George Rebane
We are all isolated from ‘facts’ by at least one layer of biased intermediaries.
In recent editions of our local Union we continue to read its columnists and letter writers who devoutly believe in and repeatedly cite versions of the late Senator Moynihan’s famous dictum – ‘You are free to have your own opinions, but not your own facts.’ In recent years our polarized country has demonstrated countless times that in addition to their own opinions, people now have their own histories, logics, social contracts, ethics, science, sense of justice, equality, equity, lexicons of highly charged terms, and, not least of all, their very own facts – and all of these backed by equally countless online citations. The NYT acknowledges all this, asking “How do you unite a country in which millions of people have chosen to create their own version of reality?” All of these realities are proudly on display in their heartfelt and intense communications that promote their own worldviews. Who among us is the final arbiter of any of these cultural and ideological notions to pronounce that this is truth and that is not?
Apropos today’s cited science, those of us trained and practiced in the sciences are both amused and concerned about the beliefs the lay public holds in this important area of human enterprise. Science has always advanced on two inviolable principles – Occam’s razor (adopt the simplest theory that explains all the observations) and falsifiability (every theory must contain tenets that, if disproved, will falsify the theory). Major advances in science have always been met with widespread rejection by ‘established science’. Therefore, almost all scientific and technological progress has been made by investigators free to strike out on many different initially promising tracks, most of which have ended in disappointment. But progress has always depended on the freedom to debate and try alternative approaches. This is why science has languished under autocratic governments in which its politically established science dictates what is accepted and rejected. And any subsequent defense of ‘rejected science’ is then labeled as perfidiously advancing “misinformation”.
Today America is rapidly sliding toward such an autocracy where its government-sponsored science establishment is the arbiter and gatekeeper of scientific truth. In this regimen open debate is proscribed in favor of the nation-wide promoted notion of ‘consensus science’. Consensus has never been the strong suit of science, but consensus science is easy to promote, and even easier for today’s overwhelmingly innumerate lay public to embrace.
NYT et al have launched the idea that our nation must fight “disinformation and extremism” in a concerted effort to be led by the federal government with a new Orwellian Ministry of Truth (“truth commission”) headed by a cabinet level “reality tsar”. A task force of this commission “could also meet regularly with tech platforms, and push for structural changes that could help those companies tackle their own extremism and misinformation problems.” In other words, the federal government would provide guidelines to the social media corporatists as to how and what communications to censor.
Since such obvious policies censoring free speech have already raised the ire of the politically alert who communicate on the internet, the new workaround policy bamboozle is to constructively inhibit selected free speech by limiting its reach. That means that such speech will be only afforded limited distribution over the media required for its transmission. The Left argues strongly that speech and reach are two separate policy areas, and that regulating reach does not violate the First Amendment right of free speech. Upon a moment’s reflection, this liberal logic is beyond bizarre, and also a very cynical and scary plan for the de facto deconstruction of free speech in our land.
To clarify the portents of this approach, consider the bookend notion (a method frequently used in science) of enforcing a law that allows a person to say or write anything, but limits its communication to only one other person. No reasonable person would agree that such a government promotes free speech. A sincere liberal may push back that this is a ridiculous example, no government would make such a claim of free speech if its dissemination is so restricted. OK, then let’s increase the permitted audience of such free speech to two individuals. Of course, the counter claim would be the same.
But by such ‘analytical continuation’ we can increase the permitted audience to a size that finally conforms to the policy proposals outlined in NYT’s salutary reporting (more here). Then who gets to decide which speech will enjoy what kind of distribution to what size audience and when. Presumably this would be handled by some faceless bureaucrats in the bowels of the new Ministry of Truth. (more here)
The bottom line of what is being proposed by progressivist social engineers is the complete control of what can be broadly distributed, discussed, and debated in America. Anything that goes against the ensconced political establishment is effectively shut down in the name of national security or public safety as the dissemination of “harmful disinformation”. Dissenters will be identified and annotated in numerous government and corporatist databases with an appropriate scarlet letter. Their lives can then be made difficult along the many dimensions of modern life that depends on ‘the grid’ for everything from employment, credit, education, travel, purchasing, habitation, political activity, access to services, and so on.
All this is as draconian as it sounds, and at our own peril we dismiss timely responses to these stratagems of central planning and control at their inauguration. As the Chinese discovered, the brave new world has arrived when a government of sophisticated technocrat elites can use leading edge population control technologies with impunity to enforce and sustain their own agenda. The dawn of stable and sustainable tyrannies.
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