I fail to see how anyone can seriously listen to Joe Rogan. He has a circus of quacks and conspiracy theorists on the show and when he does occasionally have a legitimate scientist he can barely muster any response beyond “wow that blows my mind”
I used to listen to the "quacks" and the "conspiracy theorists" on Joe Rogan because back in the past most of the conspiracy theorists he had on were pretty harmless... people like Graham Hancock, Jacques Vallee, Stephen Greer. Additionally back in the day he used to have a good balance of scientists and those discussions were interesting esp since he would ask questions from a layman perspective.
I haven't been listening to it in recent months because it seems the show has become has obsessed with covid and is all covid all the time with some comedians thrown in now and then, not to mention Spotify as a platform is kind of a chore to use for podcasts.
"On January 24, 2022 Senator Ron Johnson invited a group of world renowned doctors and medical experts to the U.S. Senate to provide a different perspective on the global pandemic response, the current state of knowledge of early and hospital treatment, vaccine efficacy and safety, what went right, what went wrong, what should be done now, and what needs to be addressed long term. This 38 minute video highlights the 5-hour discussion."
The 38 minute compilation is a great, easily consumable summary - however here's the link to the full 5+ hours of testimony - https://rumble.com/vt62y6-covid-19-a-second-opinion.html - which obviously has far more depth to it.
The reason I ask if you've seen it is Joe's had multiple of these highly credentialed, front-line workers (doctors, researchers, etc. with expert domain knowledge and experience), on his podcast - some multiple times.
It's going to get harder to ignore these people and what they have to say the more formal the setting the information is shared.
Another video everyone should watch is Maddie De Garay's mother giving testimony for 10 minutes of their experience of her daughter being in Pfizer's 12-15 year old vaccine clinical trial. The limitations designed into the clinical trial reporting app might be most obvious to UX designers, but I think everyone will be able to understand the design implications: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2GKPYzL_JQ
Noted Pro-Covid Senator, Ron Johnson. This is all quackery. The description is just an appeal to authority ("highly credentialed") when in reality they are regularly debunked despite their credentials: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/01/24/robert-malo...
And of course you didn't watch any of it, right, just an automated dismissal?
And then you didn't watch the Maddie De Garay video either, otherwise anyone who watches it and cares about integrity would be shocked - and would want to make sure it's looked into - just alone on the clinical trial reporting app design alone is highly disturbing.
Edit to add: You haven't posted in 4 years and you have few comments to begin with? That's a bit curious. I wonder what an analysis of the HN accounts that instantly jump to putting smear campaign links on these different credible, articulate doctors/researchers/experts, would look like. Any way to do such a study dang, ideally with directly or indirectly getting upvote and downvote data to see if there's other interesting patterns that emerge?
Do you expect perfection? This is classic conspiracy stuff. Latch onto some small weird things that are truly odd but probably explainable though maybe with a good deal effort. Or in some cases they are truly just incompetence or whatever. It doesn't imply some crazy vaccine conspiracy that spans the entire world. It just means there is a really complex problem and neither public health policies or vaccine producers are perfect. But how many lives did both of those things save? Probably a lot more than were saved by JR and others casting doubt on these policies and on vaccines.
It's quite telling that your standards are so low, and that you think an app purposefully designed to prevent reporting of adverse events is somehow me expecting "perfectionism."
That component on its own is not a complex problem - it's blindingly obvious.
You're trying to gaslight to categorize something as simple and obvious is a "conspiracy theory" is "classic" attempt to lazily smear and demonize, meanwhile you actually avoid addressing my specific points.
So let's address 1 of my specific points shall we, and not claim that I'm merely being a perfectionist to dismiss discussing it?
Is it a problem, yes or no, that the adverse events that could be reported by participants in at least the Pfizer mRNA clinical trial for 12-15 year olds limited what could be reported by highly specifically creating a relatively short list of relatively minor potential adverse events? Yes or no?
Now, please brainstorm and extrapolate to the potential consequences of the app that participants were provided as the only means of reporting adverse events, and write out your thoughts here.
It's obvious you don't care much for integrity as you dismiss crucial structure for an apparatus meant to and necessary to capture the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth - but interestingly the operators and designers of the clinical trial decided to design the app to not allow any free-form writing option - like you and I are able to do here?
