I think that we often get hung up on the what-ifs of censorship while misinformation is doing damage right this second.
The problem is that people don't evaluate 2 narratives equally based on the information in them. If that was the case, you would just have to make sure that for every bogus report there is a reliable report, but once misinformation takes hold it takes a lot more than that to dislodge. The analogy I think of is that when presented with a table full of junk food, its hard to get people to pay attention to the veggie platter.
This study[1] indicates more success could be had with a new narrative that doesn't just refute the misinformation, but crafts a new narrative with additional information that can dislodge the other one, like a flank attack instead a head on one. Anecdotally I've seen that work and I've also been guilty of the lazy head on approach and seen it fail.
IMHO, this is an incredibly authoritarian point of view. It makes the assumption that the content being censored or banned is both wrong and damaging. I am not only referring to this specific case, but the interviewee here is ostensibly someone of expertise being a professor of medicine. That doesn't mean what they say is correct but at the very least they have direct knowledge of the topic.
In the grand scheme of things, there isn't much that is universally agreed upon even in professional/academic circles.
I would submit that limiting discussion because it doesn't fit the most wideley accepted or palatable narrative is a magnitude more dangerous than instead relying on people to take in all sides and decide for themselves.
Recall how Galileo Galilei was treated. History can and does repeat itself.
It is always authoritarian, yes. People do have the right to be wrong and make mistakes, that's part of an indivials personal sovereignty
That said, having tens of thousands die bringing innocent people with them to the grave is a matter of public policy and the very reason why governments are not direct democracies but republics instead
I am happy that this video was removed, not because I trust YouTube, but because I don't want to see people continue to die needlessly. Governments have other tools to provide economic sustenance to those that require it. And no, I won't go to the cinema, a mall or a restaurant simply "because they are open" as I don't have the brain of a child to risk myself and my family for it
There are many actors that want to convince you something bad, is good. Historically, cigarettes, sugar, even cocaine were advertised as healthy, or as better substitutes to things. Hell, even grain is still pushed by industry and government, when low-carb has a lot of evidence backing it.
Guess what happened when we decided "telling people sugar is great for kids" was bad? The government now regulates the information people are provided regarding nutritional content in food.
Speech isn't so easy, which is why the analogy still doesn't work.
I do agree, I wish we could live in such a world, but we indeed do not. That's why economics professionals receive nobel prices for their investigations into nudge economics and imperfect trade systems
Cows are not perfect spheres, and people are not perfect rational agents and that won't change for the foreseeable future so policy makers need to handle things with their avaliable policy tools, not the tools they wish they had
Should probably ban NHK to be broadcast in US while we are at it, maybe compel ISPs to do it, Great American Firewall we can call it. Japan not implementing any sort of western style lockdown at all. Ids going to school, people moving around shops open..
And THAT is exactly the issue. "Misinformation" uses the prefix "Mis", which is "...a prefix applied to various parts of speech, meaning “ill,” “mistaken,” “wrong,” “wrongly,” “incorrectly,” or simply negating: mistrial; misprint; mistrust."
As the Covid-19 situation, prognoses, diagnoses, testing procedures, and far more are PUBLICLY ADMITTED to be flawed, it is RIDICULOUS to silence ANYONE, let alone legitimate experts, even if they are engaging in WILD speculation.
FREEDOM OF SPEECH ONLY MATTERS WHEN THE SPEECH IS DISLIKED.
Think over that...deeply...speculation and experimentation may save your life....or not.
The explanation is in the first sentence: "Early data indicate a year-on-year 14% jump in fatality rates per distance driven in March, the document by the National Safety Council (NSC) says."
The number of deaths is down, but the deaths per mile are up.
If clicking something with a clickbaity name isn't your thing, I can save you a click. The cause is "more likely to be bites or stings from other arthropods such as fleas, skin reactions to chemicals or infections."
How do you know that it was a brown recluse? I'm not disputing, I'm just wondering if it was assumed based on the injury or if you were able to find the actual spider.
A friend later told me that MRSA sometimes mimics the same symptoms, but both occurred during summer, and not around other kids or in a hospital setting.
Unfortunately doctors tend to over diagnose a lot of things as brown recluse bites[1]. So, unless he specifically tested for it, there's a really good chance it wasn't a brown recluse bite.
Funny. 10 years ago, I lived at the northern edge of the brown recluse zone. I saw many spiders in my apartment building that looked like them - can't say for sure. Then one day I developed sudden swelling on my thigh. It went from nothing to fairly swollen in about 2 hours.
I went to the doctor and he said "Could be a spider bite, or could be a staph infection. No way to know - just take these antibiotics and pray."
Then earlier this year it happened again - at a similar spot. Doctor said the same thing. No brown recluses in this area, but he said it could be a different spider.
