Coronavirus: Hard-hit Brazil removes data amid rising death toll

Re:Coronavirus: Hard-hit Brazil removes data amid rising dea... by JoshTriplett on Monday June 08, 2020 @01:09AM (#23453745)

I was aware, when posting my reply, that I was positing a fantasy world. So was the comment I was replying to. But you seem to have imputed a very specific (incorrect) assumed meaning to "apply critical thinking" and then carefully dissected the result.

When I said "apply critical thinking to all sources", that doesn't mean "re-derive everything from scratch and give zero weight to information obtained from others". "be prepared to question any belief" is closer to what I had in mind. Beyond that, there's little harm in trusting a single source for information you are not actually heavily relying on yourself, but that wasn't really the point of this thread. Are you really trying to argue that the world would fall apart if people generally speaking put a little more critical thought into verifying information they're exposed to from a single source before giving it undue weight?

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Re:Coronavirus: Hard-hit Brazil removes data amid rising dea... by dredmorbius on Monday June 08, 2020 @01:51AM (#23453951)

I may have misread you. In which case, consider my response to a not-infrequent assertion that individual responsibility and media literacy alone, absent some general social value of individual and institutional epistemic integrity is sufficient. That really does not seem to work.

And rereading this thread, particularly your response here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23447763), that seems to me close to your argument. If not from scratch and first principles, in large part.

If not, care to restate?

It's less the obligation to validate, and more the licence to bullshit, that concerns me. Brandolini's asymmetry is steep. I've spent more time than I'd have liked around intentionally devceptive persons, and institutions (and machines). The experience is virtually always tremendously umsettling, at best.

There are reasons why social, moral, and legal strictures against deception, fraud, and betrayal of trusts run so deep, with frictions against values of free expression. Dante put bearers of false witness in the penultimate circle of his Hell.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Coronavirus: Hard-hit Brazil removes data amid rising dea... by JoshTriplett on Monday June 08, 2020 @03:57PM (#23460124)

I'm certainly not advocating in favor of continued BSing or deception (from leaders or otherwise); I'm solely advocating that people apply more critical thought so that people don't get away with it as often.

[ Parent | on HN ]