Hacker News Reader

Comment by colordrops | Hacker News Reader

This whole fear of being labeled a "conspiracy nut" for exploring less trodden paths needs to end. Calling people conspiracy nuts for looking behind curtains they shouldn't was a good tactic by various entities to cover up secrets and misdeeds, but it has spilled over into the non political arena and poisoned everything.

Humans don't have a full understanding of everything, and in fact it's quite the opposite, in that we don't understand almost everything. Almost all paths are untrodden. It's fine to look where others haven't and come up with your own theories and ideas, as long as you retain a healthy skepticism and back things up with data as much as you can.

Science and exploration should not use fear of social reprisal as a guide.

View on HN

I’m torn about this now. I used to cautiously support the practice of double checking your doc, but not wholeheartedly because of all the various quacks: essential oil moms, natural/spiritual healers, psychics, supplement sellers, crystal therapists, “old school” (pre-COVID) antivaxers and so on, muddying the water.

Until COVID came around and unearthed the absolute hoards of dO yOuR oWn ReSeArCh imbeciles. Now the sensible practice of getting a second opinion and exploring other options/doctors has been mixed up with the kooks: extreme politics and actual conspiracy theories, to the point where it’s hard to take any of it seriously.

When someone now says they don’t trust doctors, you have to dig deeper to understand if it’s someone genuinely seeking out other options, or if it’s one of Those People who’ve gone off the deep end.

The pandemic revealed the degree to which any respectable field can harbour extremely dangerous kookery without realising it.

For example, Western health authorities used to be absolutely certain that viruses could not be airborne (outside of very specific medical procedures), even though they did not have any good reason or evidence to back that up: it was just an old idea that happened to fit in with their priors, so generations of experts kept parroting it until horror unfolded.

Completely agree: couldn't believe the amount of conspiracy theorist doctors that pushed untested "vaccines" to a whole cohort of people which were at 0% effective risk from COVID.

I don’t think it is possible to end the derogatory use of the term conspiracy theorist universally, but I do have some hope that we can put a stop to it’s use as an ad hominem here on Hacker News.

It is never used in the spirit of promoting insightful discussion.

Instead it is used to shut down a line of inquiry in its tracks. It’s like calling someone an anti-semite.

It is used as a soft form of censorship, to disqualify the mere idea of engaging in the specifics of an argument.

If someone dismisses a comment by implying it is a conspiracy instead of offering a substantive rebuttal of why the comment is mistaken, it reduces the quality of the entire community.

I think we can do better, but more people need to call out this bad behavior.

What you're suggesting leads to an offense/defense asymmetry. Spouting a conspiracy theory usually takes very little effort from the poster, they're either intimately familiar with it already or they just copy-paste the talking points from somewhere else (or both). Expecting others to write a deep rebuttal every time takes a lot of time, it basically amounts to a DDOS attack.

I reserve the right to dismiss low-quality posts with a low-quality answer. And yes, that's a judgement call. There is no way around that.

This whole fear of being labeled a "conspiracy nut" for exploring less trodden paths needs to end

People get called conspiracy nuts when they make big claims with no real evidence. That is the opposite of 'science and exploration'. The difference is always evidence. Go on a conspiracy site and ask for hard evidence of anything and they will get very upset.

Pretty sad that you have to state the obvious ey? Amazed daily by the closed-mindedness on HN.

The earth is not 6000 years old

God didn’t do it

Gravity is the curvature of spacetime

Things are not attracted to the planet through static electricity

Covid is real

Vaccines work

Rich mother fuckers do NOT have our best interests at heart

Intelligent aliens have not visited earth

People are called conspiracy nuts for being conspiracy nuts. Not for “taking less trodden paths”. Getting real tired of the HNs new “wahh wahh, we’re such major victims for believing stupid shit and being called out on it!” And just trying to paint it as “less trodden paths”.

You are arguing with a straw man. Nothing in my post suggested support for any of those things. That's why I included the terms skepticism and data.

Add to that list, some version of the lab leak theory is plausible, but there was an attempt to make it sound like a conspiracy theory.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com