Science isn't done by youtube video battles but by debates in scholarly journals. Youtube is a medium for popularizing whatever content. Youtube seems well in its rights in banning content it considers harmful and in this case I'd agree with this ban.

That's not to say youtube's effective monopoly isn't concerning. I'd rather see ten providers but I'd like to see them all ban climate change, antivax and similarly noxious content - make people interested in the subject read long texts instead.

Video isn't good medium for sustained, coherent debate. In this instance, it's a means of broadcasting shallow propaganda to morons, or put less insultingly, those not using rational facilities to decide things.

And these debates should be open. It's incredible how hard getting data on clinical studies are vs. here our culture of open source.

As a scientist, I would prefer more open discussion. Because the conversations scientists have with each other is not what ends up getting told to the public, and many agendas impact that.

You know the climate change denial videos on youtube aren't "getting things in the open" but slick sales jobs for a particular viewpoint.

That's a lot of confidence to have in a very broken system given the replication crisis, ineffective peer review process, excessive and pervasive paywalls, and general high barrier to entry.

Youtube is actually pretty great platform for lots of science and educational channels. I could easily see a scenario where some very poorly done climate study is talked about on Youtube and it becomes demonetized simple because the algorithm believed it was 'climate change denial ism'.

Sure it is Youtube's right to do whatever they want and we are just 'lucky' that Youtube isn't controlled by anti-vax, climate change truthers, etc.

Lots of alternative scientific journals exist. Climate change denial is, in fact, well financed. There's nothing about a youtube ban that prevents alternative scientific research, even into things I'd considered absurd and despicable.

If we're going to ban instructional bomb construction videos then I think anti-vax stuff is perfectly acceptable as well. I really don't understand where this miscomprehension that you should be able to say anything you want on private platforms comes from - there have always limits even on public speech, and private platforms have traditionally refused to print or publish items that go too strongly against their corporate beliefs. This even extends into print media and editorial boards.

Smoking and Drinking also directly cause deaths, yet as a society we are fine with taking such levels of risks and let people in videos show that they are smoking and drinking too. And don't get me started on opoids prescriptions which kill way more people that COVID all things considered (in years of life cost) and for which nobody seems to lift any finger to stop the carnage.

Which is why it's wrong on so many levels to censor stuff, because orgs that do that have no clue and no principles and just follow a certain political agenda instead of any rational motive.

your comment has led to death too, by that kind of logic?

Science is just more forgiving and less dogmatic than religion. etc.

One big issue is using the term ”believe”. It is not matter of belief, it is a matter of understanding, wrapping theorems and facts. We need to understand the science. We have already 10 000 gods, so let’s not make science equated to the religion and reduce its power with that.

Science is a way of postulating that something may be real given the a available evidence. A true scientist should be ready to change their understanding of “real” when presented with new evidence.

Belief or faith is trusting something is real without evidence and is the antithesis of science.

If perspective changes, we did not have enough data.

The knowledge comes when hard science is applied on this data, e.g math or logic.

Temperature rising is science. Is it natural proces? Well that depends if you choose to believe or not in actual knowledge.

That's true of most of the "hard sciences" like physics and chemistry. Climatology, however, is unfortunately full of beliefs and incredibly lacking when it comes to theorems and facts. Part of that is just due to the inherent difficulty associated with making inferences about climate history using a relatively limited amount of data from modern, accurate instruments. Add to that some extremely biased incentives in the institutions and governments funding climate research, and you're no longer in the same ballpark as the other hard sciences.

I'm not saying it's all wrong or that the climate isn't changing (I think it is to some degree), but the one thing climatology has proven most convincingly over the years is that its prevailing predictions tend to be wrong – and not by an insignificant margin.

I agree with your point, though even if there is consensus on a topic, we should still be able to have open discussion without censorship.

If you assume consensus is infallible, you'll be wrong sometimes. If dissenting voices are silenced, it's even worse: you'll be wrong, and not know that you're wrong.

In the cases where consensus is right, you're only adding fuel to the conspiracy theories when you censor opposing views.

In summary: freedom of speech - even wrong and unpopular speech - is essential to our continual pursuit of truth. To pretend that our world is somehow different today (as if misinformation or wrong ideas didn't exist before the internet) is just ignorance. How many times does history have to show us where the road of censorship leads?

1) no one is an authority on the truth.

2) no one is infallible.

3) we can change our minds when new evidence occurs

This doesn’t mean everyone’s opinion is equal or that truth doesn’t exist. Credibility is important. Method is important. Reproducibility is important. Consensus is important.

It’s more difficult today because of the ease of mass communication. But in the end we are better off taking the long, difficult, and often infuriating road to finding the truth. The alternative is an inquisition and worse.

The truth will always rise to the top, eventually, this way even if we are wrong along the way.

That's not the relevant question to this discussion (and also basically a strawman).

