Comment by baryphonic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by baryphonic | Hacker News Reader

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I should state from the beginning that I detest the tech monopolies engaging in censorship, and I question whether they even have a right to do so (they seem like common carriers to me).

One of the interesting aspects of this censorship is that is taking places in the US is that it probably is taking down mostly misleading information. The main issue with it is that no one actually knows that much, and so whichever faction of experts is most influential or savvy or popular gets to dictate the so-called consensus. That being said, while I still vehemently disagree with censorship, I don't think there is immense harm in taking down a video that advocates, say, psychic consultation to prevent COVID.

Once a culture becomes a censorship culture, the calculus changes. While right now in America, the effort appears to mostly be an attempt to weed out information that these experts believe is untrue, we have seen that in China, the censorship explicitly weeds out information that is true. The so-called conspiracy theory about the virus leaking from either the Wuhan CDC or the Wuhan Institute of Virology in November that has since been corroborated in multiple Western mainstream publications was discovered mostly due to Chinese officials engaging in fairly heavy-handed censorship. The Wuhan Institute of Virology was scrubbed of information about one particular young woman who was working as an intern there, and has been named as a possible "patient zero." A paper released by researchers at the South China University of Technology also suggested the Wuhan CDC as a probable point of origin, and this was also scrubbed by Chinese Communist Party censors. Every instance of this is like a canary for lies being propagated by the CCP. And they have helped astute Western observers of China find the trail of the truth just by looking at differences in what has been censored without a trace.

This is why I am so opposed to censorship (and torture and deplatforming and partisan violence and the list goes on): every time it becomes a regular tool, it becomes twisted only in a way to serve those in power and punish their enemies, often when the authorities are spreading lies and their enemies are daring to tell the truth.

This comment is a gish gallop that contains piles of exaggeration, misdirection, and outright fabrication, and I bet I know its shitty source. Folks, don’t fall for it. Baryphonic, if you fell for it, I’m sorry, but do try to seek out at least some of the opposing information, for your own sake.

Quite a few sources. But please, school me in (1) where I got my information and (2) what your preferred "opposing sources" are and say, and why they are credible?

For what it's worth, I do seek out "opposing information" (is that a bit like "alternative facts?"). Much of it has been fairly non-credible because it seems to change frequently, more like whiplash. For example, the CCP has made a big show of shutting down the wet markets, only to allow them to reopen quietly, despite neither bats nor pangolins, the likely carriers of SARS-Cov-2 to humans, being sold at the wet market in Wuhan.

If you're trying to convince people not to take me seriously, or are trying to convince me of that as well, then would it not be simpler (and cost fewer downvotes) to point to the errors in facts I present or my reasoning?

You got most of these bad takes from Project Evidence, a textbook example of a gish gallop that looks convincing only by the sheer quantity of shit it contains.

I don't have time to "school" you in everything, because you wrote so much that was wrong that I don't have time to. That's literally the whole point of a gish gallop: it takes 10x more words to refute bullshit than to state it.

While I'm having my morning coffee let me do a few:

> the CCP has made a big show of shutting down the wet markets, only to allow them to reopen quietly

This is completely wrong, because it mixes up wet markets (which literally mean any market that doesn't only sell dry goods, and which also exist throughout Asia, in Europe, and even in the US, and are far less weird than you've been told: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whbyuy2nHBg ), and the exotic wildlife trade. The latter was shut down, and remains shut down. The former have never been shut down, because it's where people get their groceries.

> The Wuhan Institute of Virology was scrubbed of information about one particular young woman who was working as an intern there, and has been named as a possible "patient zero."

If you actually read the complete evidence that Project "Evidence" gives for this, it is:

1. There was a graduate student at WIV that graduated 5 years ago (as graduate students do)

2. There was once a rumor on Chinese social media that this person was patient zero, but absolutely no reason given why that would be the case (and obviously, Chinese social media is just as unreliable as social media everywhere else)

3. This graduate student has not recently made any dramatic public appearances or viral social media posts (because why would they)

4. This graduate student is no longer on the lab website (this is completely normal; they would only remain 5 years after graduating if the lab managers forgot to keep updating the site)

That pretty much sounds like zero evidence to me. But how do they summarize it?

> Would it really be impossible for the Chinese government to get in touch with her and have her issue an in-person statement to the media? It would only be impossible if she was dead.

I mean, forget about how weird this demand is — it’s negotiating with China as it they were the Borg. Even if the demand were in good faith, does that sound like a document aiming to find the truth? Or is it just trying to make a series of low-evidence claims sound maximally sinister? Are you really the kind of person who falls for this?

> conspiracy theory [...] has since been corroborated in multiple Western mainstream publications

Not the ones I've read, and I've read plenty. This is a massive claim with no evidence.

I've never heard of "Project Evidence" before.

Great, so I suppose it's metastasized. How about the rest?

My intended point about the CCP was that their censorship is often a hint about what is true and embarrassing (or even destabilizing to the regime) and this is beyond the pale. I did not intend to make some strong claims about the absolute veracity of rumors on Chinese social media; rather, I tried to convey (and I admit that my success at this was clearly mediocre) that censorship is often a clue about where to look for the truth.

I don't really put much stock into the idea that this particular woman was patient zero. But it doesn't exactly matter.

A better example would have been a case everyone knows about and that is uncontroversial: that of Dr. Li Wenliang. He told the truth that the virus was a coronavirus and probably similar to the original SARS virus, but it was inconvenient to the state, and so he was hauled in by the police for "making false comments on the Internet."

If I amended my initial comment and simply used the uncontroversial case of Dr. Li, rather than discussions about the WCDC or Wuhan Institute of Virology, I think it stands to reason that I would not have been accused of "Gish galloping" (thank you for teaching me a new phrase, by the way).

Not that you'll believe it, but I really had no intention of overwhelming you or anyone else with rumors as a distraction; I was trying to add a couple of examples to illustrate An asymmetry between American and Chinese censorship.

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