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March 20, 2023
Guest Perspective by William Briggs
Twitter Files #18 and #19 focus on the Virality Project, an “anti-vaccine misinformation” effort led by Stanford and bringing together elite academia, NGOs, government, and experts in AI and social media monitoring, with six of the biggest social media companies on the planet. They went far beyond their “misinformation” remit. Twitter Files show the Virality Project pushed platforms to censor “stories of true vaccine side effects”.
Experts.
“Reporting side effects of the now-pulled Johnson & Johnson vaccine would have been labelled ‘misinformation’ under Virality Project decrees.” And was. I tried showing deleterious vex effects using the CDC’s own data all through 2021, with this being one of the most interesting posts. Of course, these efforts were whacked on social media, and the post(s) died quiet deaths. Just like…but never mind.
Rather than listening out for safety signals to protect the public, leaders in the “anti-disinformation” field ran cover to protect BigPharma, smearing and censoring critics. The moral depravity is astounding and quite possibly criminal.
The Virality Project however is just part of a broader cultural shift that reverses long standing liberal/left commitments to free expression and allows censorship in the name of protection and safety.
There it is. Protection and safety. The Cult of Safety First! All exacerbated because of our Expertocracy, i.e. managerial state.
Incidentally, if you want to see why the Cult will only become more stultifying and pervasive, see things like this thread:
This is consistent with long-understood differences in male and female attitudes to rules, systems, conflict, hierarchy, and objectivity. So what happens when the law becomes majority female? Do those subjective, informal, empathetic norms prevail? I guess we'll find out . . . pic.twitter.com/cMe7hMnrUB
— Helen Andrews (@herandrews) March 19, 2023
Do you recall the many times I mentioned that Official Disinformation necessarily meant there must be Official Truths? And that if there were Official Truths there must be an agency or agencies in charge of producing, promulgating, and policing those Official Truths?
And do you also recall that we predicted Experts ensconced at midwit factories would salivate at the opportunity to have their credential-certified versions of events be {\it the} source of Official Truths? This:
…3.“Reports of vaccinated individuals contracting Covid-19 anyway”; “natural immunity”; suggesting Covid-19 “leaked from a lab”; even “worrisome jokes”:
4.All were characterized as “potential violations” or disinformation “events” by the Virality Project, a sweeping, cross-platform effort to monitor billons of social media posts by Stanford University, federal agencies, and a slew of (often state-funded) NGOs.
Disinformation events.
Another aside: remember when the CDC Experts pushed the idea that naturally acquired immunity was nothing next to the awesome power of the vex, a first in medical history, and against all prior medical evidence? Which vex? Didn’t matter. Take one. Take five (right, Harvard?). They are officially safe and effective.
Experts, as we all saw, also thought it well to create disinformation as propaganda, in order to lessen criticism of government policy.
Let’s not form the idea that the Expertocracy’s efforts at policing Official Truths were—past tense—all about the coronadoom and vex. Their goal is much higher than this, and Experts are far from finished.
Take this woman as an example (read the whole thread if you can):
“Disinformation studies” is an emerging multidisciplinary speciality that brings together psychologists, computer scientists, sociologists, engineers, philosophers, mathematicians, behavioral scientists, military scholars, historians, political scientists, linguists, and more. https://t.co/cnoVgO30HZ
— Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D (@RVAwonk) March 10, 2023
In case it disappears, she boasts of a new field of “Disinformation Studies.” Studies. Have we not learned the lesson of “Studies” yet?
No, sir, we have not:
“Disinformation studies” is an emerging multidisciplinary speciality that brings together psychologists, computer scientists, sociologists, engineers, philosophers, mathematicians, behavioral scientists, military scholars, historians, political scientists, linguists, and more.
That is as fine a list of Experts swimming in an Expertocracy as you are likely to find. Experts in one field gather to absorb the light which they believe shines off the others—all with the goal of solving an unsolvable problem.
People believing falsities started with Eve. This was well recognized, even at the time. Many things have been offered as correctives: religion, beatings, and, most recently, education. None has proved to eradicate the malady. Indeed, education has been of late positively correlated with belief in falsities.
So Experts hit upon the idea of banning Official Disinformation, and only issuing Official Truths. A double whammy of censorship and HR harangues.
Here’s the editor of Science giving us an example of what this means:
This gives people the permission to say things like “climate change may be real, but I don’t think we should have government regulation to deal with it,” which is unacceptable. We can’t concede that by letting people pick and choose. Good for @Magda_Skipper for speaking out.
— Holden Thorp, Science EIC (@hholdenthorp) March 21, 2023
Disagreeing with Experts is, he says, or should be, “unacceptable.” We cannot let “people pick and choose” what to believe. They must be told.
Which might even be a good idea, given what we are told to believe is True. Alas, with our Experts, this is most unlikely.
Late Addition Only saw this at 5 this morning:
The National Science Foundation gave millions to professors to develop a misinformation tool called “Course Correct.” It will help fight “skepticism” and reinforce “trust” in what the government and the programmers define as true or reliable viewpoints…https://t.co/Gmft5xIADv
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) March 22, 2023
Dr. William M. Briggs has a Ph.D. in Mathematical Statistics and an MS in Atmospheric Physics. Briggs describes himself as a “Data Philosopher, Epistemologist, Probability Puzzler, Unmasker of Over-Certainty”, and statistician to the stars. As you will see, Briggs has a healthy skepticism of the supposedly ironclad findings that modern science purports to find seemingly every week.
Buy his new book and learn to argue against the regime: Everything You Believe Is Wrong.