Justin Peters writes:
Joe Rogan has made a very lucrative career in comedy and podcasting out of surfacing irrational cultural suspicions: that the moon landings might not have been real, that the World Trade Center’s Building 7 might have been downed by a controlled demolition, that woke liberals in the media and the tech industry might be conspiring to stifle the speech of the worst-faith pundits of our time. In recent months, he has used his wildly popular interview show, The Joe Rogan Experience, to surface illiterate observations on how otherwise healthy young people might not need to take the COVID-19 vaccines, and how vaccine passports and mandates might be bringing the United States “closer to dictatorship.” . . .
Rogan, whom I [Peters] assessed for Slate in 2019, is one of the world’s most popular, most prominent, and certainly one of its best compensated podcast hosts. In May 2020, the streaming service Spotify acquired The Joe Rogan Experience and licensed its archives for a sum reportedly in excess of $100 million. Rogan has used his new institutional platform the same way he used his old one: to talk ad nauseam about comedy, drugs, mixed martial arts, conspiracies, suppressive elites, and the perils of wokeism. . . .
The above-linked article focuses on covid skepticism, with the statement: “The fact that the medical establishment is broadly united in its position that there’s no evidence ivermectin works to treat COVID is exactly why so many of the most gullible people in America believe it does work to treat COVID.” That particular claim by Peters doesn’t seem quite right, but I agree there’s something puzzling here. I guess the mysterious part is not that people are putting their faith in unproven cures that are disdained by the medical establishment. People want a treatment that works, and they’ll put their hopes where they can; that’s not new. No, the mystery is people turning down the vaccine, as that’s something that does work, both to reduce your own chance of getting serious covid and also your chance of spreading it to others. That’s where the role of the media, including Rogan, is key, in spreading the attitude that covid is no big deal. Then when people do get it, you get panic.
The role of the news media and social media in spreading confusion, aided by maverick scientists with their own agendas, is a story for another day. Here I want to focus on something different, which is Joe Rogan’s credulity.
Rogan is open to conspiracy theories about the moon landing, World Trade Center attack, and the Kennedy assassination. Fine. I mean, no, not fine, actually this is ridiculous, but, sure, the guy’s a performer and this is his shtick. In any case, millions of Americans do believe these conspiracy theories—UFOs are another popular one, and in previous decades and centuries we had fun stuff like Noah’s ark, the Loch Ness monster, and the shroud of Turin—hey, Arthur Conan Doyle was fooled by obvious fake photos of garden fairies!—so it makes sense that some popular media figures will have such beliefs. So, yeah, Rogan is often suspicious of the official narrative, which leads him to a bunch of ridiculous positions but can work for his listeners.
But here’s the funny thing. The previous time we heard about Rogan on this blog was because he’d uncritically interviewed Matthew Walker, the sleep researcher associated with Google and the University of California who’d repeatedly misrepresented data—as Alexey Guzey put it, “Matthew Walker’s ‘Why We Sleep’ Is Riddled with Scientific and Factual Errors.”
Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t hold it against Rogan for having Walker on his show or even for believing everything that Walker told him. After all, that interview came before Guzey’s post, which was the first public airing of the research misconduct in Why We Sleep. It makes sense if you interview someone with these credentials, to just believe him. That’s the point of credentials, right??
It just makes me wonder. If you’re a comedian / podcaster / media figure and you’re distrustful of authority, distrustful of authority, distrustful of authority, then how do you decide what authorities you do trust? You don’t believe the Warren Commission which had all that public documentation, but you do trust some bozo with a Ted talk who makes stuff up about sleep . . . because the bozo is a University of California professor? That can’t be it, right? You wouldn’t trust every University of California professor.
Remember the The Chestertonian Principle: Extreme skepticism is a form of credulity.
I’m not sure I understand what is meant by “Extreme skepticism is a form of credulity.”
Me neither, it it’s supposed to always apply. But it does work for a lot of cases. The only way to be extremely skeptical about the moon landings is to believe one of a set of rather nutty conspiracy theories. Same with being extremely skeptical about the safety and effectiveness of the covid vaccines. In a lot of cases you can be skeptical of something without credulously believing something else, but sometimes there’s an either/or character to it: the more skeptical you are of one thing, the more you have to embrace something else.
Might the credulity refer to a steadfast belief that authorities (or certain classes of authority) are always wrong or lying, rather than a willingness to consider evidence on a case-by-case basis?
Jeff:
Sure, but, again, then why believe Matthew Walker’s over-the-top claims? Walker’s an authority too, right? My point that when Rogan is not being an authority-mistrusting superskeptic, he’s gullible to all sorts of things. Again, this is not really a slam on Rogan so much as a more general comment on the fragility of extreme skepticism.
I was trying to understand “extreme skepticism is a form of credulity” more than to explain anything specific to Rogan.
To your question: I get your point, but his skepticism seems centered more on fanning the flames of existing conspiracy theories than on questioning every “authority” (which I’ve put in quotes because it becomes an umbrella term if you’re going to use it to cover both Walker and the Warren Commission). It’s not like raising troubling questions about the Kennedy assassination in the 21st century is the mark of an original free-thinker who’s going to blow a lid off anything. I mean, if a “the gub’mint wants you to sleep more so they can fill your dreams with mind control messages” narrative had been trending, don’t you think he’d have been right there?
This phenomenon is discussed in Scott Alexander’s, “Beware Isolated Demands for Rigor” post and captured well by the “I Don’t Believe In That Nonsense / So True” meme format: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-dont-believe-in-that-nonsense-so-true
I think the puzzle goes even deeper. People are, perhaps rightfully, skeptical of the medical-industrial complex, and, in my opinion foolishly, rejecting the vaccine on that basis. Many of the same people are instead throwing their faith and weight behind cures that are created by the same medical-industrial complex–ivermectin, HCQ, broad-spectrum antivirals, monoclonal antibodies–some of which probably or definitely do work, but which are variously more risky, more expensive, or whose efficacy is more questionable than the vaccine.
https://www.npr.org/2021/09/01/1033485152/joe-rogan-covid-ivermectin
One producer of monoclonal antibodies for treatment of covid-19 is none other than AstraZeneca. I don’t know if Rogan took AstraZeneca’s antibodies, but the point is that his treatment and the vaccine come from the same type of institution, and are produced and validated by the same kind of process and evidence. So not only does Rogan selectively trust some authorities and reject others, but will variously trust and distrust the same authorities on nearly the same subject.
My only explanation, which sounds very negative, is that it’s a combination of motivated reasoning to support the chosen side on politically polarized issues and an argument-clinic style automatic gainsaying of expert opinion. “THEY, THE EXPERTS, recommend prevention by A, so I’m gonna go with treatment by B instead”. While it’s obviously a nonsense epistemology, in my personal experience it’s the natural conclusion when you’ve been convinced that someone is constantly out to get you.
“We have prepared for you a very generous offer–”
“and we are prepared to reject that offer. What is your second offer?”
