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The core of science is debate. There is no singular truth for most things in the scientific world, and lots and lots of shades of "the truth".

Science isn't done by youtube video battles but by debates in scholarly journals. Youtube is a medium for popularizing whatever content. Youtube seems well in its rights in banning content it considers harmful and in this case I'd agree with this ban.

That's not to say youtube's effective monopoly isn't concerning. I'd rather see ten providers but I'd like to see them all ban climate change, antivax and similarly noxious content - make people interested in the subject read long texts instead.

Video isn't good medium for sustained, coherent debate. In this instance, it's a means of broadcasting shallow propaganda to morons, or put less insultingly, those not using rational facilities to decide things.

They're not even banning the content, they're just not showing ads on it.

They recently removed videos against Covid vaccines.

Those videos lead to deaths - so that's completely reasonable. America has pretty much plateaued in terms of vaccination rates and that is prolonging a disaster.

If we're going to ban instructional bomb construction videos then I think anti-vax stuff is perfectly acceptable as well. I really don't understand where this miscomprehension that you should be able to say anything you want on private platforms comes from - there have always limits even on public speech, and private platforms have traditionally refused to print or publish items that go too strongly against their corporate beliefs. This even extends into print media and editorial boards.

How could video lead to death? I though it works only in horror films.

The US is currently 64% vaccinated even though the vaccine has been available there the longest - this is well behind most other western countries.

It is not answer for my question.

Every video leads to death. You waste 10 minutes of your limited time. You are 10 minutes closer to death after watching the video.

Ok, that is valid answer. Should we ban entire YouTube then?

Exactly, lol! It's a net detriment to mankind.

> Every video leads to death.

your comment has led to death too, by that kind of logic?

Well, "crate challenge" videos demonstably lead to deaths as well.

America prides itself on being the land of personal responsibility - I think the crate challenge stuff is quite dangerous and folks need to stop being idiots. But in the US people will cheer on Darwin Award candidates so that's sort of part of the culture now - doing something that harms other people is still a no-no though.

> Those videos lead to deaths

Smoking and Drinking also directly cause deaths, yet as a society we are fine with taking such levels of risks and let people in videos show that they are smoking and drinking too. And don't get me started on opoids prescriptions which kill way more people that COVID all things considered (in years of life cost) and for which nobody seems to lift any finger to stop the carnage.

Which is why it's wrong on so many levels to censor stuff, because orgs that do that have no clue and no principles and just follow a certain political agenda instead of any rational motive.

YouTube only makes money if ads are shown on the video. YouTube also has an algorithm that chooses what gets promoted and recommended. There is absolutely no way that YouTube does not take into account whether a video is monetized when choosing recommendations. Ie this will most certainly limit the visibility of these kinds of videos.

It seems like the goalposts are moving in the conversation. People are acting like it's banned above, and then you're saying it hypothetically will be less but still nonzero proactive algorithmic promotion of the content, right?

Promoting the content is the same thing as endorsing it.

Not to mention science doesn't consider all opinions equal or worth publication in standard journals, etc.

Science is just more forgiving and less dogmatic than religion. etc.

Science certainly is. The "science" establishment in the USA... not so much. It is just as dogmatic as religion. Take the dogma of zoonotic origin of covid-19 in early 2020 for example. Where was the "less dogmatic" then?

> Science isn't done by YouTube video battles but by debates in scholarly journals.

That's a lot of confidence to have in a very broken system given the replication crisis, ineffective peer review process, excessive and pervasive paywalls, and general high barrier to entry.

Youtube is actually pretty great platform for lots of science and educational channels. I could easily see a scenario where some very poorly done climate study is talked about on Youtube and it becomes demonetized simple because the algorithm believed it was 'climate change denial ism'.

Sure it is Youtube's right to do whatever they want and we are just 'lucky' that Youtube isn't controlled by anti-vax, climate change truthers, etc.

That's a lot of confidence to have in a very broken system given the replication crisis, ineffective peer review process, excessive and pervasive paywalls, and general high barrier to entry.

Lots of alternative scientific journals exist. Climate change denial is, in fact, well financed. There's nothing about a youtube ban that prevents alternative scientific research, even into things I'd considered absurd and despicable.

> but by debates in scholarly journals.

And these debates should be open. It's incredible how hard getting data on clinical studies are vs. here our culture of open source.

>Science isn't done by youtube video battles but by debates in scholarly journals.

As a scientist, I would prefer more open discussion. Because the conversations scientists have with each other is not what ends up getting told to the public, and many agendas impact that.

