In 2018 Mitchell Baker (Mozilla CEO) received a total of $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla, which represents a 400% payrise since 2008. On the same period, Firefox marketshare was down 85%. When asked about her salary she stated "I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to."
By 2020 her salary had risen to over $3 million, while in the same year the Mozilla Corporation had to lay off approximately 250 employees due to shrinking revenues. Baker blamed this on the Coronavirus pandemic.
I don't understand the allegories to feudalism when jesters who crossed a line weren't censored but executed. (I would guess specially if they expressed or supported any sort of anti-monarchy or anti-their-monarchs viewpoints)
Actually, it was a chief job of the jester to cross the line when other members of the court could not. Jesters, as all court members, had a natural fear of execution, but probably not any higher than any of the other courtiers.
maybe peasant is a better allegory; he works the lord's lands solely at the lord's discretion, keeps a tiny share of what is produced and is ejected at will
Apparently some jesters were used as messengers during campaigns / sieges and if the recipient didn't like the message they would be trebucheted back to whomever sent them.
You can't properly understand something if you can't question it. When you elevate any idea to unquestionable capital-T Truth, you blind yourself to the actual truth. You break the only mechanism we've ever discovered for figuring out how the world actually works. Censorship of anything is the enemy of human progress and always has been.
I heard a good definition of what it means to be rational the other day. If I remember correctly it was a simple as being open to error correction. Perhaps this is a statement by David Deutsch, I don’t remember right now. But I like the definition very much. If you can’t communicate how are you going to do error correction?
I can agree with you, but the issue is that this isn't an academic discussion on the merits of thorough vaccine trials. Here's the third verse:
"Let’s go, Brandon, we know he cappin’ Patriots out in the street takin’ action Huntin’ us down for speakin’ the truth (Huh) Beat down the PEDO, let’s save all the youth (Uh huh) Media lyin’, ignore all the cryin’ They buildin’ back better, but only the Taliban (What?) Pilots on strike, but to Joe, it’s irrelevant Open the border, lose all the order Divide us up so they know what we never win But we united, we here in the stadiums (Let’s go) Everyone chantin’ it, CNN slanderin’ (Let’s go) Biden collaspin’ and Democrats stealin’ it (Facts) Ayy, we look at Joe, can we get a refund? (Brandon) How ‘bout some mean tweets? (Facts) Joe is a crook, and he knows how to decieve F.J.B. is the motto in these streets, let’s go, Brandon sing it with me"
I see a lot of claims but no questions. This wasn't written to question, it was written to enforce ideas already held by the listener. I agree that the song shouldn't be censored, but I also think it doesn't have any right to be promoted or distributed by third parties. YouTube has as much of a right to take the song down as Sound Cloud has to leave it up, which is exactly equal to any venue that chooses to let him perform on stage.
YouTube certainly has that right, but they enforce it at the risk of losing any credibility on claims of impartiality or “holding free speech as a core value,” like their CEO bragged about last month.
But yes, I totally agree – the song “Fuck Donald Trump” has been on YouTube for 5+ years with millions of views, and YouTube has every right to take it down.
If you're referring to anything related to Covid there's no well-established scientific consensus it literally just happened around year and a half ago it's impossible to have scientific consensus.
Even the most respected scientists are saying they don't know about a lot of things related to covid.
also well-established scientific consensus is not an ideal goal post .
Galileo was excommunicated.
Labotomies won the Nobel prize.
Nothing is certain in life when human beings are involved no matter how comforting that thought is. There is only a narrative of certainty.
> also well-established scientific consensus is not an ideal goal post .
It indeed is. As a layperson who knows nothing about a field, not even a closely related field your best bet is to accept the scientific consensus. And by best bet I mean that that that is the choice that will give you the highest expected value of success.
People keep pointing at the cases from the past (sometimes from the very far past, like with Galileo) trying to disprove this strategy. There are at least two fatal flaws with this logic:
1. science has evolved a lot since then. And it doesn't just mean that we know more about those specific subjects (be it astronomy or neuroscience) but more importantly, the scientific method has evolved too. I.e. when we think we know something today, is very different from what it was a 100 or 500 years ago.
2. Of course, scientists can be wrong. Even en masse (i.e. the scientific consensus). (If it wasn't so, we may not need research any more after all because we'd know everything.) But going completely wrong is pretty rare and what is exactly your other option? Listening to lunatics? Because every lunatic will say "yeah, but the scientists are wrong all the time, so..." and go on with their 100% unfounded claims. No, it's not that they do research because they don't accept the consensus. That would be totally OK. They just make claims that they support with this very vague critique. "Lobotomy won a Nobel prize, which we know don't work, so who is to tell me that I'm wrong with my claims that I have nothing to support."