“You haven’t even heard–”
“Never accept their first offer.”
https://youtu.be/r-GFmH0EK9Y
Yes, being anti-mainstream seems to be fundamental.
> “The fact that the medical establishment is broadly united in its position that there’s no evidence ivermectin works to treat COVID is exactly why so many of the most gullible people in America believe it does work to treat COVID.”
There is a similar phenomenon in post-soviet countries, where people had adopted to living with totalitarian government-controlled propaganda. Basically, you develop a knee-jerk reaction that every official statement is a lie. The more something is declared as a consensus, the less you should trust it.
But US is not a post-soviet state.
I can concur that I personally see this most strongly in Chinese and USSR expats. While it serves them well in some environments, it also leads to some truly batty conclusions. “The government says the Earth is round? Therefore the Earth must be flat. The government says to prepare for hurricane Sandy? Therefore it must be no big deal.” I’m not sure why it’s gotten to this point with so many who’ve lived their whole lives stateside, or why so many of the same folk seemed to trust Trump when he was, in fact, a US president.
The trick is that this “extreme scepticism” is very easy to exploit. If you don’t believe official authorities or any authorities at all, you cant do fact checking. So you basically trust any guy who flatters you. And it is very easy to flatter you by telling “You are totally correct to distrust everyone!”
The US is a state captured by interested misaligned with its population in exactly the same way as a post-soviet state. The US is a post-democratic state.
Andrew … I am wondering if you are viewing JR’s podcast through the most appropriate lens. I have come to understand his project —and That of many other podcasters— through a commercial lens. JR podcasts frequently and his casts are often 2 hours long. So his team needs to sweep in a lot of guests to discuss content that would be of interest to his listeners… and then JR needs to engage w/ those guests in a way that keeps the conversation flowing in a way that again appeals to his listeners. I don’t see this undertaking as a focused search for knowledge… and I would be surprised if there is much in the way of an approach taken by Joe that seeks to evaluate claims and challenge views.
There are, of course, other podcasters who do seek to expose their audiences to real debates. But JR isn’t one of them.
Mike:
Interesting. Following this reasoning, Rogan isn’t skeptical at all. It’s the opposite: he books a string of guests for his show, and he’s credulous for each guest. Sometimes his guest is anti-establishment, in which case Rogan will credulously go with the guest’s anti-establishment take; other times his guest is just promoting himself (as in the Why We Sleep guy), in which case Rogan credulously goes with it too.
It would be cool for Rogan to get an actual debunker on his show, someone like Alexey Guzey (who shot down the Why We Sleep book) or Alan Allport (who shot down one of Malcolm Gladwell’s books) . . . but it’s not clear that it’s in Rogan’s interest to do that, given that this would create interference with his existing interviews with Walker and Gladwell.
From that perspective, Rogan’s feat is to maintain a reputation as a contrarian, given that his pattern is complete credulity.
Again, I’m not really talking about Rogan as much as about “the Joe Rogans of the world” who have this seemingly unstable combination of skepticism and credulity.
Amdrew –
Don’t ignore the ideological interaction effect. Rogan started out as a big fan of the vaccines and was highly critical of those wouldn’t take it. He wasn’t “contrarian” about them early on.
He’s basically a right-wing ideologue, and his contrarianism aligns with that orientation. He has an audience and he’s selling a product to them.
> Rogan isn’t skeptical at all. It’s the opposite: he books a string of guests for his show, and he’s credulous for each guest.
Yes, this is the case. Joe Rogan interviews a wide range of guests and usually just has a casual conversation with them (combined with some amount of live online fact-checking). The “casual conversation” format doesn’t lend itself well to hostile interviews. I’d think of such a podcast as a kind of window into the thinking of his guests. Occasionally Joe Rogan will argue a point, but this is more of the exception that the rule. I’d say the guy selects for “interesting”, as opposed to “accurate” when choosing his guests; and what “interesting” person have you ever met who doesn’t have unorthodox ideas?
>From that perspective, Rogan’s feat is to maintain a reputation as a contrarian, given that his pattern is complete credulity.
Well not really, Rogan isn’t responsible for his reputation and so shouldn’t be credited with maintaining it. I’d recommend you watch one or two episodes yourself if you have the time, e.g. the Moxie Marlinspike (creator of Signal messenger) one is fun to listen to. The Sanjay Gupta (of CNN) is more covid-related and less entertaining, but also on a relatively high level. Usually these kinds of podcasts are too long for me, but occasionally I’ll listen to them while e.g. cooking. Podcasts are not meant for scientific discourse – or even debate – and you’ll better understand Joe Rogan if you listen to him than if you read about it.
There used to be a time when an interview wasn’t expected to be hostile, you should think Joe Rogan as an interviewer in this tradition. I honestly don’t get why e.g. Joe Rogan gets a lot of flak for not being a pure truth-seeker and inviting weird guests, whereas gonzo journalists like Hunter S. Thompson who when much further and just made up “interesting” things don’t.
Matty –
> I’d say the guy selects for “interesting”, as opposed to “accurate” when choosing his guests; and what “interesting” person have you ever met who doesn’t have unorthodox ideas?
There is a clear through line in what he identifies as “interesting.”
> Well not really, Rogan isn’t responsible for his reputation and so shouldn’t be credited with maintaining it.
I have a hard time understanding that absolutist approach. He obviously has some agency over his reputation. As such, why should he be viewed only as helpless in some way to have an effect? He actively seeks to affect his reputation all the time!!!
> I’d recommend you watch one or two episodes yourself if you have the time, e.g. the Moxie Marlinspike (creator of Signal messenger) one is fun to listen to. The Sanjay Gupta (of CNN) is more covid-related and less entertaining, but also on a relatively high level. Usually these kinds of podcasts are too long for me, but occasionally I’ll listen to them while e.g. cooking. Podcasts are not meant for scientific discourse – or even debate – and you’ll better understand Joe Rogan if you listen to him than if you read about it.
Rather than get into it with you here, what I’d be interested in is if you listened to this podcast which discusses these issues and then explained where you disagree with their take. I’m not suggesting I think their take is perfectly accurate or that I agree with it in all respects – but I do on the whole think their take is more aligned with my view than your take, and since their take definitely differs from yours, I’d like to know where/how you disagree.
https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/joe-rogan-just-an-average-joe
> There is a clear through line in what he identifies as “interesting.”
I think you underestimate the breadth of Joe Rogan’s show because you only hear about the controversies. Bernie Sanders, Elon Musk and Mike Tyson have all been on Joe Rogan. Here is a list of upcoming guests to the show https://jrelibrary.com/upcoming-guests/ , if I hadn’t told you it was Joe Rogan, would you consider this list particularly unusual? You clear line you see passes through a pre-selected list of guests, you’re seeing mostly selection effects in your analysis.
>I have a hard time understanding that absolutist approach. He obviously has some agency over his reputation. As such, why should he be viewed only as helpless in some way to have an effect? He actively seeks to affect his reputation all the time!!!
