can't depend on agreements lasting longer than the current leadership then such countries will see themselves not taken very seriously.

Kind of like if a president signs a trade deal with his country's closest neighbors and then a few years later instigate a trade war against the same countries.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#575

Post by hackyhacky »

SeptiumMMX wrote: post #328
mcmcmc wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having two parties with opposing biases and incentives doesn’t magically cancel out and become impartial. That’s the opposite of impartiality.

That's the problem. Real humans in real world cannot be impartial and will always have biases. So if you expose the public to many different biased opinions and let them learn to recognize the biases and see past them, the "cumulative mindset" will be more objective and less prone to manipulation. But if you let one biased group decide what the majority is allowed to see, the public opinion will inevitably align with…

> let them learn to recognize the biases and see past them, the "cumulative mindset

Is there any evidence that most people are capable of this?

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#576

Post by hackyhacky »

_heimdall wrote: post #571
hackyhacky wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some blame, if not a majority, belongs on whoever actually hears those views and facts though. Knowing someone's intent is extremely hard, it really shouldn't matter whether they intend to mislead or believe what they are saying. Just because someone shares what they may honestly believe to be a fact doesn't mean we have to take it as fact. I don't think that casting blame on individuals here is productive. I agree…

Oh there are societal issues here as well, no argument there. They all roll down hill from individuals' choices though. Society didn't force Walter Cronkite on us. People chose to listen to him and a small number of other trusted sources, and they began choosing to take what was said by those sources at face value. I'm not even saying that was a bad thing or wrong, at the time news did seem to be reported in better f…

> I don't see how this could have started as a societal issue rather than individual choice first.

really? I'd say it's clearly a matter of education. Critical thinking and media analysis just isn't part of American public schooling. If anything, people are taught to believe authority figures.

Regardless of how it "started", blaming the individual isn't helpful, because that suggests there's nothing to be done. "Well," you say, "folks made a bad decision, c'est la vie." Instead, we should be looking for solutions to media illiteracy, and that solution is certainly social in nature.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#577

Post by api »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #514
api wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zero effort is going into addressing any of the top reasons people cite for not having kids: housing prices, unaffordable college, child care, etc.

Those definitely affect the choice, but ultimately, there’s just no real cultural push to have more kids nowadays. Rich people aren’t having kids either, as you can see in top 10%, 1% brackets. Like, I don’t have a single girl friend that even wants 3 kids. Anyone whom I’ve talked to always has a range between 0-2. Can’t blame them. Giving up at the minimum 6 years of your life for no real benefits kinda sucks.

It's a complex issue. IMHO it's only a real problem when birth rates are consistently below replacement or when they fall way below replacement as they are in a few places like Korea.

In that case, step one is to remove obvious barriers like insane housing prices and pervasive workaholism so that people who want to have kids find it easy to do so. Create a culture that is a supportive environment for families.

I don't see the Project 2025 crowd doing much of that. Many of the billionaires backing the project are pushing work cultures and social policies that will have the opposite effect. Think Musk's "hard core" work cultures are conductive to family formation?

I think it's because their real goal is fundamentalist theocracy and/or fascism. Just like the climate protestors who are actually hard-core Marxists or anti-industrial Neo-primitivists hoping to collapse society to realize their vision, these people are "problemists." The problem is a good thing because it's a hook they can use to sell a whole agenda. Solving the problem without implementing that whole agenda would be, to them, a failure.

Christian Nationalists don't want to fix declining birth rates without implementing Christian Nationalism any more than the people throwing paint on works of art in Europe want greenhouse gas emissions fixed without collapsing capitalism.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#578

Post by w0m »

SeptiumMMX wrote: post #290
breadwinner wrote: post #240

Data is the ultimate Fact Check. This is a President that's adamantly opposed to fact checking [1] and has even coerced Facebook to drop fact checking. Of course they don't want data on government sites that disprove their "alternate facts". [1] https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4920827-60-minutes-tru...

Well, fact-checking works if it's done impartially. So, if you want to fairly fact-check a political debate, each side should have their own team of researchers/fact-checkers being equally able to object to an argument made by the opposing party. Due process, sort of, kind of. But I don't think I've ever seen that done actually. Usually, fact checkers are akin to Reddit moderators. Technically independent, but with o…

> Well, fact-checking works if it's done impartially. So, if you want to fairly fact-check a political debate, each side should have their own team of researchers/fact-checkers being equally able to object to an argument made by the opposing party. Due process, sort of, kind of.

IIRC, This is mostly what Facebook did after the 2016 election; put together a non affiliated board and made sure it was populated by all sides - Facebook itself had no/minimal control over what said board did/decided; but all decisions were public.

Zuck just gave in to 'community moderation' instead because "actual solutions" are considered a negative in today's political climate.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#579

Post by ceejayoz »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #417
plagiarist wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modern paraphrasing could use price of eggs but otherwise have the same structure.

Hilarious that only after the past two weeks do some of you care about grocery prices.

Hilarious that only after the past four years do some of you not care about grocery prices.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#580

Post by jakelazaroff »

_heimdall wrote: post #563
wilg wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's your bias.

Well in an attempt to at least show where the bias, if that's what it is, comes from: - Affordable Care Act - the entire Covid response - GDPR - the "TikTok Ban" act To name a few, those are all examples of us having granted larger powers to the government in hopes that they will fix problems for us that we won't fix ourselves.

Let’s take the ACA. That was designed to fix the problem “healthcare in the US is insanely expensive and insurance companies can deny coverage if you have a pre-existing condition.” How could you fix that problem individually?
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