I kept reading aloud
Townhall excerpts from this extraordinary MIT paper to my husband, who kept insisting that it was a hoax. It does sound as though someone were auditioning for the Bee, and sailing very close to the wind.
[C]alling for increased media literacy can often backfire: the instruction to ‘question more’ can lead to a weaponization of critical thinking and increased distrust of media and government institutions . . . . [C]alls for media literacy can often frame problems like fake news as ones of personal responsibility rather than a crisis of collective action. . . . [Anti-maskers] value unmediated access to information and privilege personal research and direct reading over "expert" interpretations. . . . As a subculture, anti-masking amplifies anti-establishment currents pervasive in U.S. political culture. . . . Data literacy, for anti-maskers, exemplifies distinctly American ideals of intellectual self-reliance, which historically takes the form of rejecting experts and other elites. The counter-visualizations that they produce and circulate not only challenge scientific consensus, but they also assert the value of independence in a society that they believe promotes an overall de-skilling and dumbing-down of the population for the sake of more effective social control. As they see it, to counter-visualize is to engage in an act of resistance against the stifling influence of central government, big business, and liberal academia . . . . Most fundamentally, the groups we studied believe that science is a process, and not an institution.
The solution?
Convincing anti-maskers to support public health measures in the age of COVID-19 will require more than ‘better’ visualizations, data literacy campaigns, or increased public access to data. Rather, it requires a sustained engagement with the social world of visualizations and the people who make or interpret them.
"Social," posited as an alternative to data literacy and explained as a "sustained engagement with the social world," remains a little fuzzy to me. Shaming? Censorship? Police raids? How I hope this turns out to be a Sokal hoax.
8 comments:
Convincing anti-maskers to support public health measures in the age of COVID-19.... Rather, it requires a sustained engagement with the social world of visualizations....
Not so much. It requires the so-called authorities, the elites, et al., to stop lying to us. Anthony Fauci, for instance, has already said he'd lied to us twice: once regarding masks for the benefit, he claims, of medical personnel who had a higher need for the masks, and once regarding the alleged seriousness of the Wuhan Virus situation, for the benefit, he claims, of us ordinary Americans so we won't panic.
These guys--of whom Fauci is all too typical--have destroyed their own credibility, with their own actions, much beyond their claims of "trust us." That "trust us" also is plainly insulting, making plain their view that we're just too grindingly stupid to understand, we must blindly accept their Bulls, handed down from on high.
It also seems these worthies failed their high school logic courses, proof by appeal to authority (themselves) being their mantra.
We should be able to take expertise opinions seriously. We cannot.
”Social," posited as an alternative to data literacy and explained as a "sustained engagement with the social world," remains a little fuzzy to me.
I’d read it in context with ‘a crisis of collective action.’ They want teams of funded activists to constantly engage this issue, monitor for deviation, and apply social pressure as necessary to bring about a state in which all such messages are uniform across the collective.
They want teams of funded activists to constantly engage this issue, monitor for deviation, and apply social pressure as necessary....
Sort of like union thugs have been doing for 100 years. Sort of like antifa and BLM do today--building on union thugs' tactics, even if they're not entirely related to unions. Sort of like the carefully divisive rhetoric of Progressive-Democrats use today, along with the laws they're attempting to enact to codify the tactics.
Eric Hines
From the paper's Introduction:
"Put differently, there is no such thing as dispassionate or objective data analysis. Instead, there are stories: stories shaped by cultural logics, animated by personal experience, and entrenched by collective action. "
Skimming the rest of the paper suggests that this is what the authors actually believe, and not just something they clumsily attribute to their opponents.
Were I MIT, I'd eject the students and their advisors for stupidity unbecoming a researcher.
“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage.
So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.”
– Stephen Schneider, lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Discover magazine, October 1989
Yes, that "entrenched by collective action" bit is the part about which I believe they're most certain. No more independents. No more questioning experts. No more thinking for yourself, or as they put it, "a weaponization of critical thinking and increased distrust of media and government institutions."
These people are determined to rule you.
"These people are determined to rule you."
The problem they face is that lies start revealing themselves, and once the cascade starts there is no telling what "truth" is left that people will accept. Resulting in a question-
Do we believe the government as presently composed, , has any legitimate authority? Do they represent us at all?
Or is it rule by compulsion now, by a group which has for all practical purposes, established itself as a new aristocracy.
""Put differently, there is no such thing as dispassionate or objective data analysis. Instead, there are stories: stories shaped by cultural logics, animated by personal experience, and entrenched by collective action. ""
I actually agree with the analysis part of this, James. All analysis is biased, that is true. The problem I have here is that rather than seek to minimize and protect against bias, they're talking about how best to weaponize it. That's a huge problem.
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