[HN Gopher] New Defaults ___________________________________________________________________ New Defaults Author : kaboro Score : 200 points Date : 2021-01-05 15:00 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (stratechery.com) (TXT) w3m dump (stratechery.com) | christiansakai wrote: | I wonder if in near future, the war against the West is best | taken by this approach, misinformation and pandemic. Seems like | this is the holy grail of weapon most effective against Western | thinking. | | If a nation X and Y and Z can work together to cook more virus | and more misinformation and intentionally release it in Western | countries, that would spell doom. This is the Prisoner's Dilemma | for Western countries. | mrfusion wrote: | Am I misreading or is this article suggesting forced medical | detention is a good idea? | _dark_matter_ wrote: | You are misreading. The article is suggesting that forced | medical detention was _effective_. It is also arguing that | free-market forces are effective (the opposite extreme). | gringoDan wrote: | I think that the relevant axis on which to evaluate countries' | default attitude towards COVID and technological progress isn't | authoritarianism vs. freedom, but rather peacetime vs. wartime | mindset. | | FDA approval processes (and many of the other governmental | processes in liberal democracies) are built around peacetime | opportunity costs. They prioritize safety over rushing to get a | vaccine out the door. When the opportunity cost changes (i.e., | there is a new global pandemic and lives are on the line) those | institutions have trouble updating their behavior accordingly. | | Conversely, authoritarian regimes are much more militant. You see | this in China's approach not only to the virus, but in audacious | economic initiatives (e.g. Belt & Road) and the defense of its | political ideology on the world stage. | | That mindset is actually similar to the democracies that have | responded best to COVID. Israel (very much a "wartime" country - | mandatory military service, surrounded by its enemies, etc.) is | blowing the rest of the world out of the water in its vaccination | implementation. In normal times, it is a powerhouse of | innovation, largely due to elite technological groups in the | military. South Korea (another country with mandatory military | service, enemy with nukes to the north) had a great COVID | response. And Taiwan, a country that faces constant existential | threat from China, | | > [E]xhibited the exact same sort can-do attitude alongside a | free press, elections, and pig intestines in the legislature. | | The US last had a "wartime" mindset during WW2. Many of the | innovations in the following period (nuclear physics, space race, | computers, etc.) can be directly attributed to the massive | mobilization effort and public-private partnerships of the time. | | So the question to ask is: How do we cultivate the wartime | mindset that leads to innovation? And if COVID can't catalyze | this, what can? | crummy wrote: | The peacetime vs wartime mindset doesn't really fit with New | Zealand's response. Maybe that's an outlier though. | ckemere wrote: | I think that the suggestion of a challenge-based Phase 3 trial is | poorly elucidated, not for the reasons mentioned in other threads | (the risk of severe reactions) but because they probably would | have revealed in more detail what the Phase 2/3 trials actually | _did_ reveal, that the vaccine is not 100% effective in | preventing infection. (Full disclosure - I participated in the | Moderna Phase 3 trial and will get vaccinated ASAP if it turns | out I was in the placebo group.) | | The incentives for Moderna/Pfizer/AZ are a bit complex here. If | they did a challenge study and discovered that 25% of vaccinated | individuals were infected but had lower viral loads, that might | have made it more difficult to get approved. Instead, doing what | they are doing - rolling out vaccination with zero public health | monitoring of folks after the fact allows them to avoid having to | deal with that. Moreover, for the anti-vaxxers, who currently | seem to have focused in on the fact that a tiny fraction of folks | appear to have an anaphylactic response to the lipid nanoshell on | the mRNA, it would have been easy to say "Oh, the vaccine doesn't | actually work at all." | | It's unfortunate, but certainly not the first time where | incentives are aligned to favor ignorance rather than maximum | knowledge. I think the really interesting question I have is | whether Moderna will continue to follow their Phase 3 | participants after they are all unblinded and vaccinated. If they | do, and do a good job of assessing changes in antibodies, then | I'll be really impressed with their ethics. | xapata wrote: | > tiny fraction of folks appear to have an anaphylactic | response | | It's one thing to know it's a tiny fraction, another to have a | friend in the hospital overnight. I'll take my vaccine anyway, | but ... yikes. | ivanbakel wrote: | This post unfortunately fails to honestly engage with its own | counterarguments. Note to the author: you can't make a thinkpiece | balanced by bringing up opposing points if you're just going to | dismiss them out-of-hand. | | >Second, it should be the default that the status quo is a bad | thing; instead of justifying why something should be done, the | burden of proof should rest on those who believe things should | remain the same. | | This is ignorant of the cost of change. That cost is the main | reason why society collectively assumes that "the system works". | Arguments for change have to first attack that notion - as | communists, fascists, and all other kinds of anti-conservatives | do. None of them believe that change, in and of itself, is | valuable. | | Likewise, the author's talk of opportunity cost neglects the | price of failure - in doing a retrospective analysis (like the | one of vaccine development), it's easy to ignore the | counterfactuals that never actually happened. But leaving them | out means that your analysis is meaningless. Would the author be | convinced to write the same article if the vaccine had been | rolled out in January, and as a result the world suffered a | second thalidomide scandal? | pdonis wrote: | _> Would the author be convinced to write the same article if | the vaccine had been rolled out in January, and as a result the | world suffered a second thalidomide scandal?_ | | A better comparison would be the swine flu vaccine in 1976. | According to Wikipedia [1], about 45 million people were | vaccinated and 362 of them suffered Guillan-Barre syndrome. | Only 1 person died of the actual swine flu. | | But that comparison actually makes Ben's case _stronger_. What | if all 330 million people in the US had been vaccinated against | COVID, and 1 in 100,000 of them (about the same proportion as | for the 1976 vaccine) had serious side effects? Even if all of | those side effects were fatal (and they wouldn 't be), that | would still be only 3,300 deaths--less than 1 percent of the US | COVID death count currently reported. And even leaving aside | that not all side effects would be fatal, that death count is | clearly an overestimate, since in the US people would be given | the choice whether to be vaccinated, and not all Americans | would take it. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_swine_flu_outbreak | ivanbakel wrote: | That's assuming that we have already seen the worst-case | outcome for a rushed vaccine - which I don't think is true. | Human medicine is sufficiently complex that its negative | consequences are extremely ripe for black swan events. | | From that perspective, your argument falls in the same hole | as Ben's: based on a retrospective view of bounded outcomes, | you are trying to argue about unbounded future events. The | real risk of a rushed vaccine rollout is not a repeat of the | 1976 incident, but a medical disaster which is unpredictably | and massively worse. Modern medical red tape exists precisely | because of the risk of such disasters. | pdonis wrote: | _> That 's assuming that we have already seen the worst- | case outcome for a rushed vaccine_ | | Why don't you think the swine flu vaccine, which was much | _more_ rushed than the current COVID vaccine, was | reasonably close to a worst case outcome? Or at least close | enough to serve as an upper bound estimate for side effects | from the COVID vaccine? | | _> based on a retrospective view of bounded outcomes, you | are trying to argue about unbounded future events_ | | That's just as true of our actual response to COVID--none | of the so-called "experts" ever really considered where we | are now as a possibility back when doing so would have | mattered. | | _> a medical disaster which is unpredictably and massively | worse_ | | You mean like _what actually happened with COVID_? | | _> Modern medical red tape exists precisely because of the | risk of such disasters._ | | No, it doesn't. Modern medical red tape exists because our | approach to risk is extremely one-sided; we punish | regulators only when something bad happens that we think | they could have prevented, not when something good fails to | happen that they could have enabled. For example, the FDA | took ten years longer than European regulators to approve | beta blockers for people at risk for heart attacks. A rough | estimate is that 100,000 heart attacks were suffered by | Americans during those ten years that could have been | prevented. But no regulator got punished for allowing those | 100,000 deaths to happen. | sooheon wrote: | > A better comparison would be the swine flu vaccine in 1976. | | I don't see how we can know that this is representative of | the worst possible outcomes. | pdonis wrote: | Why not? Note that I'm only using it as an estimate of what | fraction of people would be expected to suffer serious side | effects from a hastily developed vaccine. And it doesn't | even need to be an overall worst case estimate, just a | reasonable upper bound for the fraction of people who could | be expected to suffer serious side effects from the COVID | vaccine. | | Also note that the swine flu vaccine was not an RNA | vaccine, it was an ordinary flu vaccine using, as far as I | know, deactivated virus. RNA vaccines are inherently safer. | 1996 wrote: | > Even if all of those side effects were fatal (and they | wouldn't be), that would still be only 3,300 deaths--less | than 1 percent of the US COVID death count currently | reported. | | No, because even if you assume no black swan (ex: zombie | outbreak due to bad QC control of a new and untested mRNA | technology) you are trading less old people death for more | young people death. | | Why should I increase my low risk of death even by 5% to save | an old person that has maybe 1 year left to live anyway? | pdonis wrote: | I explicitly said in my post that people would be given the | _choice_ of whether or not to take the vaccine. You could | simply refuse if you thought your risk from the vaccine was | higher than your risk from COVID. But that old person whose | life you so blithely discount might make a different | choice. That 's how a free country is supposed to work. | 1996 wrote: | You assume people will be given the choice to get | vaccinated. | | I believe it will be as "optional" as not having a SSN or | a bank account: in theory possible, in practice with so | many hurdles that people will relent. | | (ex: ban unvaccinated people from plane, train and bus | interstate travel using the TSA for controls) | pdonis wrote: | _> You assume people will be given the choice to get | vaccinated._ | | I assumed that they _would_ in my hypothetical, yes. That | 's in a USA that was even capable of considering that | option a year ago, the concept of a "free country" would | be understood. | | In the actual USA of now, that concept is _not_ | understood; just as the article under discussion says, | our current society combines the worst features of | freedom with the worst features of authoritarianism, and | gets the benefits of neither. Your hypothetical about how | vaccination will be handled is an example of that. In | other words, you are giving further evidence that the | status quo in the USA is not working and needs to change. | ghiculescu wrote: | Your example will almost certainly happen in a few | months. pdonis is just suggesting the same thing happen, | but 6 months