Ask HN: How do you decide on anything when you're surrounded by misinformation?

Personally, I take everything I read with a grain of salt, and try (a) to sanity check against my model of the world and (b) to try and consider the core issues / agendas behind the different perspectives rather than what usually ends up as a proxy battle over some "scientific" details.

I'm a bit wary it giving concrete examples because I'll emphasize, it's a personal process, but for illustrations sake:

Re Covid vaccine, I definitely think there are multiple agendas, but there is really global adoption, and short of some unrealistic conspiracy theory, you would not see unequivocal recommendations like this if there were serious concerns. Covid was pretty clearly a big problem, and worth trying to stop.

I think there is, correctly, pushback on whether people should have something like a vaccine forced on them. And that ends up provoking a reaction where people run to "scientific" arguments about effectiveness and side effects, but I see that as mostly noise that would go away if not for the spectre of some kind of compelled (or de-facto compelled) vaccination.

Vaccines have a pretty well documented history of success, and safety so it's not like this is something out of left field. The most likely failing, if any, is simply that it doesn't work, not a dangerous reaction.

So for me, in the balance, I got the vaccination.

No idea if that's helpful or even coherent, just trying to give an example of processing different viewpoints.

Edit: also, I like to read the "alternate facts" - sometimes you get an interesting perspective, often you can immediately see how incoherent and ridiculous some side of a debate is. But in all cases, I believe the "information" should be our there, even if ridiculous, for people to debate and reject, not gatekeeped by some enlightened elite that get to tell me how to think. Many people seem to have a problem with this last part, which should be more frightening than the potential for misinformation.

welcome to the info wars...

tldr: education

for me it feels like i have to go back and relearn all the things i had learned before. the second time around you learn some new piece of the puzzle. rinse and repeat and experience is what drives your knowledge. so you might be asking a better question; how to avoid all the bullshit? well my dear girl, you can't. when you're in a shit slinging war [which is what we're having] you can dodge and weave all the shit you want, but eventually you're going to get hit with some shit. and you'll probably throw some shit...

might be getting to the point that we're all covered in shit. at which time we might ask ourselves... do we really need a shit war? some people will just be happy with all the shit flinging. others will try to escape it. eventually, some will find cover from the shit storm. it will be a haven. much like hacker news. others will want to join the sweet cover and protection from the shit storm. a tipi to a fortress. a tribe to a village. eventually we will have to isolate the shit throwers from the non shit throwers. that will be a place that deals with problems like intellectual property and competition based policies.

until then... just gonna have to learn as much as you can. look for the path of least resistance. sometimes it will just be easier to go along with the bullshit, and you should go along with that. recognizing that and learning how to identify it is how you deal with it. don't take the red pill. don't take the blue pill. take the purple pill... prince is waiting

one last thing to remember: the meek shall inherit the earth, but not her mineral rights.

It is called developing critical thinking. The truly insightful people in the world have both intelligence and critical thinking. If you are sufficiently intelligent and have honed a practice of critical thinking "misinformation" just becomes another data set to weigh while making decisions. You should not expect anybody to tell you the full truth about anything. Rather you should investigate various sides of issues that are relevant to you and come up with your own decisions.

My decisions regarding COVID after observing the disease and the reaction to it:

I have decided, based in part on close contact with people who actually got the disease, that for most people the threat of COVID has been overhyped. Unless you are diabetic, overweight or come from an ethnic group predisposed toward diabetes or obesity or have other serious health conditions effecting cardio-vascular-pulmonary or metabolic systems or serious issues like cancer or extreme old age or HIV covid probably will not kill you or even seriously disable you. You could get unlucky but it does not make sense to live life in fear.

With regard to vaccines they have also been widely tested in the population and adverse effects are rare. I chose to get the one shot J&J vaccine because it was based off a more proven traditional approach rather than the unproven mRNA approach and was logistically simpler. It really baffles me why the one shot vaccines have not been more widely promoted. Yes there was the very rare incidence of blood clots in younger women. If you are not a young woman or on birth control you do not need to consider that risk. I personally think the J&J vaccine is the least risk and best tolerated. I felt flu like symptoms for about 24 hours after the vaccine starting 8 hours after I got the shot but other than that I have experienced no side effects. Sure beats getting sick for 3-4 weeks. So I am not too worried about the vaccine and not too worried about covid either. I think it is bizarre how over-hyped so many people's anxiety over both covid and the vaccines has been. It makes no sense to live your life in fear. It does make sense to take reasonable precautions. Everybody dies of something one day or another. This is a basic fact of life. I personally would avoid the mRNA based vaccines because they lack an established track record and are unnecessarily complicated and I have anecdotally heard the second shot typically has worse side effects esp. in younger people for the mRNA vaxes.

This post is caused by phone call I had earlier, where family members strongly suggested I shouldn't get vaccinated as the side effects are supposedly more likely to occur then a critical infection...

