Deep dive into stupid: Meet the growing group that rejects germ theory | Hacker News Reader

Deep dive into stupid: Meet the growing group that rejects germ theory

arstechnica.com

20 pointsarunbahl16 comments

Yet another example of the negative consequences that come from selling snake oil in the "click-based" economy created by social media algorithms.

The people feeding this Facebook group are likely making a tidy living off this. Something that would have been far less likely before Facebook, Twitter, etc.

The cumulative effect of so many fringe groups being pumped up like this is, paradoxically, they act like viruses that make society itself sick.

I dont know if that is true.. Many of the groups existed for decades before social media in various forms

none of this is really new, just more exposed.

And drastically better connected. Connecting the village idiots maybe wasn't such a great idea after all.

While that is one way to look at it, it is also true that more people are exposed true information as well, many people have been brought OUT of these toxic groups due to exposure to more information online

You are only looking at 1/2 of the equation. On Balance I think it is a net gain for side a truth.

Keep in mind that media and human in general tend to be bad at risk assessment, People believe they have a greater chance of dying in an airplane than on the road as an example, or that terrorism is a greater threat than it is. Or more recently slight up tick in violent crime is worse than it really is...

Sure some people that may not have been exposed to things like the Flat Earth or Anti-Vax were, but I did to look at the over sensationalized media reports of these groups being "epidemic" that social media is to blame for as self serving since the media is used to being gate keepers of information, having lost that power to social media and the internet in general they are looking to demonize the technology in order to regain their position as the Arbiters of Truth

Dont get me wrong, I think Twitter and Facebook are terrible, I just to no support the idea that solution to these problems is with centralized "Fact Checkers" who are conveniently part of the old guard media establishment,

Make no mistake that is what ars is pushing for.

> it is also true that more people are exposed true information as well

Some people are. Before elections though I used to try to follow fringe political parties to be more informed. My Facebook feed just got blanketed with nonsense like you wouldn’t believe. My YouTube recommendations went downhill too, and got flooded with conspiracy theories, aliens, and other crazy but sort of funny stuff. Filter bubbles are real and extreme

Disruption -- technological, political, disaster, whatever -- makes people go nuts.

Plus, the way social media amplifies hysteria for profit would make William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Goebbels blush.

FWIW, I found these interesting:

Agnotology, the study of ignorance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnotology

The Last Archive https://www.thelastarchive.com

Prediction: Like coronavirus, these memetic pathogens are the new normal.

Pasteur may have conceded that Bechamp was correct on his deathbed, according to Hans Selye[1].

[1]http://www.susandoreydesigns.com/insights/pasteur-recant.htm...

The rate of increase shows we have a systemic information problem.

Usually a bad bet to say that things can be experimentally proven don’t exist. Unless they argue that the agar plate needs to detox after being scratched or the milk when it’s a few too many days old. And I recall they proved the helicobacter pylori relation with ulcers by drinking them and then taking antibiotics. Wishing doesn’t usually make it so.

Wow the language in this article... Don't think I've seen something so disrespectful from an official magazine before.

I'm betting it's fatigue from dealing with so many stupid people. Can't say as I blame them.

please explain.

In general arsetechnica article quality has been way down from a year or so a go. Too political, always on the offensive, comments short from wishing people dead. Or just something that looks like a promotion/advert for someone. Very few articles actually worth reading.

Consider the topic. Apart from acknowledging the complexity of a higher organism, and anticipating the idea of microbiomes, terrain is a pretty bad idea. Which is more predictive of catching cholera, eating salami or drinking water with cholera in it?

I agree they could be less snarky, but there’s less to respect in that point of view than flat-eartherism.

What’s an ‘official magazine’?

Actually, refreshing to see someone take the gloves off and tell it like it is. 'Toxic ignorance' (of the willful variety) definitely exists - has repeatedly been demonstrated in all eras of human history - and is definitely capable of creating a lot of misery.

After hundreds of thousands of deaths: Non-violence is a wonderful idea in general, but when someone points a gun at you, it's not the most pragmatic response. I wish that could have been made clearer on Jan. 6.

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