> Nothing is certain in life when human beings are involved no matter how comforting that thought is. There is only a narrative of certainty.
Nobody said it was. This is a big fat strawman. But just because (almost) nothing is 100% certain, it doesn't mean that we don't have more probable and less probable answers.
Sure. As you don't have certainty but you have to make decisions.
> Science is not the ultimate source of truth,
Science is our current best approximation of reality. But yes, it's not ultimate and we indeed do know that it's inaccurate. But we don't know better. And that's also important to keep in mind.
> it is data with a risk reward attached that you can use for your own critical thinking
Yes, but there's a trap here. It's OK as long as you base your decisions on your best knowledge (i.e. science). You can say that based on your risk profile (which you can estimate using science) the best decision (bet! :) ) for you is X. That's rational. However, a lot of people interpret similar claims as if it would be rational use what they think is "critical thinking" to override science. And that's a huge difference.
To be more specific. E.g. there is huge difference in saying that I believe that (accept the assumption) mRNA vaccines are safe with a 99999/100000 probability (i.e. cause cause serious side effects at most 1 out of 100 000 times) but I estimate my COVID risk lower, because the way I isolate myself (let's say you do have the data). I don't meet anyone, don't go outside, I'm 25yo, I work out, I don't have a condition, etc.
Vs. if someone says that "yeah, they say it's safe, but I don't think so, because this and that". Because that's not critical thinking. That's actually the lack of self reflection/critique. Even if someone reads up on some literature and they base their opinion on that, that almost certainly will just be cherry picking (it's hard to do better in a field someone knows nothing about).
> But people now are treating as an infallible religion that
> you can outsource your critical thinking to...which is scary imo.
I don't see this. I probably see more people who are so afraid of making the wrong decision that they actually end up making the wrong decision :). Again, "critical thinking" sounds good, but a lot of time it's not critical thinking. Some people may feel insecure if they just accept someone else's decision or opinion even if that someone else knows lot better. And it may feel safe to make your own decision (which, almost by definition has to be different). But that's a bad intuition. If you have no better information to base your decision on than your best source (in this case, science) then your end results will just be worse by adding in your thinking (your inferior data sources and inference).
Given that there is no way to measure absolute scientific progress, this is a meaningless and baseless claim.
At the time of Galileo, scientists had, after many centuries, perfected their means of calculating geocentric orbits. Thee equations worked extremely well. Experts at the time would have told you that science had progressed significantly since the time of Aristotle. Yet it had progressed in a completely wrong direction.
There is no reason to believe science is somehow progressed perfectly today in every arena.
There are, of course ways we can measure progress. E.g. by measuring the results of applying science and scientific results to practical problems. Since we talk about medical sciences here, life expectancy is a good measure. So is being able to cure specific classes of diseases. And these are off the top of my head, I'm pretty sure someone into the philosophy of science could come up with much better and more general metrics.
> At the time of Galileo, scientists had, after many centuries, perfected their means of calculating geocentric orbits.
Again, Galileo had a clash with the catholic church not really fellow scientists.
> Thee equations worked extremely well.
I'm not so sure. Galileo came up with his theory based on what geo-centric view couldn't explain.
> Experts at the time would have told you that science had progressed significantly since the time of Aristotle.
> Yet it had progressed in a completely wrong direction.
Which was true. They indeed got ahead, because they also had to perfect the math and measurements, etc. Not just the descriptions of the orbits. Also, BTW, Galileo was wrong. He thought the Sun was the center of the freaking universe, which it isn't at all.
Also what are you then arguing for? If you can't say that science evolves and improves over time then what's wrong with censorship? Those ideas that you think would be censored (I didn't exactly say that, but let's go with it for now) would not improve science. Or, at least we wouldn't be able to measure it, according to you.
The way I like to think about it is that science is a machinery that constantly builds and improves itself. It not only gets 'bigger' but it constantly gets better and building itself by improving the scientific method itself. E.g. if you think about medical sciences again, 150 years ago doctors would experiment on themselves (n=1) and use their "experience" (i.e. a small amount of inaccurate measurements aggregated in their head). These days we do double blinded, randomized controlled trials and funky statistic checks to filter out errors, then other people look over the results multiple times (think peer reviews and meta-analysises). It's an iterative process that keeps correcting and perfecting itself. And we do know when we go in the wrong directions because results will be off from the reality.
Yet with that knowledge you have come to the conclusion that the mRNA vaccine is perfectly safe after being developed in 6 months and tested in humans for only a year-ish?
