23 Comments

Great piece, David - although that opening cartoon is an eyesore! 😂

I've written a great deal about this for a great deal of time. Before Substack, I was picking up Mary Midgley's themes about the substitution of scientism for religion on my previous blog, and also in my philosophy books. I often used the term 'atheology' in reference to what you're describing as 'atheist theocracy', although I don't think many readers understood what I meant when I invoked the term!

Regarding 'information', this is of course a recurring theme of mine, following on from Ivan Illich. Did you catch the piece that looks at the way information has substituted for truth over the last half millennia? This kicked off July's run of pieces on this topic.

https://strangerworlds.substack.com/p/lost-in-information

One further piece of commentary, re: the WHO's claim than an infodemic:

"it spreads between humans in a similar manner to an epidemic"

This is a fascinating claim, because it turns out (my thanks to Carl Henghan and Tom Jefferson for patiently elucidating this point) that we don't actually know how a respiratory epidemic spreads, because studies on transmission more or less ended nearly fifty years ago. After that, we just sort of assumed we knew how it works, and brushed the ambiguities, the inconsistencies, and the unresolved questions under the carpet in favour of the new faith that manufactured pharmaceuticals would fix everything(!).

But as I have repeatedly noted: most people want certainty far more than they want the truth. To honestly seek the truth is to wrestle with ambiguity... neither contemporary government nor the contemporary sciences have the virtues to bear that cross. Hence, as you nicely lay out here, we end up governing in the parochial manner of the middle ages.

Stay wonderful!

Chris.

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Didn't you get the memo, Chris? Epidemics spread because people go within 2 metres of each other. Unless they're outside, except when they're in a queue for a shop. And unless they're wearing a mask or visor or are behind a perspex screen. Or they're exercising in a gym. Or eating in a restaurant. Or drinking in a pub while eating a Scotch egg. I hope that's cleared everything up for you!

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Such a learned and erudite answer! But I still want to know: If I am swimming underwater, do I need to wear a mask? 😝

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Outstanding essay! This: " a sort of atheist theocracy" is the root cause from which 'infodemic' and 'EARS' grow. It's no wonder that the 'scientific community' are regarded as best curators to guide the ignorant public to the approved 'truth' because said community had to grapple with their own, smaller 'infodemic' since the 1980s where 'publish or perish' had become the guiding principle of scientific research.

I've long visualised this 'infodemic' as an ever increasing stream of sludge where one had to pan for nuggets of proper information like those gold diggers of old. Those nuggets have become increasingly smaller and rarer ...

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Thomas Kuhn comes to mind. Here are some salient observations from his 1962 book *The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.*

Kuhn answers his question as to why students of “physics, for example” ought to read the historical works of science by addressing the advantages enjoyed by the humanities in this regard:

"As a result, the student in any one of these disciplines [in the humanities] is constantly made aware of the immense variety of problems that the members of his future group have, in the course of time, attempted to solve. Even more important, he has constantly before him a number of competing and incommensurable solutions to these problems, solutions that he must ultimately evaluate for himself."

In contrast, scientific textbook training “is a narrow and rigid education, probably more so than any other except perhaps in orthodox theology.”

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Yes, although sadly nowadays humanities education is increasingly taking on exactly the narrowness he was decrying...

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Once upon a time in the West, English majors might take a course in 18th Century British Literature and read "Gulliver's Travels."

Book Three of "Travels" includes Gulliver's visit to the floating island of Laputa. The story is an immensely funny satire on useless scientific technology (e.g., extracting heat from cucumbers). And it is an uncanny prequel to the current collaboration of state power and a scientific priestly class (the scientists can position Laputa to interdict the sun or, if necessary, lower the island to crush the rebellious inhabitants.)

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The 'narrow and rigid education' in 'scientific textbook training' has a very valid reason: to lay and enforce the basis for scientific work.