Progressive pricing of goods/commodities tied to CO2 emissions as a result of their production/consumption would be good. Transportation, energy, industry, and agriculture account for the majority of US greenhouse gas emission.
Charging heavy consumers at a progressively higher rate will ensure the heaviest emitters pay their share without disproportionally affecting low income or light emitters.
I've had discussions with coworkers and friends about this issue and similar issues where there is a lot of moral ambiguity but a lot less academic ambiguity - we basically know what works and doesn't work but what does work is not morally acceptable to about half the country. It is super frustrating to a lot of us because there doesn't seem to be a way to reach them, they can change their minds but only when they are personally affected by the issue but it doesn't seem to then spread much to their peers.
To paraphrase one conversation that reminded me a lot of the larger national conversation "I play by the rules, why shouldn't everyone else?". It didn't matter that punishment didn't help or in a lot of cases, was costing them more and having worse outcomes, the larger (and to me, more trivial) moral and emotional argument won out.
This sounds exactly right to me. In discussions with a religious friend of mine some years ago, I noticed that she had a tendency to conflate law and morality, when they really have nothing to do with each other. Further, she seemed to think that because it was illegal or bad to do something, it was reasonable to expect that people wouldn't do that thing as a result. I found (and find) this ridiculous - in large enough groups, you can use incentive/disincentive structures to push the population's behavior in a certain direction, but never with 100% effectiveness. Naturally, she disagreed.
The legal = moral line of thought is one of my most hated things to come across. It correlating with the highly religious makes sense, but it's by no means limited to them. It's incredibly wide spread in American culture to have at least a small degree of that, people always feel naughty when they break the law. I too find it ridiculous.
Keep in mind that there’s actually a path to breaking people out of this point of view, but it’s a really deep, dark rabbit hole, with lasting ramifications.
When you take this principle into account, however, a huge segment of the world makes much more sense, although the realities that become evident are kind of horrible.
The fastest path to lead people out of this mindset, is to prove to them their own error by bringing them in on some misbehavior (such that they perceive it as a serious violation of their own personal code), for which they both benefit from, experience no consequences, and find deep tempatation to repeat.
To broach the subject of crossing some personal line with a person like this raises an eyebrow. Crossing that line in front of them reveals a mixture of feelings. Inviting them to participate is met with uncertainty. Pulling the trigger with them gives way to a period of paranoia, until the coast is clear. Then, twice then, three times. Now, they’re convinced that morality isn’t set in stone, and laws are the commands of mere mortals, to be broken at will.
But, now what you have on your hands is a convert. Once conservative, and yet still as much, but eager to experiment and challenge their own views. This is where stereotypical morally abivalent, yet superficially conservative people come from. Seduced out of their naive, obedient world view, but entertaining dubious integrity. So now it’s no longer divine authority in an imperfect world conceived by some paranormal perfection, but instead, simply might makes right. And so, you get tasteless materialism, and a ruthlessness to obtain status.
After a certain age, this sort of thing really can’t happen with some people. When you’re a teenager, transgressing certain boundaries can be harmless and naive, but after a certain age, cheap thrills don’t work. That’s why we find a broad split of sheltered, uptight squares, mixed in with smaller segments of snobby, cavalier libertines or cheesey, greedy sociopaths.
It’s a distribution of age brackets for teenage misbehavior. The cornier the yuppie, the later in college they started breaking the rules, or maybe they never broke any rules, and that’s why they’re stuck with this holier-than-thou attitude.
I think he/she is suggesting that project maven wasn't as bad as people made it out to be. It's unclear from the lack of context _why_ they think that.
This is one of my favorite Arthur C Clark books. What makes his books so interesting is that the technology aspects are very much sidelined by the human aspects. I don't think it appeals as much to people who enjoy hard sci-fi with a lot of jargon but I've always loved how interesting technological ideas are almost used offhandedly as plot devices but the real story is always the people (even if his concepts for the technology are groundbreaking to the reader or to the field at large).
I feel the same thing about renewable energy and climate change - a top down approach could have such massive impact, but a bottom up approach is so difficult. There are thousands of groups (there are literally a dozen probably coordinating together in my mid sized city alone) all trying to do the same work from the bottom up and on the ground with churches, local governments, individuals etc but it requires so much pressure and buy in from your average citizen to get anything done that way.
The problem is that people don't evaluate 2 narratives equally based on the information in them. If that was the case, you would just have to make sure that for every bogus report there is a reliable report, but once misinformation takes hold it takes a lot more than that to dislodge. The analogy I think of is that when presented with a table full of junk food, its hard to get people to pay attention to the veggie platter.
This study[1] indicates more success could be had with a new narrative that doesn't just refute the misinformation, but crafts a new narrative with additional information that can dislodge the other one, like a flank attack instead a head on one. Anecdotally I've seen that work and I've also been guilty of the lazy head on approach and seen it fail.
[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170912134904.h...