All the time Facebook shows me "[My mother] likes [News Outlet]" and then shows me stories from that news outlet. That is a recommendation from my mom, or at least Facebook would have you believe so.
None of those things were implied in my comment, or a subtext in it, or a conscious or subconscious component of it, or even statements I would typically agree with.
But, if you prefer to approach this from, "this guy disagreed with me and said something I don't like, so I bet that means he likes other things I don't like, so I'm going to accuse him of that", then ... well, okay. Go on dismissing the modern problems with widespread misinformation as exactly comparable to the National Enquirer, I suppose.
Other people are having a more serious discussion about the subject though and you'll be missing out.
2) How exactly did 'Varcht' demonstrate that "people aren't equipped to sort out fact from fiction"? Do you disagree that vaccines have both benefits and risks? I thought he made a good point.
FWIW, this is a variant of a debate tactic known as "just asking questions" (on rationalwiki) or the "loaded question" (wikipedia). I won't accuse ~Varcht of doing this intentionally, because I don't know them well enough to assume bad faith, but the end result is the same: the question, appearing innocent enough, is based on false premises and derails the conversation.
It's especially common coming from people who have been misinformed on some controversial subject and have developed vague doubts towards established science on that subject, but don't have a sufficient library of information at-hand to argue directly. Instead, they just try to raise the same doubts in others. Their conversations follow the form, "Okay, but what if...?"
It works because people in civilized forums don't want to be seen as unkind towards people asking innocent-looking questions. For instance, here we are being distracted by ~Varcht's 1-in-100 question, but the patently false statement they started with is being ignored.
To bring this back to the subject of the thread, ~Varcht unintentionally -- I assume -- made themselves an excellent example of a victim of the modern problems of misinformation. I would wager that they don't regularly read the National Enquirer, and probably wouldn't believe most or any of the stuff in one, but here they are to raise the spectre of the dangers of vaccination -- a popular belief, I would add, that kills people, especially young children.
So that we don't let ourselves become too emotionally detached from the consequences people suffer from this pandemic of misinformation, here's a reminder of what infant whooping cough looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3oZrMGDMMw
> If your goal is persuasion, I think it's better to engage rather than resorting to sarcastic responses of "Good job, HN".
Sometimes persuasion is a reasonable goal. Other times, bad ideas should be mercilessly mocked before they have an opportunity to germinate in fertile ground. You were around here then, do you remember what HN's attitude towards established science was shortly after the CRU email compromise?
But yeah, I could've left that last part off.
But I can't -- and shouldn't -- be dispassionate all the time, either.
> Your comments are usually excellent, but I thought this one fell short.
Thanks, and fair 'nuff.
The National Enquirer isn't piped into our smartphones all day long, mixed in with notes from friends, repeated on local TV news stations, and broadcast over FM radio. They've never put the money into figuring out how to manipulate people into consuming their content as often as possible.
As the whole anti-vaccination problem has clearly shown, people aren't equipped to sort out fact from fiction all on their own, despite (or maybe because of...) living in the most information-rich society in human history.
However, a large enough group of ill-informed people is sufficient to force social change or even incite violence and stoke the fires of xenophobic hatred. So it is a problem that needs to be addressed; it's wrong and morally lazy for intellectuals to lean back and say, "well, free speech, and people will sort themselves out anyway." There is an imperative here to resolve this new problem our society has.