Hacker News Reader

Comment by yessirwhatever | Hacker News Reader

> Rogan is dangerous because he’s an entertainer who needs controversy to sell hundreds of millions of dollars in viewership but a lot of his audience think he’s giving them something more than that.

By that logic, Neil Young is also dangerous. Technically they're both as dangerous as any other media personality or entertainer with a mic (or platform) and an opinion. You shouldn't be listening to Rogan without questioning, nor should you listen to MSM without questioning. Treating what they say as something that needs to be curtailed is at best patronizing to the millions of people that are in the audience, and autocratic/authoritarian at worst.

Saying that he's specifically dangerous (without highlighting that it's the same for others in MSM) is in fact dangerous because it's cherry picking what fits your biased narrative.

View on HN

There’s a key difference: Neil Young isn’t dangerous because he’s not portraying himself as someone he’s not. He’s not presenting contrarian hot takes but simply saying that the experts are right on this and we should listen to them.

When you try to dismiss that as a “biased narrative” or “authoritarian” it demonstrates the danger of this intellectual sloppiness: you’re conflating two positions as equally worthy of attention without acknowledging that one of them has near-unanimous consensus among experts and has been extensively validated. Trying to “both sides this without accounting for that weight is making you less informed, not more.

He’s literally virtue signaling trying to cancel another entertainers contract. It’s very authoritarian and bent towards a biased narrative. Maybe that’s not the words I would have used myself but I completely catch the meaning.

How is Neil Young adding any value to the world by this action? Do you really see Joe as a threat to something? What is it?

It's not “virtue signaling” to say that someone should not use their platform to foment deadly misinformation. Rogan isn't talking about sports, or debating whether someone's music is better than another artist's, he's giving weight to people who are pedaling advice which will reliably harm people.

It's especially interesting to see you attack the scientific consensus as a “biased narrative” because that's what you are actually trying to promote. The scientific process isn't perfect but it includes a lot of effort to avoid bias, starting with how things like experiments are designed and conducted. Claiming that someone else's politically-motivated position deserves equal weight is revealing that the problem here isn't bias but rather that it's not biased in the direction you would like.

Which doctors and scientists do you specifically think spread ‘deadly misinformation’ on Joe Rogan?

I think the point of the 1st amendment is that to distinguish speech is to apply bias - good or bad… the outcome of such action is selecting winners and losers and a path to oppression.

This is a very inaccurate understanding of the first amendment and freedom of speech in general. The first amendment prevents the government from restricting speech – King George cannot have cops quiet you in the town square — but it doesn't say anything about someone having the right to an audience or that anyone has an obligation to promote everyone else's speech — and, of course, if it did, Rogan certainly wouldn't meet that standard since he selects his guests based on what he thinks the audience will like rather than some attempt to present a full spectrum of opinions.

> since he selects his guests based on what he thinks the audience will like

What makes you think he does that? And if so, isn't this exactly the same thing that MSM does?

Interesting point of view. So why are you labeling what the experts that Rogan brings on as "presenting contrarian hot takes"? Is it just because they're different from what another group of experts are saying? What gives one expert-group the right to say something more than what some other experts-group?

Then again if you read my comment carefully, you can see that I'm not "dismissing" what Neil himself is saying/doing, but what the comment I'm replying to did, which is labeling one thing as dangerous and the other as not. Which IMO is dangerous for the opinion holder themselves because it eradicates any chance of self-inspection.

I'd really like you to specify as clearly and concisely as possibly why you think the two positions are not equally worthy of my attention:

- A) the experts that are pro something

- B) the experts that are against something

Is it just the "near-unanimous consensus" as you put it? How is it near-unanimous? and who's consensus is it? And does consensus make things unquestionable? Not exactly clear on what you're trying to say.

Or are you saying that the people Rogan brings on are not experts? Or were experts and not anymore? If so, please provide some examples.

It’s that they’re not experts at all. For example, Malone was involved in the earliest days of mRNA research in the 1980s. He’s not an expert on what other people subsequently did over the next 3 decades and his endorsement of medications which don’t work and the antivax movement shows that he’s no longer willing to meet the standards of being a scientist.

Now, that might be a sad, slightly comical end to a career if it was something harmless — similar to how, say, the creationists would latch onto one guy with a Ph.D in something science-related to say there was a controversy — but it’s medical malpractice at a time when thousands of people are dying daily and vaccination lowers that number by at least an order of magnitude.

To say that "Malone was involved in the earliest days of mRNA research in the 1980s" is an understatement to say the least really.

Malone is the discoverer of in-vitro and in-vivo RNA transfection [1] and architect of mRNA vaccine platform (check the 9 patents he holds) [2].

Please don't take what I'm saying here as an attack on you personally, but what makes you capable of saying that he's not an expert on "what other people subsequently did over the next 3 decades". And what sort of credentials you personally have to say that whatever medication he's endorsing "don’t work", or that "he’s no longer willing to meet the standards of being a scientist". What are those standards? Is it that he's not part of the consensus you're speaking of?