He can try to influence his reputation, but his reputation consists of what other people say about him; in this sense he does not have any direct agency over it. Joe Rogan’s reputation to me isn’t as someone who is particularly contrarian, btw. Regarding unreasonably absolutist positions: treat them as extremal points in the space of ideas (does the Krein-Milman theorem apply?) :)
>Rather than get into it with you here, what I’d be interested in is if you listened to this podcast which discusses these issues and then explained where you disagree with their take
It’s a three hour podcast, if there were a transcript I might be up for it but like this the way it’s going to go is that I will start listening to it until I get bored. My commentary below:
So far it has taken until minute 6 for them to reach anything interesting, which is the fact that apparently it’s possible to somehow skip through parts of the podcast, but none of the linked services seem to support this. So now I skipped forward to around 25 minutes – they’re making fun of some guy who does a lot of push-ups, who is apparently “like” Joe Rogan, so they’re going to summarize Joe Rogan based on this interview. Maybe it’s just the annoyingness of their mic being broken, but it’s really hard to listen to this podcast.
Now they’re “challenging” the idea that Joe is just an “ordinary guy”. Well yeah, no shit. Does anybody think Joe Rogan is just an “ordinary guy” without “political opinions”. The next criticisism is that while he interviews a range of people (like Neil de Grasse Tyson, Bernie Sanders, Steven Pinker, etc…) he keeps coming back to certain themes and has political opinions. Again, pretty obviously true, but at the same time is this supposed to be some kind of relevation? Obviously Joe Rogan – just like everybody else in the world – has opinions which influence him. But it’s still commendable that he interviews people who don’t share his opinions without trying to put them down.
Finally a substantiative point. Yes Joe Rogan is “goop for men”, whatever that means because he likes supplements. Minor interjection: I have yet to meet someone who doesn’t have their pet theory of what is healthy/especially good, that is usually unrelated to “science” more or less. In some cases, this takes the form of weird supplements or crystals or whatever, but in others it’s “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”, silicon valley fads like “bulletproof coffee” or “microdosing”, or even “wearing cloth masks to stop covid” ( sorry, I couldn’t resist, but where I am here in Europe nobody has worn just cloth masks for over a year and the fact Americans still act like they matter is just so funny). My point is that it’s very human to have special things you think are special, or to think you have special insight into this or that, so it’s a bit unfair to make fun of Joe Rogan for tapping into this.
Then they make fun of Joe Rogan for acting (for lack of a better word) traditionally masculine? This is like the 10th time they’ve mentioned “testosterone”, is that supposed to be a put-down? I mean I’m pretty nerdy – nerdy enough to comment on this blog – but do these guys have zero connections to traditional masculinity at all? Which I don’t want to make fun of, but I when these guys make fun of Joe Rogan for making cars it just makes me think of people who make fun of nerds for liking equations… Now they back down by saying “there’s nothing wrong with liking these things”, but it doesn’t come off as particularly sincere.
Ok I’ve had enough, skipping forward again. They’re now claiming Joe Rogan is apparently “against vaccination”, where last I heard he wanted to get the vaccine but got covid just before his appointment. See e.g. Zvi (rationalist blogger) reviewing Rogan’s Gupta interview: https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2021/10/21/covid-10-21-rogan-vs-gupta/ . Then they (mostly) misunderstand/misinterpret Rogan’s comments on the overweight and covid. At least I finally hear some empathy (for the overweight) from this podcast, took a while.
I’ve now given up, maybe the people hosting the podcast are just too far in my outgroup, but I’m not having particularly much fun listening to them making fun, but I’ve yet to see a single idea be steel-manned or admitted as good so I’ve had enough. Not that I’m above listening to people being made fun of, just I’d probably find someone making fun of their podcast more entertaining than what they’re doing.
Matty –
I’m more aware of the “breadth” of what Joe does than you assume.
I was hoping for more of a bird’s-eye view in your response – but maybe you just don’t think they offer any higher-level critique and if you can’t get there, that’s cool.
BTW -. Consider that I hang in their with Rogan and Weinstein and Sam Harris and others despite that I have a similar view of the quality of their “content” as you have of the gurus podcast.
“cause I think it’s worthwhile to challenge myself to be more open-minded about differing perspectives.
>I was hoping for more of a bird’s-eye view in your response – but maybe you just don’t think they offer any higher-level critique and if you can’t get there, that’s cool.
I didn’t see a high-level critique in what I heard. I saw a faint echo of a high-level critique, but it wasn’t precise enough to warrant commenting on more than I already did.
>“cause I think it’s worthwhile to challenge myself to be more open-minded about differing perspectives.
I get “read lots of different opinions”, but I don’t have the time to listen to lots of podcasts. For me, podcasts are something to do if I’m doing something boring and a bit of attention is left over. I get enough scientism from my colleagues at work and the general media, I don’t see why exposing myself to more is useful.
Hi All,
I am more interested in your viewpoints about physicians/epis/ like Vinay Prasad, Peter Attia, and Marty Makary. These experts are most willing to be featured in a podcast like Joe Rogan’s. Peter Attia too has a super popular podcast. In my opinion, they represent the new generation of experts who are in the process of capturing a much larger share of audiences around the world.
I hadn’t watched a Joe Rogan podcast until I saw that he was trending on Twitter. Apparently, he has captured 10s of millions of audiences. I would have to watch many more to draw an opinion. I gather he had Robert Malone on his podcast after the latter got suspended on Twitter. So now Malone is projected to have an even bigger following than the 500,000 that he had on Twitter,
There is Marty Makary and Sonia Gandhi who have drawn large likes on Twitter. i mean like 6,000 or more. Pretty impressive.
I guess it’s become too easy to find fault with a viewpoint you don’t agree with. If we would stick to evaluating quality of data and studies, that would be really helpful.
Oops, Vinay Prasad has a podcast as well. I try to listen to as many perspectives as feasible. Vinay though has a seemingly great command of clinical trial methods as well as analytical biases. I like to listen to that kind of analysis.
Samara –
Perhaps if you want to kniw more about Markary, you could start with his WSJ op-ed with the heading:
We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April
Covid cases have dropped 77% in six weeks. Experts should level with the public about the good news.
Where he accused “experts” of not “leveling” with the public becauae “herd immunity” was just around the corner
(BTW, to reach that incorrect pronouncement – in addition to just working from a fatally flawed conceptualization of “herd immunity,” – he extrapolated from ionnidis’ obviously wrong IFR)
He has a rather extensive list of other public advocacy which was similarly inaccurate.
Hi Joshua,
Thanks. Yes, I know that Marty Makary made that claim. He has written a very intriguing book on hospital billing & management.
From my observation, nearly every expert, in some phase of the pandemic has made a claim that hasn’t panned out in some aspect.
