[HN Gopher] Too good to be true: when overwhelming evidence fail...
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Too good to be true: when overwhelming evidence fails to convince
(2016)
Author : beefman
Score : 74 points
Date : 2022-10-20 18:00 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
| jesuscript wrote:
| The headline is making ominous a phenomenon that English already
| has a word for.
|
| Mistrust. It's not about the evidence, it's about loss of trust.
| Many people have lost trust in institutions, not evidence.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Not to mention verifying evidence is very hard, manufacturing
| evidence can be cheap, and instutitions have a bad track record
| about evidences.
|
| After 20 years of internet saving the lies of people forever,
| showing thousands of submarine articles, photoshopped pics and
| now deep faked materials, can we blame people?
| jesuscript wrote:
| Of course not, plus the last two decades included two
| bullshit wars (straight lies), an economic collapse where
| institutions lied, and hysteria over the severity of Covid on
| key demographics (masks, politicization, and lockdowns on
| non-critical demographics, e.g non-seniors).
|
| And that's just America (or the West). How anyone trusts
| foreign governments of the totalitarian type is something
| else entirely.
| colpabar wrote:
| This is what drives me absolutely nuts whenever I read
| about current events. Pfizer had to pay the largest fine in
| US history for a fraud case, yet questioning their data
| (which we weren't allowed to see until they were sued) is
| forbidden. We spent decades destroying the middle east with
| the justification being based on lies, yet to question the
| motives of the US in the current war is to be a traitor.
| Fauci was the one in charge of the response to AIDS, which
| everyone seems to agree was horrendous, yet he's now a
| national hero.
|
| I really struggle to understand how everyone can just go
| along with it all and forget about everything when the next
| thing starts.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"I really struggle to understand how everyone can just
| go along with it all and forget about everything when the
| next thing starts."
|
| My worldview is that all of us are far more "in-the-
| present" than we realize. I sense most people _want_ to
| help, want to conform with what is seen as serving the
| greater good, and are willing to follow the lead of what
| the group seems to be doing. Not only are we overloaded
| with information, if we aren 't being reminded of what
| "the good guys" did in the past that was either wrong or
| hypocritical, we won't know to make a fuss of it. Same
| story with "the bad guys" having done good things in the
| past.
|
| The most eye opening thing for me was seeing the American
| political left embrace Liz Cheney while the American
| political right disavowed her. That flip was unexpected,
| but it makes perfect sense when it comes to what is
| immediately expedient.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Pfizer had to pay the largest fine in US history for a
| fraud case, yet questioning their data (which we weren't
| allowed to see until they were sued) is forbidden.
|
| Questioning it is fine, and the data should be public.
|
| But also note that Pfizer also has credibility because
| they have made a decently high ratio of non fraudulent
| claims since they have a history of making and selling
| medicines that work.
| bb88 wrote:
| > Fauci was the one in charge of the response to AIDS,
| which everyone seems to agree was horrendous, yet he's
| now a national hero.
|
| That's a very self-serving argument cherry picking from
| history.
|
| Fauci was initially hated by the AIDS activists in the
| 80s but worked to gain their trust. You also don't factor
| in the societal hate americans had towards the gay
| population preventing research towards a cure.
|
| Here's an article that gives a detailed account of what
| it was like back in the 80's.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/06/the-
| her...
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| Yes, imo - because they don't just mistrust - they randomly
| trust alternatives.
|
| Mistrust is warranted, definitely. Trusting random sources
| that fit their heavy bias is something we should all be hyper
| aware of and fight. Yet we don't.
| Manu40 wrote:
| But that just fuels the fire.
|
| See, when a person already has evidence that 'other'
| opinions cannot be trusted, due to the many things being
| talked about in this thread by GP; It gives credibility to
| the alternatives because they at least make sense to those
| people's confirmation bias.
|
| Meanwhile, your own confirmation bias is being given
| credibility due to the things you believe to be true.
|
| This is the truth of all information until proven as
| objective fact. Until proven as objective fact, anyone can
| claim your 'truth' is just subjective; and thus potentially
| and highly likely wrong.
|
| And so it fuels the fire.
|
| The only solution (AFAIK) to this is that everyone leave
| each other alone for a while and let them figure these
| things out for themselves by letting good ol father time
| teach us what is right and wrong. Time. It's one thing in
| the universe that might not be lying to us, at least all
| the time; unlike humans who can't stop lying in attempts to
| ego stroke over being right.
