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Comment by gamepsys | Hacker News Reader

When I was in highschool I had to fill out a survey about my experiences with substances. I remember getting a laugh out of lying on the survey. Always take any self reported questionnaire results with a large grain of salt.

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This is why nutrition research is extremely confusing and contradictory often. I worked in a nutrition department and the amount of post menopausal obese women in our knee studies that said they just ate a half cup of green beans that day is astounding.

Now try to use data that flawed to make assumptions over a lifespan about human health. About the only studies I truly believe are the ones where people are at a facility and all food is provided to them and tracked.

My favourite example of this is that the number of condoms used in the USA, according to surveys, is dramatically higher than the number of condoms sold in the USA.

Perhaps they are using them more than once.

Or they are confusing imagination of how much they would like to have sex with reality. Or they feel the social pressure, to boast themself. Sexual activity is kind of a primitive success metric. Reporting low numbers means reporting low success ..

In surveys the amount of liquor consumed is often about half the amount of liquor that is sold.

Yeah, that's because it's assumed that the other half consumed is non-registered moonshine. I don't get how that would apply to condoms, though.

Grey import through Chinese websites like AliExpress? I doubt those individual sales are registered on the total sales numbers of the USA.

Ew.

I lived in one of those food study centers after college. Most people there were pretty diligent about sticking to the program, but there was a big scandal when one guy was kicked out after discovering extensive cheating and several papers had to be retracted.

We were allowed out - I had a full time job, but couldn't eat or drink any food not provided by the center (we took a radio-isotope tracer with food, and had to collect our poop). It was quite interesting :_)

what was the consequence if you did eat outside food?

If the researchers found out then you would be eliminated from the study and no longer paid (and given free food) as a research subject.

Well, some studies validate their FFQs. Also, FFQs don't have to be perfect. They just have to create analytical clusters or continuity. As FFQs become less accurate, confidence intervals get wider but it just depends if the study is powered to handle it.

I find that most of the dismissal around FFQs is pretty vague and seems to come from a group of people who find the consensus in nutrition research inconvenient for them.

Pew Research found that 24% of Hispanic adults are licensed to operate a SSGN submarine: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/05/online-op...

The margins of error on online opt-in polls are massive.

I too was a “daily cocaine user” in 6th grade…

How many Americans think chocolate milk comes from brown cows? I’d wager almost every single person who answers in the affirmative really just thinks it’s the funnier answer.

You might be surprised...

Yeah, according to certain studies, most of my 6th grade class has stinky cheese farts and did moderate to heavy cocaine use in the morning.

Do cocaine as the morning pick-me-up and then some heroin in the evening to help you sleep.

I'm convinced this is the source of flat earth conspiracies.

I suspect there are a vanishingly small number of individuals who believe flat earth, and the rest are just doing it for the lulz.

You're missing an important third group: people making money pushing these beliefs. Themselves, they likely don't believe it - but they know this type of "content" creates strong "engagement".

Behind the Curve is a good documentary about flat earthers. A lot of them seem to believe it because it gives them a sense that they have figured something out that others haven't. It makes them feel special.

Others believe it, or at least continue to believe, because they find a community and connection with other believers.

Sounds remarkably similar to mainstream religions in the U.S.

But the earth is visibly not flat! Clearly we live in a Dyson sphere.

Of course it is flat! It's just the coordinate system that is curved. ;)

That is what you hope, but do you know how many people believed in the Q conspiracy? Chemtrails? Reptiloids? Bill Gates using the vaccination to control everyone through a microchip? It is the same ballpark.

I wish those people pushing this, were doing it just for the lulz. But mostly they are serious.

I'm convinced that chemtrails came from a stoner watching some variation of How planes fly / aeronautics at 3am and heard chemtrails in place of contrails and we are now forever stuck with it.

What I want to know is why Bill Gates got stuck with the microchip conspiracy theory when Elon Musk regularly has press conferences about the progress his team is making with actual brain microchips.

That is simple, because Bill Gates did talk about a microchip for people in an interview, but just an RFID chip, to keep track of the vaccinations. Also his foundation is doing vaccinations big scale. Even without foreign hostile agencies making disinformation, it is easy seeing crackpots mixing it all up.

Ah, that makes a decent amount of sense.

And this is just the start.

LLMs are very good at mixing information to produce bullshit.

No worries, we can ask another LLM for verification.

Musk makes it optional, Bill Gates required it (vaccination, presumably including the chip) of everyone.

You were just contributing to the Lizardman’s Constant :)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Slate_Star_Code...

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