Herd immunity is not a new concept. It has been bandied about foe decades. I suppose that if one culled all the definitions in the contexts in which the term was raised, one would note that it hasn’t been that controversial in the past. I could be wrong.
As I recall, Robert Redfield, the prior CDC director threw out an estimate of 70 million infected with COVID, in July 2020. Not sure how that was calculated, given that there was so little testing being conducted. But more recently, Scott Gottleib estimated that currently about 90 million had ‘natural immunity’. That estimate, he noted, conferred good level of herd immunity. I’m not qualified to assert which of the term’s use is conceptually fatally flawed.
What I am suggesting that nearly everyone has had to backtrack on some research and conclusions. b/c there aren’t enough data and maybe it’s of poor quality. Or we may not have access to better quality data. Any scenario is probable.
Sameera –
No doubt, a lot of people have made very wrong claims throughout the pandemic.
The problem with that Markary article, IMO, is that it seemed obviously wrong at the time – but even more than that was his direct argument that “experts” weren’t “leveling” with the public.and of you followed his over the course of the pandemic, much of what he has put out there in public was very similar in nature.
HTF, does he know if experts are or aren’t “leveling” with the public, and WTF would he write an article in such a high profile forum where he makes such an accusation of bad faith since he can’t reallyknd probe (presumably)?
Sorry, it in my view that was explicitly politicizing the pandemic, and I don’t think that’s OK independently of whether people make mistakes.
Marty Makary is an honorable person. He has provided pro bono representation to patients hit wit surprise billing. The accounts are documented in his book, the Price We Pay. He is also Chief Editor of Med Page Today. It publishes worthwhile commentary, imo.
Now I reread that WSJ article. One of the major points that he elaborates upon is the role & extent of natural immunity in the US. The medical experts with whom he has had conversations do not acknowledge either for they assert that there are not relevant data. Makary’s response is that ‘observational data is compelling’. That line of reasoning can apply to various hypotheses in circulation about COVID. We don’t have nearly enough randomized or cluster randomized control trials to begin with in regard to many hypotheses that are considered a given when forging treatments and protocols, seemingly.
Basically, I don’t really think Makary’s view is an outlier, as many prominent and reputable experts do agree with his hypotheses. And nearly all such experts have been making predictions that are in different degrees in various contexts wrong and right.
Lastly, I know that physicians among themselves share views that they may not want to share publicly. That goes for much expertise, especially as subsets are under confidentiality constraints. So there is that.
Sameera –
> Marty Makary is an honorable person…
I make no judgment of Makary’s honor. After all, I’ve never met him. I was refefencing his arguments and his rhetoric.
He made a terrible argument from a scientific perspective, imo. It seemed obviously bad at the time, and actually pretty bizarre, even to someone with as little technical knowledge as I have. He was extrapolating from outlier estimates to project numbers that were themselves, also outliers. His numbers, basically, amounted to a mathematical impossibility given the numbers that were likely infected and dead at the time (in mine with the mathematically impossible IFR that Anoneuoid stated in this thread as the low end of his estimate).
And in the end, he was spectacularly wrong in a very influential op-ed, and that spectacular error had meaningfully bad consequences.
But sure, people make mistakes. Even knowledgeable scientists are biased in their assessments sometimes.
But again, what is worse in my estimation was his broadside against “experts” to argue in bad faith that they weren’t “leveling” with the public. Imo, that was clear politicization of the pandemic. He was defaming people based on his belief that he had mind-probing skills he can’t possibly have.
Again, that doesn’t make him a bad person. Many, many people have politicized the pandemic.
But in my opinion there’s no valid excuse for doing so. There are reasons why people do it, usually, again, because of “motivation” (in the sense of motivated reasoning). But that’s not an excuse. Imo, people who have access to such a powerful mouthpiece should do better.
Hi Joshua,
Can you cite what in the article you disagree with precisely? OK, so Marty predicted that the pandemic would be over in April on the basis of his evaluation of the research he came across.
Heck, all sorts of predictions have been bandied about by experts. Some predictions somewhat better than others.
But no one emerges as being substantially accurate. Michael Mina comes the closest as he warned in spring of 2020 that mutations were likely to emerge and disrupt lives and the economy.
I think that politicization of academia has a long history. It’s really more a matter of an anti-intellectualism that Hofstadter wrote about in the early 60’s. But even more insightful is Richard Posner’s Public Intellectuals: a Study in Decline.
The sociology of experts is fascinating. I think that Deborah Rhode, Richard Posner, and David Kennedy have elaborated on this subject eloquently.
Hi Sameera –
This is what I was referring to:
That was obvious even to someone as in expert to me. I thought his op-ed was bizarrely bad, even on top of the claim about herd immunity.
There was more, also.
https://healthfeedback.org/evaluation/misleading-wall-street-journal-opinion-piece-makes-the-unsubstantiated-claim-that-the-u-s-will-have-herd-immunity-by-april-2021
… even to someone as inexpert as me…
For me, it’s not so much that there’s some kind of step change regarding politicization of academia, but I’ve been pretty surprised and deeply disturbed at the extent to which the pandemic has been politicized.
It’s as if all guard rails have been removed. Anything goes. Even the deaths and illness of millions is fair game for the purpose of gaining political advantage.
I’m as cynical as they get and even I could not have predicted this.
Sameera –
You may also want to look at this:
https://twitter.com/gorskon/status/1362545964062560262?t=8J62ArUdHwZ6IEWzd8by2w&s=19
Hi Joshua,
Thank you for the link. Problem is that the article doesn’t go into sufficient depth so as to me to draw conclusions. That has been an issue for so many articles.
I do think that Eric Topol acknowledges ‘natural immunity’ as a hedge again reinfection. Of course there have been ongoing debates about the extent to which natural immunity and vaccination are durable and protective.
I was surprised to see so many tweets by those vaccinated & boosted who had omicron. Younger populations even more surprisingly.
Marty’s views are not outliers anymore. Nor discredited more broadly, but for the April prediction.
My own hunch is that more recent COVID policies being rolled out by CDC, in part, acknowledgment that omicron will be hard to contain. And lockdowns are so unpopular b/c they have generated multiple other risks. I have enthusiastically endorsed rapid testing. We’ll see how that pans out.
I would have to explore their citations more assiduously. Hope i can find time.
Sameera –
> Thank you for the link. Problem is that the article doesn’t go into sufficient depth so as to me to draw conclusions. That has been an issue for so many articles.
OK. I thought the article went into sufficient detail to make it clear that Makary’s article was bad science.
But one last time. Bad science happens. Science is hard.
However, mind-probing to accuse “experts,” as some broad class, of not “leveling” with the public is bad public engagement and not excusable, imo.