earlier. | ghaff wrote: | The Federal government probably has very little authority | outside, perhaps, of federal property. States _may_ be | able to implement their own requirements. But private | organizations like airlines, universities, and companies | can do pretty much whatever they want. Qantas has already | said they 're going to require vaccinations for | international flights. | potatoz2 wrote: | > What if all 330 million people in the US had been | vaccinated against COVID, and 1 in 100,000 of them (about the | same proportion as for the 1976 vaccine) had serious side | effects? | | What your comment and the article both miss are the second | order costs to safety failures: it's not only the immediate | side effects that are a problem, but rather the change in | behavior coming from the rest of the population. | | If you think that 330 million people would have gotten a | vaccine that had not gone through any safety trial, even | though a large portion of the population is still unsure | after the phase 3 trials, I think you're deluding yourself. | If, on top of that, you had widely reported and exaggerated | ("free speech" at work) reports of side effects, the | percentage of willing volunteers falls dramatically. | Vaccinating 5% of the population in January doesn't really | help. | maxerickson wrote: | _What your comment and the article both miss are the second | order costs to safety failures: it 's not only the | immediate side effects that are a problem, but rather the | change in behavior coming from the rest of the population._ | | Yeah, it'd be a damn shame if a big chunk of the country | had lunatic ideas about vaccinations. | pdonis wrote: | _> it 's not only the immediate side effects that are a | problem, but rather the change in behavior coming from the | rest of the population._ | | That's just as true of our actual responses to COVID. | | _> If you think that 330 million people would have gotten | a vaccine_ | | I explicitly said in my post that not all Americans would | choose to take the vaccine. You are attacking a straw man. | I was simply giving the highest possible upper bound to the | expected number of deaths from vaccination. | | _> a large portion of the population is still unsure after | the phase 3 trials_ | | Yes, and why is that? Because despite all of our | "respected" institutions saying that the vaccine is safe, | _many people don 't believe them_. Why not? Because they | know that those same institutions _lied to them_ , | repeatedly--and not just in general, _specifically_ during | the whole COVID crisis. So why should people believe those | institutions now? | | In other words, we have a problem _with the status quo_. | | _> If, on top of that, you had widely reported and | exaggerated ( "free speech" at work) reports of side | effects, the percentage of willing volunteers falls | dramatically._ | | Who would be reporting and exaggerating the side effects in | a way that everyone would hear about? The mainstream media. | In other words, the problem you describe is _the status quo | right now_. So the status quo in this respect obviously | needs to _change_ since it makes us as a society stupid, | unable to even consider courses of action that, in | hindsight, would have been obvious and dramatic | improvements over what actually happened. | potatoz2 wrote: | > That's just as true of our actual responses to COVID. | | Please expand on that point to clarify. The second order | negative outcomes of a botched vaccine rollout would be | enormous, both for this particular pandemic and longer | term. | | > I explicitly said in my post that not all Americans | would choose to take the vaccine. You are attacking a | straw man. I was simply giving the highest possible upper | bound to the expected number of deaths from vaccination. | | This is a key point that you cannot elide though. If 30% | of the population takes the rushed vaccine but 70% takes | the tested slowly rolled out vaccine, the difference in | the herd immunity outcome is large. | | > Yes, and why is that? Because despite all of our | "respected" institutions saying that the vaccine is safe, | many people don't believe them. Why not? Because they | know that those same institutions lied to them, | repeatedly--and not just in general, specifically during | the whole COVID crisis. So why should people believe | those institutions now? > In other words, we have a | problem with the status quo. | | The FDA never lied during the pandemic, that I know of. | Broadly speaking people do trust them, and the tests and | approval has a positive effect on vaccine acceptance. | Also note that this isn't a binary choice "status | quo"/"not status quo", you have to offer a realistic | alternative to the status quo that we can measure the | status quo against. Rushing the vaccine has more | negatives than positives, in my opinion (both in | hindsight and even more so with the information we had at | the time). | | > Who would be reporting and exaggerating the side | effects in a way that everyone would hear about? The | mainstream media. | | No, mostly social media. But even if the mainstream media | is responsible (whatever that term means, it encompasses | local stations, cable news, NPR and newspapers like the | NYT/WaPo, each of which have different propensities to | exaggerate), you're not offering a solid alternative. | pdonis wrote: | _> Please expand on that point to clarify._ | | Our actual response to COVID has had huge second order | negative effects, like killing the economy, for no real | benefit. You need to include that in your analysis. | | _> The FDA never lied during the pandemic_ | | I didn't say "the FDA", I said "institutions" in general. | That includes both government organizations like the CDC | and the WHO and the mainstream media. The FDA isn't the | government organization that generally does direct public | communication in a pandemic, so they didn't lie because | they didn't really say anything at all. They did, | however, botch development of tests _and_ kept state and | local health authorities from developing their own tests. | | _> mostly social media_ | | You obviously have been living on a different planet from | me for the past year. | | _> you 're not offering a solid alternative_ | | Oh, you want me to reinvent society from scratch? | | You're right that I don't have a working alternative | society in my back pocket, but our current society is | clearly not working. The first thing to do if you're in a | hole is to stop digging. | potatoz2 wrote: | > Our actual response to COVID has had huge second order | negative effects, like killing the economy, for no real | benefit. You need to include that in your analysis. | | There's strong evidence that the economy suffers whether | or not governments institute lockdowns, mostly because | people choose not to go out on their own. For example, | take a look at the Swedish unemployment rate over the | past year: | https://www.statista.com/statistics/527418/sweden- | monthly-un... | | > I didn't say "the FDA", I said "institutions" in | general. That includes both government organizations like | the CDC and the WHO and the mainstream media. | | The CDC didn't lie either, AFAIK. The WHO is irrelevant | in this case because they're not in charge of approving | vaccines in the US. | | > Oh, you want me to reinvent society from scratch? > | You're right that I don't have a working alternative | society in my back pocket, but our current society is | clearly not working. The first thing to do if you're in a | hole is to stop digging. | | There's no need to reinvent society from scratch, but if | you criticize a situation harshly it's best to have your | desired alternative in mind: what, exactly, do you want | people to start or stop doing? | pdonis wrote: | _> the economy suffers whether or not governments | institute lockdowns, mostly because people choose not to | go out on their own_ | | Yes, in a free country many people will choose to curtail | activities. But that's still a lot better than | governments shutting down businesses without any real | data or science to back up their decisions, including | many businesses that (a) aren't linked by any real data | to COVID transmission, (b) are taking precautions to | protect their customers, and (c) _still have plenty of | customers who would like to go there_. Not to mention (d) | allowing "essential" businesses to stay open, but | "essential" often means "has political connections" | rather than really being essential, and (e) politicians | notoriously violating the very lockdown rules they impose | on everyone else. Which causes further secondary damage | by further eroding people's trust in institutions. | | _> The CDC didn 't lie either, AFAIK._ | | To be fair, the CDC hasn't done a lot of public | communication either--most of that has been Fauci, who | works for NIH, not CDC. But the NIH is a government | institution too. And the things he said were trumpeted by | the media, who I also included in "institutions": | | Masks are bad--no wait, masks are good! | | Lockdowns are bad--no wait, lockdowns are essential! | | The herd immunity threshold is 60%--no wait, 65% to | 70%--no wait, 70% to 80%, or is it 70% to 80% to 85%? | Fauci _admitted_ to the New York Times that he was just | making up those numbers based on no actual science, just | on what he thought would manipulate people into doing | what he thought was a good idea. | | _> The WHO is irrelevant in this case because they 're | not in charge of approving vaccines in the US._ | | We're talking about second order effects. The WHO refused | to even admit there was a pandemic until March 11, by | which time Europe was already weeks into exponential | growth and the US was not far behind. No wonder people in | January and February 2020 weren't thinking in terms of a | vaccine (or, for that matter, of _shutting down | international travel_ to stop the spread, which the WHO | advised against). | potatoz2 wrote: | > But that's still a lot better than governments shutting | down businesses without any real data or science to back | up their decisions | | There's strong evidence hard lockdowns lower the spread | of the virus. See, for example, the correlation of | lockdowns and cases in France. Allowing people to make | their own choices doesn't work to deal with a pandemic | because a very small subset of the population can cause | the vast majority of cases, negating any personal effort | made by the rest. | | The argument isn't that institutions are perfect and | never make mistakes (or politicians), but rather that | overall they've taken reasonable measures to deal with | the current situation. | | > To be fair, the CDC hasn't done a lot of public | communication either | | The CDC (and the FDA) have published tons of documents | about recommendations, vaccine efficacy, etc. | | > Masks are bad--no wait, masks are good! Lockdowns are | bad--no wait, lockdowns are essential! | | As the pandemic progresses, we learn new things about it | and adjust. This is exactly what you should expect from | your institutions: give you the best info available at | the time. This is the full quote: | | "There's no reason to be walking around with a mask. When | you're in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might | make people feel a little bit better and it might even | block a droplet, but it's not providing the perfect | protection that people think that it is. And, often, | there are unintended consequences -- people keep fiddling | with the mask and they keep touching their face." | | In April, the CDC (which, as I said, _does_ do public | communication) changed this recommendation to instead | push wearing masks | https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent- | getting-si... | | Remember that initially it was not clear that Covid was | highly airborne. At the time, folks were recommending | disinfecting groceries. This doesn't mean the advice at | the time was bad, that's hindsight bias. | pdonis wrote: | _> overall they 've taken reasonable measures to deal | with the current situation_ | | Once more, evidently you and I have been living on | different planets for the past year. | | _> As the pandemic progresses, we learn new things about | it and adjust._ | | That would be fine if that's what happened. But it isn't. | The guidance had nothing to do with getting more | information, and