Knowing how to gaze in awe at all the probable solutions is no good if you are incapable of recognising what could or could not lead forward. Or said differently, beautifully formulated verbal arguments which can be refuted with equally worthy-sounding verbal arguments are 'nice to have' - but even with the greatest of efforts of ideological obfuscation (the wokeists are trying very hard), it is incontrovertible that 2 + 2 = 4, or that no amount of verbose excuses can hide when an experiment went wrong. And it's the proper scientific method*) on which discoveries are made. This is the 'rigid, narrow method' which scientific textbooks train.

*) You might like to watch this brief clip of Feynman explaining it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b240PGCMwV0

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I beg to differ. Science is in pretty bad shape these days owing to this sort of dismissive misconception. Perhaps you should read up on some science history. Those who have made truly innovative discoveries had well-rounded education and interests.

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It's not just science which is in pretty bad shape - the Humanities are in even worse shape, leading for example to calls of ditching Maths because it's white and colonialist/imperialist - not that these people know what Imperialism means.

The scientists I knew and under whom I studied all had well-rounded educations and had other interests - as have I myself. Want proof? Check out my other substack: https://vivianevansdivertimenti.substack.com

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You make a valid point, Vivian. But pointing at the failures of the humanities is hardly an argument for bad science pedagogy. The problem with the humanities today is that it has abandoned its humanist roots and turned to revisionism, presentism, and all manner of lazy thinking. This sad state of affairs has come about through funding priorities and pressures within the academy where the humanities are deemed lesser than the almighty Science. And this perspective, in turn, stems from attitudes like the ones you're expressing which places Science above all as the ultimate hypostasis of human knowledge. It is bizarre that you're actually arguing that scientists shouldn't learn more about the actual history of science, and should not acquire a sense of the convoluted manner by which discoveries are hit upon (in place of the false histories to which Kuhn is pointing)... that in fact, you think they ought to be trained like technicians or clerics rather than innovators, that the best approach is to give them the impression that they are in possession of the one true Truth that has been handed down on tablets by the Science. Meanwhile, your defence of building ignorance into the pedagogy seems so passionate, I'm left wondering how you rationalise such an indefensible position. (As a side note: your references to your own substacks don't come across well. In the right context, it can at times come across tastefully. But here it's not.)

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This has been my subject for quite some time. Great to see it so eloquently handled, David. I tried using perplexity ai, a search engine that purports to be better than others since it provides "sources." So I tested it out, and it's worse than Google because it exudes more authority and conveys to the consumer more certainty (if that's possible). Most people don't check sources. It's enough that their information has superscript numbers in it. When I followed the sources provided by perplexity, I found that they were all news articles. The very concept of primary and secondary sources, never mind, bottom-of-the-barrel news sources, was entirely absent. This state of affairs is concerning to say the least.

My suggestion following McLuhan's observation that "the medium is the message," is that we need to tackle the perception of knowledge as material, as something one can possess like a potato or that one can collect like baseball cards.

The trouble, as I see it, is *certainty.* We Google things and we see a list of facts, we see data in the form of images and written information. What we don't see is the dialogical nature of knowledge, the fact that things are rarely settled as Fact, and those things that are facts are generally mundane, like "Jack has a pimple on his nose." It seems to me we need to develop a search engine that presents information in a way that conveys to the lay researcher (and especially to the scientifically trained), that seeking quick answers does not imbue one with certainty and authority. Truth and knowledge are not things one can point to.

Basic research requires that we investigate (1) primary sources, (2) authors, (3) critics and critiques, and (4) alternative hypotheses. One's research is incomplete until all these elements have been examined. I suspect that there are elegant solutions to representing information in a manner that conveys this complexity and dissuades users from coming to the conclusion that they are in possession of the one true Truth and can therefore be unwaveringly certain, and consequently dispense with any sense of curiosity in exploring matters further. This relationship to knowledge lies at the heart the divisiveness we're seeing afoot all around us. People feel they don't need to talk about things with each other since the *smart* phone or computer screen told them the one definitive Truth.