Surely you're smart enough and have enough integrity to agree that that is unacceptable, especially if you believe in the scientific method? Or perhaps you'd be okay if in scientific studies words like "harmful" weren't allowed to be used?
The avoidance and cognitive dissonance you must be experiencing to dismiss this as me being perfectionist is something else.
Did you even watch or analyze everything said in the Maddie De Garay video? I'd go line-by-line through it with you and dive into the implications if you want?
And then what about the 5+ hour long testimony that Senator Ron Johnson had on January ~25th, that included a bunch of highly credentialed frontline doctors and other experts with incredible amounts of domain experience but that have been being smeared and suppressed in the mainstream media? What are your thoughts on these highly intelligent, articulate individuals sharing their experiences and backing it up with third-party study data when necessary? Are they all perfectionists too or they're all lying too?
Here's the 38 minute shorter compilation version EVERYONE should watch even if you're not willing to dive into the studies or domain knowledge they're referencing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jMONZMuS2U (38 mins)
"On January 24, 2022 Senator Ron Johnson invited a group of world renowned doctors and medical experts to the U.S. Senate to provide a different perspective on the global pandemic response, the current state of knowledge of early and hospital treatment, vaccine efficacy and safety, what went right, what went wrong, what should be done now, and what needs to be addressed long term. This 38 minute video highlights the 5-hour discussion."
P.S. Even the U.S. military is represented in these testimonial video: one of the best kept, if not the best kept dataset on a set of humans' health - where you'll hear their lawyer state that prior to the mandated vaccine there was 1.7 million issues reported during the sam period before the vaccines, once vaccines started the issues reported JUST in/by the military was OVER 20 MILLION more than the period before; so are they all lists too, unreliable sources I imagine you'll say, just like VAERS is apparently/conveniently unreliable - which if true then why/how are we even allowing deployment of new treatments if there's no apparatus to detect potential harm? We should just trust clinical trials are designed "good enough" - but not flawlessly like the scientific method would require, because we don't want to be called perfectionist do we!
Fuck ANYONE who tries to demonize or put me dowm or dismisses me when I'm concerned about the safety of children, or anyone for that matter. You should be ashamed of yourself for your current reaction to this - care about the safety of our children, by caring about the integrity and quality of clinical trials, please.
I looked into the case with Maddie, and it seems like there is NO published information on this case substantiating the claims made by her and her mother. Why is that?
--
Kids have gotten sick from the vaccine - but a lot more kids have gotten sick due to Covid.
You obviously feel very strongly about this, but no I don't see any evidence anywhere here that there was any intentional wrongdoing.
> Is it a problem, yes or no, that the adverse events that could be reported by participants in at least the Pfizer mRNA clinical trial for 12-15 year olds limited what could be reported by highly specifically creating a relatively short list of relatively minor potential adverse events? Yes or no?
It is hard to parse some of what you're saying, but what I think you're saying is is it bad that the app only permitted selection of certain things.
First, I don't know this is true. I haven't:
1) Seen the app
2) Seen multiple people talking about the app
3) Seen other apps used for similar trials
From what I know of end-users of software, and also what I know about parents and people who are politically motivated, I have a lot of skepticism about the claims in the video. Note I said skepticism, not that they are lying. I am skeptical.
I don't know if this claim is true.
But, let's assume it is true. There is another list of things I don't know:
1) Were there other ways to report these effects?
2) Is there a clinical reason why the app would be designed this way?
3) What else don't I know that should stop me from jumping to a really big conclusion? (that the entire world is in on some vaccine conspiracy).
Even if the answer is definitively "the app was designed to limit selection of adverse effects of the vaccine during the trial" there is a set of other things that I just don't know:
1) Was the app designed this way intentionally, or was it a consequence of poor planning? Or a bad software team? Again, being familiar with software, I'm skeptical that if we get this far (see all my previous points...) it was intentional
2) What else don't we know that we can't get from a ten minute video?
Your claims are remarkable - they need to be remarkably substantiated, and you're not doing that.
You're being a classic conspiracy theorist, just like I said in my first comment.
Because he's a compassionate and free thinking interviewer who approaches a conversation like a real human being. With respect for the individual whether the person has controversial opinions or not, which seems to be something lost in media these days with the constant need to be 'right'.
