You trust your government and medial institutions, fine. My government has been caught lying over and over “for the public good” during this pandemic, but also on topics like feminism. We know they would lie again without an afterthought like they have in the past, for example giving AIDS to people through blood transfusion (4000 victims because they didn’t want to be seen doubting) or Chernobyl (“Don’t worry, the cloud didn’t reach France” - It did), or bombing the Greenpeace boat with people inside in NZ, or giving 6 diplomatic passports to Benalla and when he was caught beating up political opponents for the service of the king, “seize his passport”... but not seizing the remaining 5 of them.
You may live in a democracy, but we don’t. We literally have laws that the press isn’t free to talk during the pandemic.
People don’t trust doctors and politicians, simply because they have been shown several times to not be trustworthy. The only remedy is not to take more or less precaution; the only remedy is to start being trustworthy, having open science, having a talk about the risks, and not trying to slander or sue people who have opinions that are not approved by the nomenklatura.
As a reminder, the Ordre des Médecins has sued Dr Raoult for “violating fraternity”. The rest of the accusations I’m not a doctor, but “violating fraternity”? Is that science we are talking about, does physics include “follow whatever the group says”?
In the end, as long as you believe it is a thing to “lie for the public good”, it is good to trust absolutely no figure we are given and doubt about every single thing you say.
> My government has been caught lying over and over “for the public good” during this pandemic, but also on topics like feminism.
I'm not familiar with what's been going in your country (France?), but I'd suggest some heavy citations to back up a lightning-rod statement like the above. It's particularly surprising from a country with a pretty good international reputation for press freedom. Were these "feminist lies" arguably innocent innumeracy / failing to perform multivariate regression?
> You need a citation for government lying to people?
When someone mixes in a vague accusation about the government lying for the benefit of a protected group, without citations, it's a bit of a warning sign. I totally believe governments lie, but citations always help credibility.
By the latter are you referring to the pay gap myth? If so it's well beyond innocent innumeracy because feminists have been doing univariate "analysis" to make false claims of pay discrimination since the 1980s, and people have been pointing out the need to do multivariate analysis for just as long. It doesn't make any difference, they still make exactly the same claims in exactly the same way no matter how often it gets debunked.
My best wild guess is that the GP is referring to univariate pay gap studies, but I'd like to do better than a wild guess.
My wife is in finance and accounting, and has a good friend who is a serial entrepreneur with several small businesses, employing a few more women than men. After one of these univariate statistics was quoted on the news, my wife (who professionally thinks about cost savings all day) asked me a question that boiled down to "Hey... it would be wrong and sexist of course... but could my friend save 5-10% on salaries by hiring nearly exclusively top-notch women?" That's when I explained univariate and multivariate regression, and why she should always be skeptical about any study that doesn't assign weights to multiple plausible factors.
There are still plenty of smart people out there who haven't heard about the flaws in some of these studies. Unfortunately, it's much easier to fit a narrative to an oversimplified problem with a simplistic solution. If only mean income were a good proxy for how effectively society helps people achieve fulfillment and life goals, fair governance would be much easier. Don't get me wrong. I believe governments should do more to help reduce constraints on women that impede their life goals and fulfillment, but it looks like mean hourly income isn't a great proxy for measuring progress in fulfillment.
Your wife is one thing and understandable because she's (presumably) not a full time feminist advocate. But I still routinely see this claim be made by e.g. journalists who have been writing about feminism their entire careers, or people who appear to be spending most of their time on such advocacy. Those people either know, or they are so dumb they never had the obvious thought that occurred immediately to your wife. I don't think they're dumb as they're normally quite eloquent, they just don't want to lose that powerful talking point.
> My government has been caught lying over and over “for the public good” during this pandemic
All governments do it. It's just that some are so good at lying that a large part of the naive population actually believe that the government is doing things for their own good. People generally have been indoctrinated when they are very young in schools.
>You may live in a democracy, but we don’t.
