pinkfloydpsw's Blog

It would seem that, by first limiting the range of contributors to only those that are willing to stick to a pre-agreed narrative, then measuring the narrow range of their output, one can create the illusion of blanket agreement in any discipline, and quite simply state that measure as a proof of the validity of the premise. This is a worrying way to measure anything, and it’s useless if we are in fact seeking truth.

The example I will start with may not be a good one, but it is one of many, others may be much much better, others will follow.

David Bellamy was once a prominent TV figure on the subject of botany, as well as the natural world in general. He was as prominent at a time as Attenborough is now. Bellamy disagreed with the idea that global warming was a man made phenomenon, and he wasn’t the only prominent expert in his field to do so. As a direct result of his position he then disappeared from the mainstream, and lost his place in public broadcasting. This is what happens to people that do not conform to a norm that has unfortunately now become as dogmatic as any religion. They, those persons offering their opinion, are not actually hurt, nor successfully prosecuted, but there is a penalty; they lose their spot in the forum of public debate and their words will not reach an audience in the same way as those from the adherents to the pre-approved narrative. It is so important to realise that the message is only what is allowed, not what is nearly proven. The medium of popular news and social information is one owned object or another, it doesn’t matter whether it is news print, social media, television, a learning environment, a workplace, or a gathering of people in worship of a deity or a pint. The message is dependent on the social conditions that enable it, the social conditions are a result of the acceptable and reasonable messages moving between persons that make up the social construct of information, but where do these messages come from? We gather up our opinions from the media we absorb, from our peer groups, from our innate nature (evolutionary imperative), and from observation of phenomena. How else would we get anything into our consciousness?

Let’s examine the presented narrative concerning climate change science. A consensus is assumed, also assumed is due diligence in checking the facts involved, but suggestion is not challenged because it is down to the target of the message (the person) to understand, identify, and discern between the truth of a fact and the truth of a suggestion, and this is where the problem lays because people are not scientists and have to believe something, so they look to something bigger than themselves or their group to provide knowledge, and in the absence of the dogma of the church (an absence that I welcome) they pick the TV set and what it portrays. I will give you an example….

It is completely valid to surmise that if you only put green balls into a sack, then measure the ratio of green balls to red balls, you will find that 100% of the balls will be green.

This is what is happening when we allow the truth to be the measure of the consensus of opinion amongst an artificially created group of people doing the science rather than examining the usefulness and validity of the premise of the initial argument, the measure of what is a pre-manipulated outcome, not the measure of what is actually thought or felt or known in a wider sense. Good science does not put the conclusion at the beginning of the measurement, only the theory belongs in that position. The science may, or may not, actually conclude that the theory is stable. Ben Goldacre’s book Bad Science is all about why this approach is just a con trick to part people from their money. So let’s run through one method of thinking this out…

A phenomenon is observed that is easy to see, but difficult to measure
AND
There is no existing explanation for the phenomenon that is sufficient to explain it entirely
AND
There are multiple possibilities for the existence of it
THEN
There may be theories formed by persons who measure it in specific and differing ways, or measure aspects of it but not the whole
AND
There may be counter theories formed by persons who measure it in other specific and differing ways, or measure aspects but no the whole, whose conclusions do not correlate those of the aforementioned persons
AND
There may be theories that the phenomenon is not anything special, not even a phenomenon
THEN
There will be dispute between those parties
THEREFORE
More must be known before any definitive course of action can be taken
BUT
There are people to whom any subsequent actions based on any of these theories will have impact
SO
Those persons will use the power and resources they hold to motivate the adoption of one theory that suits the outcome that supports, continues, or increases, their revenue, or power

This seems like a logic flow to me, that if there are motivated persons that hold the power to control the medium, potentially to reflect what they are motivated by, they will of course be motivated to do so, and what could this lead to? I suspect that a populous informed in this way, by motivated people, may change the way it does business, the way it votes, trusting dogmatically, as they usually do, both the message and the medium of the message since anything that is not on-message has already been discarded as if it were an anomaly. This is a sanitised version of information, and not accidentally, and very much not for the purposes of protecting the persons being informed from some harm.

Media sets out to misinform and to motivate, that is it’s purpose, it is a tool of the powerful that does not exist to make money (newspapers and news media always loses money, even with advertising factored in), a form of sophisticated oppression within a very sophisticated fabric of liberal capitalist totalitarianism (a bold claim yes, but justified I think), one that is so subtle and so nuanced that most persons within the social fabric will believe that they are free to make informed choices based on having the criteria to do so, we describe this as informed consent. But I would argue that in many cases a psychological trick is being played with information, one that lacks the sort of crudity that we can easily find in openly oppressive countries like China and Russia where they might use force and fear to shape social truth, akin to a supermarket steering it’s customers to the premium brands by having them staged throughout the shelves in a well thought-out manner. The supermarket knows, because they have employed people to measure the effect, that they can make people buy certain things because of placement and comparison, but the purchaser has no conscious awareness of this manipulation. Using this same measure and affect the owned sources of mediation can steer the voter citizen through the supermarket of life choices, making them care much more about the plight of the celebrity than the spraying of pharmaceuticals in the eyes of rabbits, making them care a lot more about billionaires engaged in an indulgent folly, than refugees trying to survive.