Oh, great. Yes, imperfect but improves iteratively. But I never said that the mRNA vaccine (or any vaccine, for that matter - we also have vector vaccines and even inactivated ones) is perfectly safe.
Indeed, what I was saying is that it's illogical to expect it to be perfectly safe. That would only make sense if contracting COVID was (proven to be) perfectly harmless. But the thing is that you are forced to make a decision and you don't have complete knowledge about the consequences of neither of your (two) choices. However, the (imperfect) experts say that the vaccines are way safer than contracting covid unvaccinated. And if anything, we both know that they have a lot better chance to be right than us.
> after being developed in 6 months
This doesn't really matter given the above (that you should listen to those who know a lot better), but the 6 months is far from being true. They started experimenting with the coronavirus vaccines back in 2003 and there was ongoing research ever since then. I've just seen a video from 5 years ago where a virologist guy talks about their bat coronavirus research at the local (Hungarian) science meetup.
The mRNA platform itself has been under development for over 3 decades, too. But again, you can go for adenovirus vector vaccines, which are a more tested technology. In some part of the world you can get inactivated vaccines (e.g. here, in Hungary we had one from Shinopharm), but they don't do that well against SARS-CoV2. However, the actual candidate for Pfizer's (well, BioNTech's) vaccine was done in something like 2 weeks, IIRC. But that was only possible because of the decades of earlier research. In part the mRNA technology itself, in part because they could skip the animal testing thanks to the SARS-CoV1 vaccines developed around 2003. (But the animal testing only protects the phase1 maybe phase2 participants, anyway. It's not that a vaccine sometimes takes years because they experiment on animals for years with a vaccine candidate that otherwise seems perfectly viable.)
>> However, the (imperfect) experts say that the vaccines are way safer than contracting covid unvaccinated.
False. SOME (imperfect) experts say this.
SOME experts say taking an unknown vaccine for a healthy person in an age group that is not at risk of Covid is creating an unnecessary (unknown) vaccine risk for themselves especially considering the vaccines are made by profit driven companies that haven't been particularly human welfare focused in the past.
>>They started experimenting with the coronavirus vaccines back in 2003
Thalidomide is based off of benzodiazepens which had been developed over a hundred years before Thalidomide was invented.
Still made unexpected flipper babies.
Have you even made a tiny tweak in a code base and the whole thing broke?
Now apply this to a biochemical system which is infinitely more complex.
Yeah, the social media and the internet is full of these claims and I see how these are pretty easy to believe when told with enough confidence. Which was an interesting revelation for me.
Since the average person doesn't know much about the background (me included!) and since a similar claim takes a lot of knowledge to disprove it just sounds plausible by default. Because if someone makes a more specific claim, like "this is how sars-cov-2 enters the cells" or "this drug works" (or doesn't work) that's easy to check and then, if not true, disprove with published papers. The "we don't know this" is harder. Even if you pull up a paper, the goal post indeed will be moved ever so slightly and if the claim is more broad then you need to be a knowledgable expert to be able to say where the gaps are in the knowledge and how likely, when discovered/understood that new knowledge would change the field substantially.
Since I became interested, I started learning a bit of virology online. Vincent Racaniello, a professor of virology at Columbia has an online course on youtube. This semester he teaches it directly with a focus on the average layperson [1]. Each session is 2 hours long and you can ask questions which he answers. It's not about covid, it's about virology in general but he does include the relevant pieces of information abour sars-cov-2 into every lesson/topic. He actually has his previous courses taught to undergrad (or graduate?) students online as well. Those seem to be just 1 hour long each, but based on a quick look at the slides the content is identical.
Now what it teaches to everyone interested is that they know a lot. They have astonishingly detailed knowledge about how viruses work in general and they have learned a lot about sars-cov-2 very quickly. But given the general virology knowledge, you won't be surprised at the things they looked at first.
My undergrad is in biology and I got it many years ago. I can only imagine how much has changed since then.
Does anyone think that in the infinite complexity of the human body and the immune system that we think we have 'figured covid out' by discovering a single spike protein?
There's such an endless possibility of how Covid can interact with the body.
We are just touching the surface of how the body works.
They just discovered a new organelle in cells this year.
So for any single group to claim a monopoly on truth and censor other views, especially with only a year and a half of study... is a major problem.
1., nobody said "we figured covid out". I said we learned a lot about it pretty quickly. (BTW, coronaviruses and SARS in particular have been researched pretty intensively since 2003, the first SARS pandemic.)
2., they didn't just discover a "single spike protein"
> There's such an endless possibility of how Covid can interact with the body.
