I’ve had a lot of dealing with the folks at TACC in my day job, and their work is pretty amazing. Add in a Top10 supercomputer and you have something pretty impressive.
> Because of downvotes? That's probably just because you brought partisan politics into the discussion.
Wut? Mentioning a politician’s name isn’t partisan politics. He said nothing about the politics of Cruz, he compared the Senator shifting blame onto his kids with this CEO blaming an intern. Don’t be like that.
> Mentioning a politician’s name isn’t partisan politics
Of course it is, why would you think otherwise? By calling out a particular politician by name, especially a controversial one, OP introduced a political slant to the discussion. Could just as easily have said "this is a problem we commonly see with politicians, or other people in leadership positions" without calling a particular one out.
> Don’t be like that.
Like what, exactly? OP made a comment, and when it started to go grey he maligned the HN commentariat as a whole as being full of lazy people. All I did was help him understand what aspect of his comment was the likely trigger for the downvotes. HN by and large does not like political discussions, it's even right there in the moderation rules.
Thank you for pointing this out - it's unfortunate that people can be immediately triggered to react after simply seeing a name that prevents/blocks them from continuing on to understand or critically think to understand what's actually said; it's definitely a sign of the times and state of our health and our thinking ability as a society.
This is uncharitable. First, you assume people were offended (and you used the loaded term 'triggered' to describe it). Then you go on to assume this means that society must be degrading, because so many people are losing their ability to think (the implication being that you are not part of that group).
A much simpler explanation is that people who read and comment on HN do not want to see every conversation degenerate into yet another political fistfight, since it seems to have infected every other part of our lives. One of the core values of this community is that we mostly manage to avoid that.
My perspective is valid, you've done nothing to prove it's not - other than putting your own "much simpler explanation;" where you're also making assumptions. Hope you enjoyed the thought exercise writing out your reply.
It's interesting how I can reference, with no personal opinion attached to it, a factual, recent situation that's comparable to the thread - about a well-known person who happens to be a politician - happens to be a politician, and as you said, because you're exhausted of hearing about them, you'd prefer they be censored/avoided in conversation. It's interesting to say the least.
P.S. Triggered is a valid word, I used it in the correct context - and you were in fact triggered by using it and are trying to gate keep its use.
What you are doing here is a pretty good real world demonstration of Russell conjugations. Also very non-productive, so I don't think there is any reason to try continuing the discussion. Have a great day!
Re: Russel conjugations - there was no "spin" to anything I said, I stated facts that were neutral - yes, that neutrality which is certainly a better light than you're appearing to believe Ted Cruz deserves (which has nothing to do with my own perception of him - it's your own belief or reaction you're applying to the facts). There is a difference - and if you read the examples at Google for searching "what is russell conjugation" - https://tomdehnel.com/what-is-russell-conjugation/ - then none of them fit what I said because I was just listing fact, so my points still stand and I wasn't using any fallacies or bad faith arguments. I won't analysis the conversation further because it'll become inflammatory. I'd love for you to show exactly where I am applying bias to the facts I listed.
Seriously. Blaming the intern is a bad look, but here it reinforces the idea that they don’t even understand what was wrong. The fact that it leaked is only relevant is that it shows 1) how bad their password is and 2) how deficient their process is for dealing with (let’s face it, inevitable) leaks.
The headline doesn’t accurately capture the substance of the article. The article does say it doesn’t find evidence for “mass hysterectomies”, but it does say that a review of medical records indicated that several women had procedures performed on them without informed consent and without any justification. The most salacious of the allegations might not be true, but it’s clear that the behavior of the medical personnel here is ethically beyond the pale.
Last week the claim was it's Nazi like mass sterilisations. Even though that's not even how you would sterilise women to commit a genocide, USA are Nazis.
This week it's "beyond the pale" they might have given women medical procedures they need but might not fully understand.
I think I don't care.
Whatever is really happening here is not great but I'm sick of the lies.
Now I question their seperating their children stories. I assume they were lying then too.
> Although some procedures could be justified based on problems documented in the records
MusicKit JS lets users play songs from Apple Music and their Cloud Library inside your JavaScript app. When a user provides permission to access their Apple Music account, your JavaScript app can create playlists, add songs to their library, and play any of the millions of songs in the Apple Music catalog directly in a browser, with no ...
Doesn't the WHO advocate a course of action that will cause people to die? Of course they do, it is just that different people will die at a different time. It is more fuzzy and diffuse rather than a data driven counter.
> Was he advocating a course of action that would cause people to die?
I thought the censorship was about the Coronavirus. There are a lot of videos that advocate a course of action that would cause someone, somewhere to die, that aren't being censored.
It has nothing to do with opinions, and it has nothing to do with ideology, except insofar as these two doctors were motivated by their ideology to profoundly misunderstand or misrepresent statistical sampling.
