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Comment by beckman466 | Hacker News Reader

1.) What do you think has made people scientifically incompetent (not trusting experts)?

2.) What do you think the impact of our current economic system has been on science? About the way science has been commoditized and feedback loops of the collective learning of humanity have been enclosed/black-boxed and made artificially scarce (innovations in the forms of patents, and other commoditized knowledge)? [1]

> Exactly! Fuck those people who studied a topic for 40 years -- why would they know one iota more about it than I do, or the facebook group of my crazy uncle -- they all have access to Google, after all!

I'm glad to see you state that access to Google and the 'commercial' web (can't think of better word) is not a good benchmark for access to humanity's shared inheritance. I see that claim too often.

[1] https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2019/02/19/dont-fooled-patent-pur...

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Science is the process of gaining, evaluating, and revising knowledge and understanding, Science is not a body of knowledge. It's an algorithm, not data. So clearly, having access to the largest book ever written does not say anything about scientific literacy.

Here's the thing: people love to trust experts and, also, love to not think for themselves.

And they do trust experts, i.e. when it comes to having their cars repaired, getting medical treatment outside of COVID, etc. It's not like millions of people came up with using malaria medication and horse dewormer on their own after conducting studies in their basement. They are following other people, while, ironically, praising themselves for being independent and most certainly not sheep (it's horse dewormer, after all).

> Science is the process of gaining, evaluating, and revising knowledge and understanding, Science is not a body of knowledge. It's an algorithm, not data. So clearly, having access to the largest book ever written does not say anything about scientific literacy.

Great description, loved "It's an algorithm, not data." especially.

> Here's the thing: people [...] love to not think for themselves.

Wtf? I agree with what you write before, but then in this comment you're grossly generalizing and calling people dumb. Why? Does it make you feel better? Maybe you could try to dig into your judgement here and share what emerges? Why do people 'love not to think for themselves', and then why are you different? Or what makes you and a few others uniquely able to see this?

I tried to honestly and state my personal state here if you're interested or need inspiration to describe your lens or your experience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28661179

You're reading a lot into my comment that isn't there.

So in your experience, people don't read movie reviews, don't listen to sports commentaries, don't read amazon comments? People don't listen to TV personalities telling them that malaria medication is good against COVID? In your experience, people read Nietzsche and Schopenhauer all day long, and discuss existentialism, rather than watching Netflix? Etc.

> So in your experience, people don't read movie reviews, don't listen to sports commentaries, don't read amazon comments? People don't listen to TV personalities telling them that malaria medication is good against COVID? In your experience, people read Nietzsche and Schopenhauer all day long, and discuss existentialism, rather than watching Netflix? Etc.

Your words, not mine. The question I'm trying to get your perspective on is: despite all this (movie review, amazon comments, TV personalities), why do people make bad decisions? You keep saying that they do (and I agree with you) and I'm asking you why you believe that this is the case. Why do they make bad decisions?

And a follow up question: why aren't people more hungry to learn (e.g. reading Nietzsche and Schopenhauer all day long and discussing existentialism if they want to)? Why do they instead watch Netflix, etc.?

Am I misunderstanding you somewhere? Please let me know.

Not "my words", I asked you a question.

Oh, I am not claiming I have answers! A lot of things can be explained by people not having time and just rolling with whatever other people have strong opinions on (ever been in an organizing committee, or in a group trying to figure out what to watch on Netflix - at some point you just want this to be over).

I think another aspect is simply vanity. It makes some feel special when you have "inside information", and you're "not a sheep" (TM), when in reality, all you do, is run after some other leader.

Edit: Systematic misinformation. Have you compared FoxNews and CNN during the Trump presidency? It's like they were reporting about different planets. One group has a significantly better outcome when it comes to COVID, for example (the motivation behind this is, however, a complete mystery to me).

> Systematic misinformation. Have you compared FoxNews and CNN during the Trump presidency? It's like they were reporting about different planets. One group has a significantly better outcome when it comes to COVID, for example (the motivation behind this is, however, a complete mystery to me).

Agreed. I fear that deeply traumatized people like Tucker Carlson aren't able to care much about people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E0NcmcGdSI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQwP0XRBjq4&t=37s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzUC4FUTKII

> Have you compared FoxNews and CNN

or is there more? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--TsGaNyr0U&t=1785s

Systematic misinformation follows from motivated reasoning. MSNBC, CNN and Fox all had plenty of it under Trump. MSNBC basically did to Trump what Fox did to Obama.

Plenty of studies have shown that liberals and conservatives can read the same studies, and both come away thinking the data supported their positions. And they were both wrong. Nuance is dead.

I agree with 'Nuance is dead' - it's horrible and I'm not sure how that can be fixed. I started reading Reuters to actually get information. I think CNN did themselves a big disservice by including too many opinion pieces and polemics.

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