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| > The only solution to this is that everyone leave each
| other alone for a while and let them figure these things
| out for themselves by letting good ol father time teach
| us what is right and wrong. Time. It's one thing in the
| universe that might not be lying to us, at least all the
| time; unlike humans who can't stop lying in attempts to
| ego stroke over being right.
|
| Man, i couldn't disagree more - about this actually
| working, that is. This seems to assume that with time we
| will progress. I have seen the opposite enough to believe
| that we _can_ , but also can just as likely regress.
|
| There are many out there that want to go back to removing
| rights from people based on skin tone, orientation,
| religion, gender, etc. Too frequently we reach a
| regression milestone that originally was projected to be
| the end of the regression, only to have us ramp up for
| the next regression milestone and fight over whether the
| next milestone is the end.
|
| I have zero faith in humans ability to cope here. I'm not
| sure on the solution, but to me it feels like we have a
| series of radio broadcasts which purposefully brainwash
| us and our only inclination is to turn the volume up, and
| make sure the neighbor can hear it through our windows.
|
| I am very, very pessimistic on our ability to dig out of
| this when we still willfully dug ourselves in to begin
| with.
| scastillo wrote:
| father time? time by itself does not explain anything...
| is the new evidence that happens over time the one that
| teaches us. We are just doomed to a mostly monotonic
| growing time function. So we need action not that
| invitation to sit down and wait for the next time chunk
| to hit.
| Manu40 wrote:
| Well,
|
| 1. I never said it would happen quickly. Thing is, humans
| are rather impatient generally speaking. Especially when
| they think they are correct about something and must
| spread the enlightenment of their ego unto others.
|
| Time, doesn't wait on us. We wait on it.
|
| Here's an example: I play some MMO's now and then, and
| with the kind where people are fighting over territory in
| the game, all sorts of real world type politics ensue.
| Sure, it's just a game, but those are real people
| playing, meaning real brains doing things that they do;
| even in the real world. People who are actually morally
| upstanding act one way, and people who are actually
| terrible under their societal masks are... well... the
| other.
|
| Sometimes you get to deal with drama that is absolute
| bullshit, where the people who are less than morally
| upstanding cast out a bunch of lies, mistruths, and royal
| stinkers.
|
| What's the best way to deal with this? You just keep on
| doing what you do, provided it's not actually wrong, and
| leave them alone. What happens?
|
| Well, in my experience, the rest of the actually morally
| decent and upstanding people take notice of this, and
| then go on to cast out the liar.
|
| Now, you may want to say "But that's just a video game"
| or "That's just the internet".
|
| But I disagree entirely to the ends of the earth. Humans
| are humans, no matter how or where they communicate. The
| only difference is that some have less inhibitions to do
| certain things, much like how alcohol affects them.
|
| So the end result for me in these kinds of situations
| both IRL and online, is eventually people wise up. They
| eventually figure out that Manu40 isn't really the
| problem, and the real problem is the other asshole. (I
| say it that way, because I absolutely can be an asshole
| if I want to be.)
|
| I've seen this sort of things play out with myself, and
| others, so many times; that I cannot agree with you. I
| can see where you come from though. Which brings me to
| #2.
|
| 2. Generally speaking, most of those problems you speak
| about in regards to rights, religion, race, gender, sex,
| orientations, etc, etc... most of these problems stem
| from people not leaving each other the F alone. These all
| stem from people being overly concerned, or angered by,
| or jealous of, or etc other feelings about other people.
|
| I.E. If they just left each other alone, most things
| would be fine.
|
| But humans don't like doing that, because again; ego.
| (And possibly a tinge of societal narcissism.)
|
| You have zero faith in humans ability to cope; but might
| I ask you without seeming to be attacking you, if perhaps
| that might be part of the problem here.
|
| You are not alone in your feelings, and so others act in
| a way to try to rectify each other in the guise of their
| opinions being holier than thou.
|
| Do you see now why I say Time and leaving each other
| alone would help solve this problem?
|
| I'm not saying it is going to resolve itself immediately
| or overnight in any way. It could take a long, long time.
| Weeks, months, even possibly years.
|
| What I AM saying, is that so long as people are
| constantly getting up in each others face and shoving
| their opinions down each others ears and throats; none of
| this will get any better, until it gets bloody. And then,
| it could still be argued that it never got better; it's
| just the killers are all that's left over.
|
| Not victors, killers. Because there is no victory in
| killing each other over opinions, and that's what this
| will turn into if people don't get over themselves, and
| leave each other the F alone.
