Comment by spookthesunset | Hacker News Reader

Comment by spookthesunset | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Speaking out against all the harms and negatives of some highly disruptive non pharmaceutical interventions with unproven efficacy is absolutely not bad faith arguments. It’s the cornerstone of science and democracy.

Anybody in a position of power or knowledge who dared to even hint at asking questions got absolutely steamrollered by a very vocal group of “experts”. They were called alt-right selfish grandma killers who watched to much fox (and sorry, I never watched fox but it isn’t my fault they might actually be right sometimes, I’ve also been a solid democrat my entire life until this nonsense started…).

What we did the last two and a half years is so incredibly shameful. It was the opposite of science and opposite of “following the data”. It was appeals to authority all the way down. We were all told to shut up, “stay in our lane” and listen to a handful of cherry picked “experts”.

The last two and a half years changed my opinion about “fact checkers” and “misinformation” completely. Both of those are nothing more than ways to bully people into submission.

I found dang's response[1] to the question "Is fact checking that difficult?" to be insightful:

> It's extremely difficult because the human psyche seems incapable of distinguishing "fact" from "that which supports my view", at least when the emotions are activated, and the only topics where people seek "fact checking" in the first place are the ones where emotions are activated. There may be exceptions—i.e. people whose minds don't work this way—but if they exist, they're so rare as to be no basis for social policy. (And I doubt that there are really exceptions.)

> That's why there doesn't seem to be any fact checker whose calls aren't predictable from one of the major ideological partitions.

> Another way of putting this is that the question, "what are the facts?" is complex enough to already recreate the entire political and ideological contest. It's understandable that people would like to reduce that contest to a simpler subset of factual questions—but you can't. Just the opposite: that apparently simpler subset reduces to it.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29597867

The only "fact checkers" I have found to be useful are domain experts who get a burr up their ass and go incredibly deep-dive on whatever it is. And whatever they come up with usually pisses everyone off relatively equally, for some reason.

I'd like to take a stab at this. Barring certain pitiable neurodivergent conditions, folks consider themselves to be intelligent and highly moral creatures. The primary goal of ideological shit-flinging contests appears to be revealing one's opponent as an amoral imbecile, as a means of both propping up one's own self-image, and virtue signaling to larger audiences. When a true authority joins the chat and nukes everyone's Dunning-Kruger fueled reductionist positions with a comprehensive and highly nuanced grasp of the topic at hand, all of the amateurs at the table are presented with details that undermine their simplistic take on the issue in question. This undermines their own credibility, introduces massive cognitive dissonance, and disrupts their ability to continue to paint their chosen adversaries as dangerous incompetents based solely on the merits of their arguemts. In other words everyone is wrong, and they hate it because ego.

dang may be the only fact checker in the world I would trust to actually check facts.

Dang blocked a link to a paper on myocarditis induced on teens by the vaccines. That is now not disputed. I don’t trust dang for anything.

Fuck you dang and block this.

> Dang blocked a link to a paper on myocarditis induced on teens by the vaccines.

I know many people have a good opinion of Dang, but this seems to be editing, rather than moderating.

Can you provide some more data about what happened, the paper in question, and if it was from a reputable source in a peer-reviewed journal, or preprint?

I'd like to know more about this. I've long talked about the myocarditis and pericarditis risks which are most pronounced with young males and young females based on the known cases, and the nordic countries withdrawal of the vaccines for young males.

Strangely, even the Novavax vaccine also appears to have that adverse event, allegedly at a vastly reduced rate though [1].

[1] https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/public-health/what-...

This wasn't editing. It was censorship. I linked to a Youtube video by a doctor. Included in the video's description was a link to the paper. Dang claims that users flagged it and linked to the FAQ.

There is nothing in the link that would violate the FAQ.

I cussed him out in another comment and he blocked that too.

My link to the paper itself was downvoted too.

https://youtu.be/nBaIRm4610o

https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/74/11/1933/6353927

Now myocarditis is accepted and found on the CDC site on the mRNA vaccines.

Hacker News is shit. I have used it far less since that time.

> Dang claims that users flagged it and linked to the FAQ.

I am not defending dang, but that does appear to be a weaponized tactic being utilized here on HN.

Flag something, downvote it en masse, get a user making a dissenting opinion on a "you are commenting too fast timer" which appears to be triggered by mass downvotes, and then hope the flagging carries through.