This is not a thing that has no harm associated with it, it is extremely important because it can and will change perspectives, and that leads to the changing of laws. Let’s use another example of a created social truth that is in conflict with a real measurable truth – It is true that people are coming to Britain on boats for the purpose of seeking asylum, it is true that this is problematic, it is NOT true that this is illegal. The home secretary says, and keeps repeating (2022-), that these are ILLEGAL asylum seekers. She knows that the terminology she is using is incorrect, the 1951 act on asylum states that there is nothing wrong with persons coming to Britain by any means and claiming asylum. But she also knows the social effect of an oft repeated lie, that people will become repeaters of that lie (echo chambers), that that process will create perspective and social truth, and that will have the desired effect of changing the law in the medium run as new laws are offered as solutions and welcomed by citizens. Couple this strategy with the actions of the media, who do not challenge, nor correct, her words (politicians have tried to yes, but with little effect) and we have what might be described as the social force that enables changing the actual force (Law), this is what the home secretary in 2023- desires.

This is not limited to matters of asylum, we can see this play out in other areas of media, where they act to create perspective by manipulating narrative, we see that there is a body of people withholding their labour against a company that is clearly exploiting them (record profits, cuts or change of circumstances mooted to save money, and increased returns for shareholders), the media immediately take the government line of being hostile towards those striking workers and describing them in terms of being a thorn in the side of the public good, as if the wages of the common folk rising was in any way comparable to the greed of the already rich. They then go out to deliberately find people that are specifically the most inconvenienced by the strike action and interview them for TV prime time news spots. By doing so they present the most compelling argument for limiting strike action, and no other perspective or implication. They do not show the plight of the worker that is on the picket line, choosing if they do a hostile interview with the union representative where the questions will be loaded with the intention of gaining somewhat of an apology from that person to the inconvenient masses that the journalist pretends to represent. Now why is the journalist always representing that lot, and the government, and never representing the workforce or the worker? I think that is a very important thing to keep in mind, they are never ever (in Britain at least) on the side of the humble worker that just wants to pay the mortgage and have a holiday, but always on the side of the consumer and therefore the consumption, and therefore the producer (profit maker). Could it be something to do with the news media being a corporate body that is owned by the same narrow sect of people who own a lot of the capitalist infrastructure of Britain?

Another example of a social truth – Steroids have been around for decades, my cat is currently on steroids for his eye, I have been on steroids many times for various reasons, they are a medical miracle that works when many other interventions fail. People believe that steroids are bad, harmful, dangerous, but this belief is based on no data. There have not been any tests, none, on the long term uses of steroids by athletes and body builders, why? Because steroids are bad, that’s what doctors say and what people in media repeat, and then what folks repeat to each other in conversation. But doctors prescribe drugs that are made in laboratories by drug producers, engineered by scientists, doctors are not armed with the knowledge of things that are not known or supposed, they cannot validly say of a thing that it is dangerous based on zero evidence then prescribe it for a recovery believing that it will be effective after saying it is not effective in some cases where the goal is recovery (a bodybuilder is effectively injuring his/her muscles so that the recovery builds them back better), unless they are speaking about the misuse of something related to it’s medicinal use only. It is true that medicines are tested and measured, but if a person is medicated to let’s say 100mg of a steroid per day for an infection (recovery), and another person takes 100mg of the same for muscle growth (recovery) then you would have to contend that each 100mg taken was equally as detrimental and as dangerous as the other. Now I’m not saying that drugs are not taken that have wicked side effects but are necessary at the time to treat the disease, but what are the common side effects of most steroids based on testosterone? – Hair growth, testicular shrinkage, gynecomastia (bitch tits), deepened voice – all reversible, and what are the side effects of taking Vitamin C tablets if you in fact already consume enough vitamin C in your diet? – nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, heartburn, stomach cramps, headache, skin flushing, kidney stones, and many more, yet nobody is warning of the dangers of vitamins. Dorian Yeats claims that the horror stories told about bodybuilders having kidney diseases are pain killer related most often since the discipline involves a lot of pain in recovery so the athletes take far to much ibuprofen, this claim is not proved either, but it is a competing theory that may have merit if investigated. Bottom line, if you abuse anything, any substance, even ones that are sold as health beneficial, you will be in medical trouble, but to claim that a thing we know as beneficial for recovery, is not actually beneficial for recovery if, and only if, the goal is physical self improvement, is just nonsense. There needs to be more studies done.

Elon Musk recently used another misleading tactic, this man gets as much air time as he wants now that he owns a significant part of the mechanisms of information. His was to suggest that there is a moral implication to the acceptance that a person can work from home when others who do jobs that require physical presence have to commute to a workplace, but I only mention it as a tactic since it does not require scrutiny. Musk’s postulate is a stupid as it is crude, no more relevant than the suggestion that people doing different things will have different circumstances to do them in, and will face different aspects in their role. For example a car mechanic will have to be in the vicinity of the car, and will get dirty as cars are dirty things, a dentist will have to be at the mouth of their patient and will suffer their body odour and breath, whereas a person who uses a PC to send emails and perform analytic actions has no real need to physically be anywhere, and could just as handily work from a beach in Thailand if the broadband connection was stable and sufficient. I would argue what is the difference if their productivity is the same? Musk just wishes to reinforce the idea that a workforce is somewhat a possession of the firm that employs it, a perspective that has been rightly challenged by the recent pandemic. The media however, have this man on spouting this without challenge, and they allow him to frame it in terms of morality, where it definitely does not belong, and he reached for morality because he could find no rational argument.

We measure the conformity to tan idea that in fundament has no related, or at least insufficient, data underpinning it, we rely on a biased media, we cannot do the research ourselves because resources are limited, we repeat non truths to each other, we trust rich folks when the speak as if knowledgeable well outside of their discipline, what we do not do is fund science to the degree it needs to be to provide us with truths.

Paul S Wilson