His interviews aren't template question a, template question b, it comes across like a natural conversation, an opportunity to talk to experts in a plethora of different topics and gain an insight to the distilled wisdom of individuals who have spent their life researching their respective fields.
There are "conspiracy theorists" because there are conspiracies which are uncovered every now and then. Why would there not be when a lot of money and power is involved?
A lot of inequality comes not from some people being inherently superior/inferior or deserving/undeserving but from information management, a crucial part of this is to secure it from competing actors while sharing it with those with overlapping interests. That is the definition of a conspiracy.
Even if there were actually no known conspiracies, we can't know they don't exist unless something comes out... so it would be healthy to have some conspiracy theories around and events being tested against those theories. The mere motivation to suppress them is very likely to come from either ignorance or malice. I believe the very fact that "conspiracy theories" are treated with such hostility is a tell that there are much bigger conspiracies that we need to uncover.
Exactly why I listen to him. What makes you think we all want to only listen to mainstream opinions filtered by media "experts" and journalists? Also I'm absolutely fascinated by some of the fringe people and their ideas, particularly Graham Hancock, Randall Carlson, Robert Schoch, i.e. the ancient civilization stuff. Literally nobody else in the media discusses these things with so much earnestness as Joe Rogan.
Always fascinating to me that being interested in fringe science and history always seems to mean listening to people who have no idea what they’re talking about instead of finding the actual fringes and edges of legitimate research and understanding. Probably because the quacks are easier to understand and simply more fun, since they’re aiming to be entertaining rather than accurate. And accuracy is, frankly, boring.
Anyway, going back to reading my book about how aliens told Bill Gates how to invent computers in 1992, leading him to found Apple and help the Allies win World War 2. It’s the story the mainstream media doesn’t want you to hear.
Yes that’s all fine and dandy, but Obama did make a statement about the UAPs recently, which was remarkable in its own right. Surely claims of quackery are true 99.9% of the time but it’s that .1% that’s the kicker.
Obama said there are things in the sky we can't fully explain, to which: "no shit." He kind of jazzed it up because he was on The Late Show. So if you're claiming that Obama said aliens are visiting Earth and this validates the claims of Billy Bob Quackdoofus, well, he didn't do that. And it doesn't validate the quacks. And if it did, then why listen to the quacks at all if you have to point to someone like Obama, anyway, to prove their accuracy?
I made no such claims of validating any quacks or quackery, as a careful reader would recognize. What is your agenda in misrepresenting what I wrote?
To clarify the point; the fact that a former president commented on the UAPs at all was remarkable. To expand, even the existence and decades long cover up Area 51 and the proven things that have come from those programs (like the f-117) are examples of the .1% of “conspiracy” quackery that did happen to be true.
I maintain these types of things are the gateway or hook that draw people deeper into conspiracies, but I’m no expert.
Both Clinton and Trump have discussed UFOs in recent memory, so not that remarkable. But, anyway, I guess I prefer listening to people with a greater than 0.1% accuracy rate.
> Graham Bruce Hancock… promotes pseudoscientific theories… An example of pseudohistory and pseudoarchaeology, his work has neither been peer reviewed nor published in academic journals.
> Mark Lehner, an American archaeologist and egyptologist, has disputed Schoch's analysis, stating, "You don't overthrow Egyptian history based on one phenomenon like a weathering profile... that is how pseudoscience is done, not real science."
> Historian Ronald H. Fritze has described Schoch as a "pseudohistorical and pseudoscientific writer".
Randall Carlson doesn’t have a wiki page.
I hope anyone who is interested in these people is listening to them out of morbid curiosity and not because they think they are deserving of any credence whatsoever. The scientific method is not optional. If you don’t use it, you’re not a scientist.
Rogan, however, appears to genuinely want to believe (and promote) these theories, whether they have any factual basis or not.
Notice how I never mentioned "science" or "scientist" in my post, because I knew exactly the type of retort I would get - "Look at what Wikipedia says about these guys!". Do I believe everything Graham Hancock peddles? Absolutely not. Some of his ideas are just plain ridiculous. But do I believe that civilization first started with Mesopotamia? Again, absolutely not. There are tons of actual solid evidence out there that we go way back.
And my God, everything isn't about science or the scientific method. Some of this stuff is just plain entertaining to me. Is it really so wrong to listen to these things and just have a great time thinking about crazy and out there stuff?
