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Coronavirus and Credibility

paulgraham.com

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Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#651

Post by lliamander »

moultano wrote: post #481
lliamander wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a useful start. I'll definitely dig into this. The question still stands as to why, even if the problem lay with journalists/media rather than scientists, is why did they get it so wrong? Also, if I as lay person am going to be getting my information from sources like NYT and National Geographic instead of IPCC reports directly, have they fixed the problems that led to the erroneous reporting?

A list of cherry picked quotes from a motivated contrarian is not evidence that they "got it so wrong."

That the media have (with some regularity) promoted the most catastrophic predictions, predictions that were subsequently falsified, is not exactly news.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#652

Post by cortesoft »

aledalgrande wrote: post #584
cortesoft wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doubling each week is not how it happens... as a higher percentage of people have or have had the virus, the growth rate decreases because there are less people available to infect. That is why infection percentage is an s shaped curve.

> as a higher percentage of people have or have had the virus, the growth rate decreases because there are less people available to infect That is what you would call "herd immunity" and no, current numbers of recovered patients are not even close to have it. It doesn't happen like magic like some politician wants to make people believe, and current estimations for COVID _herd immunity threshold_ are 29%-74% of the c…

Sure, but the comment I was replying to was suggesting that in 10 weeks, 300 million Americans would be infected... that is 91% of the population of the United States. We aren't going to hit that number.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#653

Post by mrfusion »

garraeth wrote: post #289
drocer88 wrote: post #275

If you're getting your "news" from CNN/Fox/MSNBC, or "gathering evidence" to promote one the two permitted narratives, that's your problem. This is stuff is low effort "Presidential Level Politics" 24x7. Real news died when reporters stopped having to craft a story so that the Associated Press or United Press International picked it up and made it available to the varied local newspapers of America, both liberal and…

Agreed. Unfortunately now it's more like picking a sport team ("Team CNN" or "Team Fox"), or Apple vs/ Google vs/ Microsoft than actually finding, or learning about, facts. Tribalism at it's finest. The only alternative I've found (I'm open to helpful suggestions) is to ignore that noise and read actual briefings and original sources. But, that defeats the point of news being an honest and straight forward source of…

I’ve been sorting reddit comments by controversial. There’s a lot of junk sure, but it’s you also get away from people parroting the standard lines and sometimes get some unique insight.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#654

Post by aledalgrande »

cortesoft wrote: post #652
aledalgrande wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as a higher percentage of people have or have had the virus, the growth rate decreases because there are less people available to infect That is what you would call "herd immunity" and no, current numbers of recovered patients are not even close to have it. It doesn't happen like magic like some politician wants to make people believe, and current estimations for COVID _herd immunity threshold_ are 29%-74% of the c…

Sure, but the comment I was replying to was suggesting that in 10 weeks, 300 million Americans would be infected... that is 91% of the population of the United States. We aren't going to hit that number.

The growth is not going to be that much, sure, but because we slow it down with isolation, not because the immune people stop it from spreading.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#655

Post by div »

yongjik wrote: post #468
pdonis wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Very nearly 100% of experts in this field agree it's happening None of these "experts" have a track record of correct predictions that justifies taking their current predictions seriously. Remember we are not talking about the fact that the climate changes: yes, it does, it always has, and it always will (unless at some point in the distant future we learn how to control it accurately). We are talking about the dir…

These days, I consider anyone saying "[the climate] always has [changed], and it always will" as immediately disqualified for having any worthwhile opinion on the climate. Climate is a serious issue. It's time we stopped entertaining these people.

The only sensible stance to take. All these trolls have to do is be obstructionist, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#657

Post by moultano »

lliamander wrote: post #644
moultano wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, David Barber was off by a bit in that particular sentence, but arctic sea ice minima are now half of their historical values, and dropping. It is true, that in complex dynamic systems, predictions have to have wide error bars, but he was way less wrong than the charlatans who claim this isn't a problem or isn't a trend. https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/arctic-sea-ice/

I have every confidence that David Barber is an honest scientist doing his best to apply rigorous science to an inherently complicated system. The objection here is that we live in a media environment which continually emphasizes one end of that error bar. So long as we live in that sort of environment claims of catastrophic consequences are going to be taken with a degree of skepticism.

Why would your beliefs about the "media environment" influence your view of the reports from scientific bodies? The claims of catastrophic consequences are coming straight from the literature. You can't explain those away by waving your hands and saying "the media."

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#658

Post by sjg007 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #582
runeks wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the background global warming is a much greater threat to human life and has the exact same dynamic with the exact same players. No, global warming has a very different dynamic. With a virus, if you do the right thing and protect yourself, you’re more likely to survive. With global warming, if you get a lot of people to emit less CO2, you might just end up making CO2 emissions cheaper for everyone else.

Hum... The GP seems to be talking about Global Warming denialists, and the dynamics of how they communicate with people. This one is the same. But yes, Global Warming has the bad quality that it is completely not obvious how to solve it. There is an entirely different dynamic at the side that accepts it for settling on a solution... and what is more disturbing, R&D and science are mostly neglected there too, even by…

Umm it is pretty obvious how you “solve” global warming and that is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#659

Post by filoleg »

Beltiras wrote: post #165
Kaiyou wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively your reasoned answer wasn't as good as you think it was.

To the conspiracy minded no answer is good enough.

Yes, but to those who are undecided and are on the edge, a good answer might pull them to the right side. I know for a fact that it happened to me multiple times, when I saw a heated argument between two people (mostly on technical topics though, not something like corona).

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#660

Post by rsynnott »

swiley wrote: post #458
tertius wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an immigrant, and I'm sure many foreigners would agree, this is extremely American. People, gentile people, who use "might" and "probably" are weak intellectuals by American standards. They are cast aside, especially in media, because they cannot give definite answers. This is science and science doesn't sell. Politicians and media types are sales-people. This really depends on the family and milieu you grew up ar…

This is actually career advice I was given as a kid by an engineer at a nuclear power plant: “don’t give the impression that you’re uncertain during discussions even if you are.” I remember thinking “isn’t it literally your job to be uncertain?” That really bothered me and I’m reasonably sure I wasn’t wrong to be bothered.

Three Mile Island?
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