Poor Alan spent an hour or so this morning letting me vent to him on the above subjects and, although I thought I had tied them down into a coherent whole, I am struggling to reassemble them now that it is time to write them down.
Anyway … here goes…
Intuition
Quite often, in my ignorance, I intuit what some few have described in words and that others have learned from those few.
A recent example is my stumbling across the subject of social capital on twitter.
In fact, I think I accidentally described my version of it here in relation to my opinion (not good) of anonymity on twitter.
[TLDR: Personally, I find a tweet more compelling/credible (award more social capital) if I believe that the tweeter is being open and honest about themselves; anonymity does not assist this assessment.]
Before I was aware it was a thing.
And, over the years, my intuition seems to have served me well, heuristically filling the gaps in my knowledge.
One of my intuitions is that the often touted claim that “the covidvaccines have saved millions of people” is overblown.
So I am watching unfold with interest a conversation on twitter between two academics, one a “Professor of Molecular Biology & Genetics” and the other a “whistleblowing lab mouse” on this very subject.
Although this is a very well mannered and professional dialogue between two sharp people, in my view it showcases the battle between the medics and the statisticians, and that generally the medics, who control the data, are both spinning the data to present their viewpoint and obfuscating it to hide the truth.
It will be interesting to see if it develops further.
Controlling the information is therefore the key here which leads me nicely on…..
Information
This week in Ireland Ms. Justice Marie Baker, in introducing the Irish Government’s new anti-misinformation force, seemed very pleased that:
“we have very extensive powers to require the correction or removal of information we believe to be incorrect”
and stated that:
“we’re all going to have to become philosophers, in a sense”
and
“we’re all going to have to learn how to test truth”
Well, her last two observations are completely redundant because that’s what our intuition is for and what it’s already doing.
Furthermore, with only one single source of truth, no thinking at all is required (or allowed!).
That’s the beauty of the totalitarianism of authoritative regimes.
Do we really want to start beheading people for bad tweets?
I much prefer Gad Saad‘s heuristic free for all:
He said:
“Let me reiterate this for perhaps the 1,000th time: In a free society, there can never be a law against misinformation/disinformation. Free societies must tolerate imbeciles, racists, falsehood spreaders, etc. I’m Jewish with my tragic childhood history in Lebanon and yet I SUPPORT the right of Holocaust deniers to spew their infinitely grotesque falsehoods. The reflex for governments to sanitize your mind from “falsehoods” is the definition of authoritarianism. This trend must be fought with all of our might.”
People should be able to get their propaganda from a variety of sources.
Lucy Letby
And here I come full circle – my very recent enraged gut instinct (intuition) becomes tempered by the insight (further information) provided by the sweetest person (highly credible) I know.
I considered putting my head above the parapet on twitter on this point, but I thought better of it because of the outrage that understandably exists at the moment.
I am as angry as the next person. I’m not defending anyone.
But, as I was reading the tragic victim profiles, from the Telegraph newspaper, out to my wife (who was a registered nurse) and my stepfather (who was a GP), my wife pointed out to me some of the intricate difficulties of looking after newborn babies, particularly premature babies, and it dawned on me that perhaps Lucy Letby was a spectacularly incompetent nurse with a “Florence Nightingale” complex.
Rather than a heartless killer who “attacked” her victims per the reports.
An only child with an overblown opinion of her own abilities?
One who relished the attention/adulation of working the heroic hours that no one else would?
In an under resourced health system so tragically collapsing in on itself that it allowed this level of neglect/incompetence to thrive?
Or maybe she is a heartless killer. The written note IS pretty damning.
I don’t know.
I hope an enquiry will get to the bottom of this, and I imagine, like the covidvaccines claim above, that there is more to this story than meets the eye.
I bet that there are a few people scurrying to cover their arses.
Even though it’s easier to scapegoat a single useful idiot than a whole bunch of them and a huge institution to boot.
Which is why I think that it’s important to keep an open mind and get your information from a variety of resources rather than to accept being spoon fed.
But in Ms. Justice Marie Baker’s world I probably wouldn’t be able to pen this heresy, without getting ten lashes at least….