Actually, no. There are indeed very definitive ways SARS-CoV2 (or any virus, for that matter) can interact with the body. It's not a living thing. It needs to get into specific type of cells and it can only do it through the spike protein which will only bind to the ACE2 receptor. As long as/if it doesn't happen, the virus is an inert particle. E.g. it won't proliferate in mice (without genetically making them susceptible) or in most other animals. Also, we have a lot of virus particles in us that can't interact with the human cells, so we'll never know about them. One interesting comment from the above curse was that prof. Racaniello said that you can learn bout your "virome" by sequencing your stool and some experiment found that the most frequent virus in there is some plant virus (which don't even have the capability to enter even plant cells by themselves).
> also well-established scientific consensus is not an ideal goal post
Genuinely asking, how should I evaluate truth in a subject matter that I myself don't have a doctorate in if the standard of "what is general consensus among the people with doctorates in the subject" isn't reasonable?
What evidence is there that a general consensus on a thesis indicates that it is necessarily true? Is it rational simply to accept a consensus, effectively taking something on faith?
That was not an answer to his question, and I am really curious for an answer to it because I think it's a valid and reasonable point.
Also, as to whether believing scientific general consensus should count as "faith" or not, I invite you to read Issac Asimov's short essay "The Relativity of Wrong".
OP's question appears to invert the burden of proof in assuming that a consensus, even of experts, ought to be believed unless there are compelling reasons not to accept it.
Where is the evidence that a consensus is a good metric for the truth of a matter? Has there been any work done to establish such a correspondence?
Asimov seems to be arguing that there are degrees of wrongness, and one can become less wrong by a process of rational error elimination and criticism. How does the mere fact of a consensus have any bearing on this process?
> OP's question appears to invert the burden of proof in assuming that a consensus, even of experts, ought to be believed unless there are compelling reasons not to accept it.
Again, I pose the question, what is a reasonable alternative?
>Asimov seems to be arguing that there are degrees of wrongness, and one can become less wrong by a process of rational error elimination and criticism. How does the mere fact of a consensus have any bearing on this process?
The scientific process IS a process of rational error elimination and criticism. Scientific consensus is the result of the majority of experts in a field using the scientific process to agree on the "least wrong" information possible given the data available at that time. If you claim not to see the bearing on this process, you're being dishonestly obtuse.
> Where is the evidence that a consensus is a good metric for the truth of a matter? Has there been any work done to establish such a correspondence?
I think you have the causal chain backwards; the evidence of a good metric for the truth of a matter is what builds consensus. If the evidence is incompatible with consensus, and it holds up to scrutiny & reproduction, then the consensus changes to match. Either way, the end result is that consensus is an improving approximation to "the truth". If you have a better way of obtaining "the truth", I would be very glad to learn about it.
>Again, I pose the question, what is a reasonable alternative?
Again, this inverts the burden of proof. There is no obligation to provide any alternative, and no obligation to defer to a consensus in the absence of one.
>Scientific consensus is the result of the majority of experts in a field using the scientific process to agree on the "least wrong" information possible given the data available at that time. If you claim not to see the bearing on this process, you're being dishonestly obtuse.
I see no evidence that this narrative is generally true, and it is a very weak argument for taking consensus as a metric of truthfulness.
>If you have a better way of obtaining "the truth", I would be very glad to learn about it.
One does not require a better way of obtaining the truth in order to avoid committing oneself to accepting unjustified claims. Again, such a requirement inverts the burden of proof.
> There is no obligation to provide any alternative, and no obligation to defer to a consensus in the absence of one. ... One does not require a better way of obtaining the truth in order to avoid committing oneself to accepting unjustified claims.
In order to act on a claim (inaction is also an action; "avoid committing oneself to accepting" is just ornate wording for choosing inaction) one must evaluate the "probability of truth" of said claim. To my knowledge, scientific consensus is the most reliable source to inform that evaluation. Since you fail to provide a more effective alternative, then it seems that scientific consensus is at least non-inferior to any other method either of us is currently aware of. Thus it is the rational choice on which to base action; basing them on a less reliable source gives a higher probability of being "wrong", and thus would be irrational.
> I see no evidence that this narrative is generally true.
Honest answer: Then I invite you to attend a consensus conference, or enough of them for the p-value on your evaluation of how they run to reach whatever level is acceptable to you.
Tongue-in-cheek answer: You also have no evidence you aren't a simulated agent in an advanced species' super-computer (Descartes's "brain in a jar"). At some point, you have to choose some axioms and build your world-view from there.