With that being said, I'm absolutely NOT saying that he is right and the others are wrong either. But to pretend that he's dangerous and others are not just because he doesn't bias in the direction you like is not a good reason really to dismiss it, or to want to brand whatever show he gets hosted on as "dangerous" for doing so. He has as much right to say his mind as others. He's no more dangerous than Anthony Fauci or any other expert involved.

1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC297778/pdf/pnas...

2] https://patents.justia.com/inventor/robert-w-malone

Where was his involvement in the development or testing of the vaccines we’re actually using? The extensive safety and efficacy reviews which were conducted in multiple countries prior to authorization? The ongoing review since then?

That’s what matters when discussing his expertise on the subject of the COVID vaccine. It doesn’t matter how great he might have been at one of the many parts of the scientific process which got us here, what matters is the topic we’re actually discussing. Scientists are not like you see in the movies: nobody is an expert at everything and they’re not perfect, either — that’s why the process is built around adversarial review since everyone makes mistakes. Linus Pauling was a Nobel laureate and by all accounts a brilliant researcher but that didn’t mean he was right about vitamin megadoses.

What is "antivax"? He was vaccinated against covid! And afaik doesn't question vaccination in general, he just has raised concerns about the MRNA Covid vaccines because of the Spike Protein. His concerns may be disproportionate and not necessarily what I'd prioritize during a global pandemic but saying he has blood on his hands and calling for censorship seems outrageous...

He’s making false claims about the vaccines’ safety and speaking at antivax events. He doesn’t need to believe what he’s saying - plenty of people find it profitable not to - but that’s irrelevant because his public statements have the same impact whether or not he believes them.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/08/robert-m...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/01/23/dc-anti-v...

> He’s making false claims about the vaccines’ safety

Like what? From your Atlantic piece this seems to be the closest to a false claim and its pretty underwhelming. These pieces read more like I should be upset because he appears is in the same sentence as Steve Bannon or the Proud Boys than the actual content of what he has said.

"Malone may keep company with vaccine skeptics, but he insists he is not one himself. His objections to the Pfizer and Moderna shots have to do mostly with their expedited approval process and with the government’s system for tracking adverse reactions. Speaking as a doctor, he would probably recommend their use only for those at highest risk from COVID-19. Everyone else should be wary" [1]

> and speaking at antivax events.

The one linked in your second article is an Anti-Vaccine Mandate event, which is not the same thing as being anti vaccine. It's possible to appreciate the benefits of vaccines and simultaneous think the government shouldn't force everyone to take one.

1. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/08/robert-m...

It’s fine to criticize that, but you should be even handed and also acknowledge that establishment experts and captured mainstream institutions have tried very hard with deceptive tactics to hide any possibility (I said possibility… I didn’t say fact) that the people dying daily you are concerned about are dying from a virus released by a lab leak in a system managed by what would seem to be your preferred experts. The possibility is there and it should not be deflected from with deception and talking points.

In other words you are so concerned about the credibility of one person, but you don’t seem to care that the entire field has compromised its own credibility by the behavior of its leading figures and key institutions.

Curious about your thoughts regarding misinformation like, "only 1% of patients get addicted". In a single year that line killed more people under thirty than under thirty unvaccinated to covid will ever die. And it was propagated by expert consensus.

Consensus among experts hasn't meant anything more than protection of the ruling class. See Wright brothers and even vaccination for other examples.

Assuming you are talking about Oxycontin, the problem there was that there was no expert consensus - in fact there was no information at all on addictiveness - but the FDA still allowed that language to be used in the promotional literature. The guy who approved it ended up working for Purdue a few months after leaving the FDA.

The story of Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family definitely exposes issues with the FDA, but I'm not sure it's a good example of expert consensus getting it wrong. (Not to say that expert consensus is always right.)

Doctors were parroting the line and prescribing the drug anyway. Despite their perception as experts apparently a lot of them never bothered to cross check the alleged study with their common sense and previous training.

No, the difference is opposite from what you say: Neil Young is the one portraying himself as something he is not: a person who supports freedom.

While Joe Rogan frequently calls himself an idiot (meaning it in the sense that we are all idiots about certain topics, but especially him since he often covers topics that are new to him) while bringing in smart people with opposing views and learning from them.

One of these people is representing himself more honestly than the other, and it’s not who you think.

And there is and should be no rule that all discussions of important topics need to be academically rigorous as defined by you.

The best way to beat Neil Young is to be more popular than him. He's failed at this before. He wrote a song called Southern Man which got some airplay, but Lyrnyrd Skynyrd wrote a response that ended up being far, far more popular ("southern man don't need him anyhow") and ultimately Neil Young ended up regretting his original song because he realized it was condescending. https://www.countryliving.com/life/entertainment/a43715/swee...

I'm sympathetic to Neil on this one but he's just signalling to his tribe and won't have an impact on anybody else.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com