People are becoming overly sensitive to caveated statements from medical authorities. The way the media writes medical headlines doesn’t help either: “Turns out eggs weren’t bad for you!” Overall, people are becoming more skeptical of the experts, which some people take to the extreme of doing the opposite of what mainstream experts suggest.
bell-cot · 3h ago
Idea: Get a few well-endowed medical schools to start advertising their Dermatological Oncology programs on social media. Claiming that "with current trends", that market will be absolutely booming over the next few decades. Leading specialists will be able to turn away all but the wealthiest of patients, earning $millions every year...
Successful or not, it'd be extremely interesting to see the reactions.
legitster · 1h ago
Tik-Tok. The answer is Tik-Tok.
I know misinformation existed before short form video, but the rate at which garbage content about otherwise benign topics can be spit out and regurgitated cannot be understated.
If you watch one video about the dangers of sunscreen, the algorithm can feed you 30 more in just minutes. This is a speed of content humans simply cannot handle. Whether you realize it or not, you'll be given a false sense of social proof and consensus that no amount of fact checking later can deprogram.
It's not just crazy opinions about politics or vaccines or sunscreen. Multiple people at a time in my circle will go off at the same time about seatbelts. Or aspartame. Or eating more liver. Or the importance of moon cycles.
cosmicgadget · 2h ago
> “I am definitely a MAHA mom and voted for Trump so that RFK Jr. could get into office,” said Summer Whiteside, 31, an ER nurse from Wildomar, California, in a text message. “After listening to his podcast on Joe Rogan, I knew he was the man for the job.”
Sigh.
EA-3167 · 2h ago
It's very hard to worry about the long-term health outcomes of people like that. As always the rub is what happens to their children, and it's a lot harder to be glib about them.
toomuchtodo · 2h ago
All you can do is let the adults hang themselves out to dry and have systems to help the kids once they become adults and parents lose their authority over them. Think in systems and cycles.
cosmicgadget · 1h ago
It's definitely not all you can do and callousness about the suffering of children isn't a good look.
I imagine more than a few of these suncreen truthers are the parents that feed their kids bleach. At that point, imho, the child's rights outweigh the parents' right to control their offspring.
toomuchtodo · 1h ago
Disclosure: I have volunteered as a guardian ad litem for a brief stint as an independent advocate for children going through the court system, my mental model and opinion comes from this experience.
You can only help children up to legal bounds. If their parents aren't making good choices for them, but parents aren't breaking the law, there is nothing else you can do. Some parents are doing their best, some parents are doing the bare minimum, some parents are actively malicious. Again, all you can do is provide the support you're legally able to until kids hit age of maturity and make better choices for themselves. If parents step out of the boundaries of the law and/or are actively hurting/harming their kids, absolutely, intervene with whatever options are available. This is a tricky dance in my experience. You can just as easily have parents come at you civilly, criminally, or with physical violence because you've dared attempt to interfere with what they consider their property. Once a child is emancipated or reaches age of maturity, you can provide any and all resources to assist them without parental interference (housing, workforce, healthcare, etc to reach self sufficiency escape velocity).
Successful or not, it'd be extremely interesting to see the reactions.
I know misinformation existed before short form video, but the rate at which garbage content about otherwise benign topics can be spit out and regurgitated cannot be understated.
If you watch one video about the dangers of sunscreen, the algorithm can feed you 30 more in just minutes. This is a speed of content humans simply cannot handle. Whether you realize it or not, you'll be given a false sense of social proof and consensus that no amount of fact checking later can deprogram.
It's not just crazy opinions about politics or vaccines or sunscreen. Multiple people at a time in my circle will go off at the same time about seatbelts. Or aspartame. Or eating more liver. Or the importance of moon cycles.
Sigh.
I imagine more than a few of these suncreen truthers are the parents that feed their kids bleach. At that point, imho, the child's rights outweigh the parents' right to control their offspring.
You can only help children up to legal bounds. If their parents aren't making good choices for them, but parents aren't breaking the law, there is nothing else you can do. Some parents are doing their best, some parents are doing the bare minimum, some parents are actively malicious. Again, all you can do is provide the support you're legally able to until kids hit age of maturity and make better choices for themselves. If parents step out of the boundaries of the law and/or are actively hurting/harming their kids, absolutely, intervene with whatever options are available. This is a tricky dance in my experience. You can just as easily have parents come at you civilly, criminally, or with physical violence because you've dared attempt to interfere with what they consider their property. Once a child is emancipated or reaches age of maturity, you can provide any and all resources to assist them without parental interference (housing, workforce, healthcare, etc to reach self sufficiency escape velocity).