>In order to act on a claim (inaction is also an action; "avoid committing oneself to accepting" is just ornate wording for choosing inaction) one must evaluate the "probability of truth" of said claim.
There is no requirement to evaluate the truth value of an ill defined, nonsensical or self-contradictory claim. In fact, a claim of that nature may as well be regarded as being meaningless. On those grounds, it makes no sense even to speak of probability in regard to such a claim.
>Honest answer: Then I invite you to attend a consensus conference
A 'consensus conference' may do one of two things:
1) It may dedicate itself to the evaluation of rational argument and evidence, in which case it is the argument and evidence that matters, and the consensus is irrelevant.
2) Some other means may be used to arrive at consensus, in which case it may be irrational, or at the very best, unscientific.
Note that the position that OP advanced, and which you appear to be defending is that the bare fact of the existence of a consensus should be treated as primary evidence on its own. At best, a consensus is secondary evidence, a pointer to the real crux of discussion, and treating it as primary evidence is a category error which is only compounded by the air of authority implied by a consensus which adds psychological coercion into the mix.
>There is no requirement to evaluate the truth value of an ill defined, nonsensical or self-contradictory claim.
Calling a claim "ill defined, nonsensical or self-contradictory" is already an evaluation of it's probable truth value.
> Note that the position that OP advanced, and which you appear to be defending is that the bare fact of the existence of a consensus should be treated as primary evidence on its own.
Actually, the person you responded to clearly stated: "how should I evaluate truth in a subject matter that I myself don't have a doctorate in". For someone well-versed in the area, or at least with enough free time to become sufficiently acquainted with it, going to directly to primary evidence is the optimal approach. However, in the situation described by OP, were they are limited in the amount of time and cognitive capacity they can invest, then basing decisions on such "Secondary evidence" as expert consensus is the rational approach.
Nope. It's not that it's ought to be believed. The thing, in general, is that you always make a choice with your beliefs and decisions. When you make a decision (vaccinate or not to vaccinate, wear a mask, don't wear a mask) then you choose between two options and in the end who you believe.
A lot of people like to formulate this for themselves as being open and not accepting some kind of "dogma". Which sounds good, you stay open, what do you have to lose? (BTW, accepting the scientific consensus doesn't mean that you can't change your mind when new information comes in, but that's a tangent.)
But the thing is that when you have to make a decision then you have to accept some claims as being true (for at least the duration of making the decision). And that's when you have to ask yourself (as a layperson): who is more likely to be right? Which model is going to be more close to the reality? Science, the majority of scientists or some random dude? (Including maybe those few seemingly legit scientists who "speak up" in social media stating that all other scientists have gone completely wrong, including virologists and epidemiologists. But that one bloke is right.) And can that solo dude be right in theory? Yes, of course. Is he likely to be right? Well, looking back at the history of science it's rare, it doesn't last too long (until others realize and change their opinion) and it's getting more rare (as the scientific method evolves).
So yeah, no burden of proof on anyone, just a meaningful strategy for those outside of the field (any given field). Those doing research should always prove they are right. But, to get back to the original topic, that's not done in social media. That's done in scientific publications through peer reviewed papers. And, of course, the scientific consensus itself is supported by those so talking about shifting the burden of proof makes no sense at all. The proof is there for the consensus. That's the point.
Try to understand as much as possible and make your call that way. Most of the scientific questions in this world don't require you to have an opinion (I don't much care which rocket fuel is better; I'll let others argue over that).
Covid and Climate Change are interesting because certain conclusions related to them have a direct impact on you and I. The ruling class would certainly like you to believe one conclusion over all the others and that conclusion might even be 'correct' in terms of being beneficial to you or humans as a whole, but asking people to believe that conclusion because of some 'consensus' is fraught with both logical and mortal peril as history has shown us time and time again.
A lot of parts of science and math are very different from the 60's while a lot of remains the same!
How do you make sense of all of this and wrangle objective truth from the chaos?
That's an epistomological question people have been asking since the dawn of mankind.
IS there even objective truth that our limited monkey/human mind can grasp?
I don't know the answer!...but I know censoring a multitude of opinions and claiming a monopoly on objective truth in an infinite world of chaos is not the way to do it.
It's not about censoring the opinions in general. Again, it's about censoring fake news on social media. Nobody wants to censor research (I know it's more complicated, because of what gets funded and what not) or publishing in peer reviewed papers. Heck, as a result of the pandemic, peer reviews got even quicker and a lot of research gets publicity when they get on pre-print servers (i.e. pre-review)! That doesn't sound like claiming monopoly on the truth to me.
