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Comment by imustbeevil | Hacker News Reader

The government, scientists, experts in various fields, people who have proven to tell the truth in the past, etc.

You obviously still have your own ability to determine what fits your model of the universe and what doesn't. These are just groups of people more likely to have access to information that you might not. You don't have to trust anyone, but in a system where someone has to judge what is true, these groups are closer than the alternative, which would be people with no qualifications, no training, and no history of telling the truth.

If you have another alternative I'm all ears.

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Often times the truth is not popular, even amongst those who should be protecting it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopes_Trial

Far more often, the truth is "popular" but boring. Not every nay-sayer is Galileo.

>The government, scientists, experts in various fields, people who have proven to tell the truth in the past, etc.

But how has it been implemented in practice?

If you look at the raw numbers, generally we rely on the lowest bidders amongst Facebook/Google/Twitter's third-world-country subcontractors, as well as the Chinese government.

The existing practice is for the community of these sites to upvote good content and downvote bad content.

Separately, moderators purge controversial content as a check/balance to the voting system. If users feel that the moderation is inconsistent with their content desires, they choose a different site to frequent, as is the case in market systems.

again, if you look at the whole system in aggregate, the existing practice is for GooFaceTwitBaba to farm out their moderation works to subcontractors, while also bending backwards to prevalent political headwinds to preserve their shareholder value. If users feel that the moderation is inconsistent with their content desires, they are free to leave the megaplatforms and become approximately completely irrelevant, thus achieving the exact same effect as being deplatformed.

What is your alternative system?

It's very easy to point out that nothing is perfect. It's very difficult to come up with a better solution.

Governments, scientists, and experts have also been proven to be wrong and to have lied in the past.

On occasion. What's the average case?

Getting things wrong on occasion is better than having some sort of idiot free for all.

Maybe, but a well told lie told by The One Authority on Truth has more destructive power than a billion chaos monkeys typing on their typewriters for the next hundred generations.

We have more options than blindly trust those who are more likely to be right and "idiot free for all".

And how have we discovered the incorrect and dishonest claims?

Through the process. You never have to trust the data if you have a good process. Process will verify data. Process will verify sources. Process is impartial. Trust the process, not the results.

Also, I take issue with the attempt to conflate people who are incorrect with people who are dishonest.

There is nothing wrong with being wrong. Being wrong is the first step to being right. You can't be corrected if you're never willing to be wrong. And we can't learn if everyone has to wait to be completely correct before making a claim. Often, we don't even know we should be looking into something until someone makes a claim that turns out to be incorrect on further study.

Knowledge isn't furthered in "eureka" moments where we have all the answers at once, it's in observing something and thinking, "Huh, that's weird", then seeking the answers.

>Through the process. You never have to trust the data if you have a good process. Process will verify data. Process will verify sources. Process is impartial. Trust the process, not the results.

The GP's post didn't say trust science or trust data. It said trust scientists. I'm taking issue with the desire to put faith in individuals.

Who is a scientist in this case but someone publicizing the process? Their job, in the media anyway, is to explain data and results and why that data makes sense. You don't have to blindly trust the scientist if what they're saying is backed by scientific process, and you can hopefully trust-but-verify by looking at whatever scientific literature exists on the topic.

I guess I don't understand the alternative: is everyone expected to go look up the write-up and replicate the experiment for themselves because we can't trust the scientists who performed the experiment? I agree we need more replication studies, but I think we're reaching the absurd ends of the "do your own research!" movement here.

The problem here is not Science. It's the perverse incentives in Academia and Journalism.

In Science as it should be practised, yes, a scientist talking to a journalist should "explain the the data and results and why that data makes sense". The journalist should then paraphrase that clearly for their audience, without altering the essential conclusions of the study/paper/experiment.

But this is so naive it's laughable now. Nobody, ever, does this. The scientist wants maximum impact, so will maximise the sensational aspects of their results. In turn the journalist wants maximum clicks, so will sensationalise more. What ends up being read by the public can be a very long way away from any conclusion that the data actually supports.

He's essentially reiterating Mac's argument from It's Always Sunny, casting doubt on people who deliver information by informing us that "Science is a liar... sometimes".

It was also people who found out those people were wrong or lying.

Yes, Piltdown man was a fraud, but it was the same "scientific community" that discovered it was a fraud. Because there were things that didn't make sense even within the confines of the field of study.

That's the great thing about the process, it's ultimately self-correcting.

A scientist being wrong is GOOD! The scientific process relies on assimilation of negative results.

If a scientist is emotionally attached to a result and ignores a result that they don't like, they are no longer engaged in science.

Peer review and replication is the correcting factor for the unfortunate reality that science must be, for the moment carried out by humans.

At the very least, when operating properly science becomes less wrong. That cannot be said for politicians who are interested in nothing but confirmation of their preconceptions.

There is a special place in hell for those who cynically use the fact that scientists are sometimes wrong as an attack against the very existence of knowledge and consensus reality itself.

I don't disagree with you. The only thing I'm arguing against is the GP's comment that we should blindly put our trust in the groups mentioned.

Some of the best parts about science, as you've pointed out, are peer review and replication. There should never be a need to put your faith in an individual scientist and take them at their word.

>There is a special place in hell for those who cynically use the fact that scientists are sometimes wrong as an attack against the very existence of knowledge and consensus reality itself.

I hope it's clear that I was in no way doing that.

Reading charitably, I don't believe that it's what you meant. But with disturbing frequency, I do see similar words uttered and written with fairly clear cynical intent.

I completely agree; it's an alarming trend that's used to sew ignorance. Blindly following experts clearly isn't an antidote to that, which is all I was trying to express originally.

Science relies on this, yes.

Academia, not so much

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