everything to do with trying to | manipulate people into doing what the "experts" wanted | them to do by misinforming them. The mask quote you give | is a perfect example: there _was_ good reason to be | walking around with a mask (my wife and I started doing | that around the end of February--and social distancing | and all the other common sense precautions that any | responsible adult should be taking when there 's a | pandemic, no matter what any so-called "experts" say). No | protection is perfect (even an N95 is not perfect), but a | mask is a lot better than nothing (even if not all virus | particles are kept out, drastically reducing how many get | into your upper respiratory tract makes a huge | difference). But no, our nanny state "experts" were | afraid we might touch our face so they lied to us. (They | were also afraid health care providers would run short of | PPE. But if governments are going to be authoritarian, | they can just put themselves at the front of the line for | however much PPE the health care providers need, without | having to lie or manipulate anybody.) | cameldrv wrote: | Maybe, but you could also have done something like opening | up the trials to a much larger population or doing a sort | of EEUA, basically making the risks very clear, having | people sign a bunch of scary forms, but allowing people to | take the vaccine if they wanted it, especially after Phase | 2. | | There would have been many people who would not want to | take an unproven vaccine, but there might have been others | that found the risk reasonable, assuming production could | have been made available earlier. | SubuSS wrote: | > Second, it should be the default that the status quo is a bad | thing; | | > Third, it should be the default to move fast, and value | experimentation over perfection. | | These points are making me twitch: We have seen so many examples | (even in the software world) of companies trying to move fast and | eventually figure it is far better to be thoughtful about changes | both major and minor. | | Imagine tossing a coin that has a 0.001:99.999 probability split. | Just 0.001% chance that you will be killed vs 99+% chance that | you won't. Believe me, you don't want to be tossing this coin in | a macro scale OR way too many times. Individually we make these | choices every day and get out scratch free, BUT once you bring in | enough coin tosses, there is an irrefutable point that one of it | is going to end up killing you. Individually the hope is that you | won't take enough chances like that before you naturally die off. | | As conservative as it sounds, keeping status quo is the safer | option for a society. There is a reason we see folks turning | conservative once they have generated enough wealth - the need to | never be poor again far outweighs the need to be wealthy. | jdmichal wrote: | Your coin flip is in a vacuum though. What is this innovation | replacing? Did I previously have to roll a 100-sided die? If | so, that coin flip sounds really damn good. | | I feel like Technology Connections did a better approach to the | same topic of innovation: | | https://youtu.be/GiYO1TObNz8?t=335 | | The idea is "But Sometimes". That is, this new innovation is | great in all these areas, _but sometimes_ it 's worse. That | then becomes a locus for the FUD campaigns -- justified or not. | It's also the same kind of thing heard in "no one was ever | fired for picking IBM". Fear of an _unknown_ potentially bad | outcome outweighs all the _known_ bad outcomes which are | improved by the innovation. | satyrnein wrote: | Yeah, I think they are overstated. The status quo should be | questioned and forced to justify itself, but not just ignored | thoughtlessly. We should move fast and tolerate risk when the | cost of delay is very high (like thousands of people dead per | day) but not when it's low. | theandrewbailey wrote: | > Imagine tossing a coin that has a 0.001:99.999 probability | split. Just 0.001% chance that you will be killed vs 99+% | chance that you won't. Believe me, you don't want to be tossing | this coin in a macro scale OR way too many times. | | That has to be some kind of named law: As the volume of a | system increases, tolerance for failure decreases. Used in | cases of: 1% failure of a hundred might be acceptable, but 1% | failure of a million isn't. | SubuSS wrote: | Weirdly enough, we see this all the time in large systems. | When we built DynamoDB - the core 3-way replication is based | on the fact that machine failure rates are something like | 0.005, so we will need to be unlucky (0.005)^2 times. Guess | what? it happens alarmingly often enough when you run 100k | boxes. | robotresearcher wrote: | > [I]t should be the default that the status quo is a bad | thing; instead of justifying why something should be done, the | burden of proof should rest on those who believe things should | remain the same. | | This is the opposite of Chesterton's Fence, the idea that | knowledge is often encoded in the current state of things, and | you should seek to understand what that is before changing it. | | https://fs.blog/2020/03/chestertons-fence/ | carbonguy wrote: | I too took particular issue with the second point; among other | possible criticisms, the categorical statement that "the status | quo is a bad thing" seems to completely miss the idea of | "embedded wisdom." Surely this idea should be familiar to | anybody who's spent enough time reading about software | development? | | I suppose the point could be interpreted to mean "investigate | the assumptions of the status quo and find out which ones are | no longer valid" - but then, that's not what Thompson wrote. | | As to points one and three - I don't buy that "free speech is | good" is no longer the default and I don't see much in this | essay that shows otherwise. The example given (Youtube | censoring perspectives that contradict the WHO, despite the WHO | itself having disseminated falsehoods) leads directly to the | questions: should Youtube _not_ have been allowed to make that | decision? And if not, how should they have been prevented? | | As to the third point - revisiting the example just discussed, | surely the WHO's communications (of which Thompson seems | critical) could be seen as an example of an organization hewing | to the very default he asserts as valuable? Move fast with your | communications, value early release over perfect certainty, | etc. | agumonkey wrote: | > Imagine tossing a coin that has a 0.001:99.999 probability | split. Just 0.001% chance that you will be killed vs 99+% | chance that you won't. Believe me, you don't. | | That's how I feel when people throw stats at random. Especially | airplane vs car safety. | titanomachy wrote: | I had a similar feeling. I think the point that TFA is making | is that our world is changing quickly and profoundly enough | that "we've always done it this way and we know it works ok" is | not as useful a heuristic as it might once have been. | | We shouldn't thoughtlessly discard proven ways of doing things, | but we may need to update the weight that we give them. What | worked well in 1990 isn't as likely to work today as 1960's | practices were in 1990. | [deleted] | [deleted] | jdmichal wrote: | > The issue is that the money market fund was the default choice, | which meant that while the new program helped people save more, | it also led folks who would have chosen better-performing funds | to earn far less than they would have. Defaults are powerful! | | Does the data actually back this up? It seems to me like the | cited data could also support that everyone who would have | otherwise opted in still went and selected stocks. | | I can't see the full paper cited, but the abstract says: | | > Second, a substantial fraction of 401(k) participants hired | under automatic enrollment retain both the default contribution | rate and fund allocation even though few employees hired before | automatic enrollment picked this particular outcome. | | This seems to be specifically _not_ stating the conclusion that | the article did. | ghaff wrote: | They discuss this. From the paper: "the fraction of | participants contributing to only one fund in the NEW relative | to the other cohorts cannot be explained entirely by a shift in | the composition of participants due to the substantial effects | of automatic enrollment on 401(k) participation." | | So the increased participation may have caused a shift to some | degree. (Maybe those less likely to participate normally often | choose a more conservative investment?) But not entirely. | | https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w7682/w7682... | jdmichal wrote: | Thanks! | OliverGilan wrote: | People are going to focus on discussion with COVID but to me the | big takeaway from this great article is the lessons not learned. | Whenever discussing stagnation or regulatory deadlock in the US | the default response is to handwring about the dangers things | like the FDA protect us from. It's refreshing to see someone | eloquently write about how there is inherent risk that regulation | also exposes us too. | | There's no one extreme that is perfect but I personally would | prefer rapid progress with some mistakes as opposed to what we | seem to be experiencing now. | evgen wrote: | This article is standard punditry of false dichotomies and | excluded middles to frame an argument in a manner that assumes | the outcome the writer wants to lead you to. I was expecting | better to be honest. The problem with 'move fast and break | things' is that when we are talking about real lives and real | consequences then then things that tend to get broken are other | people. Make no mistake, it is always 'other people' that | pundits like this are talking about. They are never going to | pay the costs of the negative externalities, it is always going | to be someone else's life, someone else's child, someone else's | home, neighborhood, or vocation. | | If someone like this author was actually interested in working | to fix the problem they would start by trying to provide | regulators with the resources they need to actually keep up | with a fast changing world filled with tech-bros out to | 'disrupt' any industry where they think they can make | themselves a middle-man in a transaction. Make it interesting | and worthwhile for smart people to work on improving the | regulatory process and adapting it to current realities and | maybe we can start to make progress that is both rapid and | safe. | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | Are you old enough to have seen the thalidomide children of the | mid-1970s? | helmholtz wrote: | The comments on this thread are scary. | | I work in the very conservative world of engineering, where | there are standards and regulations up the wazoo. Welding | standards, CE markings, standards for how high on the car your | headlamps have to be, pressure ratings, instrumentation | accuracy classifications. My colleagues in civil and nuclear | engineering have even more stringent regulations to contend | with. Compliance with those standards costs labour and money. | It's tedious, painstaking, careful work. These regulations have | been hard fought, and have taken millions of man-hours to | perfect. But this is why we are able to have the degree of | safety that we enjoy in this world. | | This zeitgeist on HN that goes against regulation, fueled | perhaps by SV culture, is a recipe for disaster. Self | regulation is NOT a thing. I can write this down for you and | promise ALL of my potential life savings. This is NOT a _great_ | article. It 's a rambling overreach of a disaster that starts | out fairly nice, but descends through seven circles of Paul- | Graham-Know-It-All-ness. | | It's a way better choice to be in a future where we are arguing | about the _extent_ and _content_ of the regulation rather than | the presence of it in the first place. A deregulated world is | scary to me. | imgabe wrote: | The standards in engineering largely arise from experience. | We have a standard height for headlights in cars because we | tried a bunch of different ones and found one that worked | best. Without that experimentation, how can you arrive at a | standard? If regulations inhibit the ability to experiment in | fields where there is not yet a defined standard, we will not | be able to reach one, or we will pick one arbitrarily