You could argue that social media is an important outlet for new scientific ideas, results and discoveries but then you'd have to prove that not censoring there and letting the fakes run wild adds more value than the harm caused by the fakes. And the we know that the latter effect exists. I'd say that even if there is added value here (TBH, I don't see it at all), it's overwhelmed by the harm. Any scientifically valuable contribution that is only spread through the social media will be lost in the noise of nonsense.
Did you ever think to yourself maybe the reason so many people are anti-(Covid)-vaxxers is not that they're brainwashed? Its that the anti-vaxx people may have a point?
Many major scientific breakthroughs were made outside of the 'institution of science' and peer reviewed papers.
Joseph Lister discovered antiseptic theory during routine medical practice and was mocked at first by other doctors who didn't want to switch instruments between surgurys.
Galileo was excommunicated for going against mainstream science.
But both of their ideas won out in the end.
If you need censorship and coercion of any sort to force your ideas on people, if to need to limit the avenues which ideas are shared .. you need better ideas.
You keep repeating yourself and don't respond to what I'm saying (even though I do address your arguments). I didn't talk about whether I thought anti-vaxxers were brain washed, so it's a strawman. And I've already explained in detail what's the problem with bringing up individual examples especially from the far past where some scientists were right against the majority. So I see 0 point in you coming up with more and more examples.
> Joseph Lister discovered antiseptic theory during routine medical practice and was mocked at
> first by other doctors who didn't want to switch instruments between surgurys.
Just to mention an earlier, related case: there was a Hungarian guy called Ignaz Semmelweis [1] who figured out the importance of antiseptics before Lister. He had very tragic fate. He published his results then he was mocked by fellow doctors, he basically went crazy for not being able to make a change (though he may have had a condition too), put into an insane asylum, where he died after a short time at the age of 47.
He gets little credit outside of Hungary (where I'm from) because he didn't figure out the exact biological causes for the infections (he didn't connect these to bacteria) so some science historians think he was just right by accident. But that's not true. He used observations and statistics to identify that the cause of the relatively common death due to childbed fever of women after giving birth was infection by the doctors who also did autopsy. He had a wrong theory about how "cadaverous matter" would cause illness through decomposition which would make both dead bodies and doctors hand smell. And he found that chlorinated lime solution would remove the smell and thus he though the "cadaverous material" so he started using it to wash his hands and convinced colleagues in the hospital to do the same which resulted in a rapid and sharp improvements in the death statistics. (So again, while his theory was wrong, his method and results were right.)
But as I said above, science has built in these experiences and this knowledge, so science to day is built on much better foundations and better methods than in Semmelweis' or Lister's time. And it's not that just we know more because we accepted their discoveries. We know how to do science better, how to be right more often and wrong less frequently. And again: what's your alternative suggestion? Where's your proof that discussing all these "alternate opinions", which completely ignore the scientific method, on social media gives any better results (and, indeed not worse results)?
The "you need better ideas" assumption is not only unfounded it's also naive and wrong. We have experiments to show that people believe stupid things even if/when they do have access to the scientific truth. Because the former can be formulated in more attractive, easier to digest ways than the reality. (After all, they don't have to match reality so they are way more malleable.) Unfortunately it's not about having access to better information or "better" ideas. You can't have better ideas than what matches the reality (or, in other words, your best current knowledge) but considerable fraction people get attracted to ideas based on not how "good" (meaningful, accurate) they are.
> Galileo was excommunicated for going against mainstream science.
Again, you already said that and I responded to that, which you 100% ignored, but I forgot to mention that:
a) Gallileo wasn't excommunicated, he was forced to retract his theories by the catholic church, not fellow scientists.
b) he was actually wrong. He thought the Sun was the center of the universe, which is clearly wrong. (But of course, less wrong and way more useful than the previous ideas. But that's the point: science evolves by getting things less wrong over time.)
Do you think Google and Facebook are putting every item that they ban through some sort of a scientific review were they carefully weigh the pros and cons of all the data of every side of a debate?
Like there's a bunch of older gentlemen with beards and pipes and philosophy phds sitting around a room discussing the cultural merits of the song wet ass pussy.
My best guess at how the censorship process works is there's a bunch of really low paid people that censor things based on a narrative page provided to them.
> Do you think Google and Facebook are putting every item that they ban through some sort of a scientific
> review were they carefully weigh the pros and cons of all the data of every side of a debate?
You're right, of course, they don't. OTOH, as I said earlier, there is very little scientific value (if any) in posting on social media, so this kind of censorship cannot hinder scientific advance/getting to know the reality better.
