You mention a few times "corrupt coding" or something similar. Where do the coding instructions come from? For each death, who decides what gets entered into the system? What do you mean by "corrupt"? The word has many meanings and connotations.
I could easily imagine a data entry system that is hard to use that causes problems, or confusing instructions, or wrong incentives, etc. all of which might insert noise into the system. It is hard for me to imagine a widespread conspiracy that causes the many, many health care professionals that must do the data entry to lie.
I might have to use a better word since I'm primarily using 'corrupt' in this context to mean cocked-up/erroneous as well as inadequate: 'corrupt' in an information processing sense. I shall replace this with 'dodgy' to open the meaning a little.
Data entry by professionals on a day-to-day basis isn't really where the problem lies (though a couple of clinical coders have confided all isn't well in that department). Death certification in primary care has always been dubious (ask any honest GP) and got well-dodgy after publication of WHO guidelines covering COVID (I've discussed this in several articles). Death certification in secondary and tertiary care follows fads and fashions more than is comfortable (I saw this for myself as HOD).
Audits of EPR for A&E admissions and in-hospital deaths for one of our largest NHS Trusts by myself (on behalf of HART) reveal a rather shoddy data entry story we may label 'COVID cobblers' (these reports are available if you wish to read them).
However, the really big problem here is the WHO, since they dictate the ICD-10 codes and determine the procedures used in each country. This is not so much noise as a systematic attempt to maximise the count for COVID and hide the impact of vaccines. In turn the WHO dictates how the automated software/AI used by ONS processes death certificates.
All that the ONS and health professionals are doing is simply turning the handle on a sausage machine: they're doing their job as they have always done. Corruption proper (disinformation) lies in the engineering of such a system as well as the misleading use of statistics it churns out.
Scott Adams, author of Dilbert, says the anti-vaxers "won" using their heuristics of distrust of big government and big pharma while his fancy analytics led him astray. He was obviously using the wrong fancy analytics.
Well he would say that wouldn't he? He can't have folk with better critical thinking skills looking at data and coming to rational decisions because that would make him look like an ignorant twat. Shame he didn't respond with integrity and honesty.
I think the way I've phrased my comment slightly misrepresents what Scott Adams means. I don't think he means to suggest that it's not because others don't have better critical thinking skills, I think he does pretty much admit that he's been an idiot and anti-vaxxers were right not just because they mistrust government/pharma but because they have approached the issue more intelligently ... but maybe I misinterpret.
Actually, I should have reviewed the video before I made my previous comment. You're right, John, he does very much say simple mistrust of government served anti-vaxxers well. However, I have to say I actually agree that starting with mistrust of government is really a very good heuristic even if with only the most basic of analysis you can work out a number of things about this "event".
As el gato malo says in the comments on the article you linked to:
there are two kinds of people:
those who know history
and those who trust the government.
Mistrust of government is absolutely key because while anti-vaxers often go beyond that simple heuristic they have still come to different conclusions about what the "covid pandemic" really is and they can't all be right. The reasons for anti-vax beliefs stem from different understandings of the alleged pandemic and vaccines in general and they can't all be right (although some will overlap). I list some of them below.
There is:
1. no novel virus, no nothing, all fake, a conclusion arrived at for various reasons including:
--- study of other psyops (me from Day 1);
--- statistics such as strange drop in flu and not a particularly large number of alleged covid cases;
--- no sense of anything abnormal in people's health other than from government and media's relentless 24/7 propaganda;
--- criticism of the scientific papers claiming isolation of the virus, distinctive illness, transmission.
2. a novel virus but not at pandemic levels/not causing any great harm, no need for vaccine
3. a novel virus which we need to protect against with a vaccine, however, the vaccine, a priori, hasn't been properly tested (or down the track, the jab is proving not to be safe or effective)
4. a novel virus which was produced in a lab
5. historical evidence against vaccines in general (or personal experience of previous vaccines).
My experience is that most people are not consistently good critical thinkers, not from any lack of ability necessarily but because of belief bias, people tend to "invest" in their beliefs and simply don't want to change them - they will apply good critical thinking where their inclinations to believe and reality align but where they don't and they feel invested in their belief their critical thinking stops. I spend my time arguing with people on both sides of the conspiracy fence and what I find is that when you challenge invested-in beliefs people will first use fallacious or otherwise weak arguments and when that weakness is pointed out they simply drop out.
Of course, it's much better not to simply judge by the mistrust-of-government heuristic but to be able to analyse the information presented by media and government objectively but certainly that heuristic serves people well.
