Comment by ABCLAW | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ABCLAW | Hacker News Reader

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>But isn't the flip side of all this censorship a reduced ability for people to tell bullshit from reality?

No. People have limited processing cycles in their heads, and you never notice the bullshit you fall for, so you can't correct for errors you're making. Critical thinking skills are great, but they don't provide you expert-level knowledge in every field, nor can they. Sometimes your educated heuristics are just plain wrong and someone else has better information you don't have access to. I see this all the time here with content in my field - developers just get law wrong all the time.

You might remember an era when email inboxes were FLOODED with a deluge of dick pills, get rich quick schemes, Nigerian prince scams, and other low-effort, low-value content. Sure you might be able to avoid clicking on garbage, but the general health of your inbox declined dramatically.

Does that mean society is going to end because we've trampled upon the rights of the latest Cialis replacement to spam my inboxes? Probably not.

You have Johnny, saying you should wear a mask when you go to the store, because it helps you against covid. And Bobby says you shouldn't, because there's no evidence it helps, and it might even be even worse for you, if you wear it wrong.

So you're suggesting we should remove Johnnys fearmongering, conspiracy post, because we should listen to the experts?

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/30/world/coronavirus-who-mas...

Experts clearly say that "There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit. In fact, there's some evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly,"

Expert knowledge by WHO.

...and a month later, we should delete Bobbys post too? Do we undelete Johnnys post?

This is actually pretty interesting because your post is premised upon a massive misreading of what actually happened. It shows you can spread disinformation while thinking you did your research.

The expert knowledge was that mass usage of masks early on in the pandemic could prevent frontline healthcare workers from accessing needed supplies while logistics spun up to meet demand.

"There also is the issue that we have a massive global shortage," Ryan said about masks and other medical supplies. "Right now the people most at risk from this virus are frontline health workers who are exposed to the virus every second of every day. The thought of them not having masks is horrific."

This is literally the third paragraph.

When community spread began to drive the bulk of new infections and we've had months to spin up production on masks, obviously mass adoption changes in value.

I literally quoted the paragraph, where they said that there's no evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit.

They didn't say "it helps, but we're unable to call wallmart and buy all their stock, so we're asking you not to buy them, so we can", they said that there's no evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit... those are two different things.

I've actually watched the briefing you're referring to. Go to 26:00 - 28:00 https://www.pscp.tv/w/1OyJAYoodRnJb

The very next statement by Dr. Ryan "There also is the issue that there is a massive global shortage, and where should these masks be, and where is the best benefit? Because one can argue there's a benefit in anything, and where does a given tool have it's best benefit? And right now the people who are most at risk are frontline health workers [...]"

The follow up statement is also very emphatic that this is about mask allocation due to constrained supply. I don't get why you're trying to ignore the very clear context of the statement.

There was evidence of the effectiveness of masks. They chose to diminish/ignore that evidence because it was inconvenient to protecting the supply of masks.

There were two studies circulating around that time. One of passengers of a bus and another of a restaurant. The bus one found that the passengers wearing masks did not catch the virus and many of those that did not wear masks did catch it. The restaurant one found that people in the flow of AC air caught it and those not in it did not. That meant that it was airborne and there was some evidence suggesting mask effectiveness.

Why should you listen to the CDC, WHO, etc… when there is a better predictor of reality?

You seem to be making an argument from authority by leaning on experts, and I don’t fully disagree with that approach either. But trusted authorities regularly betray trust, and use their label of expertise to push their own agendas. A recent example is found in the false attribution of the PNW heat wave to climate change (https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/07/flawed-heatwave-repor...). They also can be wrong solely due to making a mistake (COVID had many examples of this with rapidly changing guidance). So you aren’t free from the need for critical thinking skills, because in the most important matters you have to still challenge them. To be able to do so, you need to have trained that muscle beforehand.

>You seem to be making an argument from authority by leaning on experts

I don't think that's the core of what I'm saying. I'm saying people have limited mental time, so devoting an unlimited volume of time to sorting through bullshit is not feasible.

Everyone is going to need to make choices, but if statistically the options presented before them are better, we'd expect better outcomes in general.

'Critical thinking' is one of those things that people keep raising as the catch all solution. This line of reasoning states that it doesn't matter what options are on offer because people will calculate the best ones! Unfortunately, they don't.

Most of our language fluency tests rate people's skills in this area; take the ACTFL scale for instance. The sad reality is that when people are provided with language based reasoning testing, many people perform fairly poorly due to common errors, even in test-based situations. People misread statements, misunderstand their meaning, have trouble moving from specific to general or vice versa, have difficulties tailoring their message to their audience, etc.

In general, the very HIGHEST level of linguistic ability in specifically tested scenarios is what we assume out of everyone as the baseline when having these discussions about social discourse. This is an unreasonable starting point.

I tried reading the article you linked to. I honestly can't get past the intro:

    As noted above, the first bullet of the main findings states that the heatwave was "virtually impossible without human-caused climate change."  Sounds very certain, doesn't it?  Virtually impossible.

    Then read their next bullet:  

    "The observed temperatures were so extreme that they lie outside the range of historically observed temperatures.  This makes it hard to quantify how rare the event was"

    On one hand, they say it is hard to quantify how rare or unusual the event was, but on the other, they claim the event was virtually impossible without human-caused climate change. 

    Both statements can not be true.  You can't be uncertain and certain at the same time.

What? The writer seems intent on purposefully misunderstanding the study. "This makes it hard to quantify how rare the event was" is equivalent to the situation of not being able to speak about a "100 year storm" because there haven't been any storms that strong in recorded history. In other words the data is so different from historical data that there's only one reason why: human-caused climate change.

If you can’t get past the intro, I would say respectfully, you’re not giving it a fair chance. You should read the full post and the underlying study being critiqued before judging it.

> In other words the data is so different from historical data that there's only one reason why: human-caused climate change.

No that’s not the case. This PNW event would have happened with or without climate change. The study being critiqued used a hyperbolic claim that the event was “virtually impossible without climate change” even though their own data shows it was virtually impossible (highly improbable) either way, and that it was more due to a rare coincidence of many factors. The Professor who wrote this post I linked also has prior posts analyzing this event and showing that really climate change contributed a few degrees to the peak temperatures, but that it would have been a record breaking event either way.

As you can see here, the purpose of climate change denialism isn't to convince anyone. It's just to delay serious action for as long as possible using handwaving and appeals to authority. Here, the fact that the author is a Professor [sic] is used to add weight to his arguments, even though a vast majority of "Professors" acknowledge that climate change is real.

Ok fine:

    Their next claim is that the June heatwave was enhanced by 2°C by global warming, which is not out of the realm of possibility.  

    But think about it.  Considering that they state that the heatwave had maximum temperatures 16-20°C warmer than normal, by their OWN ADMISSION only about 10% of the heatwave was the result of global warming.  Thus, a record-breaking, unique heat wave would have occurred without global warming.   

    Imagine if they had stated that.  You would not have seen many headlines: Global warming contributed 10% of the heatwave!

This guy is frankly so wrong and misunderstands what he's talking about so badly that he should be completely ignored and you should not cite him any more.

Imagine that global warming dries out a forested area to the point where it catches fire due to being so dry. This guy is saying the equivalent of "the fire burned at 800°C, and global warming only accounts for 0.25% of that!"

I gave the article a fair chance, and facepalmed repeatedly at his inane arguments. He's a crank and you should ignore him.

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