Should we introduce legislation forbidding websites from posting anti-scientific nonsense...

Should we introduce legislation forbidding websites from posting anti-scientific nonsense? Taking websites such as Natural News or How Stuff Works into consideration, they outright lie, misrepresent citations, fear-monger and so in an attempt to sell bullshit products/support their own agendas.

This has nothing to do with politics, but rather they actively make the population dumber and oppositional to highly beneficial technology to the point where commercial viability of said technology is impossible. Take Golden Rice for instance, anybody who isn't a complete fucking retard understands how GMOs work; there's no magic chemical voodoo and nothing at all in the process to suggest they're unhealthy or dangerous (countless reputable studies claim the opposite). Golden Rice in itself is a very promising endeavor in ending world hunger, however people en masse whose knowledge of GMOs amounts to "IT'S NOT NATURAL/HAS CHEMICALS/I DON'T UNDERSTAND SO IT'S BAD" actively campaign to shut it down as a result of absurd amounts of misinformation spread by idiots and organic food retailers. These same people are extremely vocal and completely unwilling to even consider or address factual arguments, instead just brainwashing other idiots to join them.
>but muh free speech
That's not being persecuted for your political beliefs, it doesn't protect you from claiming any sort of bullshit you want is fact.

Other urls found in this thread:

fooledbyrandomness.com/pp2.pdf
google.com/amp/bigthink.com/risk-reason-and-reality/taleb-on-gmos-advocacy-masquerading-poorly-as-honest-intellectual-argument.amp
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

you can't possibly ban every single shitty tabloid in existence

just ignore

>This has nothing to do with politics

that's where you're wrong.

you're also wrong about golden rice; it's not the most efficient way to end world hunger. food prices are dominated by transport and storage, not growing costs. and if you want to get micronutrients to people, supplementation is more efficient than engineering it into the crop genome itself. transgenic GMOs are a different reference class than selective breeding and they have a wholly different risk profile. not saying they're bad, just that "they're bad because they're not natural" is a strawman.

Pretty sure severe fines would get them to stop, the government can just walk in and shut the site down themselves if they wanted to, anyway. You'd really only need to go after the bigger ones both because they're the ones people read and to set a precedent.
I didn't say golden rice was perfect, I said it was promising and the opposition is entirely unscientific
>just that "they're bad because they're not natural" is a strawman.
Have you spoken to the average person on this subject, I promise you it isn't a strawman

Nope, this would be hugely political and impractical.


On the other hand i like the idea of introducing legislation for websites to get a sort of seal of approval for having peer-reviewed information. Though any method is political and opens opportunity for manipulation.

The issue with peer-reviewed information is they'll cite it, but take it completely out of context to support an opposing point. Realistically the "seal of approval" is the most realistic option, though

of course, but that's true if you listen to the average person on any topic.

here's a paper arguing that many of the assumptions you're making aren't on as solid ground as you might think. the key is that the risk profiles are different, so statements like

>there's no magic chemical voodoo and nothing at all in the process to suggest they're unhealthy or dangerous (countless reputable studies claim the opposite)

are actually very equivocal (pic related)

fooledbyrandomness.com/pp2.pdf

even if you disagree with the conclusions of this pdf, you can't deny that it's at least a reasonable argument. my overall point is that if you start clamping down on "dumb" arguments with actual legal punishments, you'll cause a chilling effect that will make people reluctant to make "smart" arguments that lead to the same conclusion. it's a very dangerous path to tread.

>reference class
>risk profile
Nonsense buzzwords detected

Also, the entire point of golden rice is that you replace supplements with a staple already being eaten, thus eliminating the cost and distribution of supplements. Stop spreading misinformation.

Sorry but the article you posted is full of mischaracterizations of the science and the risks. You are being misled. The risks have been extensively studied and are well understood.

>Nonsense buzzwords detected

the PDF i posted goes into more detail if you want to read more.

tl;dr some things are far more vulnerable to model error and tail events than others, and their behaviour ends up being qualitatively different enough that they deserve to be in separate categories.