There is no doubt that Rogan is often way too credulous, and often does not seem to retain critical information and insights from one show to the next. However, I think there is more of a pattern though than that. As Joshua mentions, Rogan used to be at least moderately “pro vaccine”, and I think he still is…sorta. I remember in the early days of the pandemic, he had Peter Hotez on twice (IIRC) and also Osterholm. It was enormously encouraging to me, given the reach of his audience, that he was having informative discussions with serious people like that. I had listened to prior podcasts he had done with Hotez pre-Covid, and thought they were quite good, and he genuinely seemed to admire Hotez’s work, so it seemed natural he would turn to him for providing expert commentary on the unfolding global pandemic.
But then we get a few months into Covid, and the whole country goes even deeper into this “pernicious polarization” loop. IDW folks like the Weinsteins start pumping out tons of anti-establishment theorizing around Covid, among which are included the Robert Malone baloney about the mRNA vaccines, the supposed neglect of ‘treatments’ like Ivermec, etc. At the same time, the fracas about censorship goes into overdrive and Rogan is ideologically very very much opposed to anything that seems like censorship.
So, I think he turns on the public health establishment at that point – which, fair enough, so much of our establishment has in fact failed in various ways – and I think this unfortunately distorts his impression of the vaccines as well. It’s not that he’s too credulous, per se, as that his social intellectual milieu, and his audience, were headed a certain way. I disagree with Joshua that Rogan is a “right wing ideologue”. I think he and his audience are truly independent centrist mashup types that represent a lot of America.
And alas, Hotez is no longer a welcome guest I guess, if this is indicative:
https://twitter.com/PeterHotez/status/1431767883617603587
Chris:
Thanks. This is consistent with the idea that Rogan is credulous by default. I just wish he’d transfer some of his skepticism to elite-supported b.s. such as Gladwell and Why We Sleep. Getting Alan Allport on the show to talk about how clueless Gladwell is, or interviewing Alexey Guzey to talk about corruption in modern academia . . . that would be fun, no? I feel like it would work with Rogan’s political leanings, too, in that he’d be pointing out systemic flaws in the institutions of the news media and academic social science. Who doesn’t love to hate on journalists and Berkeley professors, right? I’m serious here, I think this could really work for Rogan. Except, I guess, that it could retrospectively make his earlier interviews with Gladwell and Walker look naive?
I think we need to start a petition to get Andrew on the Joe Rogan show.
Raghu:
I’ve been on a bunch of podcasts—you can find them on the internet—and I’m pretty sure that I’m a lot more boring, for most listeners, than Matthew Walker. His superpower, as it were, is his willingness to make up things that sound good, whereas I’m constrained by reality. I guess that Alexey Guzey would have similar problems. Rogan can interview Walker or Gladwell who can spin these great stories. For the discerning listener, reality is more interesting than bullshit. But I’m guessing that for most listeners, bullshit is much more fascinating.
Indeed, he has had Eric Weinstein on several times to talk about corruption and failure in academia – and much else beside :) I think the other default for Rogan is that he favors messages that empower individuals against experts. So Walker’s bottom-line is this story about how fixing your sleep confers amazing health benefits, and I imagine part of the schtick is how this has been ignored or misunderstood by the mainstream. Rogan also is always gonna favor guests who are entertaining and blessed with the “gift of the gab”. Afterall, his product is 2+ hour conversations for which he wants to retain a large audience! All in all, I’ve appreciated many of his interviews with scientists and other serious thinkers (he had Penrose on, how cool is that?!), while also feeling exasperated by some of these other features.
Uh oh, here comes another long diatribe from a well-known contributor. I believe I am probably older than most on this blog. As long as I can remember when the next health crisis came, Vitamin C, D and zinc, plus some herbs and other things, were pushed as a cure in the underground (the internet didn’t exist then). This “cure” was certainly being pushed early on in communities hard hit by AIDs. It actually cured nothing. Big Pharma, with all of its many well-publicized faults, did come up with solutions. I am certain all of us know people being treated for diseases like cancer, with Big Pharma drugs that are more targeted and more effective than ever before. As a kid I was just at the start of polio vaccines, but pre-mumps and measles, and remember the havoc they caused.
And when someone tells you what they are believe them. So if they say they worked for a Pharma company and no longer trust them at all, take it at face value when you read comments. I for one, unfortunately from personal experience, am very grateful for some of the amazing treatments developed by Pharma.
Rogan was a big believer in “Big Pharma” and vaccines for COVID until he wasn’t.
And of course while he promotes the “profit motive” as a reason to believe that vaccines are a hoax being pushed onto sheeple, he neglects to apply the same logic to why people should or shouldn’t buy the health products he and many of his invited guests market.
Just a coincide of course, I’m sure.
This pod looks at Rogan from within a larger frame of “gurus”/podcasters/contrarians/social media:
Joe Rogan is a world famous podcaster, a martial artist, a stand-up comedian, a MMA commentator, co-founder of the Onnit supplement company, the ex-host of Fear Factor, a long term friend of Alex Jones, and recently a major outlet for promoting ‘alternative’ Covid facts.
And yet despite all these ‘achievements’ and his recent multi million dollar deal with Spotify many argue that a large part of Joe’s appeal is that he is just a ‘regular Joe’. Joe himself has said he’s just a ‘f**king moron’ and that people should not take his opinion seriously… but does he mean it?
Join Matt & Chris as they break out their dusty gym bags and enter the house of pain that is long form podcasting to try and imbibe the full Joe Rogan Experience. To aid in this glorious quest, the guys sought out the most testosterone laced JRE episode they could find and inevitable landed on a recent episode with ex-navy seal & motivational author, Jocko Willink. This is a man who everyday posts black and white photographs of his wristwatch at 4.30am with captions like ‘Ready. Set. GET SOME’ & ‘Default: AGGRESSIVE’.
If you think this means the episode will be covering the sexually arousing nature of armoured cars, the beauty of handcrafted knives, and how to revive the American manufacturing industry… you would be right. But that’s not all.
You will also discover surprising non-partisan ‘facts’ like how Tulsi Gabbad is the centrist messiah, George Soros is responsible for recent US crime waves, Nancy Pelosi is an assassin, and the Hunter Biden laptop story is the biggest story of the modern era. Oh and, of course, that Covid vaccines are dangerous and effective alternative treatments are being hushed up.
Wait… what?
So rev your engines, sharpen your handcrafted knives, and get ready to smash headfirst through brick walls of ignorance and faux expertise in this testosterone soaked episode as Matt & Chris refuse to acquiesce to the ‘burden of civility’.
P.S. Did Matt mention that he had to listen to 6hrs this week?!?
https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/joe-rogan-just-an-average-joe
Also, on a related topic:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/03/how-politics-got-so-polarized
So Polarized
In a new era of hyperpartisan identities, can anything bring “us” and “them” together?
I have a different perspective.
Right from the beginning, the vaccine was touted as being part of a herd immunity strategy. But what if you couldn’t care less about the herd? Remember when the woman at the Florida School Board meeting said, “I am so tired of people telling me I am part of a community!”?
