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Comment by umvi | Hacker News Reader

Critical skepticism should be a core competence as well. Even well known and highly respected journals like Nature or NYT likely have biases at the editor/peer review level. They should be read with at least one eye toward skepticism that [money/prestige/desire to get published/etc] have influenced the results of the paper/article.

I've read that scientists often have to "massage" their papers if publishing on a divisive/politicized topic like climate change or transgenderism in order to not have their paper dismissed out of hand (for example, one I saw recently: https://patricktbrown.org/2023/09/05/the-not-so-secret-formu...).

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It’s a fair point, and it’s a shame that something we took for granted growing up in the 90s - a culture of being reflexively critical of all media, whether state or private - now finds itself awkwardly shoehorned into the hellscape of 21st century American politics.

I will say also though that I wouldn’t _personally_ equate the sort of biases you allude to in your comment - extremely troubling though they are - with content produced by actual malicious actors.

My litmus test for whether to respond to a piece of media with healthy skepticism or outright rejection often comes down to a simple gut-check: “Is this coming - ultimately - from a place of hate?”. I’ve found that to be surprisingly effective.

I also feel like that was a political lesson we were supposed to have learned from 20th century history - maybe the most significant and enduring lesson. But here we are again, and it’s true what they say: every generation has to fight for it.

> My litmus test for whether to respond to a piece of media with healthy skepticism or outright rejection often comes down to a simple gut-check: “Is this coming - ultimately - from a place of hate?”. I’ve found that to be surprisingly effective.

How exactly are you confirming this "surprising effectiveness"? Going with what your gut thinks is literally the default for everyone, it's the opposite of critical thinking.

I think what you are saying ultimately reduces down to the question: 'Do you like this person?', which is a fine position to have, but don't lie to yourself that it's anything other than that.

Claims made in circumstances where there’s evidence of hatred or malice - either as motive or intent - warrant scepticism and a higher burden of proof relative to other claims since, as we know from recent and not-so-recent history, the weaponisation of hate is both a very effective and frequently-deployed political strategy. That formulation okay with you?

It’s just an heuristic. Apparently one that makes no sense to you. Have a great weekend.

That heuristic causes you to miss all the self serving lies that are everywhere. It might make your social life flourish since you trust all of those lies and people like when you trust them, but it will make your head full of lies and falsehoods.

For example, a fat person might say that being fat has nothing to do with how much they eat, I have heard that many times, that doesn't come from a place of hate but you shouldn't trust it anyway. It is however self serving, that is the main thing to look out for.

I sometimes feel like modern education could really use a "defense against the Dark Arts"-style information savviness class. In theory, it's one of the things research projects are supposed to teach you (critical thinking), but I think it could stand to be even more focused: embrace and emphasize the notion that people state falsehoods as truth, whether it be due to lack of attention to detail, conflicting incentives, or overt malicious intent.

Comprehension is a balance. Believe too much and you've left the path of reason. But we've also seen skepticism come right round to conspiracy theory... Believe too little, and someone ends up standing in a pizze parlor brandishing a firearm demanding to see the nonexistent basement.

Reading that article, all I can think of is the bald-faced lies the public was told during the pandemic because they were convenient for steering behavior. My trust in “science” was seriously damaged by that episode.

Which bald face lies? Like ivermectin?

Off the top of my head? The vaccines were sterilizing. Nope not at all. Mildly reduced the chance of transmission while sick. But Pfizer was “moving at the speed of science”. Another is that natural immunity was worse than getting the vaccine. I’m sure there’s more, but the comment Will be flagged so why bother?

I'm curious. Please email me (link in bio https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=throw10920). Also I suggest adding your (or an) email (or some other contact info) to your profile.

Just so you know, it's a bit creepy when someone makes a post on a contentious topic to immediately want to take the discussion offline and to request their PII.

The more paranoid in the audience will take this type of behavior as evidence that lists are being kept of 'unbelievers' and that they are 'being silenced' etc etc etc. You know the type of thing.

Just letting you know how this comes off.

Your comment was flagged for being full of shit. And you proved why.

A few that come to mind:

1. Public health agencies originally stated that N95 respirators don’t work and require special fit training. This guidance vanished the moment respirators stopped being in short supply.

2. The public was repeatedly told the virus was not thought to be transmissible by airborne particles, even though there was evidence that it was. Similarly, well after fomite transmission had been ruled out, health agencies continued to preach hand-washing and surface disinfection.

3. Concerns that the vaccines might have serious side effects were blasted as anti-science lunacy. Later, the vaccines were proved to cause serious side effects in some people.

4. Any discussion of the lab leak theory was treated as radioactive.

I could go on.

What’s bothersome about these examples isn’t that the science was imperfect or evolving. It’s that the public were lied to, and were also told they should not dare question Science (with a capital S). When I read that scientific journals censor entire avenues of inquiry because the implications are undesirable, I wonder if real science even exists in politically sensitive fields.

honestly i see the opposite more often. people being skeptical to the point of absurdity. They also never seem to trust anybody.

This is a lot more common, but I wouldn't call this proper skepticism. It's usually just people being cynical and biased in their own way. They've subscribed to a political tribe and social media echo chamber that happens to be opposed to something in Nature, and that's the reason why they're doubting whatever is written in Nature, with some made-up justification that sounds plausible only within that echo chamber but is transparently wrong to people not caught up in that particular group think. That said, actual skepticism should be applied everywhere, including towards Nature.

Do you think cynical mistrust (so-called "scepticism") truly is more common than lack of healthy scepticism towards information provided by trusted sources? Or is it rather more obnoxiously salient? Someone who rejects Nature claiming that the Earth is an oblate spheroid is much more likely to make their voice heard than someone who would happily accept whatever is published in a scientific journal with no question whatsoever.

Either way, at face value, I do agree that cynical mistrust (especially when partisan) is more immediately damaging to society than uncritical absolute trust, regardless of each of their relative frequencies. However, I do believe that each of these phenomena reinforce each other in a vicious cycle. The contrarian denialist feels vindicated when he sees the blind acceptance placed on certain sources by the naïve truster on the other end of the political spectrum. The naïve truster, on the other hand, feels that any criticism or questioning directed towards trusted sources on his side is to behave like the contrarian denialist would. Hence the mutual polarisation.

There's plenty of stuff in NYT that should by eyed with extreme skepticism. It's got an agenda and is bending its content around that agenda like every other mainstream commercial news outlet.

As if non-mainstream news outlets are objective.

I would relax "plenty of stuff" to "everything" - the New York Times has adopted a policy of "advocacy over reporting" for several years now[1] and is untrustworthy as a journalistic entity as a result. They're no long a news organization, they're an activism organization that uses news as their political vehicle.

[1] https://www.city-journal.org/article/slouching-toward-post-j...

This is dependent on your social circle. My experience agrees with GP and disagrees with yours.

Both over-skepticism and under-skepticism are bad and should be recognized and fought. If you only oppose one of them, then it's likely because your preferred party is, too.

While this can come about perfectly naturally when an intellectually lazy internal ruling establishment only wants agreement instead of critical thinking, it should also be noted that such a result is also a deliberate end goal of social attacks by external hostile actors, such the russian government and it's "firehose of falsehood" method of propaganda.

This can result in paralysis and/or radicalization of the effected population depending on how it's used.

Unfortunately we kind of have both the internal and external problems in effect right now.

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