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by afarrell 2116 days ago
> the WHO should figure out a way to rely less on member nations accurately reporting information to them.

So you would say that the WHO should be 'entitled to their own set of facts', separate from that of the PRC, correct?

That would imply that "How do we determine the credibility of organizations?" is a sometimes-difficult exercise in human judgement, correct?
1 comments
ceejayoz 2116 days ago
> So you would say that the WHO should be 'entitled to their own set of facts', separate from that of the PRC, correct?

No, not really. "The WHO doesn't have reports of X" and "No one has reports of X" are separate (if related) facts.

> That would imply that "How do we determine the credibility of organizations?" is a sometimes-difficult exercise in human judgement, correct?

"Is this organization credible?" is an opinion, that you might back up with various facts.

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afarrell 2116 days ago
"Is this organization credible?" is an opinion, that you might back up with various facts.

Right. 100% Agreed.

And that implies that a fact like "On 5 January 2020, the WHO said 'Based on the preliminary information from the Chinese investigation team, no evidence of significant human-to-human transmission and no health care worker infections have been reported.' " is based on an opinion like "The WHO's web administration team is credible and would not have misleadingly changed the content of a web page"

Unless you start comparing that fact with other facts as reported the internet archive or a checksum in your database...which also has credibility questions.

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I'm just saying "Sadly, there is no way to escape using human judgement somewhere." I suspect we agree on most relevant object-level questions about vaccines and COVID-19.

I realise I sound pedantic. In normal times, I just round 0.9999999999999999999 up to 1 and go on with my life.

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ceejayoz 2116 days ago
Ah, we're conspiracy theorizing now.

There is substantial contemporary reporting of the WHO's statements from January, and the Internet Archive has it snapshotted on Jan 9. http://archive.is/jZByM

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afarrell 2116 days ago
No, I'm saying that in order to believe in any facts, you have to exercise some level of human judgement and conclude/assume that the entire world has not conspired to deceive you.

It is wise to exercise judgement in that direction for the same reason it is wise to round 0.9999999999999999999 up to 1

It is often wise to round 0.999 up to 1.

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I'm not saying '2+2=5'.

I am saying '2+2=4'. You are saying '2+1.99999999999999999=4'.

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ceejayoz 2116 days ago
"There are no real facts, this could all be a simulation and 2+2=5" isn't really a useful position to discuss anything useful from.

https://birdsarentreal.com/ is fun to chuckle at, but it's not a useful philosophy for encountering the world.

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