Articles tagged with "response"

While researching for the articles I write for the NZ Skeptics newsletter, I often find myself staring at the Google AI response that shows up ahead of search results, trying to come to terms with just how uncritical our current slate of AIs have been trained to be. If I type in the name of a crank scientist, all I see is positive words about the groundbreaking, unconventional work they've done. A quack therapy is painted by Google AI as a miracle cure. A fringe conspiracy theory sounds like a legitimate political viewpoint.

Kahneman's book Thinking Fast and Slow (2013) is a good starting point for thinking about the strengths and limitations of human thinking processes. There is no good substitute for the use of “educating gossip”, as Kahneman describes it, for training in effective judgement and in decision making.

We recently had a member decide not to renew their membership, because of concerns about our submission to the Therapeutic Products Bill. They told us:

Thames-Coromandel mayor Len Salt

Back in November last year, I wrote a critique of a Safe ICT questionnaire I picked up at the Go Green expo. We recently received a copy of Safe ICT's most recent newsletter where they responded to my criticisms. I'm not going to rebut their rebuttal, as this kind of to and fro rarely ends up being productive, but suffice it to say that Safe ICT's overly cautious advice for people using technology is not in alignment with our understanding of the science, and is not based on any scientific evidence of harm.

I've written about Liz Gunn before. She used to be a respected broadcaster on TVNZ's One News, but has now gone well down the rabbit hole. Last year she claimed that an earthquake was Mother Nature's response to Jacinda Adern's Covid-19 response . She announced her FreeNZ movement, which appears to have political aspirations.

Back to COVID seriousness now. It's been a frustrating week where we've seen the Delta variant now escape Auckland and head out to other parts of the country.

As mentioned in the Mary Hobbs response above, there's now a group of doctors in NZ standing up for vaccinations, mostly it would seem in response to the handful of those who are against them.

Welcome to the NZ Skeptics newsletter.

In November Wellington's Dominion Post newspaper ran a piece (in my opinion...) of misleading propaganda they passed off as a cartoon which can be summed up as naturopathy vs science.