>The risks have been extensively studied and are well understood.

the paper is arguing the opposite. which parts do you disagree with in particular?

No. Peer reviewed science is disproved all the time. The science you worship is often as wrong as a tabloid. Science has hurt just as many people as ignorance. Scientific consensus can be bought and manipulated as well. It is folly to think that scientists are not politically motivated or financially motivated which subjects them to manipulation.

Unfortunately this shows the underlying problem with "muh freedom!" The places were you find the most pseudoscience is human discourse and how people live their lives; raising kids, health, and human interaction. Western society has become too anti-authoritarian and anti-intellectual. They would flat our reject any attempt to show things to be true or not as an affront on their freedom and therefor it must be tyranny.

Nassim Taleb is notorious for making up pointless buzzwords. Try reading about GMOs from a scientist who actually understands them.

google.com/amp/bigthink.com/risk-reason-and-reality/taleb-on-gmos-advocacy-masquerading-poorly-as-honest-intellectual-argument.amp

>That's not being persecuted for your political beliefs

Free speech encompasses more than just political beliefs.

It didn't argue it, it simply claims it with no basis. Look at the research.

>science is wrong sometimes
>therefore serial liars are OK
Really ripples my think sack

>complains of buzzwords
>cites bigthink

okay

anyway this bit in particular stood out to me:

>This suggestion — that we have slowly tested our foods and come up with a safe diet that evolved naturally over long times, and that GMOs are sudden and therefore fraught with unique peril — is common among GMO opponents who speculate about dire harms from agricultural biotechnology, but it is just ignorant of basic facts. Many of the foods we eat are species that were created in just the last few decades by blasting the entire genomes of their parent plants with radiological or chemical mutagens.

I don't think this really counters taleb's point -- he's not talking about increasing the rate of mutation, he's talking about transgenic organisms.

again i'm not that interested in arguing about GMOs for the sake of arguing about GMOs. my point is that, even supposing taleb is wrong, it's dangerous to start censoring people for having honest disagreements.

Serial liars are given less credence than science. When science that is wrong is published it can harm people with more authority. If you want to hold people and corporations and politicians accountable for bad science. Then you can discuss your liars.

to expand, let's talk about something slightly less controversial: diet. we now pretty much know that the official "low fat" dietary guidelines issued by the US government decades ago weren't properly based on scientific research. it became "received wisdom" through a series of mistakes and information cascades, not because it was properly validated through trials (in fact the trials they did do showed low fat diets were no better than placebo).

if the OP's policy had been around in those times, we'd likely still be stuck in that trap where nobody wants to risk their reputations arguing against the mainstream position.

the point of the paper is that much of the risk analyses done in GMO research is based on faulty statistical premises. saying "the research shows otherwise" is ignoring the whole thrust of the argument.

"Should we create a centralized body dictating what is "true"?"
Rephrased, should we create an Orwellian ministry of truth? No. At best we can try to improve the human species to be more intelligent, on average, preventing false beliefs from propagating and such inherent slavery to tribalism and group identity. Though even then it's clear you don't have much to work with, the human species, the "human spirit", is throwaway trash at best.

Regardless, the top down approach doesn't work and never will. Look at our current regulatory institutions, they're all deeply corrupt, anti-intellectual, and anti-scientific. You envision yourself, or men of wisdom and courage being the maintainers of truth. There is no such thing to be had, and if it briefly exists, it will quickly decay leaving you with structures leftover that are more harm than good. Structures, and little people, that are in the way of anyone with half a brain leaving them trapped in hell for life. Thanks for that, bud.

I don't think you understood what you're quoting. Taleb is fearmongering by saying that the food we currently eat and know is safe was tested over thousands of years, but much of that food has not existed for even hundreds of years.

another example: stomach ulcers. for a long time the received wisdom was that stomach ulcers were caused primarily by psychological stress, despite there being very little concrete evidence for it. the theory had nothing behind it but inertia. it took somebody literally swallowing bacteria from someone else's ulcer and then developing ulcers of his own for people to take seriously the idea that it might be caused by infections.

much of what we think we know actually isn't so.

also think about the potential backlash this could cause. suppose you start censoring "anti-scientific" opinions, but then eventually one of those wrong opinions gets shown to be right anyway (presumably after a heroic uphill struggle on the part of truth-seeking researchers). what would the public think then? it would be a massive coup for the very anti-science people you were trying to shut down, because now they can say (rightly!) that the scientific establishment isn't to be trusted.