It’s not one side thinks this, the other side thinks that, it’s that their video is factually wrong, and in being wrong encourages dangerous behavior.
Really? Are you really so arrogant as to ignore that YouTube is far more likely to be making an ideological decision here?
An expert made a statement. YouTube went out of its way to find a doctor who supported YouTube's ideological slant and used that as justification for taking action.
This obliviousness. This is why we must restrict power. This is why we can't have nice things.
Do you really trust YouTube to make that decision? That's the whole point. I'm not actually interested in the credentials on either side - merely pointing out that YouTube is doing far more harm than good in choosing a side. Society would be far better off without their curation.
No, you claimed "an expert made a statement". I want to clarify. No expert made a statement on youtube. Two nonexperts made statements, and Youtube removed them, presumably at the behest of experts (like the WHO, whom youtube is using to set guidelines on removable content).
A doctor on the frontlines is an expert. He may not specialize in epidemiology or virology, but his credentials are sufficient that the difference between credibility between the scientists and the doctors is too small for youtube to reliably choose one over the other. YouTube is not an accreditation agency or an arbiter of credibility.
YouTube has no authority to suppress credible doctors from going against the consensus. The fact that this particular decision agrees with what the majority of us think is right doesn't mean that YouTube is right to choose.
Great, and the WHO is welcome to keep the doctors video off of their platform.
Ignoring ramifications of politicization, How many developments will be missed if we embark on a campaign to suppress all dissenting opinions?
You don't think a doctor on the front line is qualified to make inferences about the disease that he is literally treating en masse? You don't think direct observation and experimentation with hundreds of patients could provide valuable insight into the properties of this disease or potential working treatments and/or best practices? How far backwards are you going to bend to defend this position?
Again, the fact that this particular decision agrees with your preconceived notions does not mean that YouTube's emerging practice of choosing truth is good for society. The WHO is also not the only qualified body, nor is it a final authority, yet here YouTube is suddenly treating it as one and, conveniently, YouTube's political slant is aligned with this particular decision. If we allow this behavior, it won't be the last time that YouTube picks a winner and shapes the reality perceived by millions of people. This is a possibly unprecedented amount of soft power and it is being used without oversight or control by the society that is being influenced by it.
I'm not suggesting we make it illegal but educated citizens should be at least resistant to the idea, not welcoming of it because it happens to agree with their politics now. The same goes for Google and FB and any other platform that acts as a window to information - these corporations are not authorities and should not be gatekeeping information. Long term that's a far greater danger to society than COVID19.
> You don't think a doctor on the front line is qualified to make inferences about the disease that he is literally treating en masse?
About symptoms or specific treatment plans, perhaps. About government response? No. It's the difference between macro and micro scale approaches. The front line doctors are experts at mirco-scale treatment. Epidemiologists are best at macro-scale treatments. The two skillsets are not the same. An expert at one is not an expert at the other, and no amount of repeating that belief will change that.
> Again, the fact that this particular decision agrees with your preconceived notions does not mean that YouTube's emerging practice of choosing truth is good for society.
Correct. I just happen to believe that suppressing lies that can kill people if they believe them is also a good thing. Or do you think that "take Hydroxychloroquine, it's a miracle drug" should be posted on the youtube homepage?
> The WHO is also not the only qualified body, nor is it a final authority, yet here YouTube is suddenly treating it as one and, conveniently, YouTube's political slant is aligned with this particular decision
What is the political slant you're describing? The WHO, CDC, and pretty much every expert body on epidemiology in the world, in every nation, from Iran to Argentina to Germany to China are doing approximately the same thing. The political spectrums in those nations cross the gamut. Yet they're all following the same treatment plan for the pandemic response. What is the political slant?
> If we allow this behavior, it won't be the last time that YouTube picks a winner and shapes the reality perceived by millions of people.
They already do that. They're just doing so with a bit of morality instead of hoping that unmonitored algorithms will lead to the best outcomes for society.
> these corporations are not authorities and should not be gatekeeping information.
Information is relative. Google's mission statement is "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". So which is more in line with that mission: providing a platform for lies, or curating correct information?
Is "up is down" information? Or is it something else? I don't think lies (or perhaps less aggressively, falsehoods) are "information", they're something else. If the doctors are correct (they aren't, but assuming they were), they'd have evidence they could share and that actual experts would agree with. Then the expert consensus would change.
Either that or you think there's a worldwide conspiracy to keep us in our homes, hurting the economy and millions, or even billions, so that...as far as I can tell, the best guess is so that governments can replace the batteries in the birds. There's nothing for the WHO or CDC to gain by suppressing these guys. There's nothing for Google to gain by suppressing these guys. And yet, they do because it's morally right to keep people safe from disinformation.
>And yet, they do because it's morally right to keep people safe from disinformation.
This is literally why we have the first amendment. Because, as you say, information is relative; that also means it is relative in time. And we can only come to a correct consensus if we allow all voices to be heard.