that | may not be the best and we will have no mechanism available | to find a better one. | UncleMeat wrote: | The problem is the assumption that deregulation causes rapid | progress. Regulation can inhibit progress, and I think almost | everybody would agree that there are some regulations that | cause more harm than good. But deregulation does not imply | enormous leaps forward. Antitrust regulations, for example, | protect progress by helping prevent large companies from eating | up all the competition and safely stagnating. | cphoover wrote: | Interesting read... but kinda came off as two articles in one, | with an attempt to piece them together... The first part around | the behavioral implications of defaults, and the second, which | was a reaction to the state of pandemic response around the | globe, free-speech, disinformation, and the perceived failures in | roll-out of Moderna's mRNA vaccine, and how if we somehow retrain | our "defaults" we can somehow overcome these issues. | | I enjoyed reading this, but it did seem a bit disjointed. | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | I just do not understand how somebody like Ben Thompson, clearly | at ease with the internet age, can continue to place so much | emphasis on what a handful of large corporate information outlets | do or do not do. | | >the default is to push for censorship, if not by the government | -- thanks to that pesky First Amendment -- then instead by | private corporations. | | It's the goddam _internet_. You don 't have to write on FB. You | don't have to write on Twitter (and please don't try to actually | _write_ on Twitter). Dozens of companies will offer you | essentially one-click wordpress installations for you, with 10 | more clicks to customize it to match your aesthetic inclinations. | Write your stuff there .... oh wait, just like Stratechery does. | | Nobody is coming for your blog. And, in the foreseeable future, | nobody will come for your blog. You can write whatever you want. | Getting people to read it might be _slightly_ harder than if you | use some corporatist social media platform, but arguing along | those lines merely cements those platforms in their pseudo- | monopolist places, which is hardly desirable for all manner of | reasons. | | Is it a good thing that FB/Twitter et al. can make wrong-headed | decisions about the content they allow on their platforms? It's | not great. But compared to the information overload issues | mentioned here by other commenters, it's not obviously bad | either. And it does _nothing_ to reduce your freedom of speech. | | Ben Thompson could post articles on Stratechery that make non- | libellous false claims about anything he wants, and nobody will | stop him. He could this every day for the rest of his life and | nobody will stop him. He doesn't like the monopolistic aspects of | current social media giants, but continues to insist that they | are so important that any "censorship" on these platforms is a | significant social issue. I find this contradictory, and naive, | and in almost every sense, simply wrong. | Reedx wrote: | But Twitter/FB/YouTube effectively drive the national | conversation and consciousness at this point. Ben is correct to | place emphasis there. | ghaff wrote: | I think you might be surprised by how many people don't | really use those platforms to any significant extent and, to | the degree they do use them, it's mostly for entertainment | and staying in touch with friends. | | >drive the national conversation and consciousness | | I honestly don't see that. | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | They do. | | But this is the result of a complex intersection of factors, | particularly contemporary journalistic practice. It doesn't | just come down to their existence or size. The fact that | journalists in the media that still gets the most "views" | consider these platforms to be a way of "taking the | temperature" of the country has at least as much to do with | the way they "drive the national conversation" as anything | else. | | Look, I'm 100% fine with actually taking over these | platforms, making them public spaces, removing all | "censorship" of any kind (it would be actual censorship now, | since it would done by the government), and watching them all | deteriorate into an even greater stinking mess than they are | already. | | But I'm not fine with telling privately owned platforms what | they can and cannot do, or with conflating their attempts to | regulate what happens on their platforms with censorship | (even in double quotes), or pretending that it matters all | that much. | | Meanwhile, I can still read Stratechery. | brlewis wrote: | Is it censorship to add a warning message? | | With limited exceptions, I'm against removal of speech as the | verb "censor" is defined here: | https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/censo... | | On FB I've seen warnings added to the bottom of posts, and on | Twitter I've seen clickthrough warnings. I think they have | every right to do so. What type of content do they go all the | way and remove? | SllX wrote: | I'll be the first to step up and say Facebook and Twitter have | the right to step up and censor their platforms how they see | fit. Their servers, their property, that's the way of the | world. | | That's not the same as saying they _should_ censor, at least | not censor in such a way as to effect the public discourse. | They have the choice, that does not mean we can only | uncritically observe their choices. If they don't want porn, | fine, which is probably a good call because it makes moderating | porn a lot easier if you just ban it all, and some forms are | illegal and immoral. If they want to ban pictures with the | color purple or somebody holding up their hands making an "OK" | gesture? That's a bit more controversial, they _can_ , their | servers, their property, that doesn't make it less _stupid_ | were they to do so. | | There's a million alternatives to Facebook and Twitter, tons of | social media companies, the goddamned phone system, FaceTime, | most chat apps, the bloody pub when the pubs are open again. | This does not mean Facebook, Twitter et al. are beyond reproach | in their policies, and this is why they walk such a fine line: | they're taking it from both ends. | | Customers and users have a right to ask for what they want, | more censorship, less, none at all or an extreme moral panic | amount, maybe every post should be pre-approved by the Facebook | Thought Security & Public Morals Maintenance Bureau before it | goes live? I wouldn't advocate for it, but there's probably | someone that would prefer it and deserves a slap in the head | for it. | spoonjim wrote: | Saying that "you don't need to use FB/Twitter, you can write | your own blog" is like saying in 1789 "You don't need to be | allowed to distribute your pamphlets in front of Faneuil Hall | in Boston, you can exercise your free speech on the top of a | mountain in Colorado." | | Sure, if free speech is only about speaking, then someone can | speak just as well on a mountaintop as they can in downtown | Boston. But speech also has an element of being heard. | | When the First Amendment was ratified, speech in a public | square was the commonplace way of getting a message out to the | world. Now, that commonplace medium is controlled by private | corporations that don't fall under the jurisdiction of the | First Amendment. If "free speech" continues to be important, | then we need to create additional protections for speech in | these virtual public squares where people can be heard, not | just for speech in Internet wastelands that are the digital | equivalent of an ice floe in Antarctica. | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | Here's why I don't think your time-based analogy is correct. | | First of all, there's no geography on the internet. Being | able to only speak from the top of a mountain in Colorado in | 1789 would have severely limited the potential of the | population to hear you (essentially, to zero). Being able to | speak "only" from one's own blog only makes discovery | difficult, it does not limit people's access post-discovery. | | Secondly: you appear to consider FB/Twitter etc. to be | "virtual public squares". They demonstrably are not this. At | the very least, it would require legislation to make them so. | | Thirdly: even given the 1st amendment, even physical public | squares have distinct limitations in how they can be used. | For one thing, they do have geography. Any given public | square is a long way from most of the population in a country | of any size (even more so in countries like the USA that span | thousands of miles), meaning that a particular public square | is not effectively accessible to most people. As a corollary, | most of the public will never be present in any actual public | square. | | They also have geometry: there are limits to how many people | can speak in them at once. | | Finally, in a public square you still cannot do the | equivalent of yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, along with | presence of simple noise limits for many possible public | square locations. These things work very differently, or are | non-existent, for written communications. | spoonjim wrote: | > you appear to consider FB/Twitter etc. to be "virtual | public squares". They demonstrably are not this. At the | very least, it would require legislation to make them so. | | Yes, that is what I am saying. I am advocating for | legislation to protect free speech on platforms like FB and | Twitter in a similar (but not identical) way that the First | Amendment protects free speech on a public street. | ghaff wrote: | >Being able to speak "only" from one's own blog only makes | discovery difficult, it does not limit people's access | post-discovery. | | Exactly. And furthermore, while the big social media | platforms help discovery and amplification, they're not | _that_ powerful (fortunately). They 're not the difference | between Faneuil Hall and a remote mountaintop. Posting on | Facebook and Twitter is no guarantee of being heard. You | can ignore all the major social media platforms and your | ability to reach a wide audience is still incredibly | democratized. | shuntress wrote: | The solution is to maintain the _public_ nature of the public | square by taking steps to reduce Facebook /Twitter's de-facto | ownership rather than to assert that the rules for the public | square must also apply to the private sections cordoned off | by Facebook/Twitter. | dfxm12 wrote: | _When the First Amendment was ratified, speech in a public | square was the commonplace way of getting a message out to | the world._ | | No it wasn't. If you wanted wide distribution of getting a | message out to the world (or even wider than your literal | public square), you needed it to be published & distributed. | That means you had convince a publisher (i.e. a private | corporation) to print your pamphlet or have the means to buy | your own press. You also had to physically get it into | people's hands. The Internet reduces these costs so that | making your thoughts available to anyone is easier today than | it ever was. | | Even if it was, that still doesn't show any implied intention | (it certainly is not explicit) of some _right_ for one 's | speech to be heard. Enforcing such a right would be | impossible and probably contradictory to some other freedoms | granted in the bill of rights. | shuntress wrote: | To expand your metaphor: | | Facebook is a roped-off section at the edge of the public | square. Most people who visit the public square spend most of | their time in this roped-off Facebook section. | | In the Facebook section, Facebook concierges monitor each | person carefully. The concierge will occasionally bring | various third-parties up to each person while constantly | gauging engagement as a proxy for how likely a person is to | return to Facebook section. | | Facebook uses their engagement metric (plus all of the | observations taken to derive the engagement) to value and | sell access to (through the concierge) their patrons. | | You are equating some specific consequences of this concierge | service to censorship as if that is the _only_ problem. This | censorship is not the _only_ problem it is also not even a | relevant problem. | shuntress wrote: | >Ben Thompson could post