Comment by abernard1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by abernard1 | Hacker News Reader

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> even getting COVID vaccines out to people because there's disinformation.

During the last year, we have seen the following claims from public health authorities affiliated with well-regarded scientific institutions:

  - Vitamin D does nothing
  - Vitamin D helps
  - You should wear masks
  - Masks are not actually that helpful
  - The Trump attempts to stop travel from China are racist and terrible (Schumer, Pelosi)
  - We need to shut down most transportation and not just airports
  - We need to lockdown all non-essential businesses
  - Hollywood is an essential business, but churches and restaurants aren't
  - Lethality of COVID-19 is 2-5%
  - Lethality of COVID-19 is ~0.2-0.4%

And just in the last couple days (highly coincidentally with no bearing at all to politics), there has been a flood of reports that Chicago, NY, and San Francisco are using to justify full openings of their economy. Those scientific reports say that the lockdowns are at best useless.

At what point have the "experts" been right this year? Which of those things should we have labelled misinformation? Attempting to install a technocratic version of truth has never worked, and we should have the grace to allow "wrong" things to be said. The experts, so-called, have been inconsistent and wrong through this whole debacle.

Institutions and experts have always been inconsistent. Just look at nutrition science - we've gone from fats are bad, to no carbs are bad, to no wine is actually good. The expectation that the scientific community would find consensus on a novel virus in a matter of months is unreasonable. Personally I've taken @nntaleb reasoning on it - whether or not masks work with certainty is irrelevant; we have good enough data to suggest it works so we take the insurance and wear them. There is nothing wrong with a healthy amount of skepticism; and claims are often muddied through the low pass filter that is Twitter (ex. experts warned that singling out China was racist when American cases came from Italy; we needed far more policy than single out the Chinese).

That said, there a mountainous gap between "we are unsure if masks work" to "the president is fighting an underground shadow cabal of pedophiles and blood drinkers." COVID deniers aren't suggesting we don't take vaccines because they are unsure of the effectiveness of vaccines - they are suggesting we don't take vaccines because they are actually microchips by Bill Gates designed to track us.

There is a clear difference between misinformation and just plain being wrong - there's a difference between telling me LeBron James is going to win a championship next year and telling me LeBron is actually an alien from Mars who came here to trick us into watching basketball so they could steal all our water. If the President was wrong about LeBron James winning, he would be wrong. If the President was trying to convince me of the latter, then I think that is misinformation.

Some good points! I do think that most people are not used to how science can change over time and that what most science is is just what the majority of scientists have come to conclude from their independent studies. Most people have not had to deal with greys and prefer things to be black and white.

We need a shift towards understanding that the best available information is better than nothing and that the information can change as more better information comes to light.

Another thing we need to move away from is crucifying people for getting things wrong - this just doesn't help in the long run. People are fallible and make mistakes. Granted, don't let them make to many in a row but once in a while needs to be acceptable.

> most people are not used to how science can change over time

We need more education on the scientific method and how it works.

I think the statement that "science can change over time", though true, is improper to use in most cases.

The transition between different models of the atom is a great example of science changing over time. The existing theory explained some things, but not others. The superseding theory explained the previous observations, and made new falsifiable predictions that could not be refuted at the time.

The conflicting claims about fats and carbs is an example of that excuse not holding water. We're talking about a new claim, that is completely incompatible with the prior one. We're taking the old claims that were supposedly evidence-supported, and tossing them in the dumpster. At the very least, this means that overly strong conclusions were drawn from previous experiments.

I think it's a mistake to dismiss such situations as the general public being confused about how science works. Undoubtedly many are, but the reason for that is certainly in large part due to the abuse of "scientific" claims about their everyday life.

> COVID deniers aren't suggesting we don't take vaccines because they are unsure of the effectiveness of vaccines - they are suggesting we don't take vaccines because they are actually microchips by Bill Gates designed to track us.