People do not hear advice from experts and assume the opposite is true. It doesn’t make sense because it is not right. Instead, there is a large proportion of people who become suspicious when you ask them to cooperate. They automatically assume that you are trying to fleece them. When you take the ivermectin, it can only possibly help you, it can’t help others, and that is why it is acceptable. This is also why monoclonal antibodies from AstraZeneca are OK but vaccines are not.
Former NBA player Charles Barkley, referring to a certain current NBA player, said “you don’t take the vaccine for yourself, you take it for others.” When about 40% of the American public hears it put that way, they think “well then I’m never taking it.”
Matt –
I think it’s miee than that. People are selective in terms of when they’re community-oriented. I don’t think it’s a blanket attribute (at least for most people).
I bet a fairly high % of those who feel no community obligation towards vaccines are involved with community-oriented church activities, for example.
I think identity-related cognition is likely an important mediator/moderator.
I’m pretty certain that Pfizer/Moderna were careful not to “tout” this feature. Perhaps the media, politicians, or individuals on twitter that have no idea what they are talking about did so.
Herd immunity would be completely unprecedented for a virus like this. It has never been observed for viruses that primarily replicate in the mucosa, because the mucosal immunity is not durable enough.
You can get it for viruses that primarily replicate in the tissue/blood (measles, polio, etc), but for covid there is essentially zero chance. Doubly so for vaccines injected into the muscle that don’t even trigger mucosal immunity.
Here are two good papers on the topic:
https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1009509
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abg9857
… more than that…
You don’t decide to trust any authorities. It is the old nullius in verba: Take no one’s word for it. This is actually the basis for the scientific thought process.
I think there is something about mathematical training (or maybe people who choose mathematical careers have a predisposition) that prevents some from really “getting it”. Fisher talked about that when discussing Neyman.
Reasoning from accepted premises appears to be a different skill than devising/exploring potentially fruitful sets of premises. In the latter case you take nothing as fact, everything is a working assumption.
Anon:
Sure, you’re describing a possible ideal attitude and behavior. But clearly the Rogans of the world don’t do this. Rogan uncritically presents bullshitters like Gladwell and the Why We Sleep guy. That’s the point of my post, that these people whose brand is skepticism will still be so credulous at times.
I rarely watch Joe Rogan (I have once or twice), but I wonder if “uncritically presenting bullshitters” is an accurate framing. Is he really jumping from trusting one authority figure to another?
It could be implicit that *everyone* is a bullshitter. He gives people a platform to state their case while asking questions but not pushing his own agenda onto them.
He has UFO guys on there too, doesn’t mean he “believes” what they say. It only means they may have some interesting ideas he and his audience may not have been exposed to before.
Anoneuoid –
> He gives people a platform to state their case while asking questions but not pushing his own agenda onto them.
>> He has UFO guys on there too, doesn’t mean he “believes” what they say. It only means they may have some interesting ideas he and his audience may not have been exposed to before.
Yes, it’s clear that you haven’t listened to his podcasts much if that’s your take. It’s interesting how uncritically you just accept what he promotes about his podcasts. Where’s all that “mathematical training” you have?
He definitely pushes his beliefs (not that there’s a reason he shouldn’t).
And it’s not just an innocent “just asking questions” about UFOs and the like. He is very selective in what he promotes, doesn’t engage with a balanced roster of guests, and always reduces issues to a conspiratorial framework – almost always aligned with “anti-woke” views and “owning libz.”
Anon:
If I were to ask the Why We Sleep guy why he’s making things up and misrepresenting data, that’s not “pushing my own agenda onto him”; that’s just solid journalism. But, yeah, I get that Rogan etc. are not doing journalism in that sense; they’re pretty much providing a platform for their guests. It’s a mutually-beneficial approach: the guest gets uncritical exposure and the host gets content to air. From that perspective what’s interesting is not that Rogan runs uncritical interviews but rather that he has the reputation for being a skeptic.
The UFO example is interesting because a person can simultaneously be a credulous believer in UFO reports of alien spacecraft and a skeptic of the official message that UFOs are not actually alien spacecraft. I guess that, more generally, a certain kind of skepticism is associated with an even stronger belief. Another example would be JFK conspiracy theories, where a skepticism about official conclusions is associated with credulous belief in ridiculous theories.
I took a look and listen. The dude is just stringing together a set of pseudofacts and interesting ideas without considering methodology at all.
Honestly, it seems standard for textbooks. I remember taking Neuroscience and on like the first page the author wrote something like “There are 100 billion neurons in the human brain” without any reference. I was like “well how the hell did they get that number?” and closed the book because I could tell it was not going to benefit me.
You could read some about that topic here:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/neuro.09.031.2009/full
Textbooks are filled with this type of thing. So, my take is that while his book is filled with BS, that is standard.
As mentioned above, people need to be assuming that *everyone* is a bullshitter. But that doesn’t mean you can’t temporarily accept what they are saying as a premise then see where it leads you.
Anoneuoid –
> You don’t decide to trust any authorities. It is the old nullius in verba: Take no one’s word for it. This is actually the basis for the scientific thought process.
Not very many people “don’t trust” authorities across the board. For example, they go to doctors for healthcare all the time. Most “trust” authorities that align with them ideologically.
> I think there is something about mathematical training (or maybe people who choose mathematical careers have a predisposition) that prevents some from really “getting it”. Fisher talked about that when discussing Neyman.
Taking climate change as an example, it isn’t that there’s a signal of “mathematical training” in the prevalence of “skepticism,” but a signal of polarization that aligns with higher performance on tests of mathematical reasoning.
I disagree with someone like Dan Kahan regarding direction of causality there (I think there’s a moderating/mediating effect of strong ideological identity).
The problem is that answering interesting questions usually requires evidence which requires many difficult and specialized skills to interpret. Maybe once upon a time there was the occasional genius who could learn all the necessary trades, but even Julius Caesar had to accept the data about the length of the year from Babylonian and Egyptian astral scientists. He could not spend hundreds of years observing from multiple points to replicate their data.
About the best you can do is to establish what data, interpreted how, lie behind claims. You still need heuristics like “field A is rubbish, method B is unreliable, field C has a pretty good approach and polices its own mistakes so I can lean on their work except when there is substantive disagreement within the field.”
So does Joe Rogan believe those pundits are the worst-faith of all time AND that there’s a conspiracy to stifle them even though there actually isn’t? Or is he correct that there’s a conspiracy to stifle them but doesn’t realize this is fine because they’re the worst-faith of all time?
Mr. Rogan has some advantages that previous conspiracy theorists didn’t have. The internet is a giant test market for all kinds of ideas. Forty years ago, Lyndon LaRouche was real big in the conspiracy theory market, but he only had his own ideas to steer his enterprise. I remember turning on a LaRouche telecast that was devoted to explaining the advantages of using 432 hertz as the definition of ‘A’ instead of 440; I doubt that this idea had much traction. The internet is real big and access is easy. There are lots of ideas out there, and Mr. Rogan can check them out and see which ones have potential. For instance, there are lots of vegan sites, but a quick review of comments will keep you from waving that banner if popularity is your goal. Likewise, it is clear that a lot of people don’t like Big Pharma, and anti-Big Pharma stuff will always be popular. How does he decide which ideas to back; my thought is that he follows the test market effect of the thousands on the internet.
