Comment by notahacker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by notahacker | Hacker News Reader

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> and we shouldn't engage in censorship of factual information because "people are dying".

It's not 'censorship of factual information' for a private service to choose to put health warnings against or delete fact free claims of HCQ as a miracle cure. Indeed "healthy living" supplement hucksters are ridiculed and kicked off platforms on a regular basis, even when some of the claims they make about "healthy living" have a tenuous connection to fact.

We don't change the parameters of science to pretend that people insisting that a pandemic isn't a threat because self-administering a moderately dangerous drug is effective prophlaxis are presenting "factual information" because the people doing so are supporters of politicians rather than pill vendors.

All of which is tangential to my original point which is that "HCQ is a miracle cure" became a meme entirely divorced from the tentative (and probably manipulated) evidence of therapeutic benefit well before attempts to shut it down or the Surgisphere "study", so I can't imagine why more blame is apportioned to them than the public figures making evidence-free claims about it from the very beginning.

> It's not 'censorship of factual information' for a private service to choose to put health warnings against or delete fact free claims of HCQ as a miracle cure.

I'm not going to get into the "it isn't censorship if it's a private company" debate. That's a facile argument. Silencing of speech is wrong. Full stop. I'm not debating semantics. If the only way you can rebut an argument is by silencing it, then you lose the debate. Get better at defending your beliefs in the marketplace of ideas.

Regarding "factual information": if 2020-21 should have taught you anything about actual science (vs. The Science (tm)), it is the importance of humility. Today's "scientific fact" is tomorrow's misinformation. We've seen this time and again throughout the pandemic -- except that one side is always less than forthright than the other about the times when their preferred facts are wrong.

AI bots and armies of low-wage employees at Facebook and Twitter are useless as arbiters of scientific truth. And science, as a process, depends on the ability of unpopular opinions to exist and be debated. Because sometimes, they're right.

Your desire to "protect people" against information that you deem to be dangerous is only as good as your ability to know what is dangerous. And the masses are finding out about this Dangerous Misinformation anyway, so it's not like the tactics are working. The two major accomplishments of this strategy appear to be:

1) making the censors look like fools on a regular basis, and

2) hardening the opposition and mistrust by the people being censored to the point where you are engaged in all-out war.

So if your goal was destroying trust and confidence in medical authority, and increasing partisan polarization, while hardening ~half the population into rigid ideological positions, mazeltov. The experiment was a success.

> And science, as a process, depends on the ability of unpopular opinions to exist. Because sometimes, they're right.

Science, as a process, does not depend on the ability of unpopular (or in this case, very popular) opinions to be broadcast to a sufficiently large number of laypeople on a particular channel. HCQ research was carried out despite rather than because Bob from Texas or Luis from Brazil read some drivel about a miracle cure written by a fan of a politician who had touted it as a miracle cure. And yes, it would have been much better if the Surgisphere paper was silenced before rather than after publication.

But I reiterate, the argument that encouragement to buy Invermectin has an inalienable right to appear in my inbox which encouragement to buy Viagra apparently doesn't because this time it's politicians shilling it is completely orthogonal to my original point, which is that people were damaging their health self-administering HCQ long before Surgisphere published or social media started to get nervous. So if we want to understand why Americans are so keen on quack cures and so hostile to stuff that has more scientific evidence behind it, we probably want to start with some very influential people that promoted that attitude, and doubled down on it as being a test of partisan loyalties. Blaming the censors seems at best a distraction and at worst an attempt to to shield the promoters from their responsibility. After all, we had Facebook censorship and ridicule of pseuds (and frequent poorly-communicated changes in public health guidelines) in my country too, but that didn't stop nearly all adults from agreeing to be vaccinated.

> Science, as a process, does not depend on the ability of unpopular (or in this case, very popular) opinions to be broadcast to a sufficiently large number of laypeople on a particular channel.

It would be amusing how confident you are in your pronouncements of who deserves to have speech "for science", if it weren't so scary.

Speaking as a scientist, I want to hear all of it, and I don't need you to help out. The only thing in the realm of speech that can truly hurt me is the risk of misled by moral busybodies who think they know what is true and virtuous, and try to control what I hear "for my own good."

> The only thing in the realm of speech that can truly hurt me is the risk of misled by moral busybodies who think they know what is true and virtuous

A bit weird how you started off with a tirade about the real world consequences of publishing a fake paper (I think we actually agree that was bad) as well as an insistence that in engaging in ridicule and fact checking was "miscommunication" breeding public mistrust then. Stop pronouncing speech had harmful consequences, you moral busybody! And how dare the Lancet take that paper down!

I'm sorry you're scared about my confidence in the future of scientific research not depending on Invermectin partisans (or anyone else) being able to publish stuff on Facebook.com without content warnings. Personally, I'd see much more reason to be scared if I wasn't confident in my pronouncement that scientific research will go on regardless of how Facebook chooses to filter its newsfeed.

> If the only way you can rebut an argument is by silencing it, then you lose the debate.

This cannot be underscored enough. If you censor criticism of a viewpoint, people won't decide it's right. They will decide it's definitely wrong.

>Get better at defending your beliefs in the marketplace of ideas.

This is sort of the Joe Rogan argument: fight misinformation by talking louder and more convincingly. I am legitimately curious, in what way could the pro-vaccine community do a better job of defending their beliefs in the marketplace of ideas?

The data is clear that vaccines save lives, they have generally mild side effects and they reduce transmission of COVID. This data has been made freely available to the public in an unprecedented way. Politicians, celebrities, athletes and scientists have all spoken convincingly in favor of vaccinations. Despite these efforts, the country that first developed the vaccine now ranks 52nd globally in terms of number of eligible individuals vaccinated. What went wrong?

I see two reasons for this. First is a carryover of distrust from the mishandling of the pandemic up to this point. There has been flip-flopping in government messaging and policy constantly. This has sometimes been due to new data, and sometimes I'd argue for political gain.

The second reason is, well, the free discussion of the nuances of the vaccine has largely not been allowed/socially acceptable. The vaccine is being pushed in very forceful way while honest (if not always scientifically accurate) discussion is repressed. Although there will certainly be a group too far gone to ever accept the vaccine, this strategy of a heavy handed and propaganda-like approach seems to be causing the vaccine hesitant to only dig in their heels further. The vaccine can't win in the marketplace of ideas if the marketplace is not allowed to exist.

OP’s point was that the argument in favor of vaccines needs to be made more convincingly. What does that actually mean? How could the information be presented more convincingly?

My point is that the argument can't be made more convincing if the argument isn't allowed. Even if the information all points in one direction, and at this point it more or less does, I see it being presented in a way where any questioning or dissent is actively ridiculed or repressed. This naturally causes suspicion.

Instead of presenting the vaccine information as a flood of not to be questioned, yet well meaning, propaganda I'd prefer an open and honest dialogue that meets an individual where they're at.

You aren't really answering my question. Despite Youtube removing misinformation, anti-vaxxers have loudly and repeatedly 'made their point.' The marketplace of ideas is alive and well. It's hard to have an open and honest discussion with groups that falsify data, but many vaccine advocates have nonetheless engaged directly and publicly with anti-vaxxers.

What specifically is lacking in the pro-vaccine argument? I'm not asking about censorship, as it is seemingly a moot point. OPs point is that the argument needs to be made more convincingly and spoken louder. What does that look like in practice?

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