“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him.” -Dostoyevsky Dostoyevsky in 1865. Also: my current mood. The 21st Century Salon is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
I think what makes it hard is the fact that we’re doing this to ourselves.
If it were some natural event like a (real) plague or a meteor hitting the earth and making it impossible for humans to live, somehow in my mind such an event would be easier to deal with?
“Well, that’s an indifferent universe for ya.”
The fact that we’re doing this to ourselves, and we could choose not to, but we’re not choosing not to, is actually driving me crazy.
So there's COVID, the youth transgender stuff, the p-hacking/replication crises, and then the humanities-are-weird now that deBoer has written about (see: Writing Studies, the Field that Hates Itself). I'm sure we're only a few years away from someone generating this sort of academic writing with an AI.
I wonder what the long-run equilibrium on all this is. I think universities will see some cuts going forward. We will also probably put more faith in people with hard math and science backgrounds.
I think it was profoundly fucked up for experts to try to mix their normative politics with their descriptive science. It just makes me take them less seriously on both.
This was a thought-provoking and sobering article. I initially dismissed the lab-leak theory out of hand because 1. I had read something somewhere that the changes from SARS to Covid-19 looked like other viral evolutions that happen naturally, and 2. Because my online friends who were promoting the lab-leak hypothesis were politically on the right and had shown bias against China in the past. I am embarrassed to say that I was unbecomingly dismissive of their arguments.
I think we still can’t say how Covid and our current version of monkeypox came to be, but it is worrisome that there still seems to be a taboo on discussing gain-of-function research and even more so on regular people saying, “Is this kind of research really worth the risk?! Why are we doing it?!”
I hadn’t even thought of this point before: “People who were pushing the natural origin had their entire careers at stake. If gain-of-function research stops, their funding stops. Their entire careers stop. So…they had every reason to lie to themselves that the origin wasn’t all that important, anyway.” Researchers wouldn’t need to be openly self-interested in refusing to look at information supporting the lab-leak theory; just a slight bias against the conclusion that gain-of-function research is dangerous would be enough to cause motivated reasoning, and also the taboo on discussing the lab-leak theory.
Jul 17, 2022·edited Jul 17, 2022Liked by The 21st Century Salonnière
Thanks for an excellent article. These are important and disturbing questions.
I don't think it is an overstatement to say that public confidence in experts of all kinds has been severely impaired by COVID, its origins, and the response to it. It feels like the curtain has been pulled back a little and revealed not a harmless wizard, but a frightening gargoyle.
Subject-matter experts are valuable in theory, which is to say under ideal circumstances. Problem is that credentialization and control of research funding has turned the expert class into a cadre of frightened yes-men who by and large say only that which advances the favored narrative of Power, and assiduously avoid saying anything that contradicts it. An expert is now defined as one who agrees with experts; thus for example, medical professionals who publicly dissented from COVID dogmas were immediately excoriated as crazy conspiracy mongers ... regardless of how many honors, publications, or Nobel prizes they possessed.
The implication is not that one should ignore expertise; that would be far too simplistic. Blind belief and blind disbelief are both blind. Rather, one must always parse what a given voice is saying inside of the context of the power relations that govern behavior in the academy, research institutes, and the state and corporate bureaucracies. Those relations are guided by the interests of the powerful, and those lines of force can be followed; voices that align themselves along those vectors should be regarded with suspicion; voices that don't so align are more likely to be guided by their own internal compasses of reason and morality, and while they might not always be correct, experience suggests they're much more likely to be at least honest.
As one example, it's often said - particularly on the left - that "we couldn't have known" X about COVID. And yet, in the very early days, before lockdowns wrecked our world, we had the Diamond Princess. The statistical epidemiologist John Ioannidis analyzed that floating petri dish and concluded that the case fatality rate was on the order of 0.1% - comparable to a bad flu, but not worth panicking over. Ioannidis had previously distinguished himself by blowing holes in the biomedical literature by demonstrating that the overwhelming majority of it was based on statistically insignificant false correlations. He pissed off a lot of powerful people by doing that, and therefore, was worth listening to. As it turns out, he was right. Anyone paying attention at the time, and exercising the basic discernment of interpreting media messaging through the lens of power relations, had good reason to doubt that COVID would be the next black death. And, as it turned out - Ioannidis was right. In other words, not only could we have known - if you knew where to look, we did.
It's similar with the lab leak scenario. That was obvious from day 1. It was only non-obvious if one persisted in giving the organs of power the benefit of the doubt; which, frankly, after decades of endless deceptions, is just obtuse.
I wouldn't expect the origins discussion to be brought up in the workplace context. It's terribly important, but it's a seprate (and much bigger?) question.
There's "Here's what we see happening around us. Here's how things might develop. Here's what you should do. We'll get back to you as things change and we know more."
And there's "How does society deal with the fact that we have the ability to create bioweapons? Especially given that we know how, somebody somewhere will probably do it?"
These questions seemed to work at odds with each other at the beginning of Covid when it felt like blame-it-on-China would send us way off task. (Especially since the truth was closer to blame-it on-us.)
But yes, our elites have shown themselves incompetent and dishonest, and that doesn't bode well.
I think what makes it hard is the fact that we’re doing this to ourselves.
If it were some natural event like a (real) plague or a meteor hitting the earth and making it impossible for humans to live, somehow in my mind such an event would be easier to deal with?
“Well, that’s an indifferent universe for ya.”