This is the best explanation I've heard of the show's appeal: Back when I was a kid you didn’t need Joe Rogan. Your best friend had a 27 year-old brother who was a fucking loser who would smoke pot in a room with blacklight posters and tell you that the Mayans invented cell phones.
Joe Rogan facilitates discussion with interesting people and not much more. Mainstream news has done just about as poorly as it could have reporting facts, unknowns, and probabilities with Covid...as the anointed truthsayers, they most definitely created a vacuum by dismissing credible questions and skepticism (lab leak, mask effectiveness, how to think about vaccines long term). And they have been eager to bless the opinions of those who have been far too optimistic https://youtu.be/_FvWnlIEHVo
There is no way we just deplatform or content moderate our way out of honestly misguided information like Malone and McCullough. Misinformation and disinformation cannot include people who are trying in good faith to present a pov that happens to just be just wrong…at some point in time that would include…everyone.
> they most definitely created a vacuum by dismissing credible questions and skepticism
What I hate about “skeptics” these days is that they think an opinion is a valid scientific argument. I mean, just go work with the published data and prove it isn’t valid. Instead, we have guys who go around saying things like “Covid is not a virus, it’s our own EXOSOMES duh”. And clueless idiots who amplify those.
Ben Shapiro is a funny guy sometimes, but his recent episode on JRE was disgusting. “We don’t need any measures because I got sick and I was fine!”. That ignores all of the scientific and clinical evidence on the population scale.
What happened to the idea that you should make up your own mind? And if you’re not allowed to do that, who vets the information? And who vets the vetters?
Look at the list of deleted episodes. The majority of the shows are with far right, hateful people who should never be platformed. It's not even quacks, it's pure hate.
> I fail to see how anyone can seriously listen to Joe Rogan
I can't speak for others, but I'm there for the guests. Not all of them, but I find Joe to be an entertaining host, mostly because it's just different. The ones I enjoy the most are the ones where it feels like some random dude has recognised he's on a train with a leading world expert in a field he finds interesting but knows nothing about. It's just earnest conversation from someone curious.
> when he does occasionally have a legitimate scientist he can barely muster any response beyond “wow that blows my mind”
I love watching Joe explore complex subject matter with experts. There are so few interesting interviews with scientists just talking about why they do what they do and what it is that they find fascinating and why they love their craft. There are some real good interviews where they just geek out and Joe asks them really stoned questions. It's not for everyone, I guess.
More to the point, as long as people hold elitist opinions like this, then there will be people who distrust science (and people abusing that to make money)
Isn't that his appeal though? He lets the guests speak without much interjection beyond "wow" and "really". Unlike many other media hosts, he doesn't have his thumb on the scale trying to steer conversations towards his own political leanings.
And while he's featured a few conspiracy theorists, they're a minority and are balanced out by credentialed 'serious' scientists.
That's all beside the point though - purging conversations from the internet is bad, and the culture that cheers this on is worse.
Fair points, but holistically one could argue he causes more misinformation and controversy than he contributes to scientific progress and education.
Regarding censorship, where does one draw the line? Misinformation? A conversation encouraging self-harm? The harm of others? Without holding media to some reasonable standard an anything goes mentality develops.
"I fail to see how anyone can seriously listen to Joe Rogan".
Maybe you should start there. It pays to learn to empathise with and try to understand other people. You don't have to like someone else, but its not that hard to see why people do listen to his podcast. You don't have to be that dismissive of other people.
Google is a big problem here. Joe Rogan is like the Reddit for all our broken Google searches. So Joe Rogan + random topic = high probability of genuine, good and arguably reliable content. Everything else is blogspam and regurgitated content from "hit like and subscribe" bros.
It was a common refrain from people who were afraid to admit they read playboy to people in public that they just "read it for the articles" because they had surprisingly in-depth articles, interviews, etc. It's also why that persons analogy falls flat since no one is afraid to admit they listen to Joe Rogan.
Cool, so are you for or against censorship? And I don't know about you but I like listening to people I disagree with. I don't like living in an echo chamber and don't want to send "conspiracy theorists" to a different echo chamber.
Indeed. As I saw someone say a while back Joe Rogan is Gwenyth Paltrow for men and that is spot on.
