[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.
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