This is an excellent example of a time not to suppress dissidents. The doctors on the front line are just as likely, if not moreso, to come up with potential treatments or policies, because this is happening in real time and the information arbitrage lends extra credibility to the doctor's words. Do you see how subjective this decision of censorship is? And any subjective decision is subject to bias, political or otherwise.
>There's nothing for Google to gain by suppressing these guys.
It's no secret Google leans left. It's no secret that protestors of the lockdown lean right. You don't see a conflict of interest here?
What if the WHO and CDC are in conflict? Who decides then? YouTube? What about platforms that are partly owned by China? Conflict of interest?
What about elections? You think it's OK for a platform like Google or YouTube to pull ads that fail "fact checks"? What about viral posts? You don't think it'll be a partisan shitshow?
If not then we have no reason to continue this discussion because we will not agree.
> It's no secret Google leans left. It's no secret that protestors of the lockdown lean right. You don't see a conflict of interest here?
No. I'd see a conflict of interest if this were a political issue. But it's not. Making something political by spouting a bunch of lies until people believe them doesn't change the science.
>What if the WHO and CDC are in conflict?
But they're not. So we're well into the realm of irrelevant hypotheticals.
> treatments or policies
Treatments, yes. Policies, no. Because as I keep saying, they're different things. You're comparing, in essence, the skills of a software engineer and a CEO. Drop either into the others' chair and they'll flounder.
> What about elections? You think it's OK for a platform like Google or YouTube to pull ads that fail "fact checks"?
> It’s against our policies for any advertiser to make a false claim—whether it's a claim about the price of a chair or a claim that you can vote by text message, that election day is postponed, or that a candidate has died.
> You don't think it'll be a partisan shitshow?
I mean, I expect that no matter what people will complain that it'll be a partisan shitshow. Given that like I said these policies already exist and I didn't notice any obvious political shitshow, only the usual suspects complaining, no.
> What about platforms that are partly owned by China?
They can make their own policies, and I'm free to use them, or not.
> This is literally why we have the first amendment.
And I fully support both the doctor's right to exercise it by spouting bullshit, and Youtube's right to exercise it by removing said bullshit from their platform.
I don't think you understand that in a reality with limited information, it is impossible for humans to know objective truth. And further you underestimate the degree of uncertainty regarding lockdown measures.
This uncertainty is an avenue for bias. I don't think you understand the dangers of giving a handful of people the power to censor and curate the material that reaches a majority of the eyes in the US. You'll change your mind when they bend against your own leanings though, I guarantee that. It's the spirit of the first amendment, because this is an enormous power that affects all of us, without our consent.
The CDC and the WHO were in conflict at one point regarding mask usage. As it happens, they are arguably in conflict today, as the WHO has praised Sweden's model which, in case you're not aware, is not a lockdown. So what now? Will you be expecting YouTube to remove any videos from the WHO suggesting people adopt the policy of Sweden?
How can you even put faith in authority right now after so many nations, organizations, hospitals, the world over, totally failed in responding to or preparing for this pandemic? And you think YouTube is in a position to choose? It's bad for society.
It's equally impossible for humans to know objective truth if all information is presented with no way to determine authority. If I present you with all possible 25 word sentences containing "covid-19", you have all of the conceivable information at your fingertips, but you can't draw any conclusions.
But that's mostly beside the point. No one is preventing these two doctors from determining the truth. If they think they have a breakthrough, they can present it in a paper, to other experts, who are capable of analyzing it.
> I don't think you understand that in a reality with limited information, it is impossible for humans to know objective truth. And further you underestimate the degree of uncertainty regarding lockdown measures.
Conventional news is far worse than Google both in terms of the things and, at least currently, in terms of reach. I'd much prefer if Fox news presented actual experts on subjects, instead of political pundits or "Dr. Phil" when discussing COVID-19. I am not and have not taken any political side anywhere in this conversation. I've been on the side of scientific consensus. I don't expect that will change.
> As it happens, they are arguably in conflict today, as the WHO has praised Sweden's model which, in case you're not aware, is not a lockdown.
Let's talk when the WHO releases official guidance to end lockdowns. Until then you're just trying to create conflict where there isn't any.
> How can you even put faith in authority right now after so many nations, organizations, hospitals, the world over, totally failed in responding to or preparing for this pandemic?
Because I trust the institutions of government (and their access to experts) more than I trust hucksters on the internet. While I don't expert the average person to be able to discern an expert from a huckster on the internet, especially due to the actions of certain politicians.
I’ll put in a vote for Wizard: the life and times of Nikola Tesla. I knew very little other than “Tesla == weird genius”, and the book gave me a much deeper view of his work, from trying to run power through the ground to building drone boats.
The article explicitly says that Improbable was told by Unity that the new TOS “specifically disallow[s] services like Improbable’s to function with their engine.”