I have to agree that Scott Adams didn't respond ideally with integrity and honesty but I still think that his admission is absolutely huge ... how many others are doing the same?
Very nicely put! We should be wary of the new breed of social media influencers but when one blows like Adams it pushes a useful wave through institutionalised thought (of which Adams is essentially part).
Distrust of government can be thought of as an evolutionary advantage in Darwinian terms, and has conferred real benefits through the ages. To view it as 'dumb luck', as some commentators are now doing, is missing the point: there is nothing dumb or lucky in how some people have reached what might be termed a 'sovereign solution'.
I say all this as a former government 'suit' and policy advisor with first hand experience of how the country is run behind closed doors. I can tell you now that such distrust is essential, and is a fire that needs to spread beyond the confines of vaccination.
"I can tell you now that such distrust is essential, and is a fire that needs to spread beyond the confines of vaccination."
Most definitely. I do not believe a word they tell us. People think of me as a hard core conspiracy theorist while I simply think I'm an evidenced-based thinker who looks at events through the psyop lens - that is with the knowledge that they follow a rule where they always give themselves away underneath the propaganda with deliberate clues so even if the base narrative is flawed in the first place - it always is - there are extra signals to work it out. Of course, beyond formulaic psyops there's so much corruption, graft, plain bad government etc which I don't know much about except where it's incredibly obvious but when they perpetrate a formal psyop on us then it's very easy to determine exactly what they're doing ... but people simply don't want to know. I don't know why it is that people feel safer trusting the government than not trusting it. What makes me feel unsafe is people feeling it's safe to trust the government, nothing makes me feel more unsafe than that.
He's just plain weird. I used to really like Dilbert though - haven't seen it around for years and I can't reconcile the guy who writes Dilbert with the nonsense Adams has said about covid/vaccines although at least he's made the admission that getting jabbed wasn't a great idea.
You mention a few times "corrupt coding" or something similar. Where do the coding instructions come from? For each death, who decides what gets entered into the system? What do you mean by "corrupt"? The word has many meanings and connotations.
I could easily imagine a data entry system that is hard to use that causes problems, or confusing instructions, or wrong incentives, etc. all of which might insert noise into the system. It is hard for me to imagine a widespread conspiracy that causes the many, many health care professionals that must do the data entry to lie.
What are you thinking?
I might have to use a better word since I'm primarily using 'corrupt' in this context to mean cocked-up/erroneous as well as inadequate: 'corrupt' in an information processing sense. I shall replace this with 'dodgy' to open the meaning a little.
Data entry by professionals on a day-to-day basis isn't really where the problem lies (though a couple of clinical coders have confided all isn't well in that department). Death certification in primary care has always been dubious (ask any honest GP) and got well-dodgy after publication of WHO guidelines covering COVID (I've discussed this in several articles). Death certification in secondary and tertiary care follows fads and fashions more than is comfortable (I saw this for myself as HOD).
Audits of EPR for A&E admissions and in-hospital deaths for one of our largest NHS Trusts by myself (on behalf of HART) reveal a rather shoddy data entry story we may label 'COVID cobblers' (these reports are available if you wish to read them).
However, the really big problem here is the WHO, since they dictate the ICD-10 codes and determine the procedures used in each country. This is not so much noise as a systematic attempt to maximise the count for COVID and hide the impact of vaccines. In turn the WHO dictates how the automated software/AI used by ONS processes death certificates.
All that the ONS and health professionals are doing is simply turning the handle on a sausage machine: they're doing their job as they have always done. Corruption proper (disinformation) lies in the engineering of such a system as well as the misleading use of statistics it churns out.
Got it. Thanks!
Wishing I had the expertise to help with the analysis...unfortunately I can only wait for your work results. Thank you for doing this!
Scott Adams, author of Dilbert, says the anti-vaxers "won" using their heuristics of distrust of big government and big pharma while his fancy analytics led him astray. He was obviously using the wrong fancy analytics.
https://twitter.com/Dr_logicaI/status/1616949618725781506?s=20&t=KfM9Tb1Eo64mD3rNYrFk7g
Well he would say that wouldn't he? He can't have folk with better critical thinking skills looking at data and coming to rational decisions because that would make him look like an ignorant twat. Shame he didn't respond with integrity and honesty.
El gato Malo nails nicely...
https://open.substack.com/pub/boriquagato/p/rationalizing-rationality?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android
Yes he does. I like his cartoons.
