apmee

Right. And how do we know his paper wouldn’t still have been accepted without his self-censoring?

I’m not saying I don’t believe him, or that we shouldn’t take such concerns seriously, but he could at least have acknowledged that this is effectively unfalsifiable conjecture.

I don’t quite understand how you’re able to acknowledge the rarity of such a sensationalised case as Isla Bryson’s, yet still use it to justify your support for policy that would hurt the trans people you know.

On the other hand, other parents may well wish to have access to cherished stories from their childhood to read to their own children _without_ first having to re-read them all in advance and prepare their own annotated versions.

I'm not even necessarily agreeing with the publisher's approach here, but I can certainly see there being a market for "modernised" versions of older books that tired parents can relax into reading aloud as a bedtime story, without that constant low-level unease about the possibility of some dodgy dated stuff popping up out of nowhere.

I don’t think this necessarily is evidence of his not being smart, as it could just as well be ascribed to malice.

Perhaps this will finally prompt Paul to stop giving him the benefit of the doubt though. I’ve long been flummoxed as to why he had continued to, long after it becoming obvious to most that it was not deserved.

Bit of a long shot, but I don't suppose you'd happen to know where to find that post or what it was called?

> Their FAQ on the topics simply says they'll block "medical misinformation" which they define as anything the WHO disagrees with

This seems entirely sensible to me.

> As the WHO has repeatedly disagreed with itself

Unless I misunderstand you, you're saying this as if it's a bad thing. No one's saying the the decision-making processes at the WHO are perfect, but shifts in stance and advice in response to newly available evidence is not "disagreeing with oneself". It's fundamentally how science works.

In fact, most of the criticisms from credible experts have been that the WHO have been too resistant to updating their positions (in the face of the increasingly overwhelming evidence last year that the virus is airborne, for example).

> this is pure authoritarianism. No fact-finding has gone into this decision.

You consider their policy of deferring to an internationally recognised public health body to inform their content guidelines to be an example of authoritarianism?

If so, what alternative "fact-finding" approaches would you suggest?

Because if we imagine for the sake of argument that YouTube somehow had the means, resources and competence to conduct their own rigorous studies and research, in such a notoriously complex field as public health, and used this to inform their content moderation decisions instead of information from the WHO, how would this be any less "authoritarian"?

I've often wondered to what extent my own password mnemonic "system" is either sufficiently secure or woefully misguided.

Each of my passwords is made up of the same eight-character non-dictionary word, plus the alphabet-position numbers of the first three characters of the name of the site I've made the password for (A -> 1, B -> 2, that old trick).

So for example, say the common word I was using in my passwords was "pizzadog", then my Hacker News password would be "pizzadog813" (H -> 8, A -> 1, C -> 3)

I admit my goal is convenience, as it's clearly only one step up from using the same password for everything, but with the added numbers making me feel a little better in the event of one of them being compromised. But is there any reason why this approach might be considered a bad idea?

Great as that is, it's not really a garden path sentence, as there's no element of being misled. It looks absurd from the outset.

Interesting, thanks. But, without meaning to excuse it, I do wonder how much of that was

a) tongue in cheek (given that it was an informal talk rather than an essay or article)

b) just a reflection of the general attitudes of the era

c) indeed down to personal prejudice

I'm guessing though that whatever prejudices he had must have been re-evaluated by the time he encouraged his sister to go into science

Really? Can I ask what you're basing that on? I'm not disbelieving you, just skeptically curious :)