That is misinformation. It is absolutely the case that people are unwilling to take the vaccine because the effectiveness (and safety) is questionable. You're just throwing up a strawman.

It's also possible you just don't know the reasoning behind any but the most vocal "covid deniers". That wouldn't be surprising, since the standard practice now seems to be to lump everyone who questions the 'official position' in with the most extreme theories, and that makes rational people shut up. Your generalization is only strengthening your echo chamber.

>It is absolutely the case that people are unwilling to take the vaccine because the effectiveness (and safety) is questionable.

Effectiveness is one thing; I take the same exact reasoning for wearing masks - you take the insurance especially when it costs you nothing. However, you are welcome to enlighten me on well supported arguments against vaccine safety. You can't just tell me that I'm throwing up strawman, then make 0 actual arguments except "I'm not doing enough research". If you are asking me to doubt vaccine safety on no data except some vague claims on there being "less extreme" positions, then I would argue you are spreading misinformation; especially when there are decades of research showing the safety otherwise.

I think you've completely misunderstood me. I'm not attempting to persuade you of anything.

You're misrepresenting the positions of the people who disagree with you. You're making it sound like the only alternative to your position is rediculous. You're throwing up a strawman.

Disagree with me; that's fine. But this is my point: be intellectually honest about it, and don't fool yourself into thinking that the people who disagree with you are not well-reasoned.

>be intellectually honest about it, and don't fool yourself into thinking that the people who disagree with you are not well-reasoned.

You have me 100% correct; I don't think the people who disagree with me, on this specific point, are well reasoned and are infact misled by deliberate misinformation campaigns and conspiracy theories. If you know something I don't, then let me know - but don't accuse me of making a strawman if you can't correct my viewpoint of the opposing argument. Why is it a strawman? Do people have reasons for not taking the vaccines other than amorphous distrust of billionaires? If I'm wrong, explain why, I genuinely want to know. Otherwise I'm led to believe that you aren't being intellectually honest and you are only acting as a foil to provide an air of legitimacy to dangerous arguments; which is also a form of misinformation.

> I don't think the people who disagree with me, on this specific point, are well reasoned and are infact misled by deliberate misinformation campaigns and conspiracy theories.

If you're unwilling to see the people who disagree with you as equally intelligent, and equally capable of reasoned decisions, then what can I possibly say to change your mind? And how can you tell me that others of equal mental capacity are misled, while you yourself are untouched by misinformation? If that's what you claim, your hubris is impressive.

You've effectively insulated yourself from any counterargument.

In the chance you're willing to consider that I'm not misled, this is why I'm skeptical of the vaccine. mRNA vaccines are an extremely new technology, and very different from any previous type of vaccine; there has been no time for extensive testing, and we don't know the long-term side effects.

> Given the novel nature of the mechanism of action of RNA vaccines, and their drug delivery vehicles, little is known about the medium and longer-term side effects....Up until December 2020, no mRNA vaccine, drug, or technology platform, had ever been approved for use in humans, and before 2020, mRNA was only considered a theoretical or experimental candidate for use in humans. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=RNA_vaccine&oldid... The wikipedia article about mRNA has been altered a lot in the past month, and is now much more focused on COVID-19. Last time I read or quoted from it was prior to those alterations, so that's what I'm citing. No reason to think the data has changed since then, just the interpretation.

>If you're unwilling to see the people who disagree with you as equally intelligent, and equally capable of reasoned decisions, then what can I possibly say to change your mind?

Up until this point, you haven't even tried. Within the context of misinformation I don't believe that opponents of the vaccine are making them in good faith, which is why they reach for dubious arguments. When someone says, like I've seen mainly on the blue site, that vaccines are tools of the wealthy to keep us at home and to be tracked, I don't think that person is making a reasoned decision on well researched information; I see someone who is probably being misled by someone else for some other person (ex. downplaying the need to take COVID precautions).