The fact that we’re doing this to ourselves, and we could choose not to, but we’re not choosing not to, is actually driving me crazy.
So there's COVID, the youth transgender stuff, the p-hacking/replication crises, and then the humanities-are-weird now that deBoer has written about (see: Writing Studies, the Field that Hates Itself). I'm sure we're only a few years away from someone generating this sort of academic writing with an AI.
I wonder what the long-run equilibrium on all this is. I think universities will see some cuts going forward. We will also probably put more faith in people with hard math and science backgrounds.
I think it was profoundly fucked up for experts to try to mix their normative politics with their descriptive science. It just makes me take them less seriously on both.
Great article!
I wouldn't worry too much about our future though, yet.
It's been like this since the beginning of time. Smart people get their mouths shut by big money/power/influence etc.
And I can't blame these scientists. When your life could be on the line and potentially the well-being of family and friends, who wouldn't give in?
It's absolutely understandable, although undeniably frustrating, but it's been like this forever - it's human nature.
The good thing is, we've always been able to overcome such tragedies and reached the point where we are at right now.
The bad thing is, we reached magnitudes of orders that can quickly change the whole world.
So it's the usual. Staying alert and critical, asking provoking questions while not losing one's self mentally.
Such is life and I'm optimistic it will stay this way through all the coming hardships that will certainly arise again and again.
Cheers
This was a thought-provoking and sobering article. I initially dismissed the lab-leak theory out of hand because 1. I had read something somewhere that the changes from SARS to Covid-19 looked like other viral evolutions that happen naturally, and 2. Because my online friends who were promoting the lab-leak hypothesis were politically on the right and had shown bias against China in the past. I am embarrassed to say that I was unbecomingly dismissive of their arguments.
I think we still can’t say how Covid and our current version of monkeypox came to be, but it is worrisome that there still seems to be a taboo on discussing gain-of-function research and even more so on regular people saying, “Is this kind of research really worth the risk?! Why are we doing it?!”
I hadn’t even thought of this point before: “People who were pushing the natural origin had their entire careers at stake. If gain-of-function research stops, their funding stops. Their entire careers stop. So…they had every reason to lie to themselves that the origin wasn’t all that important, anyway.” Researchers wouldn’t need to be openly self-interested in refusing to look at information supporting the lab-leak theory; just a slight bias against the conclusion that gain-of-function research is dangerous would be enough to cause motivated reasoning, and also the taboo on discussing the lab-leak theory.
Good piece of work. We’re pretty fucked, pardon my French
Thanks for an excellent article. These are important and disturbing questions.
I don't think it is an overstatement to say that public confidence in experts of all kinds has been severely impaired by COVID, its origins, and the response to it. It feels like the curtain has been pulled back a little and revealed not a harmless wizard, but a frightening gargoyle.
Subject-matter experts are valuable in theory, which is to say under ideal circumstances. Problem is that credentialization and control of research funding has turned the expert class into a cadre of frightened yes-men who by and large say only that which advances the favored narrative of Power, and assiduously avoid saying anything that contradicts it. An expert is now defined as one who agrees with experts; thus for example, medical professionals who publicly dissented from COVID dogmas were immediately excoriated as crazy conspiracy mongers ... regardless of how many honors, publications, or Nobel prizes they possessed.
The implication is not that one should ignore expertise; that would be far too simplistic. Blind belief and blind disbelief are both blind. Rather, one must always parse what a given voice is saying inside of the context of the power relations that govern behavior in the academy, research institutes, and the state and corporate bureaucracies. Those relations are guided by the interests of the powerful, and those lines of force can be followed; voices that align themselves along those vectors should be regarded with suspicion; voices that don't so align are more likely to be guided by their own internal compasses of reason and morality, and while they might not always be correct, experience suggests they're much more likely to be at least honest.
As one example, it's often said - particularly on the left - that "we couldn't have known" X about COVID. And yet, in the very early days, before lockdowns wrecked our world, we had the Diamond Princess. The statistical epidemiologist John Ioannidis analyzed that floating petri dish and concluded that the case fatality rate was on the order of 0.1% - comparable to a bad flu, but not worth panicking over. Ioannidis had previously distinguished himself by blowing holes in the biomedical literature by demonstrating that the overwhelming majority of it was based on statistically insignificant false correlations. He pissed off a lot of powerful people by doing that, and therefore, was worth listening to. As it turns out, he was right. Anyone paying attention at the time, and exercising the basic discernment of interpreting media messaging through the lens of power relations, had good reason to doubt that COVID would be the next black death. And, as it turned out - Ioannidis was right. In other words, not only could we have known - if you knew where to look, we did.
It's similar with the lab leak scenario. That was obvious from day 1. It was only non-obvious if one persisted in giving the organs of power the benefit of the doubt; which, frankly, after decades of endless deceptions, is just obtuse.
I wouldn't expect the origins discussion to be brought up in the workplace context. It's terribly important, but it's a seprate (and much bigger?) question.
There's "Here's what we see happening around us. Here's how things might develop. Here's what you should do. We'll get back to you as things change and we know more."
And there's "How does society deal with the fact that we have the ability to create bioweapons? Especially given that we know how, somebody somewhere will probably do it?"
These questions seemed to work at odds with each other at the beginning of Covid when it felt like blame-it-on-China would send us way off task. (Especially since the truth was closer to blame-it on-us.)
But yes, our elites have shown themselves incompetent and dishonest, and that doesn't bode well.