Defending Reality

I just watched another incoherent Tim Pool video on medical matters regarding various treatments and prophylactics for SARS-CoV-2. It is time somebody defended reality because humans are now in 2021 utterly confused about what it is or might be. To my knowledge, no one has mounted this kind of defense.

What do I mean by 'incoherent' regarding Tim Pool's medical views? To be fair, much of what Tim said is true as far as I can see, and I support Tim financially because he really does care about reality, but here's an important example of his incoherence.

Tim says ad nauseum that you need to get medical advice from your doctor with respect to vaccines or Ivermectin or other things relevant to the current "pandemic".  Tim always sets up your doctor as an authority figure you can trust. He has also absolved himself from any responsibility for giving out medical advice you may follow because you consider Tim himself to be an authority figure. You can't sue Tim! And maybe YouTube won't ban him! Well, that's reasonable enough I guess.

But Tim also says ad nauseum that if you don't like what your doctor tells you, you should find another doctor! If you can pick your own expert, that kind of negates the whole idea of an authority figure, doesn't it?

In fact, Tim is right, though unknowingly. Legitimate authorities do exist, but they are much rarer than you might think. Your flawed mind craves certainty in a chaotic world. Most people will believe anyone who seems to offer them the certainty they require.

This is understandable, but also leads to all sorts of problems. In fact, manipulating people by offering up soothing but fake certainty leads to the kinds of destructive problems the human world is experiencing right now. Like vaccine mandates and other egregious violations of basic human rights. (Basic human rights are and always were a really good idea.) Or blaming all coronavirus problems on the unvaccinated, when reliable hospitalization data tells us otherwise (e.g., the data coming out of Israel). Or vaccinating children, who have almost no risk at all. It's like Pfizer, Moderna, et. al. run the world.

I know, it's frightening. Humans are easily corrupted and demand certainty where little may exist. Well, that's the way the human brain works. Nothing to be done about it.

Still, there are some deeper points to be made here. Let me try to explain.

It would be best if you were able to throw away all the nonsense in your head right now before you read what I am going to say, but I know you are unable to do that. Much of that junk, and perhaps nearly all of it was implanted there by incentivized people with political agendas (e.g., Rachel Maddow, see Tim's video). Carrying out these agendas typically involves an all-out assault on reality. But what do I mean by reality?

This seemingly complicated question is surprisingly easy to answer. In terms of what is true, there is ultimate Reality (capital 'R') and there is reality as it concerns humans (lower-case 'r'). Nobody knows what ultimate Reality is, and as far as your life is concerned, it almost certainly doesn't matter what it is. But small 'r' reality does matter. Simply put, reality exists. Tim or others will sometimes refer to there being "two realities" but that is always a confusion. There are multiple human political points of view, but in certain matters there is only one reality. The human brain wasn't "designed" by evolution to care about reality or recognize it—never mind why—but your brain's shortcomings don't imply that reality doesn't exist. A simple pertinent example will suffice to make this clear.

• Ivermectin either works to some significant extent to reduce SARS-Cov-2 severity in those infected or it does not.
• Ivermectin either provides significant prophylaxis against SARS-CoV-2 infection or it does not.

That's it. X or not-X. There's no getting around it. In human populations, it's either X or it's not-X. End of story. With respect to inhibition of severe illness or prophylaxis, if X is true to a "significant" extent, Ivermectin should be an integral part of the prevention or treatment of SARS-CoV-2. If it doesn't work at all, or works relatively rarely for unknown reasons, Ivermectin is simply a placebo in the vast majority of cases.

OK, let's work through this existing reality, and how you can navigate it, very carefully.

• Unless you are an awesome autodidact, and can therefore understand what is known about anything through your own efforts, you are going to have to trust somebody.

• In so far as such autodidacts are vanishingly rare in the human population, and therefore it is overwhelmingly likely you are not one, the question thus becomes who can you trust? 

• This is true about all sorts of things which have a scientific aspect — whether climate change is anthropogenic, whether Ivermectin works, whether you are more at risk driving your car as opposed to getting SARS-CoV-2, whether smoking is bad for your health, whether vaccines are effective and safe, etc., etc. It's also true about things like crime and other wrongdoing. If you're accused, you did it or you didn't do it. Reality really is binary here. Despite what lawyers might say, or what you believe you intended to do, or what confused witnesses think they saw, there is only one reality. If it's on video, that's even better. 

• Humans being what they are, trust is hard to come by. But it's the best we can do.