The decision to vaccinate or not vaccinate should not be based on general data. It should be based on personal stuff specific to your life.

Some good reasons to vaccinate:

1. You need proof of it so you can travel.

2. You have to have it to do your job.

3. You have reason to believe this will be better for you than not vaccinating.

Some good reasons to not vaccinate:

1. You've had a severe reaction to past vaccines.

2. You have an underlying medical condition that makes it contraindicated.

If you don't have strong reasons either for or against particular to your specific situation, then it's probably a good idea to err on the side of getting vaccinated to help stop the spread of a global health crisis.

Covid and the vaccine for it seem to be mostly problematic due to what they do to your blood rather than actual respiratory problems. If you don't have any blood related disorders, it's probably not particularly dangerous.

I am not a doctor. I do have a serious medical condition and read and think a lot about such things.

For other kinds of info, it sounds like you need to learn more about what kinds of evidence constitutes strong evidence. One strong piece of evidence can overturn multiple weak pieces of evidence and it's important to know how to judge such things.

For some domains of knowledge, there is no substitute for simply getting educated. Being knowledgeable about one thing doesn't necessarily prepare you for judging other things. Sometimes it actually leads you astray if they are different enough.

Thank you for responding!

> For other kinds of info, it sounds like you need to learn more about what kinds of evidence constitutes strong evidence. One strong piece of evidence can overturn multiple weak pieces of evidence and it's important to know how to judge such things.

i am aware of this, but it is hard to actually pay attention to this at all times. my personal rule of thumb has always been that a testable/falsifiable thesis is always more trustworthy then one that is not. But a lot of the highly volatile topics dont have any like that, because actually doing so would be immoral or unrealistic to actually test. They always end up with meta analysis being done on both sides, which can always be portrayed in whatever way you wish.

I grew up in a family as the youngest.

From my immature point of few as a child back then, everyone looked very knowledgeable and rational. Over the years, everyone in my family increasingly argued with emotions and link videos to people that are - from my point of view - incredibly manipulative.

Now I'm in my thirties and everyone in my family seems to see the covid situation as a conspiracy.

There is an endless stream of discussions from often quite knowledgeable people doing various meta analysis, showing how there is no/negligible danger, how the tests do not actually work, that the virus is older then 2019 - with the only change being that we now pay attention to it and so much more.

As a software/devops engineer, i feel unqualified to have an opinion on the matter.

I wouldn't know the first thing about verifying or falsifying any of these theories.

nevertheless, I am told that I should research and decide for myself, and that just trusting the official channels is negligent or even dangerous.

And the thing is that I agree on the last point. I know my government (germany) to be corrupt beyond any doubt.

All of them have been proven to have stolen public money, participated in nepotism and supported policies which made our society objectively worse off while profiting various parties - with no consequences to the politicians.

I just hope we will have less controversy on this topic in the future, though it doesn't really look like there is any chance of this happening.

You need to find ways to disentangle yourself from the family drama. Disengage as much as possible. Arguing with it tends to make things worse.

But a lot of the highly volatile topics dont have any like that, because actually doing so would be immoral or unrealistic to actually test.

Things that can't be tested can still be checked against known good mental models and historical incidents.

There is an endless stream of discussions from often quite knowledgeable people doing various meta analysis, showing how there is no/negligible danger, how the tests do not actually work, that the virus is older then 2019 - with the only change being that we now pay attention to it and so much more.

As a software/devops engineer, i feel unqualified to have an opinion on the matter.

What you are describing is really an issue of unhealthy social dynamics. It has nothing to do with the question you asked and everything to do with knowing how to handle people.

It's perfectly fine to not have an opinion on every topic under the sun. People who have and share strong opinions on things they are ignorant about are called blowhards.

Just don't discuss things you don't know enough about to have an informed opinion about. Don't let people drag you into discussions of such things.

At most, listen politely. If that's making you uncomfortable or they are insisting you agree with them or insisting you act on their opinion, don't engage. Shut it down.

I know my government (germany) to be corrupt beyond any doubt.

"The News" tends to be bad news and focuses on everything that goes wrong. No one is perfect and people make mistakes and that's reality, but listening too much to the news will convince you things are worse than they really are.

There is a global health crisis ongoing, so people are stressed out. You see more social weirdness during this kind of crisis.

Politely let people know "I know you are stressed out about all of this. So am I. And for my own mental health, I just can't discuss this with you. Thank you for understanding."

As for actual actionable decisions related to the pandemic, it doesn't matter where the virus came from. It matters that you protect your health and make choices rooted in what kind of future you want.

If travel is an important part of your life, you likely need to vaccinate to keep doing that. So look to your future and questions like that, not to the past and drama surrounding questions of how we got here.

Understanding how we got here can be valuable sometimes for resolving a problem. But that's not what your family is doing.

Ignore all that. Think about what you need to do to not get sick, not get fired from your job, not end up barred from things that matter to you, etc.