So glad you're here on Substack Helen. Wether Twitter survives or not it's gonna' be a pleasure to read you in longer pieces and not constantly being interupted by trolls and pigeon chess champions.
LOVE this quote by the way:
"The fact that these consensuses adjust themselves in accordance with new evidence is a benefit and not a flaw of science."
Thank you, Daniel, but do not spend any money you need on supporting me! I will keep all my stuff free and just add some optional extras, chats and audio versions for subscribers. I appreciate your appreciation, though.
Hi Helen - You once gave me some invaluable feedback when I submitted something to AREO. I have written something pretty similar to this piece that I think you would like. Is it ok if I leave links here, or is their a better way for me to share?
I think we also see a kind of "clustering" phenomenon when we discount everything somebody says because they previously said something wrong (or 'offensive'). I'm a bit guilty of that too. Knowing, for example, how much of the government messaging surrounding covid and the vaccines was a distortion of the truth (at best) and outright lies (at worst) makes me much more sceptical of their claims regarding climate change.
For background, I'm a (retired) theoretical physicist with over 30 years research experience in industry and academia. Outside of my very, very, narrow specialization I would suggest I can often be as insightful as a bowl of porridge.
I enjoy a good bit of knockabout and outrageous fun and rhetoric but in my calmer moments I am somewhat concerned with the deepening of this polarization. It's always been there, but like so many things, it seems to have recently become much worse.
My own assessment of the 4 areas you mentioned is a bit different, but I'm in total agreement that they ought to be evaluated separately outside of some overarching ideology (be that 'left' or 'right').
I can't help but describe much of the 'woke' ideology, so heavily inspired by the so-called 'critical' theories, as just batshit bonkers. The notion that the sex binary, for example, was created as a tool of colonialist oppression is just so outrageously ludicrous it's hard to know how to even take it seriously. Yet this notion is being pushed in some schools as 'fact'.
The idea that by merely 'identifying' one actually 'becomes' is a similar walk down Bonkers Boulevard.
I used to be a staunch supporter of the EU and Britain's place in it, but I'm less convinced of that at the moment. I'm probably about 50:50 on the issue.
As for masks, well I can't see any good a priori physical reasons why we would expect them to 'work' against an aerosolized respiratory virus. The typical surgical mask acts, primarily, as a barrier and not a filter. All you're doing when you wear one is causing a re-direction of the airflow - and not at all reducing (in any significant way) the emission of virions into the atmosphere.
The vaccine issue is more complex and, for some reason, it's very hard to get the full datasets needed to do the proper analysis. Many people have tried using various FOI requests but, again for some reason, have been unable to get the full data. Even the data we do have access to does not lead me to the view that the vaccines have either been effective, or safe. Just one example here, the definition of 'vaccinated' as being those who had the jab 14 or 21 days prior introduces the potential for a very significant source of error in the determination of 'efficacy'. This is just one, amongst several, red flags that are too big, for me, to ignore.
As for climate change my view is that, yes, probably, man's activities have contributed to a changing climate. Whether this is the single most important contribution to that change, or whether it constitutes a 'crisis' is another matter entirely. The extensive attempts to induce a state of panic and fear (reminiscent of similar attempts for covid) make me question things here. The proposed 'solutions' don't make much sense, either. To think that we can reliably replace our energy generation with 'green' methods such as wind or solar, doesn't really stack up. They're just too variable to do the job properly. As a physicist I'm baffled as to why nuclear energy has not been more widely promoted as our only realistic option if we want to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.
The most important thing, however, is that we are able to thrash all these things out properly - and this process is hampered if they become seen as 'partisan' issues. People dig their heels in, and it all becomes tribal - and that's a really bad thing if you want to get to the truth of a matter.
So glad you're here on Substack Helen. Wether Twitter survives or not it's gonna' be a pleasure to read you in longer pieces and not constantly being interupted by trolls and pigeon chess champions.
LOVE this quote by the way:
"The fact that these consensuses adjust themselves in accordance with new evidence is a benefit and not a flaw of science."
I'm so happy to read you long form again Helen - It's made my week"
Thank you, Daniel, but do not spend any money you need on supporting me! I will keep all my stuff free and just add some optional extras, chats and audio versions for subscribers. I appreciate your appreciation, though.
Hi Helen - You once gave me some invaluable feedback when I submitted something to AREO. I have written something pretty similar to this piece that I think you would like. Is it ok if I leave links here, or is their a better way for me to share?
I think we also see a kind of "clustering" phenomenon when we discount everything somebody says because they previously said something wrong (or 'offensive'). I'm a bit guilty of that too. Knowing, for example, how much of the government messaging surrounding covid and the vaccines was a distortion of the truth (at best) and outright lies (at worst) makes me much more sceptical of their claims regarding climate change.
For background, I'm a (retired) theoretical physicist with over 30 years research experience in industry and academia. Outside of my very, very, narrow specialization I would suggest I can often be as insightful as a bowl of porridge.
I enjoy a good bit of knockabout and outrageous fun and rhetoric but in my calmer moments I am somewhat concerned with the deepening of this polarization. It's always been there, but like so many things, it seems to have recently become much worse.
My own assessment of the 4 areas you mentioned is a bit different, but I'm in total agreement that they ought to be evaluated separately outside of some overarching ideology (be that 'left' or 'right').
I can't help but describe much of the 'woke' ideology, so heavily inspired by the so-called 'critical' theories, as just batshit bonkers. The notion that the sex binary, for example, was created as a tool of colonialist oppression is just so outrageously ludicrous it's hard to know how to even take it seriously. Yet this notion is being pushed in some schools as 'fact'.
The idea that by merely 'identifying' one actually 'becomes' is a similar walk down Bonkers Boulevard.
I used to be a staunch supporter of the EU and Britain's place in it, but I'm less convinced of that at the moment. I'm probably about 50:50 on the issue.
As for masks, well I can't see any good a priori physical reasons why we would expect them to 'work' against an aerosolized respiratory virus. The typical surgical mask acts, primarily, as a barrier and not a filter. All you're doing when you wear one is causing a re-direction of the airflow - and not at all reducing (in any significant way) the emission of virions into the atmosphere.
The vaccine issue is more complex and, for some reason, it's very hard to get the full datasets needed to do the proper analysis. Many people have tried using various FOI requests but, again for some reason, have been unable to get the full data. Even the data we do have access to does not lead me to the view that the vaccines have either been effective, or safe. Just one example here, the definition of 'vaccinated' as being those who had the jab 14 or 21 days prior introduces the potential for a very significant source of error in the determination of 'efficacy'. This is just one, amongst several, red flags that are too big, for me, to ignore.
As for climate change my view is that, yes, probably, man's activities have contributed to a changing climate. Whether this is the single most important contribution to that change, or whether it constitutes a 'crisis' is another matter entirely. The extensive attempts to induce a state of panic and fear (reminiscent of similar attempts for covid) make me question things here. The proposed 'solutions' don't make much sense, either. To think that we can reliably replace our energy generation with 'green' methods such as wind or solar, doesn't really stack up. They're just too variable to do the job properly. As a physicist I'm baffled as to why nuclear energy has not been more widely promoted as our only realistic option if we want to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.
The most important thing, however, is that we are able to thrash all these things out properly - and this process is hampered if they become seen as 'partisan' issues. People dig their heels in, and it all becomes tribal - and that's a really bad thing if you want to get to the truth of a matter.