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yanks215 | 5 years ago
The US surgeon general and Fauci told people to stop buying masks. Then they reversed themselves, and defended their position at the time.
Media reports "fiery, but mostly peaceful protests".
What intelligent person would trust institutions that are inconsistent and refuse accountability? What intelligent person can cope with the dissonance of arson = peace? Can you blame distrust given this environment?
helen___keller|5 years ago
> Institutional trust has eroded.
I think the biggest problem is social media. A reasonable person would make this same conclusion you have, for example:
> What intelligent person can cope with the dissonance of arson = peace?
And yet another person who gets their information from another source, would reach the opposite conclusion. The simple fact is that enough happened in enough locations that if you hone in on one protest here or one riot there you can paint a completely different picture.
For full disclosure, most of the images I got of the protests personally were from a twitch stream called "Woke" which was a compilation stream of about usually 5-10 simultaneous protest streams from different cities. I don't think I ever once witnessed arson or another crime, despite having watched that stream ever night during the height of the protests.
But I don't doubt there was arson and numerous other crimes.
In other words, I am particularly pessimistic that it is possible to have institutional trust anymore, because the events in our world are so numerous and nuanced that it is frankly impossible to give a succinct, consistent, and accountable view of them.
Same with the mask thing: Fauci and the surgeon general were absolutely correct telling people to stop buying masks when there was a shortage and hospitals were running out of them. And they are absolutely correct now telling people that, with no remaining shortage, we should all have masks and wear them to stop the spread (in particular now that most people aren't sheltering in place anymore). But that level of nuance doesn't come through, especially in a world where most "news" comes from headlines on reddit links and facebook posts.
dnautics|5 years ago
Why do you jump straight to social media?
Why wouldn't the fault lay with the authority figures themselves? For decades we have authority figures saying "the science says X therefore you must Y" while at the same time we have an educational system that (correctly) says "science is not authoritative".
Maybe if we had leaders that were less hubristic and lead with uncertainty on scientific matters and are careful to get buy in on nonscientific (i.e. ethical or self-serving) grounds this would happen less.
mc32|5 years ago
But why with the backdrop of that violence do they characterize that one “as mostly peaceful”. They could at least have been forthcoming and said while most are peaceful this one has devolved into violence you see behind me. But they are like Baghdad Bob ignoring the bombs falling as he broadcasts...
llcoolv|5 years ago
Sorry, but this is classical gas-lighting. This is absolutely equivalent to saying - I saw Leni Riefenstahl's movies and there were no people dying in concentration camps, so Nazi propaganda is factually correct. There are tens of thousands of criminal acts documented during those 'peaceful' protests and I don't think that anyone with IQ >80 and the slightest bit of self-respect would ever take what you're saying seriously.
Btw, these days even far-left HN seems to be split in two and I was sure it would be one of the last bastions of group-think. I guess we live and learn.
necrotic_comp|5 years ago
Making a claim and then reversing it based on new data is the correct thing to do. This isn't an issue at all and shouldn't be considered a violation of trust.
throwmeaway_pls|5 years ago
Here’s an interview where Fauci discusses point-blank why the American public was mislead, and it had nothing to do with data: https://www.thestreet.com/video/dr-fauci-masks-changing-dire...
We need to hold our leaders to a higher standard. All of them. Red, blue, green, whatever.
yanks215|5 years ago
Agree with this statement, however it does not apply here. There was no new data. They always knew that masks worked, but they needed them for first responders. Confirmation of this from Fauci interview: https://www.businessinsider.com/fauci-mask-advice-was-becaus...
The responsible, accountable thing to do would have been to say to Americans, "these masks do work, but we need them for first responders, please donate yours!"
vlucas|5 years ago
https://medium.com/incerto/the-masks-masquerade-7de897b517b7
anm89|5 years ago
The individual things people seem to believe seem to be nearly universally idiotic, but I sympathize with them to the extent that they can see they are being fed bs narratives all the time and just decide to believe whatever they want if it's all bs anyway.
jlokier|5 years ago
An intelligent person would trust institutions that change their mind more, because it's the right thing to do.
Institutions that remain utterly consistent in the face of evolving knowledge are the ones you should be wary of.
I saw an analogous thing in the much simpler world of signal processing and statistical estimation. Estimators and control systems sometimes oscillate as new data is acquired. It seems counterintuitive, more data should just improve accuracy, right? As if to converge toward an underlying true value? No, sometimes the best possible estimate and control output oscillates gently as more data is acquired, without any inconsistency. It took me a while to appreciate that.
Back to the big picture of institutions. Inconsistency over time may seem dissonant, but it shouldn't. It can be the most correct and accurate recommendation over time as new data and knowledge is accumulated. In an evolving situation, you should be seeing this.
The fact is people do cite inconsistency as a reason to disbelieve, and it puts public health policymakers in a dilemma. If they tell the truth and give the best advice to follow, people don't believe it because the truth is complicated and counterintuitive, and best advice rightly changes over time, and in different locations, circumstances, etc. So they have to walk a line between fully detailed truth, and simplified advice that people en masse are more inclined to believe and follow.
(I don't disagree with your other assertions about accountability etc).
throwmeaway_pls|5 years ago
> they have to walk a line between fully detailed truth, and simplified advice that people en masse are more inclined to believe and follow
I know they are acting in good faith. However, the field also has a lot of received wisdom that may or may not be true. There’s clearly a bag of tricks they believe must be used to achieve a set of self-set goals, and I think a more straightforward approach along with dialogue would have been wiser in this instance.
The alternative is that some people will lose trust and won’t comply. You don’t want that if your plan requires everyone to comply.
maxerickson|5 years ago
That's of course an over-simplification of the dynamics at play in many US cities this summer, but it's not reasonable to attribute responsibility for the actions of a few to large groups that just happen to be nearby.
tobr|5 years ago
> What intelligent person can cope with the dissonance of arson = peace?
The first statement sounds more like an ampersand than an equals sign.
supercanuck|5 years ago