[Opie]

Originally Posted by spike021

Maybe this will be a poor example.

But you rebuild cars, right?

At some point years ago you probably didn't know very much about the cars you rebuild now.

Maybe the first couple times, you screwed up on something. Maybe you didn't realize something needed a certain tolerance to hold up or ft/lb of torque, etc.

If you posted on forums about your builds at the time, you probably would have said what you did and that it "worked" (I don't know if you did or not), only to later do more builds or whatever and find out there were better, safer ways to do things.

Now you write up a new post about the process, which contradicts what you said earlier.

But people say they don't care about your write-ups anymore because you've changed how you did things since the first time.

Obviously that doesn't affect people on nearly the same level.

But you must agree that when you go through an empirical learning experience with multiple iterations of new discoveries and attempts and results, you find better ways to work the problems, right? And come out with a better build?


Why can't you apply this same logic to the researchers who didn't know much about the virus but slowly iterated on their knowledge as time went on, more patients got it, etc.?


I don't feel as strongly as everybody in here so this is just a purely honest question.

And FWIW, the most primitive example of this is when you're a baby and grow up. You learn so many things by iterating on situations you've come across. No person is born an expert on the world who cannot ever find something to improve upon. A kid sometimes needs to touch a hot object to realize it'll burn them and decide to never do that again.

The difference is in willful deception, opposed to learning new information. In the case of cars, if I learned a new, or better or correct way of doing something over time that is acceptable. If I willfully told you something inaccurate that is a problem.

As you say "A kid sometimes needs to touch a hot object to realize it'll burn them and decide to never do that again", we call that common sense. But we've become a society that no longer learns common sense by experience, we do what we are told without asking why we are doing it. Regardless of what our experience, "common sense", tells us.