
Coronavirus skeptics, deniers: Why some of us stick to deadly beliefs - ClarendonDrive
https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/03/26/coronavirus-skeptics-deniers-why-some-of-us-stick-to-deadly-beliefs/
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fileyfood
Personally, I am more likely to trust sources that appear to think critically.
A lot of reports are heavily one sided, and will provide a lot of evidence
backing up a point, while appearing to hide the evidence of the opposition.

I find that a much stronger piece comes when a report questions its own
assumptions and explains why we are making a judgement given the shortcomings
of the initial argument.

When you consume mainstream media you get a lot of one-sided reporting, which
inspires me to try to find the holes in their arguments. This puts in the
position of question Coronavirus measures etc.

The reality is, the people making the measures are probably aware of the
assumptions they are making, and are trying to recommend the best approach
given what we don't know. Given the limited information, it is nice to have as
much transparency as possible though.

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notacoward
> I am more likely to trust sources that appear to think critically

Information-warfare specialists know _exactly_ how to exploit that attitude.
Sowing distrust of mainstream media is core to their strategy, so that people
will be "skeptical" about anything they say and turn to alternative outlets.
How is it done? Easy: create the _appearance_ of greater balance or depth
without its substance. Create strawman versions of objections only to knock
them down, include data points that appear to make the analysis more inclusive
but don't change its outcome, toss in a few dubious factoids or citations,
etc. It's not even that hard. Before long you'll have plenty of people who are
"inspired" to poke holes in the mainstream narrative (but not their preferred
one) and "question" mainstream advice (ditto) to carry on the fight for you.

OTOH, having registered a mere two hours ago and only ever commented on this
article, I suspect that you're well aware of those tactics.

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bjt
The body of the article contains a really good descriptions of the heuristic
shortcuts we use, and their limitations.

The title, though, seems to assume the result. Trust in authority,
confirmation bias, and sampling based on your peers' beliefs could just as
well make you overestimate a risk as underestimate it.

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fileyfood
I agree, and I'd argue the potential confirmation bias presented by one side
easily inspires skepticism from the other side

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loopz
Beliefs are bad, mmmkay?

Have faith != belief

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thu2111
It's this kind of openly biased article that makes people perceive academia as
blind to its own failings and ideological dementia.

I'll summarise the article.

Apparently only conservatives stick to deadly beliefs. They're bad because
they don't listen to academics (ever, any of them) in order to follow
"authoritarian ideology". People blindly follow the words of authority
figures, and that's bad because of an example involving Trump and chloroquine.

What about when people blindly follow what academic authorities say? Well,
that's totally rational of course because those experts make smart decisions,
so don't think or ask questions, just obey:

 _We all need to be more intellectually humble. We all need to recognize that
how certain we feel is irrelevant to how certain we should be. We need to
recognize that there are scientists and medical experts out there who have the
knowledge and expertise we need to make smart decisions_

The lack of self-awareness in this lady is astonishing. She's a psychologist.
Psychology has had its credibility utterly trashed by the growing awareness
that so much of what they do doesn't replicate and/or contains major errors.
The evidence grows all the time that listening to psychologists is a good way
to make dumb decisions whilst feeling smart. Yet she says:

 _As for behavioral and cognitive scientists, we don’t yet know if the
tendency to hold onto dubious beliefs can be trained out of people_

Indeed we don't. I guess a good place to start would be trying to train her
colleagues out of the many, many dubious beliefs that pop psychology and other
academic backwaters propagate every day.

In this crisis we see the man who first wrote about the replication crisis
once again publicly warning us about the dodgy data and modelling being done
by academic 'experts', people who are never held to account for mistaken
predictions and thus have no incentive not to constantly give us confident
sounding 'expert advice', regardless of their own certainty. Who should we
listen to? The article doesn't help answer this.

