Comment by atleta | Hacker News Reader

Comment by atleta | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> also well-established scientific consensus is not an ideal goal post .

It indeed is. As a layperson who knows nothing about a field, not even a closely related field your best bet is to accept the scientific consensus. And by best bet I mean that that that is the choice that will give you the highest expected value of success.

People keep pointing at the cases from the past (sometimes from the very far past, like with Galileo) trying to disprove this strategy. There are at least two fatal flaws with this logic: 1. science has evolved a lot since then. And it doesn't just mean that we know more about those specific subjects (be it astronomy or neuroscience) but more importantly, the scientific method has evolved too. I.e. when we think we know something today, is very different from what it was a 100 or 500 years ago. 2. Of course, scientists can be wrong. Even en masse (i.e. the scientific consensus). (If it wasn't so, we may not need research any more after all because we'd know everything.) But going completely wrong is pretty rare and what is exactly your other option? Listening to lunatics? Because every lunatic will say "yeah, but the scientists are wrong all the time, so..." and go on with their 100% unfounded claims. No, it's not that they do research because they don't accept the consensus. That would be totally OK. They just make claims that they support with this very vague critique. "Lobotomy won a Nobel prize, which we know don't work, so who is to tell me that I'm wrong with my claims that I have nothing to support."

> Nothing is certain in life when human beings are involved no matter how comforting that thought is. There is only a narrative of certainty.

Nobody said it was. This is a big fat strawman. But just because (almost) nothing is 100% certain, it doesn't mean that we don't have more probable and less probable answers.

>>your best bet is to accept the scientific consensus

you got it right.. it's a bet

Science is not the ultimate source of truth, it is data with a risk reward attached that you can use for your own critical thinking

I do agree with you though that it should be heavily weighted in your thinking.

But people now are treating as an infallible religion that you can outsource your critical thinking to...which is scary imo.

> you got it right.. it's a bet

Sure. As you don't have certainty but you have to make decisions.

> Science is not the ultimate source of truth,

Science is our current best approximation of reality. But yes, it's not ultimate and we indeed do know that it's inaccurate. But we don't know better. And that's also important to keep in mind.

> it is data with a risk reward attached that you can use for your own critical thinking

Yes, but there's a trap here. It's OK as long as you base your decisions on your best knowledge (i.e. science). You can say that based on your risk profile (which you can estimate using science) the best decision (bet! :) ) for you is X. That's rational. However, a lot of people interpret similar claims as if it would be rational use what they think is "critical thinking" to override science. And that's a huge difference.

To be more specific. E.g. there is huge difference in saying that I believe that (accept the assumption) mRNA vaccines are safe with a 99999/100000 probability (i.e. cause cause serious side effects at most 1 out of 100 000 times) but I estimate my COVID risk lower, because the way I isolate myself (let's say you do have the data). I don't meet anyone, don't go outside, I'm 25yo, I work out, I don't have a condition, etc.

Vs. if someone says that "yeah, they say it's safe, but I don't think so, because this and that". Because that's not critical thinking. That's actually the lack of self reflection/critique. Even if someone reads up on some literature and they base their opinion on that, that almost certainly will just be cherry picking (it's hard to do better in a field someone knows nothing about).

> But people now are treating as an infallible religion that > you can outsource your critical thinking to...which is scary imo.

I don't see this. I probably see more people who are so afraid of making the wrong decision that they actually end up making the wrong decision :). Again, "critical thinking" sounds good, but a lot of time it's not critical thinking. Some people may feel insecure if they just accept someone else's decision or opinion even if that someone else knows lot better. And it may feel safe to make your own decision (which, almost by definition has to be different). But that's a bad intuition. If you have no better information to base your decision on than your best source (in this case, science) then your end results will just be worse by adding in your thinking (your inferior data sources and inference).

>>then your end results will just be worse by adding in your thinking

Tell that to the people who decided against getting a labotomy after labotomies won the Nobel prize. ;)

> science has evolved a lot since then.

Given that there is no way to measure absolute scientific progress, this is a meaningless and baseless claim.

At the time of Galileo, scientists had, after many centuries, perfected their means of calculating geocentric orbits. Thee equations worked extremely well. Experts at the time would have told you that science had progressed significantly since the time of Aristotle. Yet it had progressed in a completely wrong direction.

There is no reason to believe science is somehow progressed perfectly today in every arena.