The problem is with HN - they are permitting this type of behavior, and not realizing (or not actively intercepting) the use of this tactic to silence dissent.

While some time ago the idea that IV injection was problematic with the vaccines would be called fringe or, more aptly, cutting edge research, nowadays we know there is a legitimate issue, many countries are now banning these vaccines in persons under specific ages, and the body of research is more developed.

The paper was published in Oxford Academic by Oxford University Press. I don't think that can be labeled as fringe.

I talked to someone else and apparently this side effect was widely known and accepted in another country far before it was accepted in the US.

The dismissal of facts also happened with the investigation of airborne transmission of covid-19.

This can't be more true. I see a new section in Google news now for "fact checks". I am guessing it's never had a post on the hunter laptop. It's not "fact checking section" it's a "daily left affirmation section".

What questions do you have about the hunter laptop?

Were news articles claiming that it was a fabrication by Russian intelligence themselves fabrications?

Is it the one powered by this tool? https://toolbox.google.com/factcheck/explorer/search/hunter%...

That seems like the long way around of saying there is no such thing as objective truth, which I'm also beginning to suspect is correct.

I 100% agree with you. Once I learned about the "Trusted News Initiative" and the cooperation between Reuters, Pfizer, major media organs, and watched how Fauci previoulsy described the mRNA shots as 95%-100% effective, and later saw that number dwindle down to the low 50s, the Canadian trucker protests against absurd mandates and the shockingly draconian response from the _Canadian_ government, the despicable Australian and New Zealand policies in which citizens can not (and still can't) legally leave their country without getting mRNA shots, listening to Rachel Maddow and Joe Biden telling my poor, miserable father that "if you get the shot, you won't get sick and you won't spread it" which is probably one of the most destructive lies the ruling class perpetuated among fearful, isolated humans in my lifetime...

...I knew I could never vote for any Democratic politician ever again who supported this.

I couldn't visit my aunt in the nursing home before she died of a non-covid cause. I couldn't visit my father when he was in the hospital for a heart attack, EVEN THOUGH I was masked and vaxxed. It's simply disgusting how administrative law was weaponized against the common man.

And yet here you are getting grey'd out. What humans inflicted upon each other over the last 2.5 years is absolutely disgusting. These few years have shown the worst of humanity. Society lost its collective shit and basically did the exact opposite of what it should have done every step of the way.

All I take heart in is knowing your view and mine will be the the correct one. History will not look fondly upon what society did to itself. All these "experts" and politicians who supported this will be viewed as crackpots, charlatans and rain dancers.

It's the black-and-white condemnation of preventative measure as ineffective, the conflation of "it's not perfect for each person but valuable in the population" with "it's worthless and a violation of my rights" that gets the downvotes.

I'd say that history will have a lot to say about everyone.

Can you prove those mitigations were worth their incredible cost to society? Can you prove they were, in fact, valuable for the population?

The fact we still debate the effect of these mandates means it wasn't worth it. The fact we jumped into all these crazy mandates with nary a shred of evidence they'd even work is batshit insane.

And last I checked, humans have quite a few inalienable rights. We violated many of them and then mocked people who objected. Apparently not as inalienable as we thought if the masses demand it.

There are folks who will gleefully spend unlimited amounts of time arguing that the earth is flat, so the notion that because a position has merit solely because attracts individuals who will argue it is ludicrous on it's face.

Incidentally, if you are convinced that there was no evidence to support social separation and masking I'm guessing you don't wear respiratory PPE as part of either your work or a hobby, don't know anyone who does, and haven't spent any time researching filtration grades and their mechanisms of efficacy. In any case there are several industries ranging from mold abatement to biopharmacology and even chipmaking that would like a word with you.

When difficult things happen some folks will pick and whine and complain and make themselves the center of attention. And some will pitch in and help. It's clear how that went in this difficult time.

ho yeah and we saw how effective the measures were, every person I know has got Covid !

...which is the expected outcome and in line with all recommendations. It's this confusion I was talking about.

Public health measures were to slow the spread and not overwhelm medical resources, and to give time for better measures to be developed. Which has happened. Some folks cooperated with this, and some rebelled. And some spewed hate and misinformation.

Of course they have. The aphormis "fuck around and find out" has definitely enjoyed it's time in the sun thanks to the pandemic. Now if everyone you knew had spent the last three years voluntarily quarantined and only ventured in public wearing rated PPE with the correct fitment you might have a point, so how about it?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com