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NYT and vaping: How to lie by saying only true things (2022)

gwern.net

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Re: NYT and vaping: How to lie by saying only true things (2022)

#31

Post by bityard »

beloch wrote: post #20

Ironically, this article is guilty of the same thing it rails against. No evidence is provided for the safety of THC vaping products. An NYT article that was clearly biased against THC was picked apart instead. The clear implication is that THC vapes were unjustly targeted and readers should assume the contrary of the dishonest NYT article. i.e. That THC vapes are safe. Yet, no direct evidence of that is provided. A…

You read the gwern article very incorrectly. It was pointing out that Lizzie's injuries were caused by _adulterated_ illegal THC vapes. While the NYT article was using weasel writing techniques to mislead readers into the conclusion the that legal flavored nicotine vapes are dangerous.

Re: NYT and vaping: How to lie by saying only true things (2022)

#32

Post by bch »

beloch wrote: post #20

Ironically, this article is guilty of the same thing it rails against. No evidence is provided for the safety of THC vaping products. An NYT article that was clearly biased against THC was picked apart instead. The clear implication is that THC vapes were unjustly targeted and readers should assume the contrary of the dishonest NYT article. i.e. That THC vapes are safe. Yet, no direct evidence of that is provided. A…

> No evidence is provided for the safety of THC vaping products.

That's not the point - gwerns article dismantled the NYT article. If one read (or heard about) the NYT article and used it as "proof" of "vaping is bad", gwern is saying: "not so fast". That's not to say "vaping is healthy", nor even "vaping is not unhealthy" - just that this article isn't the proof you're looking for. Vaping (legal flavoured nicotine (which is what's on trial)) could be horrible - simply citing instances of why this is so isn't actually done in the article.

If it matters, I'm not condoning vaping or smoking at all.

Re: NYT and vaping: How to lie by saying only true things (2022)

#33

Post by aoeusnth1 »

beloch wrote: post #20

Ironically, this article is guilty of the same thing it rails against. No evidence is provided for the safety of THC vaping products. An NYT article that was clearly biased against THC was picked apart instead. The clear implication is that THC vapes were unjustly targeted and readers should assume the contrary of the dishonest NYT article. i.e. That THC vapes are safe. Yet, no direct evidence of that is provided. A…

The article explicitly and repeatedly affirms that illegal THC vapes are dangerous because of Vitamin E Acetate, which is used as a thickener agent. TFA points out how the NYT article carefully weasels its way around admitting that the THC vaping was the cause of the teenager's lung injury - the NYT is attempting to get the audience to associate the harm with legal nicotine vapes.

Does that make more sense to you now?

Re: NYT and vaping: How to lie by saying only true things (2022)

#34

Post by slopinthebag »

loeg wrote: post #15
slopinthebag wrote: post #5

I vaped for a couple months but stopped when I started to have my heart race when I would stand up suddenly. Ears started to crackle as well. Not saying the article is wrong, but I think there are probably good reasons to chose alternatives...

> Not saying the article is wrong, but I think there are probably good reasons to chose alternatives... This concern is addressed in the article. > it would be possible to write this story without bringing in irrelevant THC-contaminated anecdotes or EVALI, by focusing on legitimate criticisms of nicotine vaping. (You could discuss teen access, flavor marketing, age checks, FDA jurisdiction, statutory drafting, the ec…

I don't see how any of that is relevant to what I said.

If you need nic, snus is by far the best for you.

Re: NYT and vaping: How to lie by saying only true things (2022)

#35

Post by unethical_ban »

beloch wrote: post #20

Ironically, this article is guilty of the same thing it rails against. No evidence is provided for the safety of THC vaping products. An NYT article that was clearly biased against THC was picked apart instead. The clear implication is that THC vapes were unjustly targeted and readers should assume the contrary of the dishonest NYT article. i.e. That THC vapes are safe. Yet, no direct evidence of that is provided. A…

Respectfully, I don't agree at all. I didn't read the OP article and think they were defending the safety of any kind of vaping. What they credibly point out is the deliberate conflation of nicotine and THC vaping. The NYT article repeatedly suggests that the hospitalization of people vaping was from "nicotine and THC" when the specific lung damage reported was from illicit THC products specifically.

