But only to a point, correct? Otherwise we end up in the current dialogue where flat earthers, moon landing deniers, and a large percentage of religious believers feel more platformed than ever. It's far too easy for the uninformed to challenge science simply because it challenges their non-scientific beliefs.
Scientist 1: If we put a sugar cube into water whose temperature is exactly 74.7373 degrees centigrade, the water will likely turn pink. here is our evidence for this.
Scientist 2: we tried this and found that if the water is cooling that it doesn’t work, it has to remain at a constant temperature.
Scientist 3: we tried it with refined and unrefined sugar. unrefined sugar did not work.
scientist 1: we took another look - it seems there was some weird additive in the refined sugar, when this additive added to water at 74.7373 degrees centigrade the water turns pink.
that’s a very silly and stupid example of “challenging” other scientist’s work. you precisely explain what you tried and how it differed, in the hope it leads to a more specific and accurate picture down the line.
flat earthers et. al just “say stuff” they think is right, where the evidence does not actually challenge any hypothesis or existing evidence because the claims are just … bad.
this is not “challenging” science. it is stubborn ignorance. pure and simple.
most of it is so easy to refute any random youtuber with a spare hour can do it (read: 6-12 months [0])
however, your point about platforming is important, because people who wouldn’t have had a soapbox 15 years ago, now have a soapbox anyone in the world can find them on.
if you’re looking for something to confirm your world view, there’s something on the internet for you.
rule 1 of the internet should be spammed in front of everyone’s eyes for seven minutes before anyone is allowed to use a web browser — don’t believe anything you read on the internet.
[0]: there’s a running joke about how long this person takes to make new videos.
He takes a couple of their claims seriously about what one will see when attempting particular experiments involving a very large lake, attempts them, sees the results one would expect if the Earth were curved, and reports this to some flat earth community forum, refining the experiment as they suggest ways he may have screwed it up, and continuing to find curvature (obviously).
The real story is how they react to contrary evidence delivered entirely on their terms, and where that community was heading four years ago (beware—I guess—that part also becomes necessarily "political").
[EDIT] I guess I buried the lede for this site's interest, which is that the video devotes a fair bit of time to how the Youtube "algorithm" took a little success for Flat Earth videos as a cue to aggressively promote them to people it identified as maybe liking them (those inclined to fall down that particular rabbit hole—which involves a lot more than just the specific belief that the earth is flat), but now flat earth is in decline, because that and other "algorithms" started sending the same folks to... Q-anon content instead.
Incidentally, there was a somewhat-big documentary on Flat Earth some years ago that included some folks from a flat earth convention trying some experiments very similar to the ones depicted in this video (involving visibility of objects across a large lake), with predictable outcomes.
That's many years beyond usefulness now that governments and companies communicate official information through the internet. You might as well say "don't believe anything ever" which makes the advice useless.
It's fine that people believe false things like flat earth. Why so much pressure to stop that? False beliefs are the default for most people, and they actually serve a purpose. We're mostly not emotionless truth-seeking Spocks. We can have religion and other beliefs that improve our quality of life by providing a sense of belonging or importance, an identity, or a community. You wouldn't go around telling Jews that no, God didn't give the 10 commandments to Moses, stop believing unscientific rubbish just because you read about it in some scroll.
I don't think it helps to cancel them, probably hurts. It's not as if you have to either censor or send your highest-status scientists to debate them, and that exhausts the finite menu. In a diverse info ecosystem someone will have their comparative advantage on engaging with cranks. The important thing about overall ecosystem health is, is it reasonable in what it amplifies?
Scientific American hasn't seemed very healthy after the 80s. In the decades before, it was an unusual labor of love by one or two chief editors (I don't remember specifically).
> I don't think it helps to cancel them, probably hurts.
Who is actually being cancelled and for saying what?
This is what I find a little frustrating. There's very little censorship and when it does happen it's usually not against those that most loudly cry about censorship.
For example, did you know you can no longer use the Futurama Farnsworth quote on Facebook "we did in fact evolve from filthy monkey men"? Meanwhile, I've reported and had the report rejected nutters I know literally calling for the stoning of gay people using Bible quotes. (Lev 20;13).
I was answering a comment opposing a comment opposing cancelation.
FWIW the moment I started wondering if we were losing liberal norms actually was reading Dawkins in the 00s calling for scientists to coordinate against debating creationists. Like I was with him in being convinced even "scientific" creationism is powered by Christianity and not any good evidence from nature, and I guess I need to say I had absolutely no problem with any scientist choosing not to engage with any creationist. But there's something anti-science in a campaign to expel a belief from public debate, by a means other than better arguments. That can conceivably be a good thing in some case; but it's the opposite of science.
Relying on Facebook is a bad idea because it's a corporation operating under different pressures than healthy discourse, further trying to direct your attention in its own interest, applying resources it gains this way to modeling you. You can try to improve its moderation but besides the trouble you bring up, probably any success you can get that way will just seed a competing platform. I prefer to give my energy to an open protocol such as Bluesky's (admittedly I haven't looked at its protocol spec) -- unless you can take away everyone's personal computers, everyone's not going to live under your favorite monitor. An open protocol is compatible with choosing among competing moderators. (BTW the pre-web Xanadu vision included open-ended moderator choice, and how different system designs could have different social effects, and the importance of getting it right.)
This must be a specific cultural thing. In my group of friends and family, generous offers like those used in the examples aren't seen as 'tacky'. They're just generous and speak to a spirit of wanting to share.
> And in the end - why is this a bad thing, to be distracted? If it’s in our nature in the first place?
But is it indeed in our nature? That comment assumes: if a condition exists, then that condition is correct. But, for example, it's in our nature to overload on sugar and fats, but that's not a healthy way to live.
Yeah I've always hated that statement. How do you even measure that? I've had my Tesla sound the alarms when I'm 4 car lengths away from the car in front of me and nothing bad is happening at all. Do they count that as having prevented an accident? Do they count all those phantom breaks as preventing a crash ;＾∀;＾）
Yep, not true at all. My solution has been to just stick to smaller/niche subreddits that appeal to my interests but stay rather small. And I can (anecdotally) say that the majority of them are apolitical.
I just deleted my account over the current reddit situation with everything being about the war. It is important, but I have enough information overload as is without having to sift through 1000 russia/ukraine memes. Reddit calls itself "the front page of the internet" and the front page is very much political.
"but there is currently very little activity there for some of my interests."
my interest is mostly media and even before this past week it feels like every subs got polarized over the years. Anime subs drawing lines over what kinds of characters and genres you can talk about, gaming subs banning discussion of certain games over staff politics of a multi-thousand employee company, art subs devolving into arguments over nude figures (art subs, where you submit typical artistic exercises and expressions which include figure drawing). And you can make an entire essay about how r/movies has shifted over COVID.
They come from a good place, but they do not at all come from a realistic or reasonable one. And some are just outright toxic. Maybe if I could stick to something super niche like woodworking I'd be fine, but man has media as a whole just gone into overdrive where everything is political.
From the link: "Harassment of any kind is not acceptable behavior at MIT ... Harassment is any conduct, verbal or physical, on or off campus, that has the intent or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual or group's educational or work performance at MIT or that creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive educational, work, or living environment."
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