The biggest problem, for me, with Rogan’s podcast is he brings on people that know nothing about a subject but let’s them talk as if they are some kind of expert. They have long conversations where Rogan as little if anything of value and just let’s a lot of weirdos that will get views ramble on endlessly for 2 hours. Then things get cut and paste around social media and misinformation spreads like wild fire.
A recent example is Dr Jordan Peterson talking about climate change. He lacks even a basic understanding but was sitting there talking about it with the confidence of a climate expert and as he is a Doctor people take him seriously about everything and it’s just god damn awful.
The same problem exists on a lot of “news” shows/channels where they have a genuine expert that has studied a subject for 20+ years and is known and respected world wide and sit them next to someone that read something on Facebook then got very vocal about it as it matched their feelings on the subject.
This whole “we need two sides” concept is bullshit when the two sides are not equals but are presented and treated as equals.
It gives credibility to people that deserve none as they have done nothing to earn it.
I think multiple points of view are extremely important but you need to ensure the people involved are as close to equal as possible with regards to their professional standing and experience. Not some random blogger.
The idea that we have to silence these people because they are spreading incorrect information implies that no one has any personal responsibility to educate themselves.
Personally, I thought that it was hilarious that Peterson criticized climate scientists for building models without the full information, because that is exactly what his field of clinical psychologists do.
Your argument is that because some people choose to get their information about the vax and climate change from people that are not experts in those fields none of us should have access to that media.
If that is how you feel you should also be in favor of shutting down fast food restaurants and liquor stores because some people don't take responsibility in those areas and become obese and alcoholics.
I don't think the argument is that Rogan or such guests shouldn't have any way to express themselves. Rather that carelessly platforming any contrarían in a lazy attempt at balance is harmful.
These people are more than welcome to setup a blog and write up their views should they wish but there is an astronomical difference between them posting their views on whatever subject they wish and inviting them onto a podcast listened to by tens of millions as if they are some sort of respected expert in the subject.
Also as I said in my original post this is not just aimed at Rogan's podcast but the media in general. Many times I have seen experts in a subject with decades of experience sat next to a random person from MumsNet or some other online community with anecdotes and nothing more. Yet they are sat side by side, given similar air time to communicate their views as if they are in some way 'equals' on the subject which is misrepresentation.
In no way am I saying the non-expert random person should be silenced but they also should not be given such a wide reaching platform due to laziness of the "news" service to find an actual expert to argue the other side.
They deserve free speech, but only if 50k people read it, not if 100M watch a video about it? How do you tell the 99M that they don't deserve to watch this media?
Spotify doesn't have to bankroll grifters. If 99M people want something bad enough they'll find a way to get it. In fact before the Spotify exclusive Rogan could be found and listened to via any podcatcher or index.
I never said we have to silence them. I don't think we have to give them a megaphone to hundreds of millions of people unchecked either though. Why should we give a platform to any random person? Do we no longer care about a persons expertise on the subject?
> Your argument is that because some people choose to get their information about the vax and climate change from people that are not experts in those fields none of us should have access to that media.
Again not what I said and you know it.
> If that is how you feel you should also be in favor of shutting down fast food restaurants and liquor stores because some people don't take responsibility in those areas and become obese and alcoholics.
No, I would be in favour of better educating people. You know by having them get information from actual experts with regards to their bodily health to either lose weight/never become obese in the first place, show how to enjoy alcohol without it becoming an addiction, etc.
>Why should we give a platform to any random person? Do we no longer care about a persons expertise on the subject?
In 2002 all of the media and the experts said that Saddam Hussain had WMDs and ties to Al-Qaeda and we went to war and hundreds of thousands of innocent people died.
I'm not saying that experts don't exist, I would much rather have the chief surgeon at Harvard perform surgery on me than some random guy off the street. But, the idea that "non-experts" shouldn't be able to you cannot question climate scientists on a large platform gets your right back to the Iraq war situation.
Honestly, I wish people took climate change more seriously, and I wish that people didn't become alcoholics and obese, but that is a tradeoff that exists in a free country.
>But, the idea that "non-experts" shouldn't be able to you cannot question climate scientists on a large platform gets your right back to the Iraq war situation.
I'm not saying you cannot question climate scientists though. I'm not saying you cannot question any expert.