Most scholarly journals are open. Moreover, anyone with a dissident opinion can publish an alternative journal and these certainly exist.

You know the climate change denial videos on youtube aren't "getting things in the open" but slick sales jobs for a particular viewpoint.

> We're straying very far away from a nation that believes in actual science

One big issue is using the term ”believe”. It is not matter of belief, it is a matter of understanding, wrapping theorems and facts. We need to understand the science. We have already 10 000 gods, so let’s not make science equated to the religion and reduce its power with that.

> It is not matter of belief, it is a matter of understanding, wrapping theorems and facts.

That's true of most of the "hard sciences" like physics and chemistry. Climatology, however, is unfortunately full of beliefs and incredibly lacking when it comes to theorems and facts. Part of that is just due to the inherent difficulty associated with making inferences about climate history using a relatively limited amount of data from modern, accurate instruments. Add to that some extremely biased incentives in the institutions and governments funding climate research, and you're no longer in the same ballpark as the other hard sciences.

I'm not saying it's all wrong or that the climate isn't changing (I think it is to some degree), but the one thing climatology has proven most convincingly over the years is that its prevailing predictions tend to be wrong – and not by an insignificant margin.

I am so tired of people implying that they believe in science. Science is not a religion requiring belief.

Science is a way of postulating that something may be real given the a available evidence. A true scientist should be ready to change their understanding of “real” when presented with new evidence.

Belief or faith is trusting something is real without evidence and is the antithesis of science.

Define evidence, please.

Evidence is just data which is collected with the best available methods. With eyes, ears or some engineered equipment.

If perspective changes, we did not have enough data.

The knowledge comes when hard science is applied on this data, e.g math or logic.

We will never have enough data. Avalibe methods for collecting data are develop with time. So if you decide to believe science, you just agree with statement of actuall knowledge.

Temperature rising is science. Is it natural proces? Well that depends if you choose to believe or not in actual knowledge.

> The truth is there is no consensus so censoring half (or more) of the discussion is downright absurd.

I agree with your point, though even if there is consensus on a topic, we should still be able to have open discussion without censorship.

If you assume consensus is infallible, you'll be wrong sometimes. If dissenting voices are silenced, it's even worse: you'll be wrong, and not know that you're wrong.

In the cases where consensus is right, you're only adding fuel to the conspiracy theories when you censor opposing views.

In summary: freedom of speech - even wrong and unpopular speech - is essential to our continual pursuit of truth. To pretend that our world is somehow different today (as if misinformation or wrong ideas didn't exist before the internet) is just ignorance. How many times does history have to show us where the road of censorship leads?

Sad this is being downvoted. When you assume anyone or any consensus is infallible you have kings and endless appeals to the authority. The reason we have made unbelievable scientific progress is because we follow sone rules:

1) no one is an authority on the truth.

2) no one is infallible.

3) we can change our minds when new evidence occurs

This doesn’t mean everyone’s opinion is equal or that truth doesn’t exist. Credibility is important. Method is important. Reproducibility is important. Consensus is important.

It’s more difficult today because of the ease of mass communication. But in the end we are better off taking the long, difficult, and often infuriating road to finding the truth. The alternative is an inquisition and worse.

The truth will always rise to the top, eventually, this way even if we are wrong along the way.

If you don't back up claims with actual science then it's not part of the scientific method. Should flat-earthers be given equal authority too?

> Should flat-earthers be given equal authority too?

That's not the relevant question to this discussion (and also basically a strawman).

The question is, should being a "flat earther" be banned from online monopolies as misinformation? As objectively stupid as it might be (even though I don't think anyone actually believes it) I think it would be extreme overreach to start trying to shut down youtube videos positing the earth is flat

> That's not the relevant question to this discussion (and also basically a strawman).

It's not strawman, it's on the same level in the science spectrum as decisively not scientific at all. It's meant to (hopefully) help them understand how stupid of a suggestion they're proposing by offering an equally stupid example.

> The question is, should being a "flat earther" be banned from online monopolies as misinformation?

No, the question is should we reward them for their misinformation content and the answer is no.

> start trying to shut down youtube videos

Not getting ad revenue is not having your video shut down. Set up patreon if you want income making "more CO2 is good, actually" videos (you probably should regardless of content).

>" Set up patreon if you want income making "more CO2 is good, actually" videos..."

What about when Patreon demonetizes the content?

>>>Set up patreon if you want income making "more CO2 is good, actually" videos (you probably should regardless of content).

People have been deplatformed from Patreon for unpopular opinions too.

https://heavy.com/news/2018/12/patreon-sargon-of-akkad-jorda...