articles on Stratechery that make non- | libellous false claims about anything he wants, and nobody will | stop him. He could this every day for the rest of his life and | nobody will stop him. He doesn't like the monopolistic aspects | of current social media giants, but continues to insist that | they are so important that any "censorship" on these platforms | is a significant social issue. I find this contradictory, and | naive, and in almost every sense, simply wrong. | | This is the important catch that the article seems to miss | completely. | | More specifically, it ignores the way engagement-driven | distribution affects communication in the FB/Twitter mega- | silos. | newfeatureok wrote: | I've never understood this take. Suppose in the far future some | super corporation owns all property on Earth and facilitates | all communication through any channel. | | Would you still believe "you don't have to interact with | Supercorp?" If so, the same is true trivially with a government | as well. It's very easy to leave the United States if you want. | Even if you couldn't leave, you don't _have_ to speak. After | all, you have the right to remain silent. | | That aside, you would think a sensible government would prevent | a private entity from reaching the heights of its abilities in | any area. | twblalock wrote: | The large platforms are where the large audiences are. | | Ordinary people (i.e. non-tech-nerds) are not going to abandon | the large platforms for smaller ones, or federated ones. The | huge amount of easily discoverable content large platforms are | the reason the audience remains. | | So yes, what the large information outlets does matter more | than what the small ones do. | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | If I had said to you in 1993 that "ordinary people are not | going to abandon the large platforms for these new internet | discussion forums", what would you have said then? | | Yes, there's a network effect. No, it's not everlasting, or | all-encompassing. | | Basing current policy on claims about how people will behave | in the future seems like a bad idea to me. | smithza wrote: | Thanks for the thoughtful counter arguments. I concede that | there is a false extrapolation into the internet at large (or | private institutions at large). I argue in his favor though | that these social media platforms are, for many, their _main_ | sources of information. Hence his argument that we should, as a | culture, focus on "improving our ability to tell the | difference" between information and disinformation. | | When I hear friends and families share conspiracy theories with | me and I read that many people are deeply hesitant to become | vaccinated, they cite these instances of YT or FB squashing | posts as further proof of the legitimacy. All this is to say | that these tech companies simply should not get themselves | involved with answering the question of "what is true?". | | I suspect that disinformation spreads faster on FB/YT/Twitter | than information because it is sensational. Humans love to hear | stories and are compelled by them more than facts. I second Ben | Thompson here that we should focus on learning how to learn and | how to parse information. We should learn how to tell when an | argument is bifurcated or someone is appealing to _ad populum_ | and learn to accept nuance and disagree respectfully. | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | > focus on "improving our ability to tell the difference" | between information and disinformation. | | Yes, _absolutely_. | | But from my perspective this has nothing to do with the idea | of whether Twitter telling you that you cannot post, or | flagging your post, is a socially-significant issue that | should be considered as some kind of censorship. | neogodless wrote: | > as a culture, focus on "improving our ability to tell the | difference" between information and disinformation | | This is an idea I continually see presented as a solution. | What I have not seen is an executable solution or a provable | hypothesis that it is feasible. | | By no means do I think it's a _bad_ idea. But how do you | execute on such an idea? | JoshTriplett wrote: | For that matter, given that the post talks extensively about | authoritarianism, I would have expected such a post to observe | that _preventing_ people from moderating their own servers | would involve a substantial amount of new authoritarianism. | klman wrote: | For blogs it might still work somehow. | | But where is the new Usenet for example? Where do you announce | new software without using GitHub or Reddit or conferences for | marketing? | | Search engines don't find it. Torvalds had it easy with | announcing Linux. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | Yes... but also no. | | In a world where, say, 3 large companies can decide to change | the dominant narrative that 70% of the country reads, what | those three companies decide is in fact a significant social | issue. It may not be "censorship", exactly, but it's still a | relevant issue. | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | It's an issue. But in that same world, it is the population, | the citizenry, that controls the fact that 3 platforms | "control the dominant narrative". There are lots of other | platforms. Yes, FB et al. use manipulative psychology to | drive "feed addiction", but it's quite different to say that | they shouldn't do that rather than saying they should allow | any and every post. | | One can argue that this is a bad situation without | simultaneously arguing that the platforms' limits on speech | is socially important. One can argue for expanding the | platform choices and reducing the manipulation->addiction | games, and still be working towards a more expansive context | for free speech. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | Interesting choice of "addiction" there. One could argue | that addiction is bad for society. And if we could reduce | the addictiveness as well as increase the number of | platform choices, then people would be more able to | exercise freedom of choice. | | So, yeah, I could go for that. More choices, less | addictive, each platform carries whatever they want. | ryanSrich wrote: | > You don't have to write on FB. You don't have to write on | Twitter (and please don't try to actually write on Twitter). | | Good luck building an audience from scratch without having a | strong social media presence. | | Additionally, your blog can absolutely be "taken down" or | canceled, even if through self preservation. Just look at SSC. | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | I don't know what "SSC" is and a simple google search doesn't | provide much, if any context. | | Most hosting services have very permissive policies (they | have to, they could not possibly preemptively police stuff | running in VMs). If you need something more permissive, find | an even more permissive hosting service (probably outside the | US). I'm not saying that you do anything with a blog and be | guaranteed that it stayed available, but you'd have to do | way, way, way more than anything a platform like FB/Twitter | would take action on. | tomjakubowski wrote: | SSC is Slate Star Codex, a blog formerly maintained by | psychiatrist Scott Alexander. He took it down in advance of | the New York Times publishing an article about it. | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | Thanks for that. Yes I remember reading about this at the | time. | | It seems to me that suggesting that this "takedown" has | anything remotely to do with what is being discussed here | is disingenous. | drchopchop wrote: | >I suspect a similar story can be told about our slide to | defaulting that free speech is bad, that the status quo should be | the priority, and that perfect is preferable to good. These are | mistakes, even as they are understandable. After all, | misinformation is a bad thing, change is uncertain, and no one | wants to be the one that screwed up. Everyone has good | intentions; the mistake is in valuing intentions over outcomes. | | This, I think, is the flaw in this argument. People do not always | have good intentions, and they are polluting the informational | landscape to the point where it's dramatically impacting society. | | The principles he's asking for are indeed happening right now, | but in a nefarious way: | | "Free speech is a good thing" - Sure, but that means 4chan, | QAnon, anti-vaxxers, and the like also get loud, free speech now. | | "Status quo is bad" - The previous status quo of large, | centralized media groups is gone, and with it basic levels of | journalistic ethics and transparency. | | "Move fast, value experimentation" - Changes are happening to the | way information is produced disseminated much faster than | societal constructs can keep up. I didn't have to worry 20 years | ago about my relatives treating "Hillary Clinton runs a sex | dungeon in a pizza shop" FB memes with the same weight as NBC | Nightly News. | | Fixing these issues, whether by government, tech industry, or | otherwise, will involve some level of "authoritarianism". | MrPatan wrote: | The probem is that here on planet Earth, governments are made | out of humans. | | You may not believe it, but when you give a human the power to | censor what would make them lose power ("fixing the issue" is | how they describe it), it has been historically hard to make | them stop using that power. | | But that's not the worst. The worst is the other, powerless | humans, who nonetheless cheer for the powerful humans to be | able to censor them! What do they have to gain? Fleeting | feelings of superiority over a different set of powerless | humans, at best. And a one-way trip to the Gulag at worst. | | So you see, in your planet things may work out fine, but here | it's all a bit messier than that. Take my advice, go back to | your planet where you know what are the "issues", and how to | "fix" them. | CivBase wrote: | > "Free speech is a good thing" - Sure, but that means 4chan, | QAnon, anti-vaxxers, and the like also get loud, free speech | now. | | Echo chambers are very powerful tools. People don't like to | find out they are wrong and modern media platforms make it very | easy to surround yourself with content which re-affirms your | existing beliefs. It's also extremely easy to unintentionally | trap yourself in an echo chamber. The content feed algorithms | on most popular social media platforms are basically designed | to trap people in echo chambers in order to maximize | engagement. | | All of the groups you mentioned maintain their limited | popularity by capturing their members in information echo | chambers. The thing is, people can only be released from echo | chambers by exposing them to alternative sources of | information. Giving any organization the power to restrict free | speech is dangerous because you essentially give that | organization power to legally enforce echo chambers. | | Personally, I feel safer having fringe groups like QAnon and | anti-vaxxers running around than relinquishing that sort of | power to any organization. | megaman821 wrote: | I am all for making things better, but every time I see the "it | used to be better" argument I think you were just younger and | more unaware then. People used to gossip about many untrue | things that are now more easily disprovable with a simple | Google search. There were more cults in the past. Mass media | loved running with shallow scientific papers (everything became | low fat and high sugar for example). The National Inquirer sold | way more copies than the Atlantic. | | The mediums are different now but the problems are still the | same. Give it time and we will figure it out. | pdonis wrote: | _> People do not always have good intentions_ | | The statement about valuing intentions over outcomes applies | just as much to bad intentions as to good ones. People with bad | intentions don't always do harm, any more than people with good | intentions always do good. | | As for actual outcomes, I don't think the case is anywhere near | as one-sided as you appear to believe. See below. | | _> Fixing these issues, whether by government, tech industry, | or otherwise, will involve some level of "authoritarianism"._ | | No, "authoritarianism" is what _caused_ problems like your | relatives ' beliefs. That "previous status quo of large | centralized media groups" did not just evaporate; it _killed | itself_ by throwing away whatever "journalistic ethics and | transparency" it once had (and one can argue that it never had | very much; it was just that before the Internet there were no | alternate sources of information available so people could see | how much politicians and the mainstream media were lying to | them). Your relatives believe random Internet sources as much | as NBC Nightly News _because they know NBC Nightly News will | lie to them_ --because NBC Nightly News, and all the other | mainstream media outlets, killed their own credibility. | | Why did they do that? Because they thought they were | authorities and that the public would regard them as such-- | since before the Internet the public had done that, because the | public had no choice. In other words, the mainstream media | thought they had the authoritarian power to _declare what is | true_ , even if it's actually a lie. They still think that; | it's just that the number of people who don't treat them that | way any more is much larger now, and will only continue to | grow. | rektide wrote: | > Fixing these issues, whether by government, tech industry, or | otherwise, will involve some level of "authoritarianism". | | This seems to be what most people expect, that someone else | will solve the problem, that someone else will have to step in | & take responsibility for all the irresponsible people. | | I disagree with this. I think it's up to us. Right now we rely | on platforms to communicate & respond, to marshal direct | responses. Which is unfortunate. These groups all have their | own safe-spaces, have their own moderated environments. They | have coordination & dissemination & protected spaces, as they | exploit the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle/Brandolini's Law, as | they poison & make other spaces unsafe. | | What's missing, to me, is some good cross-platform ways to | register dissent & disagreement. The aegis, to me, is not other | people. It is us. A -1 vote, that we can deploy easily, that we | can reinforce each other on, anywhere. Let disagreement be | known. Those who want to go further ought bring Issue Based | Information Systems (IBIS)[1][2] up & online to talk about the | things they have seen online, to link the world of mis- | information into their own structured, defined refutations, and | let others amplify & support those refutations. Link more, | structure more. Do it on our own turf, consolidate our | responses, and most of all, support each other, follow each | other's feeds, plus one the links, plus one the arguments. | | More sunlight, use this great internet, use speech, to cleans | away so many of the darker shadier rots. Society, building some | aegis, some protection, to shield itself, to let good voices | amplify & support each other. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issue- | based_information_system | | [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfIZY0s1JG0 | mrfusion wrote: | > ..the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion | is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the | existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still | more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are | deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if | wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the | clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by | its collision with error. | | John Stuart Mill | | https://www.utilitarianism.com/ol/two.html | drchopchop wrote: | Should all expressions of opinion be given equal weight? Is | an average person able to evaluate what's factually correct, | and what's not? | | Just think of all the assumptions that you need to make when | you figure out "should I take a COVID-19 vaccine": | | * Is this vaccine safe? What do I know about the companies | that are making it? | | * What even is a vaccine? Are they all the same? How do the | different ones work? | | * Is COVID-19 even real? Have I personally witnessed people | getting sick? Is there statistical evidence that large | amounts of people are getting sick? Is the death rate worse | than the average flu? | | * How do we even know this is transmitted between people? Do | masks work? What even is a virus? How do they grow and | replicate? | | * Are doctors lying to me? Do they have an incentive to? How | do I fact-check these claims when I can't travel around the | country and see with my own eyes? | | * et cetera | | You have to rely on some assumptions to be able to answer | these questions, which is the whole point of having an | educational system at all, and necessarily prioritizes ones | that we have deemed "correct". Is this authoritarian? Should | we just let children loose on Twitter after they're born and | have them re-derive all information for first principles | again? | mrfusion wrote: | Perhaps you and I have lived with this miracle too long to | be properly appreciative. Freedom is a fragile thing and is | never more than one generation away from extinction. It is | not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended | constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a | people. Those who have known freedom and then lost it have | never known it again. | | -- Ronald Reagan | inglor_cz wrote: | "be given equal weight" | | By whom, that is the question? By the listener? Probably | no. | | But once you get committees and probably bots (b/c there is | not enough people to judge the entire information flow of | today) that decide the weight of X using some flexible | criteria for others out there, the bad actors will do their | utmost to influence them and get them under control. | | And, ten years from now, hey presto! Whatever the Prime | Minister does not like, will be classified as | misinformation. | | This system is accountable to Darwin, not Newton. It | evolves. | | https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/darwin-newton/ | the-dude wrote: | But the nefarious way is nothing new : _Weapons of mass | destruction capable of reaching the capitols of Europe_ , _The | Russians are bad and would invade Europe if it wasn 't for us / | nuclear weapons_, _They hate us for our freedoms_ etc. | | The authoritarians are as nefarious. | AlexTWithBeard wrote: | I don't think there's a good, consistent way to limit "bad" | speech, while allowing "good". I personally have no problems | with anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers and conspiracy-theoretists | being able to express themselves. I do have problems with | something that doesn't fit the current narrative being declared | a conspiracy theory by some group and banned on this basis. | gnusty_gnurc wrote: | Bingo. They get off easy by calling it authoritarianism. It's | correctly called despotism. | xapata wrote: | > Second, it should be the default that the status quo is a bad | thing; | | > Third, it should be the default to move fast, and value | experimentation over perfection. | | These two bullets are the same. Rather, the latter is both | necessary and sufficient for the former. Without experimentation | (implying the evaluation of success and the intent to abandon | unsuccessful methods), defaulting to status quo is preferable. | pachico wrote: | Allow me to digress for a second by saying that this page is a | pleasure to read in a mobile device, which is a very rare virtue, | I'm afraid. | raghavtoshniwal wrote: | The FDA rushing the approval of vaccine that might turn out to be | unsafe harms their credibility in the long run. The worst case | scenario of a hastily approved vaccine is so high that it | probably makes sense to bear the cost and take the | health/economic hit. | | Also this is the first major use of mRNA vaccine, scientists and | experts were not sure how well it would work. Administering it | without trials could have led to a nightmare scenario for a few | individuals and anti-vaccine stance for a larger chunk of | population. | | Ben is probably right, the status quo should change, but I am not | sure if the 'opportunity cost' calculus he makes is accurate in | this case. | renewiltord wrote: | Well, the worst case scenario of not approving the vaccine is | that the virus mutates into an airborne monstrosity with near | instant fatality. So not approving the vaccine also makes no | sense. | | Ultimately, any optimization strategy that depends on using | just the worst case without the probability of the worst case | to optimize on is going to rapidly find itself unable to | optimize because the worst case has cost infinity with every | path. | pdonis wrote: | _> The worst case scenario of a hastily approved vaccine is so | high that it probably makes sense to bear the cost and take the | health /economic hit._ | | I'm not so sure. See my response to ivanbakel upthread. | xyzzyz wrote: | > The FDA rushing the approval of vaccine that might turn out | to be unsafe harms their credibility in the long run. | | FDA has just paid for this risk of losing credibility with | hundreds of thousands of lives. Was it a good price? | | > The worst case scenario of a hastily approved vaccine is so | high that it probably makes sense to bear the cost and take the | health/economic hit. | | Really? You ran the numbers? Show your work. | breatheoften wrote: | > Yes, those who test positive should have greater options for | self-isolation than they currently do. | | Nothing along these lines even remotely happened. The boogey man | of 'forcing people to quarantine' can be avoided while still | creating incentives and expectations that individuals should opt- | into a plan that concentrates risk and concentrates isolation | requirements around known risks. | | A positive test in the West comes with vague advice to quarantine | at home. It should've instead come with a pre-paid package | providing hotel+food+income-supplement that continued for the | quarantine period so long as you don't violate the isolation | expectations ... Incentives, not punitive measures, would've | sufficed to make it possible, easy, and expected for people to | _avoid_ spreading to their co-dwellers/neighbors or anyone they | come into contact with by necessity for basic survival needs. | Spivak wrote: | There is a point the author doesn't touch on which I think ends | up undermining his central thesis. One's motivation for setting a | default matters. If you're acting in good faith and selecting a | default because you genuinely believe (and/or have data to show) | that it's what all but a small group of outliers choose then | there's no issue. If you're acting in bad faith and selecting a | default to shape behavior or to get a particular outcome then | you're abusing your position of (relative) power as a decider for | other people. | | > Second, it should be the default that the status quo is a bad | thing. | | The author wants this default changed because he doesn't like the | status-quo. Look, I don't like it either but assuming that people | don't like the current state of things in literally every single | aspect of life unless stated otherwise compared to "I want to | change X,Y,Z." is way off base. | a3w wrote: | What is a 401K? | | Proposal: Articles that are hard to read for non-US citizens | should be marked [US&A] | | -- Borat | HideousKojima wrote: | It's a kind of retirement investment fund. Contributions to it | aren't taxed until you retire, and employers will often match | employee contributions to it up to a limit. | cma wrote: | > I am here to tell you that those practices are wrong, at least | for the U.S. They are a form of detainment without due process, | contrary to the spirit of the Constitution and, more important, | to American notions of individual rights. Yes, those who test | positive should have greater options for self-isolation than they | currently do. But if a family wishes to stick together and care | for each other, it is not the province of the government to tell | them otherwise. | | If we had widespread ebola or if coronavirus was as deadly as | smallpox I don't think many people would be making this argument, | and we already have plenty of case law. | xyzzyz wrote: | If we had widespread Ebola, people would stay home on their | own, without the state forcing them to. The whole reason people | flout the restriction is because their personal risk is very | low. For people under 45, catching covid presents similar risk | of dying to a year of driving a car. If government tried to ban | driving, arguing that it is for my safety, I would be pissed | and would not accept that law. However, if 10% of drivers died | every year, I wouldn't need government to stop me from driving, | I'd stay the hell away from the killing machine myself. | ryandrake wrote: | > If we had widespread Ebola, people would stay home on their | own, without the state forcing them to. | | Sadly, I'm not so sure of this, anymore. 