What's horrifying about AI in this regard is that the present misconception of knowledge and information is being transposed into the circuitry, as it were, and the output is even more dogmatic than what emerges from a Google-type search. Until the designers of these technologies awaken to the problem, the civic divide will continue to deepen and grow more volatile.

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Few people are willing to put in the immense amount of time and thought that this requires. AI generated information will be accepted by most simply because of that. How many people do you know who are even willing to talk over an issue for 2 or 3 hours, let alone dig into written information? Speed and simplicity are more important to most everyone I know. They don't even care that the information is incomplete or possibly completely wrong.

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Yes, the new AI functionality on Google is really egregious because it's so seductive. It's big and it has the information *right there*. Why rely on anything else?

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We need to think of AI as a tool. It's easier to drive in a nail using a hammer than your forehead. With the latter, you'll hurt yourself and are unlikely to do a good job with the nail. So use a hammer. But don't use a hammer for anything else, like playing the piano or mixing pancake batter. You'd be giving the hammer too much responsibility in your life, and it won't be good for you, the piano, the pancake or the hammer.

So with AI. It's a tool. With limitations. If you use it as a tool to get a very quick download of facts of the 1+1=2 variety, or a widely-held view on a topic, it's pretty good. If you remember that you've brought yourself from 0% to X% knowledge of a topic, where you don't know what X% is because you don't know what 100% is, or what the somewhat arbitarry boundaries of the topic are that AI didn't tell you about, or what lies beyond those boundaries, then you're not in bad shape. So question: is scientific teaching sceptical, humble, curious and encouraging curiosity? Or is it authoritarian, rote, factual etc?

If instead you are lulled into thinking AI has given you Truth, and therefore you can use that Truth to gain power ... by reciting what you've been told at the dinner table, in a meeting, on the Today programme, in Cabinet....you're on a very bad track. Equally, if you took physics GCSE and came away thinking "I know physics" you were always on a bad track, but you probably avoided this trap because you knew there was an A-level and a degree, that you didn't take.

I found the following ChatGPT instructive, starting from the simple question "what is the boiling point of water". For everyday purposes, 100degC is fine. Some educated people would say "100 degrees in certain circumstances". I like that ChatGPT's first answer is "at 1 atmosphere" and prompts "would you like a detailed explanation?" I don't like when it rests at the atmospheric explanation, and required a prompt from me to explain purity, measurement and calibration issues.

https://chatgpt.com/share/6763e7f6-1570-8006-b2de-5dffe932dcc8

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A little light on the implications for social control. Some people need it spelling out. It doesn't reduce your academic reputation or make you a scaremonger

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Thank you, Dr McGrogan, for drawing attention to EARS – now there's an acronym to conjure with. Shades of the Three Little Monkeys, hearing, seeing and speaking no evil.

Got it. In the 2020 pseudo-pandemic, the WHO Apostasy of Truth heard, saw and spoke no evil mis-, dis- or mal-information.

Theatre of the Absurd's finest hour. Beware again "the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister by the lights of perverted science."

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I'm always amused by Covid information controversy because it was perfectly illustrative of the absolute bollocks perspectives that arise when political intuitions of any kind interfere with questions pertaining to the behaviours of the material world. The leftish PMC won this particular information fight but they are at least acknowledging the possibility of overreaction & overreach. The fringe rightish, on the other hand, are never ever accountable for their most lurid and ludicrous claims. They just move on to something else.

My personal position on 'disinformation' etc is that it's a demand-side phenomenon. Which is why no amount of 'correct' information will change minds.

In the end, though, it's all about status and power. Which is why the PMC will never give up their quest to own everyone's opinions and judgements. The psychological drivers of all this seem more interesting, to me, than the mechanics.

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Are they at least acknowledging the possibility of overreaction and overreach? I don't see a huge amount of that, to be honest with you. Other than that, I agree!

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I must confess that I am really only describing some PMC-aligned commentators. No, the technocratic class itself says nothing.

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Good article however I would debate the following line "carefully vetted by experts".

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"Sloppily vetted by purported experts"?

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Spot on

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