Re: NYT and vaping: How to lie by saying only true things (2022)

#36

Post by qsera »

lacewing wrote: post #12
zrezzed wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m disappointed this is the first comment on this post. gwern’s writing (including on nicotine) was formative for me; it showed me how and why the internet the was important: it let me read good, well written thinking I had never seen from the NYTs or my parents. I first saw a link to gwern.net on HN. And I trusted the NYTs as an institution then, and do to this day… and I’m sure I clicked through, and took the gwer…

Meh. Writing like this was formative for me (before Gwern; I'm old), but I've come to realize that the biases of the rationalist community are really no different from the biases of anyone else. It just manifests in a different way? It boils down to an obvious disparity in the standard of proof they demand for "pet" topics versus what they need for everything else. You can do this kind of ultra-nitpicky "rational inq…

>but I've come to realize that the biases of the rationalist community are really no different from the biases of anyone else.

In other words, uninitialized intellectuals are just plebs with a degree or browse HN or worse reddit. They become nice "mouth pieces" for the businesses to mobilize the masses in the name of "science" or "social justice".

Re: NYT and vaping: How to lie by saying only true things (2022)

#37

Post by sho »

Calvin02 wrote: post #11

This doesn't surprise me. I grew up reading NYTimes on the weekend with my parents. I held them in extreme high regard when it came to their news and journalistic integrity. Over the years, I've shifted to think of them as another data point. For the industries that I'm most familiar with (Tech, Finance, and Pharma), I find their reporting often shallow, lacking in nuance, or intentional/unintentional misreporting. A…

Same story with me. To be clear, I am a subscriber, though I tend to hold out for the ultra-cheap last ditch retention deals they through at you. But I take them with a grain of salt these days. They have a narrative like anywhere else, and they don't let the full facts get in its way.

Michael Crichton said it best:

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”

Re: NYT and vaping: How to lie by saying only true things (2022)

#38

Post by saagarjha »

cwillu wrote: post #4

The problem with gwern posts is that there are so rarely anything to nitpick, to spark conversation in the comments.

There is plenty of stuff to nitpick but it's the kind of thing that internet commenters who read his articles dismiss as poorly reasoned because it involves indirect social impact and presentation rather than content.

Re: NYT and vaping: How to lie by saying only true things (2022)

#39

Post by saagarjha »

scarmig wrote: post #9

One of the more amusing things about the vape panic is that it's now easier to purchase fentanyl adulterated meth in San Francisco than it is to get a Juul pod. And it's riskier to be a seller of the latter than the former. Public health officials are throwing their credibility into a bonfire when they land on a fixation and use heavy handed strategies to pursue their goals, without a sense of proportionality or effi…

I genuinely have no idea how to purchase fentanyl adulterated meth in San Francisco despite residing there. I assume there is probably some guy who knows a guy who might hook me up but it would be pretty sketchy.

On the flip side I can literally type "vape shop" into Google and get a handful of options in walking distance that I could stroll into legally and purchase whatever I wanted, as long as it was not flavored. That too is something Google is happy to share with me.

Re: NYT and vaping: How to lie by saying only true things (2022)

#40

Post by saagarjha »

moravak1984 wrote: post #17
lacewing wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh. Writing like this was formative for me (before Gwern; I'm old), but I've come to realize that the biases of the rationalist community are really no different from the biases of anyone else. It just manifests in a different way? It boils down to an obvious disparity in the standard of proof they demand for "pet" topics versus what they need for everything else. You can do this kind of ultra-nitpicky "rational inq…

> Meh. Writing like this was formative for me (before Gwern; I'm old), but I've come to realize that the biases of the rationalist community are really no different from the biases of anyone else. It just manifests in a different way? Could you point out to some examples? Is there any "rational inquiry" that shows a worldview bias from the rationalists, in your opinion? I agree that the broader smarty-pants community…

Rationalists are not necessarily better at thinking than you are, they're just usually better cited. That isn't to say there isn't value in being able to cite your beliefs, but if you try very hard you can find data that justifies just about anything, omit nontrivial externalities, and expect any arbitrarily high standard of evidence because that is what you need to think well and good, when in fact they just spend more time being comfortable with conversations that involve p-values and metacognition than you are and will seek to draw you onto their home turf for that discussion.

In this case, for example, I doubt that Gwern is seeking to mislead, but I have heard (hearsay, I know) that there are people who read this, start vaping, and legitimately end up with nicotine additions from much worse stuff. Sure, there's nothing false said here, but you can definitely say only true things about vapes and neglect to mention that your readers of this have ended up more likely to die of lung cancer than they might have had you not published this. I think someone who was truly rationalist would find that in itself an interesting topic of conversation but it seems to rarely come up that being super pedantic often leads to negative outcomes because presumably this would make them shine a mirror at themselves in a way that they are almost intentionally incapable of discussing.

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