Elites Abusing Power: Claiming to Support Science While Suppressing the Voices of Scientists

I’m sure everyone has heard by now how our elites keep wanting the voices of actual scientists to be suppressed. See here and here. After social media suppressed an important interview of Dr. Robert Malone by Joe Rogan, a Republican named Troy Nehls of Texas placed a transcript of the interview into the public record. (Ok, I’m not sure what that means. It’s on his website, but did he do anything more than that?) That means that someone from the allegedly anti-science party acted so as to preserve an interview with an actual scientist, while no one from the allegedly pro-science party did the same (as far as I know).

This is an abuse of power. Suppressing important medical information probably has led, if not to lost lives, at least to people suffering or inconvenienced in some way that they needn’t have been.

Now one would think that social media had learned its lesson after trying to suppress scientific voices in connection with the source of the virus, but no, they have kept going, suppressing this, that, and the other.

There are two questions here. First, how did this start? It seems to me that it started with the idea that hate speech is bad and must be suppressed. It’s a slippery slope from there to suppressing speech that those (like Trump supporters) who are likely to use hate speech (or more likely, those who are thought to be likely to use hate speech) will use and which goes against the prevailing wisdom. This covers a much broader spectrum of humanity than simply those who will use hate speech. It ensnares actual scientists who may even lean left.

Second, why do they keep doing it? These interviews with Joe Rogan are getting an enormous amount of viewings and readings of the transcripts, yet the elites act as though they can prevent people from knowing about them. So, why do they keep doing it? One easy answer is that they have been bought by Big Pharma, which benefits from the vaccines, but that’s too easy. This isn’t a pattern confined to the virus because the same thing happened, though perhaps on a lesser scale, with global warming, and global warming has no connection with Big Pharma. No, there seems to be something deeper.

The elites don’t seem to like debates with non-elites or with those they see as siding with non-elites. They prefer easy answers – get the vaccine, give up on fossil fuels – rather than the uncertainty of actual, cutting-edge science. No one has Cartesian certainty on the vaccine, even though many always talk as though they do. We don’t have the certainty on the vaccine (or other aspects of the virus) that we have with mathematical theorems, which are always more certain than any scientific theory, no matter how well confirmed it is (the force of gravity could change at any time because we don’t really know what’s going on). We don’t have the somewhat lesser degree of certainty that we have with, say, the atomic theory, which has been around for a couple centuries. We don’t even have the degree of certainty that we have with the big bang theory, which is mostly settled now, but which was unsettled when I was growing up. The emergence of the Wuhan virus has presented the world with a tough epistemological puzzle which still can surprise us. No one really knows anything, as I have been saying almost right from the beginning (see here). It may be another twenty years, or even a century, before we really understand what has happened, and so it doesn’t help when the powers-that-be suppress the voices of important scientists.

Let me close by giving advice to the elites: Don’t do anything that you wouldn’t want your political enemies to do to you if they had the power to do so.

Comments

[Charles N. Steele]

Good points. I think elites often have the ulterior motive of simply increasing their own power and wealth, so argument and debate about what is right is beside the point for them. They want the narrative left unchallenged.

Re your last point, “Don’t do anything that you wouldn’t want your political enemies to do to you if they had the power to do so.” Excellent point, unless you intend to eliminate your political rivals.

[J. Reed Anderson]

These have been some good posts, John. I’m enjoying your new series.

[John Pepple]

Thanks!