|
| I mean shit, I'm guilty of it right now too by even
| replying to you to potentially help have you see things
| from my point of view; and so are you in reverse.
|
| Ideally, we'd all just stop typing and talking, and just
| mind our own damn business.
|
| But that's hard, because like it or not; some of us are
| actually right, and yes you and I could be wrong right
| now. The solution could be something that neither of us
| have even thought of yet.
|
| But that's still going to take TIME.
| jesuscript wrote:
| Which MMO? Sounds like Eve.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Yes, imo - because they don't just mistrust - they
| randomly trust alternatives.
|
| > Mistrust is warranted, definitely. Trusting random
| sources that fit their heavy bias is something we should
| all be hyper aware of and fight. Yet we don't.
|
| Not exactly, IMHO mistrust is a two step process: 1.
| mistrust and 2. find alternatives to trust instead, in that
| order. I think 1 always _starts_ first, through 2 can
| accelerate /reinforce it.
|
| Mistrust puts one in an awkward, unsupported position in a
| world where things are way to complicated for one person to
| process, and it should be expected that it will take a
| _long_ time for an individual to find an adequate
| replacement for institutions that have lost their trust
| (probably through trial-trusting other institutions then
| mistrusting them, too).
| akozak wrote:
| The view that we don't fight confirmation bias very much
| comports with my priors.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| However, the article itself is talking about an entirely
| different phenomenon
| omginternets wrote:
| Quite. And if we're going to be Bayesian about it, "too good to
| be true" is a strong predictor of untrustworthiness.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| It seems like advertisers know this: Witness the number of
| advertisements that feature: "Preferred by 4 out of 5 <x>".
| O__________O wrote:
| (2016) was year of publication.
|
| Press coverage:
|
| - https://phys.org/news/2016-01-evidence-bad.amp
|
| Presentation by authors:
|
| - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz6xUjJHTII
| csours wrote:
| Why isn't this in a psychology journal? This looks like it was
| presented at an engineering conference?
| gotoeleven wrote:
| Since we know that the NIH will block research that doesn't fit
| whatever is fashionable at the moment how can we trust anything
| they put out? If contrary results are forbidden then its not
| science. See for example this story from yesterday..
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33269567
| themitigating wrote:
| Every group, business, person, and country has lied at some
| point in their existence. Trustworthiness is not a binary
| value.
| water8 wrote:
| It should always be the standard for public institutions.
| Just because we are not perfect does not mean we should not
| strive for perfection.
| astrange wrote:
| This is the cause of why NIH/Fauci said untrue things about
| Covid; he can't say true things, because new true
| information is too surprising and you'd lose trust in him
| due to it changing too fast.
|
| Instead, he can only say things that "sound like what a
| trustworthy person would say", which is why they have to
| stick with medical dogma even when it's clearly expired.
| water8 wrote:
| No people dont trust fauci because of his absurd sense of
| entitlement and authority on something that is not
| knowable literally. You cannot unequivocally state that
| there will be no 10 year side effects for something that
| has not existed for 10 years. It is logically and
| physically impossible to make that statement and say it
| is a fact. Fauci confuses his opinion with the word fact.
| his hubris is why people don't trust him.
| astrange wrote:
| > You cannot unequivocally state that there will be no 10
| year side effects for something that has not existed for
| 10 years.
|
| Sure you can. Vaccines aren't computer programs and their
| side effects can't be programmed to happen after waiting
| 10 years; instead, they'd happen very rarely at shorter
| times and then become more likely to happen over time. So
| you can catch them by very carefully observing a smaller
| population.
|
| https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1467855689531940867
|
| I'm in a study with a silly name (HERO-TOGETHER) which
| basically means Google emails you every other month to
| ask if you've died yet. So far I haven't.
| jessaustin wrote:
| You guys are pulling out all the stops, here. This is the
| most shameless Clapperism I've read this month.
| andrewmutz wrote:
| If my test suite never ever goes red, then I don't feel as
| confident in my code as when I have a small number of red tests.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| This is what mutation testing is for.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Natural systems are massively complex. We know a lot, but it is
| still a small fraction. It's right to question things that seem
| too good to be true. Sometimes that may lead to further discovery
| about the underlying mechanisms. Although there are plenty of
| drugs out there that we don't know why they work, we just know
| that they do.
|
| And on that note, most doctors (that you know personally anyways)
| will be skeptical of new treatments as they've seen the
| unintended consequences of previous miracle treatments. Things
| that have stood the test of time at least give you a better
| understanding of the potential outcomes.