• Human brains are always confused about what reality is, but since the 16th century science has allowed us to sort that out about some things, not to an ultimate extent (Reality), but to a good enough extent (reality, works all the time practically speaking). We don't know what the Ultimate Reality of gravity is, but you better not ignore it, right?

• Humans were not "designed" by nature to be scientific (objective in a small-r sense). Humans evolved to be biased in a multitude of ways, all of which act in concert to obscure reality rather than reveal it.

• In the 21st century, fear-driven mass psychosis has utterly destroyed science as a tool for discerning reality. Political biases now dominate virtually every scientific domain. The universities are hopeless in this respect. Psychosis here basically means being to some very large extent out of touch with reality. We are living in a new Dark Age.

• It is therefore nearly impossible for any of us laymen to differentiate good science from motivated, biased junk science. We are constantly told to "follow the science" by people whose political agendas supersede in nearly all cases what actual science says (if we could indeed identify the actual science which is still ongoing).

• In short, "follow the science" is simply a post-hoc rationalization used by those who want to further their own political agendas, and even in cases where it is not, we laymen can not possibly tell the difference. Worse yet, early science is never "definitive" (good enough), but rather admits a smaller array of possibilities. Over time, a good enough reality emerges. But the Darkness has descended now. Things will likely not get sorted out ever unless we try really hard to prevent Bad Things from happening.

• Bad Things are human political events that cause mass suffering and death due to some humans mistakenly believing they understand our flawed Human Nature and can somehow correct it (they are delusional idealists). Such beliefs are always self-serving. The irony is that those who believe "improvement" is possible exemplify some of the worst aspects of Human Nature.

Now, at this point we could just throw our hands up in the air and say what the fuck???  Do masks work? Or are they mostly a placebo that make us feel safer? What about mDNA vaccines and the delta variant? What going on there? Does Ivermectin work to some significant extent or not? What about lockdowns? Do they work or not? It goes on and on. How can we little people possibly filter out the human noise to come up with a true signal (something akin to reality)?

• If you need to trust somebody, and you do, you need to consider the source very carefully. That is the very best you can do. The question then becomes how do you best consider the source?

• Before trying to answer this question, it should be pointed out that this solution is unfortunately subject to the state of your own awareness. If your own state of awareness tells you (for example) that Rachel Maddow and Dr. Fauci and CDC head Rochelle Walensky can be trusted, you are already fucked and my defense of reality here can not help you. Your brain's search for certainty and safety often has virtually nothing to do with reality.

How can you identify a good source of information you can trust?

• About an information source, always ask yourself how does this source benefit from telling me X and not Y or Z? If they apparently don't benefit, that's a very good sign.

• A good source typically has no obvious conflicts of interest in reaching certain conclusions and not others. Your job is to look for conflicts of interest.

• A good source typically has no obvious social or financial incentives to reach certain conclusions and not others. Your job is to try to identify your source's incentives. In this Dark Age, fear of job loss, social exclusion and other bad consequences are very often the main incentives driving behavior. Sticking your head above the parapet is not a good survival strategy when the bullets are flying. A person who is swimming against the predominant social currents is often a person with integrity. Integrity matters, even if the person in question ultimately turns out to be wrong.

• A good source is consistent or forthcoming in their conclusions. Such a source can explain to you why they reached certain conclusions and not others. Such a source does not simply assert the truth of something without explanation. Such a source can explain why they changed their mind if that was required. Such a source does not assert X on Tuesday this week and then without explanation assert not-X on Wednesday next week. 

• A good source can be mistaken and admit it. A good source is accountable to someone, even if it's their own conscience, and therefore never lies. (Of course, humans generally deceive themselves.) Your job is to identify lies when they occur (as they constantly do nowadays). Lies always indicate an attempt to manipulate you or a need for a source to protect himself from the consequences of his own past behavior. Your job is to ask yourself if a source is trying to manipulate you (e.g., make you fearful for no good reason) or why, if the source is an honest information broker, the source needs to protect himself from his own previous behavior. Here's looking at you, Dr. Fauci!

• A good institutional source is not captured by those it regulates if that is what it is supposed to do, nor does it invent reasons to maintain its own existence and enhance its social status and importance.

• A bad source is not a good source according to all or most of the criteria listed above.

And that's it. Still, you may get fooled about what reality is but at least you tried to defend it. You may even pay a heavy price for being mistaken. But even then in this worst case you will know that you did the very best you could do in a human world which is so fucked up right now that it is virtually impossible for any of us to see our way through it.

Good luck.