Is the West In a Societal Death Spiral?

David Strom came across a paper by a sociologist arguing that yes, indeed, the West is in a societal death spiral.

The paper is written by Michaela C. Schippers, John Ioannidis and Matthias Luijks. Strom underlines the contributions of Ioannidis, who he says is one of the world's most-cited scientists "and one of the best." He wrote a paper called Why Most Published Scientific Results Are False, which I think I've seen quoted. The basic idea, if my memory serves, is that there are great rewards for positive scientific results -- "interesting" findings, unexpected correlations, and hypotheses verified -- and almost no rewards for what should be the most common result in scientific experiments. Things like "No result" or "no evidence supporting" a hypothesis.

He argues this incentive structure creates an insidious pressure to... massage findings. Puff up null findings into something that the media will quote.

At any rate, Strom quotes from his paper. I've borrowed some quotes. I've stripped out the voluminous citations to other papers.

My bold. Well, Strom bolded some too. I'm endorsing his boldings.

While the period before the COVID-19 crisis may have been characterized by relative policy underreaction to complex social problems, also referred to as "wicked problems," such as hunger and poverty, the current times may be characterized by overreaction to certain problems. The COVID-19 crisis seemed to be characterized by groupthink and escalation of commitment to one course of action, at the expense of other possible solutions. Initial low-quality decision-making was followed by decisions that made things worse. The sheer scale and severe disruption caused by these policies has increased inequalities, an important marker of societal decline.

...

Unnecessary crisis response as a form of policy overreaction may sometimes occur as a way to shape voters perceptions of a decisive and active government. Excessive action and exercise of control over societal structures, e.g., public health, may enhance centralization of power and decision-making, and authoritarianism. When governments make use of mass media to spread negative information, a self-reinforcing cycle of nocebo effects, "mass hysteria" and policy errors can ensue. This effect is exacerbated when the information comes from authoritative sources, the media are politicized, social networks make the information omnipresent, and dissenting voices are silenced. This may lead to a vicious cycle of ineffective dealing with crises, low-quality decision-making and dysfunctional behavior, intensifying the current crises and leading to new ones, and eventually societal decline and even collapse.

Indeed. I think these "overreactions" are occurring precisely because the "experts" have made so many mistakes recently, and are now loathe to confess to any more. So they double down and double down on what are clearly mistakes, hoping that if they just shout loud enough, and enlist enough government operators to silence the people speaking the truth, they'll get away with lying. Again.

When really, they would not be doubted very much if they just forthrightly admitted their errors. You know, like scientists and professional "experts" are expected to do.

People who admit errors are usually assumed to be generally right about the things they're not confessing error over. The fact that they confess error makes them more trustworthy, not less.

On the other hand -- you have our Failure Factories of the media, the universities, almost the entirety of the cowardly and competence-challenged Professional Managerial Class. They have made so many enormous blunders -- including going all-in on RussiaGate and Hunter Biden's laptop being a Russian fake -- that the public has turned against them decisively, and their brittle little egos can't take that.

So they just puff themselves up more and double down on past errors. And past lies -- they lie an awful lot for people "defending democracy" and physically incarnating Science Itself.

Reminder: The "experts" telling the public that a lab leak was ruled out as impossible (and the theory was RACIST to boot!) were actually telling each other, in secret Slack chats, that a lab leak seemed plausible or even likely, but they should lie about it for political reasons.

Trust your experts, trust your media class's choice of experts.

Nobody, but nobody, wants to even think about, much less cover, the chaos of the early COVID period.

Those of us who didn't gaslight the public want to think about it, and cover it.

Do you feel compromised on the issue, Semafor:

But to revisit that horrorshow: An extraordinary set of Slack messages was accidentally released by a congressional committee last summer. They reveal top evolutionary virologists telling one another that they find the "lab leak" theory of the coronavirus's genesis plausible, but that, for reasons of politics -- they didn't want to give ammunition to people they saw as alarmist about some virus research -- they should steer journalists away from it. The messages also include specific discussion about how to manage then-New York Times public health reporter Donald McNeil.

McNeil, with those scientists' encouragement, became an early skeptic of the lab leak theory, before concluding it was in fact a possible explanation of COVID's origin. He addresses the Slacks in his new book, The Wisdom of Plagues, writing that the scientists "clearly misled me early on." McNeil is "disappointed, both in them and in myself, that I was so easily taken in."

But he muses on the challenge: "It's one thing to be lied to by a politician and fail to check it out. But on viral evolution, to whom do you go for a second opinion? ... If Albert Einstein assured you that nuclear fission is harmless, whom would you trust to quote saying, 'Einstein's dead wrong?'"

There were experts who said the lab leak hypothesis was not only plausible, but likely. But you didn't report on those people.

As usual, the media is plugged in only to left-leaning "experts" and chooses to report according to what socio-political narrative they wish to advance.

Now the substantive debate is a "stalemate," he writes, with both sides "hurling mud," and editors demanding answers "so they can assign analyses of which political candidates benefit."

What does this mean? My guess: He's complaining that after having pushed so many lies to the public, the public is demanding accountability for his dishonesty or gullibility (or both), and he wants to portray this as pointless score-settling.

Well, buddy, you "journalists" presume to dictate who can and cannot speak in public based on their accuracy and reliability. You can't just just hand-wave away your own mistakes and lies.

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 02:10 PM

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