I think the way I've phrased my comment slightly misrepresents what Scott Adams means. I don't think he means to suggest that it's not because others don't have better critical thinking skills, I think he does pretty much admit that he's been an idiot and anti-vaxxers were right not just because they mistrust government/pharma but because they have approached the issue more intelligently ... but maybe I misinterpret.
Actually, I should have reviewed the video before I made my previous comment. You're right, John, he does very much say simple mistrust of government served anti-vaxxers well. However, I have to say I actually agree that starting with mistrust of government is really a very good heuristic even if with only the most basic of analysis you can work out a number of things about this "event".
As el gato malo says in the comments on the article you linked to:
there are two kinds of people:
those who know history
and those who trust the government.
Mistrust of government is absolutely key because while anti-vaxers often go beyond that simple heuristic they have still come to different conclusions about what the "covid pandemic" really is and they can't all be right. The reasons for anti-vax beliefs stem from different understandings of the alleged pandemic and vaccines in general and they can't all be right (although some will overlap). I list some of them below.
There is:
1. no novel virus, no nothing, all fake, a conclusion arrived at for various reasons including:
--- study of other psyops (me from Day 1);
--- statistics such as strange drop in flu and not a particularly large number of alleged covid cases;
--- no sense of anything abnormal in people's health other than from government and media's relentless 24/7 propaganda;
--- criticism of the scientific papers claiming isolation of the virus, distinctive illness, transmission.
2. a novel virus but not at pandemic levels/not causing any great harm, no need for vaccine
3. a novel virus which we need to protect against with a vaccine, however, the vaccine, a priori, hasn't been properly tested (or down the track, the jab is proving not to be safe or effective)
4. a novel virus which was produced in a lab
5. historical evidence against vaccines in general (or personal experience of previous vaccines).
My experience is that most people are not consistently good critical thinkers, not from any lack of ability necessarily but because of belief bias, people tend to "invest" in their beliefs and simply don't want to change them - they will apply good critical thinking where their inclinations to believe and reality align but where they don't and they feel invested in their belief their critical thinking stops. I spend my time arguing with people on both sides of the conspiracy fence and what I find is that when you challenge invested-in beliefs people will first use fallacious or otherwise weak arguments and when that weakness is pointed out they simply drop out.
Of course, it's much better not to simply judge by the mistrust-of-government heuristic but to be able to analyse the information presented by media and government objectively but certainly that heuristic serves people well.
I have to agree that Scott Adams didn't respond ideally with integrity and honesty but I still think that his admission is absolutely huge ... how many others are doing the same?
Very nicely put! We should be wary of the new breed of social media influencers but when one blows like Adams it pushes a useful wave through institutionalised thought (of which Adams is essentially part).
Distrust of government can be thought of as an evolutionary advantage in Darwinian terms, and has conferred real benefits through the ages. To view it as 'dumb luck', as some commentators are now doing, is missing the point: there is nothing dumb or lucky in how some people have reached what might be termed a 'sovereign solution'.
I say all this as a former government 'suit' and policy advisor with first hand experience of how the country is run behind closed doors. I can tell you now that such distrust is essential, and is a fire that needs to spread beyond the confines of vaccination.
"I can tell you now that such distrust is essential, and is a fire that needs to spread beyond the confines of vaccination."
Most definitely. I do not believe a word they tell us. People think of me as a hard core conspiracy theorist while I simply think I'm an evidenced-based thinker who looks at events through the psyop lens - that is with the knowledge that they follow a rule where they always give themselves away underneath the propaganda with deliberate clues so even if the base narrative is flawed in the first place - it always is - there are extra signals to work it out. Of course, beyond formulaic psyops there's so much corruption, graft, plain bad government etc which I don't know much about except where it's incredibly obvious but when they perpetrate a formal psyop on us then it's very easy to determine exactly what they're doing ... but people simply don't want to know. I don't know why it is that people feel safer trusting the government than not trusting it. What makes me feel unsafe is people feeling it's safe to trust the government, nothing makes me feel more unsafe than that.
An example of Adams' institutionalised thinking. How dangerous is this piece of art?
https://open.substack.com/pub/boriquagato/p/kitten-corner-life-imitates-art?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android
He's just plain weird. I used to really like Dilbert though - haven't seen it around for years and I can't reconcile the guy who writes Dilbert with the nonsense Adams has said about covid/vaccines although at least he's made the admission that getting jabbed wasn't a great idea.
Came as a bit of surprise to me, being a Dilbert fan. "There's nowt so queer as folk", as they say up North!