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Comment by myself248 | Hacker News Reader

The suggestion in the article, to simply label these things as sci-fi, seems reasonable.

Labeling as sci-fi is also a stretch. He's videoing and documenting real sites that exist around the world. The origin and timeline around those sites is speculation, but that certainly doesn't make it sci-fi.

Science-Speculation, then. SciSpec.

It can be a great category on its own right if done correctly.

My issue with labeling is the same weak link as ever: it relies on trusting the labeler. I think the consumer having a general rule of thumb of "treat this as entertainment and not educational" for all documentaries is the safer, more broadly applicable solution.

I don't know about you, but I don't really trust Netflix to consistently find the line between documentaries that are honest purveyors of truth vs. ideological cheerleaders.

This attitude "if we can't do it perfectly, we should just give up" is very frustrating.

Yes, it's impossible to correctly classify all video productions, and you won't ever get a guarantee that everything said in a "documentary" is correct, but labelling clear examples of pseudo-science as just that will slightly improve the situation, it won't make it worse.

The fact that you don't see the problems in labeling expressive content/speech by the group that is hosting the content shows we have markedly different world views and/or priorities. Which isn't a problem, but it does indicate we probably won't have a useful conversation on the topic.

I will just say that the problem lies in what you think is "clear" vs. what the person/group doing the labeling thinks is "clear". That determination is usually anything but "clear".

> I will just say that the problem lies in what you think is "clear" vs. what the person/group doing the labeling thinks is "clear". That determination is usually anything but "clear".

Scientific community has a pretty strong consensus that this is not science. It's pretty clear cut.

We're not even talking about cancelling it, just about showing the contextual information that the information presented is in a stark conflict with the scientific consensus.

The "Scientific community" is not the one doing the labeling (nor is that even a coherent enough thing that one could hypothetically trivially ask it; it's an inherently organic, diffuse, grass roots concept). Netflix (or similar) is. If the last 3 years have taught me anything, it's that I don't trust organizations like Netflix etc. to decide what it is the scientific community has or does not have consensus on (which is also a much murkier question than you seem to believe that it is). Sometimes, the scientific consensus is obvious. Sometimes it's obvious that there is no consensus (yet). And other times, some people or groups think that there is (or is not) consensus when the opposite is true.

> Netflix (or similar) is.

Indeed, it's Netflix who is doing it. And has been always doing it. It's in a way a strawman to discuss whether they should be doing it or not, because they've been always evaluating what they're distributing. They do have to make calls on what is Nazi propaganda and what isn't. It's possible that they got it wrong a couple of times, but it doesn't seem to be a systemic problem in the case of Nazis.

The push here is whether they should make a better job at labelling or not.

> Sometimes it's obvious that there is no consensus (yet).

So, do you think there's no scientific consensus on Ancient Apocalypse being pseudo science?

In what ways would labelling it as pseudo-science on Netflix make the world a worse place?

The existence of easy calls doesn't get rid of the case of hard calls. I think the damage of making the wrong call when it's hard more than offsets the advantage when it's easy. The labels are less important when scientific consensus is obvious (as in these cases), and they are more likely to get it wrong in cases where a (correct) label would be useful, since it's exactly the cases when it is isn't easy and obvious to determine the scientific consensus that having someone tell us what it is is helpful.

> I think the damage of making the wrong call when it's hard more than offsets the advantage when it's easy.

You seem to forget that Netflix already makes a wrong call by labelling "Ancient Apocalypse" as a "documentary".

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