Who says they aren't already accountable? There is plenty of accountability for lying in achieve avid even for just being sloppy. There is no accountability for quack sites. Not to mention that you are setting up a false choice between one or the other. It seems like a nerve was hit. Which quack site are you protecting?

How exactly would that make people afraid to argue against low evidence conclusions? Everyone knows dietary science is full of crap. Why? Because there is a huge industry of misinformation surrounding it. This is actually a perfect example of why the media needs more rigorous standards. The media has completely corrupted dietary science, not the other way around.

The media has corrupted nearly everything because the media is corrupt. The question people need to start with isn't if media is corrupt in X way, it's why is media corrupt.

Uncomfortable truths surface, and people avert their eyes because their culture supports that behavior. They must not be allowed to.

Which papers are based on faulty statistics? This is patently false, not to mention hypocritical since the paper cites the Seralini which is widely known to be a statistical fishing expedition in addition to numerous other flaws.

The point is, the paper you posted is full of lies.

We already do. Its called the court system.

>Should we introduce legislation forbidding websites from posting...

No.

The more prevalent rules are that restrict speech, the less restraint will be shown in restricting more speech. The remedy to incorrect speech is more,correct, speech. Truth owes no fear to error.

>Should we introduce legislation...
>This has nothing to do with politics

But of course the only reason you know that now is because of scientific evidence, not because someone made up a story. There is a difference between being wrong and committing fraud, you know that right?

>Should we introduce legislation forbidding websites from posting anti-scientific nonsense?

No we should allow free debate and free speech just in case we missed something.

Legislation and creating more government intervention in peoples lives, not to mention throwing out freedom of speech, is in no way some kind of answer.

You are a brainlet.

>legislation

Why do you go there, instantly? Legislation is a political act, for political ends.

If you want a "Real Science" Seal of Approval, that can be issued by a body of scientists with no need of the government injecting politics into it.

Media is not corrupt and hasn't corrupted everything Mr. Tinfoil. The media is made up of humans who sometimes lack understanding and sometimes have perverse incentives. Why does pseudoscience cluster around certain topics, like dietary science? Because it's human nature. People eat to believe that they know things others don't and they eat to believe that they can control things in their life by making simple choices. Certain topics are therefore perfectly situated to take advantage of that gullibility.

*like to believe

>Should we introduce legislation forbidding websites from posting anti-scientific nonsense?

Yes, immedeately.

>but muh free speech

Right of free speech has to be allowed only if duty of speaking truth and not misinforming is added to it.

>Media is not corrupt
Your base premise is false. The media being made of individuals is as relevant as a forest being made of individual trees. It's a matter of the scale you're viewing from, and each behave as singular entities, and the pattern of that behavior is incredibly consistent.

I actually find that dietary science, while full of marketing exaggerations, contains far less in terms of outright lies than other areas. It's just the broader overarching suggestions that are false or disingenuous.

I'm not protecting any quack sites. I'm just attacking peer reviewed studies and the interpretation of data or misinterpretation of data. I'm attacking the false representation of results to fit non pure science goals. When science is politically or economically motivated interpretation and review tends to skew towards desired result and not fact. I'm saying modern science can often be as reliable as quack sites but far more damaging under the protection of consensus. Consensus does not denote fact. Consensus sold as fact is far more dangerous than tabloid nonsense.

Good to know that plain, old fashioned totalitarian fascism is still alive and well.

That is unfortunately the world we live in. Would were it not so.

>Google or some other company creates an AI that scans the internet for news and makes predictions of future events

>Bot gets fake news from shitty sites, gets false training data and makes poor predictions

>Google sues the shit out of news sites for fucking their bot, news sites have to post real news now