zlacker

this is terrifying.. who can we even trust then :\

Such exposed dishonesty leads to more and more people completely losing faith in everything that the scientists say and turning into anti-vaccers etc.

>>seaman+(OP)
it's the reality of living in large, complex societies, where our intuitive trust-building relational proclivities get short-circuited by power structures. that doesn't mean we never trust organizations, but trust should be commensurate with our relational distance. that's actually the foundational principle of the federalist separation of powers (in the US).

also, terms like "anti-vaccers" don't help. just stop trying to bucket others as being stupid or outrageous. there are small but real, legitimate risks to every vaccine. that some folks can be overly self-assured and blow out those dangers for their own self-importance has no bearing on that fact. employ your rational brain to keep your emotional brain in check so you can see risks as they are, not as others want to use against you.

>>seaman+(OP)
You trust Science, not The Science, not the Scientists. You trust the Scientific Method, and nothing else. It took mankind a lot of centuries to get free from the shackle of the gods, let us not replace the pantheon with our science man.

>>seaman+(OP)
You don't "trust" often or very much. You look for a society where conflicting ideas are encouraged and are based in reason not whacky extremist ideology. You trust good disagreements and debates, you look for argument and parties which try to convince with facts and solid arguments.

We can't just live in a world where my side is right and your side is evil.

The strength of the US system of government and any democracy comes from diversity of thought and opinion which is good enough and respectful enough to actually be interested in arriving at the truth.

Instead we have political process which is somewhere between a reality show, a sporting event, and a religion.

>>seaman+(OP)
You can’t trust anybody, not structurally anyway. Western civilization has spent literally hundreds of years developing various ideas, such as free speech and democracy, to deal with that fact of life.

>>colech+Af
What does that say about social media censors and "fact checkers"?

>>chmod6+Vi
Social media is in a very confuzed middle ground between publisher and public square. I don't want them to be the arbiters of truth nor do I want them to be megaphones for misinformation nor powerful tools for easy population manipulation... but here we are. The solutions aren't just in content moderation, but whatever it is, it is difficult.

>>colech+zk
"Megaphone" is a bad analogy. You hear a megaphone whether you want to or not, and it interferes with other discussion.

Social media was blocking posts that people wanted to read and even blocked private messages. That's privatized censorship; there's no other word for it.

I am honestly dumbfounded that people are excusing it.

>>seaman+(OP)
Treat Science like a religion, you even used the word faith. It may often be more accurate, but at the end of the day, it's just another way of explaining things.

And if you ever think of science as perfect, just look at the history of science. There was a time where most scientists knew for a 'fact' that certain races were objectively inferior to others. Science is always being refined, new things are being discovered, and the people doing it change. Invariably, there is some scientific knowledge that will be discredited and changed in the future.