350K+ deaths in the | USA alone has called into question the public's ability to | assess risk and do the right thing. I don't see why it would | be any different for something like Ebola. You'd still have | the same viral Facebook videos calling it a hoax and a | conspiracy. You'd have the same toothless, unenforced | "orders" from the government to quarantine. You'd have the | same people refusing to cooperate Because Freedom. I don't | see why anything would be different except for the number of | deaths. | ativzzz wrote: | Something like 600-700k people die in the US of heart | disease every year and yet we don't do much to combat | obesity and unhealthy lifestyles. | xyzzyz wrote: | > I don't see why anything would be different except for | the number of deaths. | | The number of deaths would make it much clearer that the | risk is real. Again, if driving killed 10% of people every | year, people saying it is a hoax would not be very | convincing, when most of people you know who tried driving | for a few years are dead. | ghaff wrote: | At least some of the case law is over 100 years old, e.g. a | state making a smallpox vaccine mandatory being considered | allowable. And I'd point out that SCOTUS, a bit later, also | upheld voluntary sterilization of people with diminished mental | capacity. So I'm not sure what all today's SCOTUS would uphold | with respect to state action. | gizmo wrote: | This is a great article, and I agree with the core point about | defaults and opportunity cost, but with the main example of | China's handling of covid it asserts that the draconian lockdown | is the reason mortality in China is lower. It even asserts that | to claim otherwise is dishonest. | | But the data isn't so clear. Countries in South America locked | down hard and early but it had no effect on the pandemic spread. | And all Asian countries, without a single exception, have | outperformed Europe, US, and SA by more than an order of | magnitude, despite countries having responded to the crisis in | different ways. How can this be? | | I think it's much more honest to say that we don't have the | answers. We have questions. It's been a year, and the questions | keep mounting. We don't know why Belgium got hit hard but Germany | did not. Why Slovenia didn't have a first wave, but did get a | second wave. Why did every African country do well despite | limited ability to lock down or distance? Why did all of Asia do | well? Why is the correlation between NPI and future | infections/hospitalizations so weak? | | And frankly I find the combination of a mounting pile of | unanswered questions one the one hand and a call for censorship | of dissenting voices on the other very disturbing. | bonestamp2 wrote: | > Why did every African country do well despite limited ability | to lock down or distance? Why did all of Asia do well? | | It's not necessarily causation of course, and likely not this | simple, but it's fascinating and maybe not all that surprising | that the regional impact of covid correlates quiet well with | regional obesity: | | https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/11/share-of-adults-d... | | This study found that a total of 73% of ICU Covid patients were | overweight (34.5%), obese (31.5%), or morbidly obese (7%). | | https://www.icnarc.org/Our-Audit/Audits/Cmp/Reports | cameldrv wrote: | The fataility rate for COVID is also extremely skewed towards | older people, to the extent that most COVID deaths are over | 75 years old, and people under 40 very rarely die from it. | | The median age in the U.S. is 38. The median age in Africa as | a whole is 19. | | Africa also has very few cases, but this is simply because | mass testing is not available. | ckemere wrote: | Also, significantly less migrant labor-style travel as | there is in China. | OliverGilan wrote: | Just adding on that many SA countries did not have stringent | lockdowns like China. My family is in Brazil when they "locked | down" recently and nothing was locked down at all. | gnusty_gnurc wrote: | > I think it's much more honest to say that we don't have the | answers. | | This is virtually impossible given how much government, | politicians, and even individuals have staked their identity | and reputation on being correct and knowledgeable. | | That's the most evil aspect of authoritarianism and despotism. | The inability to admit failure, limitation and falibility. This | is why Fauci and friends always couch their responses to | criticism with dismissive explanations. | | I'm constantly frustrated with the unimpeachable self- | confidence that's so pervasive now. It's only worse when their | failures are so apparent. | JackFr wrote: | >This is virtually impossible given how much government, | politicians, and even individuals have staked their identity | and reputation on being correct and knowledgeable. | | In the short term, absolutely. One hopes 5-10 years down the | road, a disinterested analysis can get a comprehensive if not | conclusive picture. | | > I'm constantly frustrated with the unimpeachable self- | confidence that's so pervasive now. | | I couldn't a agree more. I have no doubts about the absolute | best intentions of those making public policy, but their | arrogance and utter lack of circumspection with such obvious | failures does nothing but further undermine their long-term | credibility. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | I think they're desperate for _short term_ credibility, | both for political reasons and for health reasons. | | The "health reasons" part goes like this: If I say "From | what we know now, we think the best plan is for people to | do X", how many people actually do X? Fewer than if I | project more certainty. So even if I know that X is just | our current best understanding (say, 60% probability of | being right), we still have a better expectation value of | the outcome if more people follow the plan that has 60% | chance of being right. So I oversell the certainty to up | the compliance, in the hope that it's actually helpful. | | The problem is that, while this may help in the short term, | in the medium term I'm setting my credibility on fire, and | if we need compliance in the future on a plan that we're | 80% sure is right, we may not get it, because nobody | believes me by then. | rusk wrote: | I think there was a fairly solid analysis of the Belgian | situation. Brussels has people coming from all over Europe and | a few universities from which the students brought it home at | the weekend. | | With regards to SE Asia I imagine the fact that they've been | through this two or three times before is a big factor. | | Why we did soooo poorly in western countries across all the | different strategies is something I'm looking forward to | dissecting ... | tracyhenry wrote: | Despite the small differences in handling COVID, asian people | are at least very willing to wear masks. My family is in China. | They've been through SARS. They started wearing masks | themselves the day the heard about this new respiratory | disease. And you know how CDC insisted that masks are not | needed at the beginning. Things got out of control because of | this IMHO. | | From the article, > more aggressive and systematic quarantine | regime whereby suspected or mild cases -- and even healthy | close contacts of confirmed cases -- were sent to makeshift | hospitals and temporary quarantine centers. | | The thing that really worked was not centralized quarantine. | It's how to identify people for centralized quarantine. My | family has gone back to normal life (like pre-covid normal) | since March. Since then every new coronavirus case will be on | the headline, and deep contact tracing (not only close | contacts, but close contacts of close contacts of close | contacts of ...) will be performed to ensure suspected | infections are quarantined. | | People coming from another country are required to provide | extensive documentation of negative test results in the past | three weeks. The tests need to be conducted in very specific | time frames and even locations, and often between two flight | connections. The rules are deliberately designed to make people | stop thinking about coming to China. Sadly I'm in the US and I | don't expect to reunite with my family until mid 2022. | Daishiman wrote: | > But the data isn't so clear. Countries in South America | locked down hard and early but it had no effect on the pandemic | spread. | | This is false. The hard lockdown period in most SA countries | lasted 3-6 weeks at most; after that there was almost no | enforcement by the police, no fines handed out, no public | shaming. It was essentially left up to individuals with ample | latitude in how they chose to exercise self-imposed freedom. | | Poor people in SA did not generally have the option to stay at | home with a robust safety net such as in Europe. Wealthier | business owners have to deal with an inefficient legal system | that burdens anyone who does things by the book. | | The first few weeks with a _real_ lockdown were remarkably | effective, as shown by the mobility and disease transmission | stats. As soon as the countries stopped using their monopoly of | force to limit mobility, the disease shot up, in an entirely | predictable manner. | | It's truly unfortunate that this misinformation keeps cropping | up. | ryandrake wrote: | Without enforcement, "lockdown" is just a word coming out of | a politician's mouth in order to make it look like they are | doing something. I think when the dust settles, we're going | to find that lockdowns did indeed work, but only in the few | places on Earth where they actually had teeth and were | enforced. Most of the West _say_ they ordered a lockdown, but | it was more of a flimsy suggestion than an order. | | In the US, people are still out and about horsing around | despite Stay At Home orders, and there are just no | consequences. They just busted an illegal gathering in NYC | [1] with over 300 people, yet only the organizer got a slap- | on-the-wrist $15K fine. Where are the $15K fines for each of | the party-goers? | | 1: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/02/us/sheriff-nye- | raids/index.ht... | notsureaboutpg wrote: | I can't remember where, but I read an article talking about how | there were examples of lockdowns and no lockdowns both | controlling COVID well, and that perhaps not every pandemic and | every event in time will have a lesson for us to learn. | Sometimes there isn't a "right" answer when we have a problem | we face. Life isn't like that, we look at life with a lens like | that. | | Maybe our strategies were wrong. Maybe they were right but the | virus was stronger than our strategies. Maybe all the feasible | strategies wouldn't have made much of a difference. | | We won't ever know. There are many things we can never know. | We've become addicted to knowing, with the Internet and all, | and similarly we've forgotten that some things (yes, still some | few things) are not in our hands. | mikepurvis wrote: | > We won't ever know. | | I sure hope we _will_ understand these things better, in the | fullness of time. Even if the answer turns out to be some | boring mix of cultural practices, genetics, and luck, it 's | still worthwhile having that understanding for the next time. | ghaff wrote: | Yeah, although "luck" is mostly just another way of saying | ultimately unknowable factors caused the outcomes in some | places to be better than others. | | I do hope and expect that we'll eventually come away with | at least a partial explanatory model that doesn't lean too | heavily on being an isolatable island. But an awful lot of | what we've heard so far seems to be case-by-case after the | fact rationalizations leavened by how the country's | politicians are viewed. | duderific wrote: | I tend to disagree with this take. I think we've known