Hi Cameron

In my country this summer, now that we’ve opened up the beaches again, there’s been a surge in drownings. I suppose in a perfect world, this wouldn’t happen. There might even be no rips.

Perhaps, in a slightly less perfect world, everyone would still be able to spot a rip, and not swim there. And everyone would be a strong swimmer, and if they were caught, would not fight the rip but remain afloat, and perhaps eventually make it back. Sometimes.

But I guess shit happens even in paradise. And certainly in a hell hole like New Zealand.

In our very imperfect world, where we have ignorant people, many of whom are over-confident, we tell everyone to swim between the flags. And there are people who put out flags, and keep watch.

And we have all of these secondary defences—like lifeguards, and, hospitals for near drownings, and well, life insurance and funeral directors and coroners. And sometimes, when all else fails, an emotive appeal on give-a-little for support of the wife and children (about 80% of drownings are over-confident men).

But what if…?

But how would you react if you saw someone moving the flags?

Or if they got a loud hailer and invited everyone to swim in the ‘calm water’ between the breaking waves … ?

Yet, as you’ve pointed out, this is precisely what’s happening on Quora at present. Especially related to COVID-19.

There are even serial offenders.

And—gosh, I know that I’ve reported one particularly prolific individual dozens of times. With no apparent response. I even happen to know that Alon Amit[math]^*[/math] has reported the same gent right up the Quora feeding chain, also with no response.

So why is this? Why should Quora admin be so obdurate? I can see several possibilities:

1. They don’t give a damn, actually.
2. There are anti-vax sympathisers in among their administrators, plying their devious trade.
3. They see this as an “expression of free speech”.
4. They have done the numbers, and are desperately afraid of losing the custom of the largish minority of Americans (Germans? Serbs?) who are anti-vax.

I doubt (1) is true. It seems that (2) is possible. That would be embarrassing. And if (3), then why have a reporting mechanism that warns people of ‘rips’, and worse?

So, unless I’ve missed something obvious, they would seem to be trading quantity for quality. Which is, of course a bit sad on a site with a mission to “share and grow the world’s knowledge”.

Not ignorance.

And certainly not “flag moving” and misdirection.

What can we do?

In a perfect world, we could have complete freedom of speech. And if someone said something life-threateningly daft, then this would rapidly be corrected. Nobody would get hurt by silliness.

Clearly this doesn’t work in real life. In an ideal world, if some dotty politician advocated drinking bleach for COVID-19, bleach consumption—and poisoning—wouldn’t go up.

We need to do something. And some things work. Even on Quora. Recently I saw yet another early post from that same individual, with 19 upvotes.

So I posted a counter-argument …

And now I see that at least in this instance—at least for now—this particular abuse of facts has been down-voted into obscurity. Even though I didn’t actually reference the post directly.

But a huge number of his rubbish posts are still there, moving the flags, and encouraging a swim in the “calm water”. Despite myself and many others reporting him repeatedly.

I guess we just have to slog on, each in our own little, way, trying to point out where it’s safe to swim.

And slapping that loud hailer out of the wrong hands with a forest of downvotes—where we can. It won’t always work.

But I guess it’s better than standing idly by.

My 2c, Dr Jo.

[math]^*[/math] Who has 107 thousand followers and 103 million content views.

Top “Stay between the Flags” image from Surf Lifesaving NZ. Second image from SciJinks.

Footnotes