|
| Edit: why disagree?
| themitigating wrote:
| You're assuming that the default is harmless. If you are seeing
| a doctor to seek treatment for a condition and you do nothing
| you still have the condition and whatever it brings.
|
| If you are deciding whether to get a vaccine for a deadly
| disease but 10% of the people who get it die you need to weigh
| that against probability you could get the disease and die.
| It's not 10% death vs nothing
|
| Doing nothing is still an action.
| breck wrote:
| I agree. I would frame though as even if you are 99.9% certain
| of something, you can never be so certain as to how _important_
| that thing is relative to other things. Often you are certain
| about something but it turns out to be a minor detail in a
| bigger game.
| jimjimjim wrote:
| People trust what they FEEL good about. If two equally
| professional looking sources say different things. One says "you
| are doing something wrong, you will have to change how you think"
| and the other says "someone else is doing something wrong, you
| are thinking correctly" then they will trust the second source.
| Even when the amount of evidence grows for the first source they
| will trust the second. This is especially true if they will lose
| face for having trusted the second source.
| Centigonal wrote:
| The way this is written, the syncretic allusions to different
| subject matter, the obsession with Bayes... I feel like I'm a
| teenager reading LessWrong articles about cognitive biases again.
| :')
| nomel wrote:
| Could you expand on that a bit?
| whatshisface wrote:
| A huge fraction of LessWrong articles are actually about
| current events politics, but since you can't talk about
| current events on that website they mainly just allude to it
| while describing how they think their ideology should apply
| to interpreting it. (I know they don't consider it an
| ideology but that's just the word that describes it best.)
| bombcar wrote:
| If you go back in time and read "current events politics"
| is kind of amazingly sad how little it all matters.
| robocat wrote:
| More viewable link to paper:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4841483/?report...
|
| Or PDF:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4841483/pdf/rsp...
| 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote:
| I feel this way about the vaccine. "95% effective at preventing
| infection" etc etc. I really believed it would stop transmission
| which we also know now is not true. Should have been more
| skeptical.
|
| And before you say "that was before variants" remember that
| wasn't the messaging. The message was "it's safe and effective
| and protects others" and also "employer: based on what the CDC
| says take the vaccine or lose your job"
|
| A lot of damaged trust in institutions these last few years.
| shakezula wrote:
| > believed it would stop transmission
|
| It did lower transmission. Multiple studies confirmed this.
|
| > remember that wasn't the messaging
|
| Yes, it wasn't, because it's generally considered bad practice
| to attempt to predict the future, and if they had you'd be
| complaining about them attempting to predict the future.
|
| > the message was "it's safe and effective and protects others"
|
| All of the data agrees with this statement.
|
| > A lot of damaged trust in institutions these last few years
|
| Yes, I wonder why that is
| wellthatsawrap1 wrote:
| > Yes I wonder why that is
|
| Because they lied to us.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Would you consider that this could be the goal of ongoing
| hostile intelligence operations?
| pstuart wrote:
| Divided we fall.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| This is a strong argument for honest messaging which includes
| the appropriate caveats
| [deleted]
| jjulius wrote:
| >I feel this way about the vaccine. "95% effective at
| preventing infection" etc etc. I really believed it would stop
| transmission which we also know now is not true.
|
| The messaging was always that it would reduce the severity of
| the infection, not that it would stop transmission.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _not that it would stop transmission._
|
| Oh yes it was, that was certainly a big component of the
| messaging.
|
| _How can you be so cruel? Take it for grandma._
| [deleted]
| jjulius wrote:
| Manufacturers, CDC, etc. were explicitly clear about the
| difference between preventing infection and preventing
| severe illness upfront. If you heard, "How can you be so
| cruel? Take it for grandma," and went along with it
| thinking that that meant transmission is prevented, then
| you received that "message" from someone who - for lack of
| a better phrase here - was not an _" official"_ messenger
| and/or was speaking out of ignorance, and you then opted to
| read no further into the accuracy of that statement
| yourself.
| potta_coffee wrote:
| There are countless videos out there of officials touting
| that "the vaccinated do not transmit covid" but not that
| the goalposts have shifted, we're supposed to forget all
| about it.
| jjulius wrote:
| >... officials...
|
| Does "officials" mean the manufacturers and the bodies
| that approved the vaccines for use? Or does it mean
| politicians who spoke out of ignorance and/or
| opportunism?
| potta_coffee wrote:
| The politicians are paid off by the manufacturers (pharma
| lobby is absolutely massive).