I think another phenomenon might be a work here. It seems to me that a lot of people (and not just Joe Rogans of the world) will accept advice from someone they can relate to (and won’t accept advice from someone they can’t relate to). Sometimes formal credentials can actually get in the way of forming that warm fuzzy bond. So maybe it’s not about credentials, maybe Rogan saw a kindred spirit in Walker and just felt it was the right type of material to pad out his hours of content.
Casey:
Sure, and I guess that Walker, Gladwell, etc., are experts in telling media interviewers what they want to hear. They’re experts in creating media-friendly content, and media-friendly content is what the Rogans have a continuing need for.
One completely trivial point to boost the number of comments on this thread – agenda, like data, is the plural form of the noun. Although it is now standard use, agenda would be the appropriate form. Agendum would be the singular.
I don’t remember much else from Latin classes, and am another who looks forward to the literature et al. posts. They leaven the reading, usually including the (few) comments they draw.
Captain:
I don’t know about that. A quick google finds “agenda” defined as “a list of items to be discussed,” with derivation from Latin, “things to be done.”
So a singular agenda is a singular list with multiple items; hence the plural.
Sorry. Poor editing obscured what I was trying to say. Although it is now standard to use agendas as a plural, agenda would be the appropriate form.
It is something that is curious, to me at least, the differences in how words directly derived from Latin have evolved over time in English. Other words such as compendium, stadium, premium, and quite few others are used as the singular noun and are made plural by adding “s”. Others such as agendum, datum have been dropped from use and are replaced with what was the plural form in Latin. The emergence of data as the form commonly used may be due to the rarity with which it would be appropriate to use datum. Agenda versus agendum seems harder to explain that way.
Anyway, objecting to the use of agenda/s is like ordering the remaining life vests and life boats needed a few months after the ship has hit an iceberg.
Also: the “Joes Rogan.”
Wins thread.
> That’s where the role of the media, including Rogan, is key, in spreading the attitude that covid is no big deal. Then when people do get it, you get panic.
This is completely backwards. The mainstream US media can be rightly accused of many things but _underplaying_ covid’s impact is just not one of them.
https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/lifestyle/coronavirus/conservative_news_viewers_more_accurately_estimate_covid_19_death_risk
Over 70% of Americans overestimate the CFR of covid, many by more than an order of magnitude and some by two orders. The results by partisan affiliation and TV channel of choice are rather striking too. The most informed respondents were those who watch no TV news at all.
I’m prett sure Rogan’s interview demeanor is much more schtick than genuine credulity. I say this because I recently had an experience that revealed the cynical showmanship pretty clearly.
Rogan interviewed a doctor (Rhonda Patrick, maybe?) on all things Covid-related (the video is on you tube, and the part I’ll reference here is about 4-5 minutes in). The doctor made a claim that cut directly to Rogan’s repeated claim that young healthy people would be better off not getting vaccinated. Paraphrasing from memory, she said that even for the cherry-picked example of myocarditis in healthy young people, the risk associated with vaccination + vaccinated exposure appears to be less than the risk associated with unvaccinated exposure. I was genuinely expecting Rogan to stop in his tracks and probe why this claim didn’t fit with his existing beliefs. Instead, he abruptly changed the subject. Yikes! I mean, maybe there’s room for benefit of the doubt at this point, but yikes.
Curious if anyone else noticed this, I read through a couple of pages of comments and didn’t see anything, so I posted a comment myself. Within a few minutes my comment had been removed. Truth-seekers don’t do that! I re-worded a bit and posted again, and the same thing happened, so I kept iterating until I got the wording weak enough that they finally let the comment stand.
All very disappointing because I was (credulously) accepting Rogan as an earnest (if sometimes misguided) truth-seeker up until then. But alas, he’s just another guy with an audience, a schtick, and an all-too-common response to the pests who might tarnish his brand.
+1 – That seems to be the simplest explanation, and he laughs on the the way to the bank.
Asking why Rogan takes one side or the other in a debate, or even why he chooses to wade into one debate and not another, is like asking why a surfer charted his particular course along the shore before setting off. He’s just riding the waves, man. If it looks like he’s on the leading edge, it’s because he’s got a good instinct for where his audience will surge. Although, I wouldn’t credit his instinct so much as the forgiving nature of the format and the audience. Both allow a lot of false starts and zigzags before settling on what works.
I’ve only listened to about 15 minutes of Joe Rogan, just to get a sense of why he’s so loved/hated. The variety of his guests and the sheer quantity of his material is impressive; there’s David Lee Roth, Penn Jillette, several scientists (e. g. Sean Carroll), and more. His style seems very casual. I think a lot of negativity comes from the current belief held by too many people that to say, or even appear to countenance, one “bad” thing is to negate the entire body of one’s work.
I find Tyler Cowen’s Marginal Revolution posts similar: a wild hodgepodge of stuff collected from all sorts of places and people, some brilliant, some trash. This morning, he posted a request for ideas from Malcolm Gladwell. I’m curious, Andrew, if you think that Cowen as well as Rogan are credulously believing everyone (e.g. Gladwell), or if they’re simply taking a “variety show” format and giving everyone a platform. (I.e. “creating media-friendly content.”)
Raghu:
I’m much more familiar with Cowen than with Rogen, and I’ve corresponded by email with Cowen but I don’t know him personally. Given that Cowen has access to the world’s top economists, sociologists, etc., I don’t really understand why he takes people like Malcolm Gladwell and David Brooks seriously. My guess is that Cowen respects that these people can communicate with large audiences. Relevant to our discussion here is this post from 2020 where I argue for the benefits of negativity and I disagree with Cowen’s advice to “avoid criticizing other public intellectuals.” I guess the point is that Cowen avoids negativity, saving it for topics where he has a strong personal or professional connection—for example he will criticize people who advocate economic policies that he disagrees with.
To step back a bit, I find Gladwell and Brooks annoying because they’re sloppy, they make mistakes, they’re gullible when it comes to claims that support their worldviews, and they rarely admit error, even though they could, and even though, in my opinion, if they were to admit error, it would make the rest of their work stronger. Cowen, I guess, just accepts that, with rare exceptions, popular communicators make big mistakes and don’t admit it, and he admires these communicators for what they do right, without caring about what they do wrong.
To take Cowen’s position on this, for me to get annoyed at Brooks for pushing false statistics or Gladwell for promoting junk science, would be like getting annoyed at Jacob deGrom for being a bad hitter . . . ummm, it looks like deGrom hit .364 last year so maybe that’s not the best example, but you get the picture. I think it’s completely reasonable for Cowen to focus on the value of Gladwell, Brooks, etc., and not worry about their flaws. I just can’t manage to do this myself.
