If you want to stay healthy, wear shorts all the time, run weekly half-marathons in the woods, get plenty of sleep... and avoid sick people.
A few common-sense morsels wrapped in pseudoscience and self-gratifying prose.
All that to say that evaluation of this list should be more thorough as opposed to total acceptance or total rejection.
I have similar problem when discussing Rudolf Steiner schools/“sects”(?) - they are really good people doing really good things compared to status quo - I love buying food from their shops because I know they have incomparable quality to what I can get at nearby shops (meat, eggs, veggies etc), they grow them in harmony (no depleting monocultures, pesticides etc). At the same time I know Steiner is pseudoscience labelled - I’m aware of it but it doesn’t subtract enough from good parts.
What I’m trying to say it’s not all bad period, it’s more nuanced.
It's like if your mom told you that turmeric powder works great to cure certain ailments and then 5 years later a study comes out which proves her right. Mom's cure was still psuedoscience until the research is actually done.
Anecdotes and folk wisdom are quasiscience -- partial science.
From there:
> I am no guru, but when .guru domains became available, my colleagues suggested that only I could own that domain. We bought supermemo.guru in February 2014, and I accepted the position of the guru on the understanding that the world of SuperMemo is so specialist that it may indeed be hard to find a better SuperMemo Guru.
There is a culture today of making sure people know how "wrong" they are.
Because a lot of con artist use one or two scientific facts that are for real just to attach a wagon of horseshit to it.
You also probably don't need "super guru" checklists because becoming a genius is not checking off tasks. Just like reading Warren Buffet biography is not going to make you good investor.
Have you read any books, newspapers, scientific journals, or online material recently?
The difference is that the honest:
- Are aware of this.
- Own their mistakes.
- Correct them.
- And don't use the incidental occurrence of error as a blanket method of discrediting others.
Bullshit wrapped in a veneer of truth sells far more readily than the unadulterated variety. All the better if there's only one specific bullshit point that's being injected --- why go through the risk and trouble of fabulating more than is absolutely necessary.
- Own their mistakes.
- Correct them.
- And don't use the incidental occurrence of error as a blanket method of discrediting others
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erratum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correction_(newspaper)
https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2002/corrections-c...
The New York Times has a dedicated Corrections section:
https://www.nytimes.com/section/corrections
At the Washington Post you'll have to search for the string "Correction:" best I can tell:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/newssearch/?query=%22correcti...
The Post's corrections policy is noted here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/policies-and-standards/#corre...
Where stories are significant, a substantial and highlighted retraction is issued. An example from Rolling Stone: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/a-note-to-...
That was one of several notable 2014 retractons. Newsweek covers several of these: https://www.newsweek.com/faults-our-stories-year-retractions...
Other typical language is "correction" followed by "regrets the error". Sample searches:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Anytimes.com+%22correction%2...
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Awashingtonpost.com+%22corre...
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Aeconomist.com+%22correction...
Note that online, corrections frequently appear in an updated version of the original article, though they are then noted in an additional comment. As in this NYT example: https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/the-world-is-f...
Every last mistake and error cannot be corrected or retracted. But serious, responsible, ethical journalism makes a very earnest attempt to correct errors when they are brought to the publication's attention. And not to double-down on insisting on being wrong.
I try to do the same myself. As shown in my HN history: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
In the era where the paper was printed in limited numbers on a fixed schedule, a printed set of corrections was somewhat meaningful, although still inadequate.
Today, it’s just an artifact. Online newspapers including the NYT routinely edit pages without indicating that they have done so, which is not the same as a correction.
There is no reason for a newspaper page not to have an edit history other than to hide errors, or because they just don’t care enough.
I respond:
Corrections: Aug. 21, 2021
Corrections that appeared in print on Saturday, Aug. 21, 2021.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/20/pageoneplus/corrections-a...
That lists four articles. For yesterday's edition.
Skipping back four days to the 16th, you'll find six corrections listed:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/18/pageoneplus/corrections-a...
It's unclear to me what definitions of "today", "just an artifact", "without indicating", or "not the same as a correction" mean in your usage, but they don't fit the actual facts of the universe I seem to be inhabiting.
In no way does it constitute an honest acknowledgment of error.
Newspapers do not own their mistakes or correct them.
Publishing a dry, hard to use correction log where it is obvious most people won’t see it doesn’t change this.
https://www.nytimes.com/section/corrections
https://www.washingtonpost.com/policies-and-standards/#corre...
Repeating a falsehood, regardless of the Bellman's assertion, does not make it true.[1]
You seem to very badly want to believe a thing regardless of its actual existence. This will likely lead to problems for you eventually, if not already.
________________________________
Notes:
Do you think that the corrections log actually undoes the impact on people who read the false report?
Do you think most people check that log to see if the previous articles they read have been corrected?
The claim you made was that they own their mistakes and correct them.
If your argument is that they quietly admit their mistakes somewhere very few people look, then I will agree to that. If you can find me denying that, you can quote me on it.
My claim is that this doesn’t correct the mistake. When you misinform someone, the only way to correct the mistake, is to let that person know, and give them the right information.
The corrections page might have been a good faith effort at doing this in the print era, but it definitely doesn’t work in the digital era.
More importantly, what you are referring to as ‘corrections’ are simply edits they make. That has nothing to do with owning one’s mistakes.
They can easily be wrong about or present something in a distorted way, and that won’t make it into a ‘correction’. I don’t see how you can call this behavior ‘owning one’s mistakes’.
Bear in mind, we are commenting on a post by Piotr Wozniak, who does in fact own his point of view, and explains exactly why he says the things people accuse of being pseudoscience.
> You seem to very badly want to believe a thing regardless of its actual existence. This will likely lead to problems for you eventually, if not already.
It would be better for you to address the argument rather than engaging in ad-hominem. That is the usual guideline around here.
It's not worth your time.
Making a list of corrections that the people who read the incorrect article never see clearly doesn’t correct anything. The damage is done.
It doesn’t matter how many times the word ‘corrections’ is used.
Except that, ya know, it's a correction, so it does correct something. Once again you are intentionally inaccurately or poorly describing something in an effort to drive home your point. I am not going to be engaging with you any further.
> I am not going to be engaging with you any further.
Good.
Though yes, clearly there's something not right here.
I'm not willing to dismiss all of a source based on incidental errors. I may even be willing to allow some major factual or rational flaws where a piece does point out some salient point, or serves as a foundational resouce of some sort. (You could include virtually all of mythology, fables, philosophy, and/or religion in this description.)
Where a source is clearly making a motivated attempt at deception, or where it shows a clear ambivalence to truth (Frankfurt's definition in "On Bullshit"), and there's nothing in the source that's not otherwise available ... my tolerance drops sharply.
This is where the intentional deception of a tremendous amount of narrative (I hesitate to even call it "information") deserves a death penalty.
The attitude expressed by supermemo.guru seems to fall squarely in this camp.
I address the point of intellectual honesty and journalistic standards, of admitting and publicly noting errors, in this somewhat tedious subthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28261042
> In the year 2000, there was a major drop in infections and the problem of lost productivity disappeared entirely by 2003. There are only 3 factors that could have produced those dramatic shifts. In the year 1999, I dropped all forms of sleep regulation, esp. the alarm clock. In the year 2003, I added weekly winter swimming and weekly half-marathon in the woods. No other solid explanations come to my mind.
Could it be the lack of exposure to university students?
We’ve got a leader in the clubhouse for the 2021 Accidental HN Slogan Contest.