There are, of course ways we can measure progress. E.g. by measuring the results of applying science and scientific results to practical problems. Since we talk about medical sciences here, life expectancy is a good measure. So is being able to cure specific classes of diseases. And these are off the top of my head, I'm pretty sure someone into the philosophy of science could come up with much better and more general metrics.

> At the time of Galileo, scientists had, after many centuries, perfected their means of calculating geocentric orbits.

Again, Galileo had a clash with the catholic church not really fellow scientists.

> Thee equations worked extremely well.

I'm not so sure. Galileo came up with his theory based on what geo-centric view couldn't explain.

> Experts at the time would have told you that science had progressed significantly since the time of Aristotle.

> Yet it had progressed in a completely wrong direction.

Which was true. They indeed got ahead, because they also had to perfect the math and measurements, etc. Not just the descriptions of the orbits. Also, BTW, Galileo was wrong. He thought the Sun was the center of the freaking universe, which it isn't at all.

Also what are you then arguing for? If you can't say that science evolves and improves over time then what's wrong with censorship? Those ideas that you think would be censored (I didn't exactly say that, but let's go with it for now) would not improve science. Or, at least we wouldn't be able to measure it, according to you.

The way I like to think about it is that science is a machinery that constantly builds and improves itself. It not only gets 'bigger' but it constantly gets better and building itself by improving the scientific method itself. E.g. if you think about medical sciences again, 150 years ago doctors would experiment on themselves (n=1) and use their "experience" (i.e. a small amount of inaccurate measurements aggregated in their head). These days we do double blinded, randomized controlled trials and funky statistic checks to filter out errors, then other people look over the results multiple times (think peer reviews and meta-analysises). It's an iterative process that keeps correcting and perfecting itself. And we do know when we go in the wrong directions because results will be off from the reality.

It sounds like we agree with each other.

Science is imperfect and iterative.

Yet with that knowledge you have come to the conclusion that the mRNA vaccine is perfectly safe after being developed in 6 months and tested in humans for only a year-ish?

I follow your thesis but not your conclusion.

Oh, great. Yes, imperfect but improves iteratively. But I never said that the mRNA vaccine (or any vaccine, for that matter - we also have vector vaccines and even inactivated ones) is perfectly safe.

Indeed, what I was saying is that it's illogical to expect it to be perfectly safe. That would only make sense if contracting COVID was (proven to be) perfectly harmless. But the thing is that you are forced to make a decision and you don't have complete knowledge about the consequences of neither of your (two) choices. However, the (imperfect) experts say that the vaccines are way safer than contracting covid unvaccinated. And if anything, we both know that they have a lot better chance to be right than us.

> after being developed in 6 months

This doesn't really matter given the above (that you should listen to those who know a lot better), but the 6 months is far from being true. They started experimenting with the coronavirus vaccines back in 2003 and there was ongoing research ever since then. I've just seen a video from 5 years ago where a virologist guy talks about their bat coronavirus research at the local (Hungarian) science meetup.

The mRNA platform itself has been under development for over 3 decades, too. But again, you can go for adenovirus vector vaccines, which are a more tested technology. In some part of the world you can get inactivated vaccines (e.g. here, in Hungary we had one from Shinopharm), but they don't do that well against SARS-CoV2. However, the actual candidate for Pfizer's (well, BioNTech's) vaccine was done in something like 2 weeks, IIRC. But that was only possible because of the decades of earlier research. In part the mRNA technology itself, in part because they could skip the animal testing thanks to the SARS-CoV1 vaccines developed around 2003. (But the animal testing only protects the phase1 maybe phase2 participants, anyway. It's not that a vaccine sometimes takes years because they experiment on animals for years with a vaccine candidate that otherwise seems perfectly viable.)

>> However, the (imperfect) experts say that the vaccines are way safer than contracting covid unvaccinated.

False. SOME (imperfect) experts say this.

SOME experts say taking an unknown vaccine for a healthy person in an age group that is not at risk of Covid is creating an unnecessary (unknown) vaccine risk for themselves especially considering the vaccines are made by profit driven companies that haven't been particularly human welfare focused in the past.

>>They started experimenting with the coronavirus vaccines back in 2003

Thalidomide is based off of benzodiazepens which had been developed over a hundred years before Thalidomide was invented.

Still made unexpected flipper babies.

Have you even made a tiny tweak in a code base and the whole thing broke?

Now apply this to a biochemical system which is infinitely more complex.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com