Hacker News Reader

Comment by mo_42 | Hacker News Reader

I'm coming out as a Bayesian here. To me, "No Evidence" simply doesn't exist:

> If Crazy Carl says that aliens abducted his prize turnip, ...

Then, this is a piece of information like many other pieces. The question is only how I should process this. Maybe it will only strengthen my belief that Carl is, in fact, crazy. But who knows maybe I should factor in some more information. Is Carly really that crazy as commonly believed or was Carl taking some strange pills yesterday?

Or in a COVID context: So if a scientist says "no evidence that asymptomatic people transmit the disease", it might change your beliefs about the disease or on the person talking about related topics in the future as you lost trust in that person.

View on HN

The people who use the phrase "No evidence" mean "no good evidence that moves the dial to a significant degree". But for brevity they shorten it to "no evidence" and assume people are capable of filling in the gaps instead of interpreting it extremely literally. We often speak without perfect precision in order to communicate ideas quickly and easily, and it's up to the reader to extend charitable and common sense interpretations.

The problem is that when public figures come out and say "there's no evidence...", they aren't assuming the public are smart and capable of understanding nuance and able to fill in gaps.

At least in the COVID context, they were worried that any nuance would confuse the public, so they simply gave the simplified, dumbed down version.

Of course it backfired a bit. I honestly don't know what's the optimal play for them, but it seems a bit revisionist to say that they assumed the public was capable of filling in the gaps...

The one abuse of that phrase I recall was around masks, where policymakers and science communicators initially said there was "no evidence" that they worked at reducing COVID transmission. I agree with your criticism when it comes to this case.

But when policymakers say there's no evidence for ivermectin's ability to treat COVID, I don't fault them because I see their choice of words as being aligned with the truth. Therefore they are accurately communicating science and good policy.

As with all uses of language, we have to look at it on a case-by-case basis whether it's being weaponized wrongly or used appropriately. I will criticize it when it's used wrongly, and otherwise not criticize it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com