> I think it would be extreme overreach to start trying to shut down youtube videos positing the earth is flat

I tend to agree. Demonetizing them and barring them from promoting any other products should be enough to discourage those crooks who don't believe themselves in flat Earth, but make videos, books and merchandise about it to cash on gullible users.

Does the mainstream media back up any of its claims that are supposedly scientific. "Trust the science", ask Galileo if he trusted the science of his time.

No one and no institution is an authority. Some people and institutions certainly have more credibility. But ultimately a core tenant of classical liberalism and the enlightenment is there are no authorities. Kings are authorities. Popes are authorities. We moved away from that for a reason.

Saying that, you’re right. If your science sucks then you should be ignored because there is little chance of finding a consensus of truth in it.

i remember not long ago lancet scientists claimed that the lab leak was some kind of ridiculous conspiracy theory.

Scientists can be corrupted too.

It turned out that 26 of those 27 scientists who signed the Lancet letter had undisclosed conflicts of interests due to connections with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9980015/26-Lancet-s...). Chief among them Peter Daszak, President of Ecohealth Alliance, whom we now know was involved in gain of function research with WIV that involved SARS-like viruses that could bind to the ACE2 receptor (https://journals.asm.org/doi/pdf/10.1128/jvi.02582-15).

Flat-earthers should be given as much room as they want to make fools of themselves. I find the notion of "it's on YouTube, therefore it's authoritative" intriguing.

When did the United States as a nation uniformly believe in science?

"believe in science" What does this even _mean_?

That you have faith in the ability of the scientific method to ultimately reveal objective truths about the universe.

And, I guess, that you believe that there’s a scientific establishment that adheres to that method, and that the results it generates are disseminated faithfully to society at large.

Why do you need to have faith ? The scientific method is all about proof.

At some point, you just have to believe, if you want to go much deeper, you get into epistemology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology

That is precisely the point where Science ends. The notion that Science can and should provide a full account of the Universe in all its complex glory is a very strange idea, conveniently promoted by those holding the credential purse strings, aka the Science hierarchy.

Proof is changing over time.

I (mostly) agree with your definition, but the word 'ultimately' does a lot of work there. Many people who use 'believe in (the) science' are actually asserting that science already revealed the objective truths of the matter in question.

It means think what someone else wants you to and don't question it.

Believe that the things that science says are true actually are true. It's pretty clear, no?

Is light a wave or a particle?

It's something that has wave-like and particle-like properties. What's your point?

We never did, but it can look as if it is moving further away from that goal

You dont need to believe in anything. Science is not a dogma. if Science is correct it can be demonstrated.

Unlike heating up balloons filled with different gases - climate change isn't something that can be demonstrated easily. I don't disagree with your statement in general, but when it comes to climate change I'm offended by any contrarian who passively sits back in their chair and shouts "prove it" - you aren't owed that.

Why that person that you are offended by cannot be offended by your statement of active screaming (sorry, just use your terminology)?

> There is very little actual consensus in the scientific community about anything

Scientists agree that at low velocities, the force of an object equals the mass times the acceleration. This is just one point of agreement. There are others that I can't list here. You may be surprised at the amount of info that scientists agree upon.

It's not sufficient to cherry pick an example of agreement to refute the original comment. There are obviously many things scientists agree on, but there are also many complicated things scientists disagree on, especially when it comes down to the details. The key point is that the public tends to treat science and scientists as monolithic in their views. The truth is far different and there is an enormous amount of diversity in thought and lots of debate within the scientific community on many, many topics.

Not that I entirely disagree with you, but.... It is easy to fabricate consensus on objective issues when you wrap them in subjective language, such as "at low velocities".

Who is the objective authority on what constitutes "low"? You are. It is subject to your own interpretation, as is the consensus- a different point of view might cap "low" as being higher than what you do, and as such will see no such consensus, or see the consensus as blatantly wrong.

Virtually every statement in this post is wrong. There's plenty of consensus in scientific fields, that's the point of scientific work, building consensus by means of agreed upon methodology. The core of science isn't 'debate' whatever that means, but work within theoretic or empirical disciplines done by people trained in methods that have proven to produce results, i.e. 'scientists'. If there is disagreement, it needs to be justified and articulated in a way that meaningfully builds on the knowledge of the field in question. nobody in science pays attention to 'disagreement' from people who don't understand the body of knowledge they're disagreeing with.

Youtube commenters or video creators don't practice science, they commentate on science, and thus whatever banning happens there has exactly zero influence on the actual course of scientific work which is done by a small percentage of people educated enough to actually have anything to say of value and contribute to the actual body of knowledge that collectively is 'science'.