However, your reasoning for not taking the vaccine is perfectly valid and reasoned and is something I've discussed with others - mRNA vaccines are a new technology and we don't know the side-effects. At the very least I can assume you are willing to accept that COVID is real and are making arguments with empirical data.

Circling back to my original argument however, there's a difference between "the COVID vaccine may not be fully tested yet" and "the COVID vaccine is going to be used to track you". Anyone can do the calculus and understand, that while the COVID vaccine may not 100% safe at this moment, that doesn't mean that the government, or the scientific community at large, is completely untrustworthy, or trying to deceive you; they are simply trying to make the appropriate trade offs. In other words, your argument implies a lack of certainty, and the other, and arguably more popular one, implies malice. Our institutions aren't acting on complete malice, so given that they will be wrong sometimes, I think it's unreasonable to abandon our intuitions just because they weren't 100% correct.

It's nice we seem to be on the same page re: mRNA vaccine. However, I don't think you're totally reasonable in how you're dealing with people who are skeptical of it. It seems like you've drawn a line where people who are too skeptical, or skeptical for the wrong reasons, are suddenly -- definitely -- misled by others for some nefarious reason. And no longer rational. That's nice, when there's an overload of information and it's not worth the time to evaluate everything; but blanket statements like the ones you made aren't reasonable.

From what I've seen, most skepticism of that sort has a pretty simple source: they are far less trusting of their government, and of people in power (political or monetary). I notice you won't definitely claim there is no malice, or that the people in power are definitely trustworthy. The less trust you express, the more might not be copacetic. I saw the same thing happen over the last 15 years with Google: the folks who don't trust Gates overlap by a large margin with the ones who didn't trust Google when they had their "Don't be evil" slogan. Pessimists are rarely disappointed.

> Up until this point, you haven't even tried.

Like I noted before, I wasn't trying. I don't like it when people do not acknowledge the mental capacity of those who disagree with them. It's not up to me to prove to you that I or anyone else is rational; it's up to you to have the intellectual honesty to admit that someone who disagrees with you could be rational. As I asked you already: how can you claim, among intellectual equals, to be the one who is uninfluenced by misinformation?

- Because most people think the way you do? Bandwagon Fallacy.

- Because the experts say so? Appeal to Authority.

- Because it's just so strange? Personal Incredulity.

The grace to be wrong has been increasing replaced by some sort of fight or flight response to being challenged. It’s not wrong to say that there are life and death consequences w/r/t to the important issues. That said, the increasingly emotional response to that is detrimental to discourse. The more hysterical people become advocating their point of view, the more difficult it is to hear their arguments. When someone is extremely emotional it triggers a natural skepticism. Not because we think they are wrong per se, rather because we know that when we are emotionally distressed it is more difficult to be rational.

Basically: everyone needs to calm down.

> The more hysterical people become advocating their point of view

All the examples I provided have been very calmly, very thoroughly promulgated in popular, mainstream media. They're not a matter of my opinion (and my opinion on them was not stated). According to their own standards, the experts have been spreading misinformation this year. The same people saying one thing and then retracting a few months later.

This is a part of the positive feedback loop. People have isolated bubbles of sensational information, lots of little positive reinforcements for consuming it (social proof, widgets, dings and badges, etc), and it all feeds back into their personal and political identity. In terms of the drug analogy, telling someone to “calm down” is like telling a junkie to “just quit”. It’s not going to break the feedback loop.

It's certainly not a good idea to identify anything that deviates from the public expert consensus as "misinformation", but that doesn't mean there isn't a problem of verifiably wrong claims spreading. For example, Chicago and San Francisco have not fully opened their economy. I'm skeptical that the resolution to this problem looks anything like "information control", but it seems terribly naive to expect the problem will resolve itself when it's so easy to be ensnared by it.

I think there's a very clear line between "Best guess" political policies with imperfect information and Q-anon.

Another log for your fire: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/01/many-scientists-citi...

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