This is also true the world over. Elections in 'democracies' are a sham. Notice the people who get elected, they are often the same group of elites. A 'democratic' society is one where the dictators have mastered the art of a bloodless coup. A vote gives your average Joe citizen the illusion of have a say when in reality has little or none.
In the end what generally makes a better society is generally overall 'better' citizens. (however one may define 'better')
> or Chernobyl (“Don’t worry, the cloud didn’t reach France” - It did),
This is a huge urban legend, which has been thoroughly debunked.
I'm not in the mood to look for sources, but the gist is that the "clouds stopped at the borders" meme came from a few specific TV reports that were extremely misinterpreted, not from any sort of official communication.
> My government has been caught lying over and over “for the public good” [...]
I just see decades old, one time events completely unrelated to the current government.
> We literally have laws that the press isn’t free to talk during the pandemic.
[citation needed]
> People don’t trust doctors and politicians, simply because they have been shown several times to not be trustworthy.
French people don't trust doctors because France in one of the leading countries in homeopathy, osteopathy and various quackery spending. Half of the typical pharmacy's stock is a healthcare scam. French are also the top antivax population in the west. [0] So it's hardly surprising that the average Frenchman's perception of what a sound healthcare policy looks like is absolute bonkers.
French people not trusting doctors is not a consequence of bad medical practice, but a symptom of something else. After all, French healthcare routinely ranks in the top 10 in the world, and often top 1 [1].
Then Macron arrives and removes homeopathy from the social security reimbursement program because it lacks any demonstrated effectivity and loads of French people complain. [2]
The government is far from being perfect, but in this particular topic, I'll side with it, thanks.
> The only remedy is not to take more or less precaution; the only remedy is to start being trustworthy, having open science, having a talk about the risks, and not trying to slander or sue people who have opinions that are not approved by the nomenklatura. As a reminder, the Ordre des Médecins has sued Dr Raoult for “violating fraternity”. The rest of the accusations I’m not a doctor, but “violating fraternity”? Is that science we are talking about, does physics include “follow whatever the group says”?
Since his rise to fame, Raoult has been charging 1264 € per consultation, many of those for prescribing a hydroxychloroquine treatment [3]. C'est quoi ça, conventionné secteur arnaque ? Excuse my literal French but the parent knows what I'm talking about. Those rates are roughly 15 times what a well-rated specialist would charge after decades of practice.
That's leaving aside that his hydroxychloroquine fixation is unawarded as it's been shown again and again that its benefits, if any, are very small.[4]
Raoult has been doing a pump-and-dump of his medical career to retire comfortably, and he's masterfully catered the contrarian sector of the French population to do so. It's textbook medical malpractice. The damage caused by him is to be picked up by his colleagues, so, yeah, that's "violation de la fraternité".
You trust your government and medial institutions, fine. My government has been caught lying over and over “for the public good” during this pandemic, but also on topics like feminism. We know they would lie again without an afterthought like they have in the past, for example giving AIDS to people through blood transfusion (4000 victims because they didn’t want to be seen doubting) or Chernobyl (“Don’t worry, the cloud didn’t reach France” - It did), or bombing the Greenpeace boat with people inside in NZ, or giving 6 diplomatic passports to Benalla and when he was caught beating up political opponents for the service of the king, “seize his passport”... but not seizing the remaining 5 of them.
You may live in a democracy, but we don’t. We literally have laws that the press isn’t free to talk during the pandemic.
People don’t trust doctors and politicians, simply because they have been shown several times to not be trustworthy. The only remedy is not to take more or less precaution; the only remedy is to start being trustworthy, having open science, having a talk about the risks, and not trying to slander or sue people who have opinions that are not approved by the nomenklatura.
As a reminder, the Ordre des Médecins has sued Dr Raoult for “violating fraternity”. The rest of the accusations I’m not a doctor, but “violating fraternity”? Is that science we are talking about, does physics include “follow whatever the group says”?
In the end, as long as you believe it is a thing to “lie for the public good”, it is good to trust absolutely no figure we are given and doubt about every single thing you say.