America as a nation is scientifically illiterate exactly because of the thing you're advocating, that every clown should have a voice simply because they can open their mouth and make noises.

> There is very little actual consensus in the scientific community about anything... eggs are bad for you - no wait, eggs are good for you - no wait, only 1 egg a day - eat as many eggs as you can! Nobody agrees on eggs - how can we have agreement on far more important and challenging-to-study things like the climate?

Yes and if you ask Philip Morris, cigarettes are good for you and there is some evidence to the "benefits" of smoking by scientists. That doesn't mean smoking is healthy, nor is there a general consensus that it is good. The weighted evidence points to smoking being bad for you.

Now while I don't fully agree with the global warming fanatics, I am still sitting on the fence personally but leaning towards there being a problem, I don't see why a group of publishers and advertisers are not able to determine whether they want to be associated with the global warning deniers, given that there is such weighted evidence against them.

> Nobody agrees on eggs - how can we have agreement on far more important and challenging-to-study things like the climate?

On the other extreme, 2+2=4 is considered a hegemonic narrative:

> “Nope the idea of 2+2 equaling 4 is cultural and because of western imperialism/colonization, we think of it as the only way of knowing,” (Brittany Marshall)

> “2+2=4: A perspective in white, Western mathematics that marginalizes other possible values.” (James Lindsay)

So the main problem is trust. Some groups trust science and others think it's being used in bad faith, so they reject it completely.

>The truth is there is no consensus so censoring half (or more) of the discussion is downright absurd.

Demonetization != banning or censorship.

You can debate, you are just not getting ad revenue for this.

I’m okay with demonetization for things with less proof than the main alternative.

What I would be against is censorship: denying the voice.

Either is for the purpose of central control of discourse.

My view is no one has a right to “monetization” on someone else's platform.

Admittedly it is has a “chilling effect” but I’m more concerned that we should allow debate instead of being concerned we should be able to make money off of the debate.

I think you are right and debate is needed, but unfortunately on online platforms debate is really hard to keep civil and respectful.

On platforms like HN where the audience is somewhat selective and moderation is possible you can have a reasonable debate, however on platforms like YouTube where views are money it can be difficult for creators to not play to the algorithm and go for the click-bate title with the emotive thumbnail with content that will attract the most views.

I think YouTube, by removing the money making imperative is at least removing that driver from the equation whilst leaving the possibility of still posting controversial material and allowing debate.

> The core of science is debate.

The core of science is not debate. It is a cluster of related items such as falsifiability, empiricism, mathematical modeling, reproducibility etc. It is most certainly not debate. You are confusing politics with science, which in many cases is a very deliberate right wing stance.

> There is very little actual consensus in the scientific community about anything... eggs are bad for you

This is also false. Argument by analogy with nutrition science is a cop out, because it is unethical to run controlled experiments on human subjects without appropriate consent. However, nutrition is important for society and we make do with weaker correlational studies on biased samples which can evolve or get overturned in the future.

Climate modeling is very unlike nutritional or social science and can by modeled consistently.

Climate can be modeled consistently ? You must have missed the hundreds of models that predicted nothing and that we conveniently hide from view to cherry pick the ones that worked. Completely ridiculous statement.

Can you link to 5 of these peer reviewed published models that predict nothing?

While I agree with you in terms of true unknowns such as dark matter/energy (science does need more diversity of ideas), climate change science is comprehensive and conclusive.

Any other ideas are absurd: we know the human contribution to climate change cause, have measured the anticipated effect, and found irrefutable causality.

Disputing human climate change is like disputing the surface temperature of the sun. These are measured facts, not theories.

What’s conclusive is that more greenhouse gases means higher temperatures.

What’s not conclusive is the doomsaying and specific claims about the future and present. A great example of this is California’s governor blaming forest fires on climate change, and another one is the signs predicting certain glaciers would melt.

That's fantastic sharpshooting. One instance of assumption (that wildfires are caused by climate change) doesn't refute the human impact on climate change.

In addition, science has not yet made a conclusion on the forest fires (the governor may well be proven right), and the Siberian feedback loop is a wildfire and was caused by climate change.

The governor ignorantly commented on an unknown. Deniers deny known facts. There is a huge difference.

> In addition, science has not yet made a conclusion on the forest fires (the governor may well be proven right),

That is impossible. Climate's a chaotic system, you can't back-predict the timing of droughts. And we already know that with or without human greenhouse gases, California has droughts. There is not some alternate history where California’s forest management practices wouldn't let these kinds of fires happen.