So, let me understand you here.
Jeebus, here we go. I’ll try, but sometimes I feel I can’t get through, and I don’t usually know if both or which of us are being the most obscure or stubborn. While I grant that you’re the more accomplished wordsmith and writer, but sometimes also an avid presumption-smith. I’ll take the long time necessary to respond as completely as I can to this single post. Seriously, this could take ME over an hour. And I hate that.
Are you saying it’s good for people who know (or assume they know) what’s good for us to hear to curate what goes into the conversation? And if we allow the “good” people to assume that role this time, who might it be next time? Especially considering I’m not so sure the results were good this time.
Well yeah, sometimes. The hard part is learning which people have the most knowledge and experience, and seem to have the most unselfish motives in their presentations. A museum’s curators have to chose how to fill the limited space they have. While youtube “curators/creators” don’t have that limitation except on their own channel and with limited time to produce their presentations. While we all have limited time to watch and read what we choose.
How we choose what to watch and read is what matters, along with how well we can adapt to the choices over time. I also learn which sources can correct themselves… like Lancet, Nature, and other peer reviewed journals that operate knowing they’re not infallible. Science is about self-correction over time, in spite of obstinate opinionators and bloviators. I also strive for delayed gratification on 99% of “breaking stories” and premature conclusions, not to mention finger-pointing as any kind of long term solution, except at the obvious maliciousness of Bannon/Trump era politics and pandering to malcontents.
It’s more constructive to understand human nature, motives, and then propose solutions that don’t evilize or dehumanize others, and that can be understood by humans who might actually be able to make a difference. Today that comes down to trying to fix systems and institutions at large, transcending the bickering and evilization at the single issue/controversy and political identity levels that viralize and take over social and other mass media. Stop promoting the outrage machines, and help people make better judgements with real evidence and smoking guns.
I have never heard any intelligent person saying that the free flow of ideas is bad. At least, not until Covid came along. I’m not ready to give up on it.
You can watch anything you want on YouTube, as long as Google allows you to search for it to get around their “what to watch” algorithms. That kind of limiting what you can watch is a different kind of censorship of ideas that’s based on “what the masses choose to click on the most”. So the masses are unwittingly informing google what to present as options, vs what to “censor”. So any working solution toward promoting respectful, well sourced, credible presentations based on fact and valid expertise comes down to helping the masses make better choices. How can we help? I really don’t know, except maybe at primary and middle school level, and by exposing how most of today’s “free flow of information” (as you put it) is of the most-popularized, cesspool quality.
That it can’t have been a lab leak is an insupportable position because I’ve heard many times from a variety of sources that “lab leaks happen all the time.” Some of the people who believe it was a lab leak are as qualified to express that opinion as those who feel it had to be zoonotic.
Insupportable positions bother me greatly, too. In a whinefest of what’s hurting credibility in science, doubling down on insupportable positions is more destructive than helpful. While I agree, I’m seeing too many scientists doing this, too. It just feeds the mass’s outrage machines. While “zoonotic spillovers” and crowded venues (like cities, and so on) have been the largest threat for centuries, at least up to recently, and they’re going to keep happening until we can focus more on preventing them. Let’s focus on preventing all possible pandemics, the best we can.
Consider that one reason for wanting to pooh-pooh the lab leak theory is due to the government not wanting to further complicate the sore relations between China and the U.S.
I agree. While most microbe researchers also pooh-pooh the lab leak theory, and decry how “gain of function” research, after decades of successes in furthering disease prevention and treatment, has become yet another political football and outrage machine issue in the hands of the masses. The world, including WHO demand competent oversight of all risky research, while this is yet another modern issue that unlearned people and politicians cannot fully comprehend, much less propose solutions for that won’t stifle medical progress.
This may seem off-topic, but remember Boko Haram? The more advance science gets, the more humans simply cannot comprehend the positives and negatives of it. Which “facts” and experts can they rely on? Especially while social media and popular “news” outlets care more about clicks than competent curation, and modern curation itself is increasingly complicated or unfathomable. Boko Haram: Just stop high level education altogether, while evilizing the progressives.
TheEncogitationer 1 year, 5 months ago.
Unseen.
