Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by new2628 2231 days ago
You are not arguing in good faith. You are making a caricature of the opposing argument, presenting in the worst light possible.
4 comments

Posts telling parents to make their kids drink bleach or disinfectant is, sadly, not actually a caricature. See, for example, how "Miracle Mineral Supplement" (aka, chlorine dioxide, aka bleach) gets pushed by malign quacks as a cure for HIV, malaria, hepatitus, autism, acne, cancer, COVID-19, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_Mineral_Supplement
I'm pointing out a problem with a real post that actually exists right at this very moment.
Indeed you are.

Enter "US-linked Australian church fined US$98,000 for selling bleach as coronavirus ‘miracle cure'"

citation: https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/australasia/article/3084250/u...

And thats just a single example of content that can get people killed.

We also already have FB playing MinTruth as well here with "Post shared incorrect number of deaths caused by respiratory diseases in Ceará"

citation: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/scienceandhea...

This one gets harder as who has the better/right-er numbers? Is Bolosonaro lying? Probably. But how do you tell? Who's fact-checking the fact-checkers?

It is easy to pick one clear-cut case that supports one's viewpoint. The question is how to handle the more murky cases.
Sure, but by answering the clear-cut cases you've at least defined boundaries for your problem space.
But the clear-cut cases aren't actually the problem. You don't need to censor things that are so obviously stupid. The bottle of Lysol says things like "Hazard to Humans and Domestic Animals" and "call a poison control center" etc.

To the point that it's incredible that the few people who actually do it are even telling the truth about why, instead of being cases of insane parents looking for a cover story when they want to murder their kids, or Munchausen by proxy or something like that.

Meanwhile the same principle gets you absolutely nothing in all of the non-obvious cases, because when the answer is non-obvious (and therefore much more problematic if wrong) then Facebook doesn't have it either.

Maybe he is, but if a system is to function properly it must work in the worst-case scenario.

Therefore, I disagree that this person is arguing in bad faith and is in fact attempting to point out where the system fails in a worst-case scenario such as this.

That’s not even the worst light possible. The whole antivax movement has done a lot more harm.