for | quite some time (at least since the Influenza epidemic of | 1918) that masks can help prevent the spread of viruses of | this sort. | | At first in the US, the recommendation was to not wear a | mask. The reasoning was that we weren't sure about whether | airborne or surface-borne spread was more of a factor | (remember the huge shortages of hand sanitizer), and we | wanted to prevent a run on masks, so that we would have | enough masks for health care workers. | | This then gets into the reasons why we didn't have enough PPE | on hand in our strategic reserve which is more of a political | question. | | So in the case of the US at least, I think we are aware of | the proper strategies, but many people, from the top down, | refuse to adopt and/or promote those strategies. | breatheoften wrote: | I think there might be some truth to this ... observability | of the pandemic is very highly non-uniform -- even assuming | the input measurements can be somehow normalized in a semi- | trustable way (probably not true in general), non-uniform | population distribution + exponential makes for much much | more noisy measurement than I think is regularly | acknowledged. | | I feel like there's a kind of built in bias against fully | appreciating the effects of the unknowns given the nature of | the crisis -- because being the guy who says 'well actually | we might not _know_ that' in every policy discussion about | the pandemic doesn't actually contribute much benefit ... | raverbashing wrote: | > Countries in South America locked down hard and early but it | had no effect on the pandemic spread | | No they didn't | hinkley wrote: | > And all Asian countries, without a single exception, have | outperformed Europe, US, and SA by more than an order of | magnitude | | We may be playing out a new chapter of Guns, Germs, and Steel, | where the germs source from East Asia instead of eastern Europe | and the Middle East. The death toll may be a pale comparison to | the % of lives lost among First Nations people during the | colonial era, but we aren't fighting many territory wars these | days. It's more proxy wars now, and economic wars. | | Over the course of say 3 epidemics in as many decades, the | differentials in economic harm could compound substantially. | jrd259 wrote: | Unlike the GG&S case, where smallpox and influenza decimated | (literally) the new world peoples, there is no evidence that | East Asians had evolved resistance to the coronaviruses prior | to the pandemic. What differences in death rate we have seen | can better be explained by social organization than | inheritance. | titanomachy wrote: | There is some kind of adaptation at play, although I think | it's likely a social rather than immunological one. The | specific mechanisms aren't as important as the fact that | the West is generally worse affected by the pandemic. | | I also didn't take the comment as implying any deliberate | ill intent on China's part. European germs decimated | indigenous populations whether or not they were spread | intentionally. | | It is an interesting point, although I think if pandemics | become more common the West will adapt. As TFA mentioned, a | promising vaccine was created in Boston within _two days_ | of receiving the digital sequence of the virus DNA (not | even a live sample!). As the risks of pandemics become more | widely understood, there will be increasing pressure to | accelerate vaccine rollout for future events. | hinkley wrote: | I took OP as implying this is more than simple public | policy. I sort of suspect the same thing. | | But even if you're right, social darwinism can do | measurable amounts of damage. Added to the levels of stupid | we already exhibit, this certainly is not helping things. | chrischapman wrote: | > Defaults are powerful! | | No kidding! Just look at where we are with personal data. The | default is opt-out - it should be opt-in. And for consent, the | default is 'assumed' consent - it should be 'informed' consent. | oblio wrote: | Yeah, as far as letters go, it's a 3 character difference. You | know: "opt-in/out". So it seems easy. | | However switching that little switch would mean killing | businesses worth tens of billions of dollars. We're talking | about millions of people losing their jobs and their privileged | positions. | | I'm not saying this because I agree with them, I'm just | pointing out that threatening their livelihood will cause a | vicious reaction. People have been killed for less. Wars have | been started for less. | titanomachy wrote: | It's incredible when you consider what it would be worth to | these companies to influence the decision one way or the | other. If Facebook calculated that it would cost $14 billion | to convince the government/people to stop Apple from changing | this default, it would probably be worth it: Facebook's | revenue is about $70 billion per year, and about half is from | advertising in the US. | | For reference, $14 billion is the total amount spent | campaigning for both the congressional and presidential | campaigns in the US 2020 election. | | Uber was able to buy their California ballot proposition for | a mere $300 million in marketing costs. | ghaff wrote: | And it's not just personal data. Imagine if organizations | were only allowed to index or archive web sites if the | copyright holder has explicitly opted in using robots.txt or | something similar. | | A huge part of the functioning of the Internet is enabled by | practices you need to explicitly opt out of--if you can opt | out at all. | staplers wrote: | We're talking about millions of people losing their jobs and | their privileged positions. | | How did the world and society exist without big-brother | surveillance?!? | oblio wrote: | Don't misread/misrepresent what I'm saying ;-) | | My point is that there are many of those people I mention, | they're rich, smart and quite powerful. Many of them are on | this exact site, by the way. | | They're not going to give up what they got without a fight. | staplers wrote: | Sounds like I'm interpreting it perfectly. | | You are implying surveillance capitalism is necessary | because "certain people" can threaten, harass, maybe kill | citizens into participating because it makes "certain | people" rich. | | My sarcasm implies it's unnecessary. Further it is a net- | negative to society and everyone knows it. Look at | tobacco, oil, or coal.. eventually they lose their grip. | Get real. | [deleted] | ilaksh wrote: | Great article. | | It seems as though we need more people with really solid problem | solving skills. Because I have found that people who do not know | how to solve problems tend to root strongly for the status quo. I | think it's because they know if they admit that there is a | problem, they will not be able to address it. So they would | rather rationalize the way things are. | devy wrote: | Ben Thompson tried to compare China with over 1.4 billion people | with Taiwan with only 24 million people and vehemently arguing | that the Taiwan's governance is better is very disingenuous at | best. Imaging the comparing the governance of large corporation | vs. a small startup, it's just different. The complexity and | nuances of managing human organization will increase drastically | when the headcount increases. That's just common sense. | | Also Ben is based in Taiwan, he should know better. The current | Tsai Ing-wen's regime actually oppressed free press and freedom | of speech by terminating CTi News TV broasting license due to | political reasons (since CTi New airs opposing views to her | government and is generally seen as close to the mainland | China).[1] | | I don't agree with Ben's first rule of new default either: | First, it should be the default that free speech is a good thing, | that more information is better than less information, | and that the solution to misinformation is improving our | ability to tell the difference, not futilely trying to | be China-lite without any of the upside. | | The more information is NOT better at all. Information overload | will cause great harm and push people to the extreme ideology, as | we've seen in social media (facebook, twitter, google etc.) the | self-reinforced bubble. And there are physical drawbacks to those | too. The more noise and junk information the less likely you can | make an informative decision. Garbage in garbage out! | | [1]: https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp/chinese-news-55000536 | vineyardmike wrote: | Most people out of the reach of the CCP will concede no | accolades to the Chinese government. Especially in regard to | information transparency and availability. | | Sure, maybe the population size requires different ways of | governing, but let's not make the mistake of looking towards | such a horrible government for source of inspiration. | | As you said, a startup has to operate differently from a large | corporation, but let's pick a "successful" corporation. | toiletfuneral wrote: | Ok so 300,000 dead is acceptable losses for the sake of our | "successful business model" | sooheon wrote: | > Information overload will cause great harm and push people to | the extreme ideology, as we've seen in social media (facebook, | twitter, google etc.) the self-reinforced bubble | | Now that we understand this piece of information, is the best | way to solve the problem more information, or to forget that we | ever learned it? | carbonguy wrote: | It's possible that Thompson means "information" in the more | technical, information-theoretic sense, which we might qualify | as " _useful_ information " - signal as opposed to noise or | "misinformation." In this sense I tend to agree with what he's | saying: more information is probably better. Indeed, I find it | hard to believe that he really feels he's making an original | point here - it seems almost axiomatic. | | Nevertheless I think you're making a solid point: information | overload can be pretty harmful. I think that's what Thompson is | getting at with his comment "the solution to misinformation is | improving our ability to tell the difference" but honestly | that's not a _solution_ so much as it is a _goal_ - granting | that it 's desirable for people to have this filtering | capacity, how can it be learned? | squidlogic wrote: | >The more information is NOT better at all. | | Do I take it that this information you are providing me is an | exception? | SllX wrote: | > The more information is NOT better at all. | | Even prior to official orders coming through, people were | acting on information they were receiving from news reports on | the virus. | | Kids were pulled out of school, the restaurant industry was | seeing less traffic, fewer people were in bars and people that | could find a way to work from home and minimize going into the | office were already doing so. Some larger firms were proactive | on this. | | Not everyone will act perfectly with more information, but more | information allows more people to make better choices for | themselves and make their own risk/reward tradeoffs ahead of | the curve. I think it was February that N95 masks started | selling out in the shops around here, maybe sooner, and it was | at least a week prior to the lockdowns that supermarkets | started selling out of staples and had long lines leading into | their parking lots. | [deleted] | forrestthewoods wrote: | > The more information is NOT better at all. Information | overload will cause great harm | | Although I appreciate your desire to decide what information | I'm allowed to access I'm going to politely decline. Thanks for | the offer. | lemonspat wrote: | > The current Tsai Ing-wen's regime actually oppressed free | press and freedom of speech | | > The more information is NOT better at all. Information | overload will cause great harm and push people to the extreme | ideology | | I sense that you believe in two conflicting views. You want | less information, but are critical of silencing a pro-China TV | license in Taiwan? How do you rectify this yourself? I'm trying | to understand. | LordDragonfang wrote: | There's a large difference between censoring a news source | for political affiliation and censoring something for (for | example) counterfactual misinformation regarding vaccines and | the pandemic, or for that matter unsubstantiated voter fraud. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-01-05 23:00 UTC)