The difference, and my complaint, is that this isn't just questioning experts but taking an expert and a non-expert and treating them as if they are equal experts in the subject. People listen to these non-experts in a subject (because they are an expert in some other subject) and accept what they are saying as correct.
If you want to discuss clinical psychology then by all means have Jordon Peterson on, after all he is a clinical psychologist.
But don't ask a clinical psychologist about quantum computing or climate change or any other subject they're not an expert on and present what they say as if they're an expert.
Imagine inviting a race horse breeder on a show to discuss horse racing and then the conversation pivots to Formula 1 engines and race car physics and you treat what they say as expert advice because well horse racing and Formula 1 are both racing sports aren't they. Surely this persons knowledge of breeding a horse transfers over right? That's about the same level of "transfer" that Jordon Peterson's clinical psychologist background has to climate change science.
As for Iraq and WMD that is a far more complicated discussion and the comment section of Hacker News is not the place for it.
This is the difference, I actually would like to hear a expert horse racer's thoughts on F1 racing. I'm not saying that a house racer is better at F1 racing than an experienced F1 racer, but it would be interesting to get their perspective.
Jordan Peterson clearly doesn't understand climate change in detail, I understand that, and I can watch him talk without thinking that climate change is a hoax.
That isn't what I said. I specifically said "Formula 1 engines and race car physics". I put it this way because I mean the specifics of Formula 1 engines and car physics. Not a general chat about Formula 1 but specific specialist areas.
Sure if it was just a general "oh what do you think of F1?" and they shared their personal opinion then fine but if they start saying stuff like "All the F1 engineers in the whole world don't know what they're doing" nobody is going to take them seriously (or you would hope not).
It is this important point, general opinion vs specific area expertise, that is the big issue for me.
Following the Dr Peterson example, had he said something like "oof I think climate change is all overblown and stupid and I don't agree with any of it" then that is his opinion and of course he is entitled to voice his own opinion.
But he didn't say that, he went in to attack specifics about climate models that he patently has no expertise in but talks as if he does. He presented it as if he is sharing factual information and that "nobody" working in climate science is correct.
All climate projections are models without full information over a long period of time. He is correct about that. The issue is that he isn't proving the opposite, he doesn't have any proof that increased CO2 levels will cause minimal problems over the long run.
> A recent example is Dr Jordan Peterson talking about climate change. He lacks even a basic understanding but was sitting there talking about it with the confidence of a climate expert and as he is a Doctor people take him seriously about everything and it’s just god damn awful.
Ironically, I see this on HN, too. Not always, but frequently enough.
What I'm talking about is comment sections (often about economics, climate change, etc.) with commenters who post with iron-clad confidence, only to be contradicted by other commenters who take the opposite position with the same confidence.
I read these dueling comments and think, "Everyone seems so sure of themselves. But I have no clue as to who is correct here."
I find this jarring because: a) somebody has to be wrong in these wars of dueling facts and b) I'm surprised because I feel that HN is enriched with reasonably bright people who I'd expect would be more circumspect with their comments.
I'm not surprised about the abject confusion that the general public has when discussing similar topics, especially since I am often confused reading HN comments. I know that's arrogant of me, but there's truth in there, too.
tldr: If I can't get a handle on dueling "facts" when reading HN, how the hell can I expect Joe Rogan or his listeners to do the same?
> I'm surprised because I feel that HN is enriched with reasonably bright people
The biggest misconception is that an expert in some field(especially STEM) has “common sense” in other areas. My former classmate is doing a PhD in automation, but claimed vaccines are harmful and he’d rather get sick “naturally”. The same goes for politics, economics, and other fields. It’s like people can’t imagine they might be completely ignorant in the areas outside their field of work.
Citing sources would be a nice plus, but I think it still suffers from the issue that primary research always has caveats and limitations. And you need a certain amount of domain knowledge to know how strong the conclusions are.
I've come to believe that "critical thinking" is often a matter of knowing which expert to trust. And sometimes, knowing who to trust is difficult.
I wouldn't say so. Original sources can be in disagreement with each other, and can be wrong. Without much effort, you can generally find some scholarly article to use as ammunition for whatever argument you want to make, and then find another one to make the opposite case. And of course, increasingly, such articles don't hold up to much scrutiny anyway.