Also, they actually only seem to block pretty blatant cases (like if someone says that there is no pandemic or vaccines don't work) and most of the content is pretty primitive and low value anyway. I see a lot of this shit, either because the censorship is not too strict or because they put a lot less effort into the non-English corners of their networks. Actually, most things that FB marks with a warning that you should only trust official sources are scientifically correct posts (e.g. from research labs or experts posting valid research papers). And the stupidity, the "alternate view" seems to go undetected. I've reported quite a few blatantly stupid posts out of curiosity and none of them were taken down. Not even the "5G activates the vaccines" types.
> My best guess at how the censorship process works is there's a bunch of really low
> paid people that censor things based on a narrative page provided to them.
This seems pretty likely. That must be one of the reasons they don't act on most actual misinformation. Though they should be able to use technology, because a lot of the misinformation I see is either some post (or video) being shared a large number of times (they could give those special attention) or reposting of the same content (could be a video, but mostly copy&pasted text). Of course, there are stupid comments too, but those would be very hard to censor efficiently (without actually harming the discourse - even if not the scientific discourse).
There are also well known profiles that are dedicated to spreading misinformation that don't get censored at all. Again, here in Hungary there is a(n ex-)pharmacist who has been cranking out nonsense since the very beginning. He very likely is building his profile for the general elections next year (he did participate 4 and 8 years ago). But he might be simply just an idiot. He would be very easy to take down, given he's relatively high profile (as a denier by all means), FB could afford to have one of their more expensive collegaues to spend a few days on him. But they don't care. Actually, they are even motivated to keep him on the site because he generates a lot of interactions... So to me it seems that if anything, then we need more censorship, not less. (But it doesn't have to mean banning the discussion, even if they would just cut the obvious and blatant misinformation, that would help a lot.)
"Well-established scientific consensus" may not be perfect, but may I challenge you to provide an alternative with a better track record? It generally takes in new information and self-corrects over time. As I mentioned to someone else in this threat, Issac Asimov's essay "The Relativity of Wrong" may be old but it's still very relevant today.
There is so much data involved with even the smallest thing in this world we're barely even scratching the surface with science.
An expert may have a PhD and know 5000% more than you about a subject but compared to the amount of knowledge required to understand how the universe or any scientific subject works...their knowledge is smaller than a rounding error..and our current knowledge as a human race is too.
Experts are poking at the world just as much as the rest of us, they just have bigger sticks, and are wrong ALL the time. But being wrong is the first step to being right. Elon had the worlds most highly trained and advanced rocket scientists working for him at SpaceX and they still crashed a bunch of rockets. You get a second opinion even though medial doctors have many years of education, don't you?
The problem is not science or education, it's how humans understand truth.
I could be wearing a red and black flannel shirt and one expert would say the shirt is red and another expert say the shirt is black and both would be telling the truth, but neither is correct.
Now pretend that flannel shirt has trillions to infinite numbers of colors and you have science.
Scientific consensus is data with strong statistical significance that all scientists agree on. The shirt is clearly red! But it's only a small subset of data among infinite amounts of data in this world much of which we don't even know about and the human race probably never will. So while a scientific theory may be true, it may not be correct. And highly informed scientists can see just one part of the whole and claim it's the truth.
And it's hubris to claim otherwise, especially looking at how often scientific consensus has been on the wrong side of human history, with Mengele, Galileo, Labotomies, etc.
Thalidomide, the drug, would calm morning sickness and the scientific consensus was that it was a good drug from the limited amount of data they knew about at the time...until more data came in....and the scientific consensus changed on a dime.
The problem is humans have a desperate need to provide some sort of order to this absolute chaos we live in because the world is scary and we're going to die and people want immediate answers they can rely on to make sense of it all.
So they create narratives like religion, or scientific consensus, or political party and claim those are the one true answers and justify their success with the rain dance working or scientific data curing an illness or how cheap they made gas prices..ad infinitum.
Scientific consensus, religion, politics, are all merely single narratives to explain this insanely complex world.
And while all are important to listen to and can be very informative, they should only be SINGLE data points in your own critical thinking. There is no single source of truth. And there is no shortcut to the truth.
Anyone who claims to have the objective 'truth' in a world as infinitely complex as ours is a religion person, and if you follow them unskeptically you are an acolyte, and if you censor people who are questioning you, you fall into an inquisition type situation.
Both undefinable terms that are increasingly being used anytime the current Western establishment wishes to censor speech and silence their opponents.
When the Chinese or Russians do it, we call it out for what it is: censorship and abuse of power. It's even more insidious when it's done in supposedly free societies, because we wrap it up in a bow with these nebulous terms and feign noble intentions.
> It's even more insidious when it's done in supposedly free societies, because we wrap it up in a bow with these nebulous terms and feign noble intentions.