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| I would say what NIH put out may have been "propaganda". But
| propaganda for a good reason: Saving the civilization. Think
| Will Smith/I am a Legend. So far we know that vaccines did very
| little harm and very much saved lives. And they saved lives
| because many people believed what NIH was saying. In other
| words they made a good effort in good faith.
|
| Of course if they go too inaccurate they will lose their
| credibility which is not good. So why would they do so, I think
| they didn't.
| omginternets wrote:
| >Think Will Smith/I am a Legend.
|
| Certainly there was great cause for concern and need for
| prudence in the early days of the pandemic, but COVID-19 was
| never an end-of-the-world scenario. Your appeal to _I am
| Legend_ reinforces the parent 's argument.
|
| >So far we know that vaccines did very little harm and very
| much saved lives. And they saved lives because many people
| believed what NIH was saying. In other words they made a good
| effort in good faith.
|
| You are begging the question: did the benefits outweigh the
| cost?
|
| To answer this, we need good data, unencumbered scientific
| debate, and time. There is reason to suspect at least some of
| the data and processes used to authorize vaccines were of
| poor quality, or perhaps even subverted; it is hopefully
| clear that scientific debate is more restricted than usual;
| and, we have not had time to observe any long-term effects of
| vaccines, especially on populations for which the risk of
| COVID-19 is extremely small (e.g. children).
|
| There is a vast middle-ground between anti-vaxxer and vax-
| maximalist that a reasonable and prudent person can occupy.
|
| >Of course if they go too inaccurate they will lose their
| credibility which is not good. So why would they do so, I
| think they didn't.
|
| You are presupposing that our institutions are rational
| actors, and that they are acting deliberately. Institutions
| can fail to perform their essential functions without malice.
| A conspiracy is not required for a more-dangerous-than-COVID
| vaccine policy to have taken place.
|
| Whether or not this actually happened is a matter of nuanced
| debate.
| themitigating wrote:
| The damage and trust lost was caused more by opportunistic
| politicans and mentally ill people than anything done by
| "institutions" assuming you mean Pfizer.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think institutions in this sense means the CDC,Who, and
| various governments
| SantalBlush wrote:
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| Everyone I know got covid either vax or not, so that number
| seems kind of meaningless.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| Humans are terrible at estimating efficacy of something
| measured in the millions from a (biased) sample size of
| dozens.
| mberning wrote:
| The fact that people turn to sophistry in defense of valid
| criticisms is evidence enough that people were mislead. Never
| mind whether it was intentional or out of ignorance. 95%
| effective at what? Preventing death? Preventing serious
| disease? Preventing spread? Preventing variants? The truth
| has come out and it was far from "95% effective" at anything.
| shakezula wrote:
| It's not sophistry to point out that someone has
| unrealistic expectations.
|
| Furthermore, you can't ask yourself a bunch of questions
| and then ignorantly answer them all with "no" when vaccine
| efficacy studies set a clear definition of "effective".
| omginternets wrote:
| It's not 95% effective, though.
|
| > vaccine efficacy studies set a clear definition of
| "effective".
|
| Those definitions changed after it became clear that the
| original definitions -- those on the basis of which the
| vaccines were authorized, and people pressured into
| obtaining them -- were not met.
|
| If anyone had unrealistic expectations, it was policy-
| makers.
| kashunstva wrote:
| The first large peer-reviewed clinical trial published in
| NEJM in Dec 2020 had around 43,000 subjects and in that
| population there was about a 95% reduction in cases vs
| placebo. Over time, it is clearer that the effectiveness
| with respect to the all-cases end-point is less. But that
| appears to be less a function of lying and more a function
| of the incremental way in which biomedical science
| asymptotically approaches the truth through iterative study
| and better understanding of confounding variables etc.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| >95% effective at what?
|
| It doesn't matter. What matters is that we don't see the
| number 100 anywhere, so one shouldn't pretend that anyone
| said the vaccine is 100% effective at _anything_ with
| regard to prevention. If you decide to pretend someone did
| say that, it 's not their fault.
| wellthatsawrap1 wrote:
| How about 95% lies!
| shakezula wrote:
| This is great if you want a catchy slogan, not so great
| if you're interested in really any honest discussion.
| JamesianP wrote:
| Is honest discussion what you're trying to do? Did you
| expect to change the original poster's mind with a line-
| by-line list asserting the opposite of their own
| assertions? I find such posting kind of rude personally
| and almost never read such posts.
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