The question is, should being a "flat earther" be banned from online monopolies as misinformation? As objectively stupid as it might be (even though I don't think anyone actually believes it) I think it would be extreme overreach to start trying to shut down youtube videos positing the earth is flat

Not getting ad revenue is not having your video shut down. Set up patreon if you want income making "more CO2 is good, actually" videos (you probably should regardless of content).

People have been deplatformed from Patreon for unpopular opinions too.

https://heavy.com/news/2018/12/patreon-sargon-of-akkad-jorda...

What about when Patreon demonetizes the content?

I tend to agree. Demonetizing them and barring them from promoting any other products should be enough to discourage those crooks who don't believe themselves in flat Earth, but make videos, books and merchandise about it to cash on gullible users.

It's not strawman, it's on the same level in the science spectrum as decisively not scientific at all. It's meant to (hopefully) help them understand how stupid of a suggestion they're proposing by offering an equally stupid example.

> The question is, should being a "flat earther" be banned from online monopolies as misinformation?

No, the question is should we reward them for their misinformation content and the answer is no.

Scientists can be corrupted too.

Saying that, you’re right. If your science sucks then you should be ignored because there is little chance of finding a consensus of truth in it.

Scientists agree that at low velocities, the force of an object equals the mass times the acceleration. This is just one point of agreement. There are others that I can't list here. You may be surprised at the amount of info that scientists agree upon.

Who is the objective authority on what constitutes "low"? You are. It is subject to your own interpretation, as is the consensus- a different point of view might cap "low" as being higher than what you do, and as such will see no such consensus, or see the consensus as blatantly wrong.

Youtube commenters or video creators don't practice science, they commentate on science, and thus whatever banning happens there has exactly zero influence on the actual course of scientific work which is done by a small percentage of people educated enough to actually have anything to say of value and contribute to the actual body of knowledge that collectively is 'science'.

America as a nation is scientifically illiterate exactly because of the thing you're advocating, that every clown should have a voice simply because they can open their mouth and make noises.

Yes and if you ask Philip Morris, cigarettes are good for you and there is some evidence to the "benefits" of smoking by scientists. That doesn't mean smoking is healthy, nor is there a general consensus that it is good. The weighted evidence points to smoking being bad for you.

Now while I don't fully agree with the global warming fanatics, I am still sitting on the fence personally but leaning towards there being a problem, I don't see why a group of publishers and advertisers are not able to determine whether they want to be associated with the global warning deniers, given that there is such weighted evidence against them.

On the other extreme, 2+2=4 is considered a hegemonic narrative:

> “Nope the idea of 2+2 equaling 4 is cultural and because of western imperialism/colonization, we think of it as the only way of knowing,” (Brittany Marshall)

> “2+2=4: A perspective in white, Western mathematics that marginalizes other possible values.” (James Lindsay)

So the main problem is trust. Some groups trust science and others think it's being used in bad faith, so they reject it completely.

Demonetization != banning or censorship.

What I would be against is censorship: denying the voice.

Admittedly it is has a “chilling effect” but I’m more concerned that we should allow debate instead of being concerned we should be able to make money off of the debate.

On platforms like HN where the audience is somewhat selective and moderation is possible you can have a reasonable debate, however on platforms like YouTube where views are money it can be difficult for creators to not play to the algorithm and go for the click-bate title with the emotive thumbnail with content that will attract the most views.

I think YouTube, by removing the money making imperative is at least removing that driver from the equation whilst leaving the possibility of still posting controversial material and allowing debate.

The core of science is not debate. It is a cluster of related items such as falsifiability, empiricism, mathematical modeling, reproducibility etc. It is most certainly not debate. You are confusing politics with science, which in many cases is a very deliberate right wing stance.

> There is very little actual consensus in the scientific community about anything... eggs are bad for you

This is also false. Argument by analogy with nutrition science is a cop out, because it is unethical to run controlled experiments on human subjects without appropriate consent. However, nutrition is important for society and we make do with weaker correlational studies on biased samples which can evolve or get overturned in the future.

Climate modeling is very unlike nutritional or social science and can by modeled consistently.

Any other ideas are absurd: we know the human contribution to climate change cause, have measured the anticipated effect, and found irrefutable causality.

Disputing human climate change is like disputing the surface temperature of the sun. These are measured facts, not theories.

What’s not conclusive is the doomsaying and specific claims about the future and present. A great example of this is California’s governor blaming forest fires on climate change, and another one is the signs predicting certain glaciers would melt.

In addition, science has not yet made a conclusion on the forest fires (the governor may well be proven right), and the Siberian feedback loop is a wildfire and was caused by climate change.

The governor ignorantly commented on an unknown. Deniers deny known facts. There is a huge difference.

That is impossible. Climate's a chaotic system, you can't back-predict the timing of droughts. And we already know that with or without human greenhouse gases, California has droughts. There is not some alternate history where California’s forest management practices wouldn't let these kinds of fires happen.