Yea they do that in China too. The Chinese have a particular knack IMO for flowery language that covers for various government shenanigans. Most censorship in China also takes place at whims of private enterprise, just like in the west.
When China is criticizing the US they call our abuses exactly what they are, while equivocating their own. Nothing new under the sun.
Did you really live through that whole Trump-era hate speech and harmful misinformation culture and not once stop to understand what that means? Did you do nothing more than repeat slogans without passing them through your human intellect first? I dare you to define those terms so that they mean anything other than "The enemy's tribe is bad because it's not the one I happened to fall into."
Not only can you not define the buzzwords you used, but you doubled down and used another ill-defined buzzword that you also won't know the meaning of.
You're a human being capable of far deeper thought than that. Why would you willfully cripple yourself so much? OK, that was a rhetorical question - you're intellectually crippling yourself to show allegiance to your tribe, membership in which satisfies some of your otherwise unmet emotional needs.
Mitchell Baker (Mozilla CEO) makes $3 million a year, and Mozilla asks you to donate "to help a nonprofit organization".
"On the same period, Firefox marketshare was down 85%. When asked about her salary she stated "I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to."
"By 2020 her salary had risen to over $3 million, while in the same year the Mozilla Corporation had to lay off approximately 250 employees due to shrinking revenues. Baker blamed this on the Coronavirus pandemic."
This lady then goes on and on talking about "social justice".
Also Google deal produces 90% of Mozilla's revenue. I would say Mozilla is really controlled opposition.
Mozilla has been prioritizing activism while the main product that brings the cash in falls behind. If the current trend continues, Mozilla will cease to exist. In a normal company, it should be focused on fixing this ASAP, but Mozilla seems contend continuing as is.
Does anyone know who actually controls the direction of the organization? How are the board members chosen/elected? Is there a way for the general public to pick other board members?
Importantly: The donations go to Mozilla Foundation, not to its for-profit subsidiary Mozilla Corp. MozCorp is who develop Firefox, the Foundation focuses more on political activism. If you want to help fund the people developing Firefox, one of the Corporation's paid products is the place to send your money.
I am not sure I want to know about your political opinions if you consider Mitchell as being "far-left" (not that I'm a great fan of hers). That is certainly not what the far left is, neither historically nor in the contemporary world.
"...That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to."
Can anyone explain what this actually means? It sounds like she's saying that taking a lower pay by 5x is too much to ask of her, but then "people and their families" doesn't make any sense, because its 1 person and 1 family.
Thats not even getting into how true is may or may not be, or how its still a lot of money overall, even if its not compared to the market overall.
How much do CEOs at similarly sized tech corporations get paid? It's fine to say you dislike the current CEO's performance, but I don't see how her compensation is relevant without other datapoints to compare to.
Mitchell Baker (Mozilla CEO) makes 3 million a year. It's actually very profitable for a nonprofit organization, isn't it?
"On the same period, Firefox marketshare was down 85%. When asked about her salary she stated "I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to."
This lady then goes on and on talking about "social justice".
"By 2020 her salary had risen to over $3 million, while in the same year the Mozilla Corporation had to lay off approximately 250 employees due to shrinking revenues. Baker blamed this on the Coronavirus pandemic."
i find the role of a "ceo" in mozilla as offensive as anything. for that matter any "management" role because it should be devs earning a buck while building cool software. nothing more, no paper pushing "managers" and ceos. why does mozilla need them anyways? who is forcing them to have one?
Mozilla needs a CEO for the same reason all companies need one. I find it disappointing how people grill open source or charity projects over spending money on management or marketing like it’s a waste. Do you think every other company spends this money just for fun? Or that it actually provides value to the business and helps them succeed?
Where's the value for Mozilla? A >80% reduction in userbase? A staggering loss in their ability to compete and recover their lost userbase due to laying off many of their highly-skilled technical staff?
If this CEO is providing value, I'm not seeing it.
It's possible that the CEO is right and the position is going for 5x less than market rate so only the bottom tier people want to take it. But also that Firefox is doomed no matter what they do. Chrome, Safari, and Edge are now all very good browsers that come by default. No one has a reason to install a different browser. An even cheaper CEO may not even be able to preserve the slow burn Mozilla is at and may just immediately crash it.
Whataboutism or whataboutery (as in "what about…?") is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy, which attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving the argument.
This bullshit has nothing to do with Brave. Brendan Eich (Brave CEO) was cancelled years ago, and the mob is still after him. That's what going on really, it's cancel culture at its finest.
I hate cancel culture even more than web3.