Regarding the more general point of Rogan etc. having a “variety show” format . . . sure, I guess so. But, again, this doesn’t quite fit the image of Rogan being a curious skeptic. I don’t have any sense of what Rogan “really believes”: as a showbiz professional, he could have all sorts of people on his program and feed them softball interviews, without believing a word that they’re saying. Here I’m speaking of his public persona, which seems to be a mix of extreme skepticism and extreme credulity.
A few key points missing in discussions about the JRE podcast, including in this forum:
1) Conspiracy theories: A lot of the “conspiracy theories” Joe entertains on his podcast are literally him poking fun at them. Classic examples are of the ‘moon landing is a hoax’, and ‘Earth is flat’ variety are meant to be satires with guests like Eddie Bravo. Even his episodes that give a platform to more controversial guests have repeated disclaimers.
2) Content fact checking: What has given Joe a big boost in recent years is the realization amongst many (including myself) that what often passes for consensus and “serious” journalism is really gaslighting by the media and re-framing the truth to fit a narrative that is inaccurate, some recent examples (not even close to being an exhaustive list):
2.1) Wuhan lab leak hypothesis went from a deplorable idea promoted by the one who shall not be named, to an obvious top contender in the absence of any viable alternatives. Occam’ razor.
2.2) Russiagate fiasco is only one in a series of botched coordinated media campaigns that drive people to seek alternative sources of news. We don’t mention this in polite society, but it is stunning that no senior person at CNN or MSNBC has been fired since the collapse of the Steele dossier.
2.3) Knee jerk and inaccurate reporting of stories like the Covington kids, Jussie Smolliet etc. just reinforce this trend.
3) Business model: The development of the long-form podcast as a substitute for mainstream news completely blindsided the CNNs and MSNBCs of this world – it is stunning when you look at the numbers, his 3 hour interviews with Elon Musk have around 40 million viewers. CNN on its best day can barely manage a tenth of that. Its not surprising that the mainstream establishment media does not know what to do about it. They’re like Blockbuster facing off Netflix in 2006. Not surprising, their reaction has been a greater push towards censorship since they can’t compete on the basis of content or business models.
Eklavya:
Interesting points. Still doesn’t explain why Rogan will credulously promote bullshitters like Gladwell and the Why We Sleep guy, but I guess that’s a separate issue: as suggested by several commenters above, this is related to his business model which requires a continuing supply of content. To continue with your Netflix analogy, Rogan is not just supplying content, he’s also promoting it, and it’s awkward to be in the position of giving anything less than 5 stars to your own content.
Again, if you think of Rogan as a talk show host, that all makes sense. Nobody was expecting Johnny Carson to ask tough questions of the celebrities who sat on his couch (with rare exceptions). The complicating factor is Rogan’s image as a skeptic. To put it another way, the appeal of Carson was that you could feel like you were sitting in your living room having a friendly conversation with some fascinating celebrities (and the occasional ditsy celebrity). Similarly, a large part of the appeal of Rogan is that you can feel like you’re in a conversation with some fun cool people like Elon Musk who you’d otherwise never get to meet. In that sense, yeah, Gladwell and the Why We Sleep guy are two more fun people to meet. But another part of the appeal of Rogan is that he’s an audience surrogate, someone who’s not afraid to question the experts and ask the questions you’re not supposed to be allowed to ask. That’s the part that is contradicted by his gullibility toward the Why We Sleep guy etc.
My point on all of this is not to slam Rogan, who has found a successful business model. All of us have contradictions, and all of us with public personas have contradictions in our public personas. It’s just interesting to explore these contradictions.
But on those rare, exceptional occasions, Carson could, even if ever so gently, shred a guest; just recall what he did to Uri Geller. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD7OgAdCObs
Gregory:
Indeed, Uri Geller was who I had in mind when I said “with rare exceptions”!
Some vaccine skepticism is warranted. I got the covid vaccine because I was convinced that it would reduce symptoms if I got the disease. But the evidence is very weak for the above arguments that the vaccines reduce disease transmission, and that they are good for small children.
A prominent vaccine expert, Robert W. Malone, was just blocked from Twitter. This makes me skeptical also. If the arguments for vaccines really so compelling, then there would be no need to censor the contrarians.
Roger:
Without addressing your first paragraph, let me just disagree with your second paragraph. Censorship happens for all sorts of reasons, good and bad, and not always related to the strength of underlying arguments. The fact that some government makes a political decision to censor some material, or the fact that some company makes a business decision not to publish some material, should not be taken as evidence that the argument on the opposite side is weak. Just for example, if a media platform will not allow posts advocating suicide, or posts advocating that people drive 100 mph on the public streets, or posts advocating mixing dangerous drugs, that does not mean that the arguments against these practices are not compelling, it could just mean that the media platform thinks that such posts could get people killed, or even more simply that they don’t want to be known as the sort of platform where people advocate these sorts of things.
Your deductive argument is valid, you are pointing out an instance of affirming the consequent. That is not what is going on here though.
Instead, look at it like Roger is populating the denominator of bayes theorem with different explanations. The numerator is that “vaccines reduce disease transmission, and that they are good for small children.”
Due to what Roger is observing (more cases than ever, increasing censorship of people who say otherwise), the value of the numerator is decreasing while other explanations in the denominator are increasing.
That is what “this makes me skeptical” refers to.
Anon:
I was arguing against this statement by Roger: “If the arguments for vaccines really so compelling, then there would be no need to censor the contrarians.”
Yes, I get that it appears to have the form a deductive argument. But that isn’t usually what is really going on when people use an argument of that form. So you will be talking at cross purposes.
If Roger wants to correct me, that would be great.
Anon, you say “(more cases than ever, increasing censorship of people who say otherwise)”, I think this is false. Everyone knows there are more cases than ever. It’s front-page news! The New York Times’s COVID entry page has a time series plot https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html and nobody is trying to get them to take it down. Biden just gave a press conference in which he talked about the exploding number of cases.
If someone’s skepticism is based on the “fact” that some unspecified “they” is trying to censor people saying the number of cases is through the roof, that person is seriously misinformed…and you are helping to misinform them.
The censorship referred to people who question the numerator:
>…who question the numerator:
>> The numerator is that “vaccines reduce disease transmission, and that they are good for small children.”
Notice no distinction between outright misinformation, and discussing the efficacy of vaccines for reducing transmission or discussing their risk profile for children.
I’ve heard and read dozens of sources where those discussions take place.
This Week in Virology discusses those questions all the time.
The lack of distinguishing between discussing those issues (I. e., asking questions about them), and what gets labeled as misinformation about them, requires elaboration.
Otherwise, one might get the impression that you (1) don’t get that there’s a distinction even though it’s obvious or, (2) are deliberately ignoring the distinction.
TWiV is a good show and I enjoy listening to them. However, when it comes to stats which is needed for interpreting the effect size, they are probably way below the sleep guy.
I have heard them many times say: “Oh, look at those p values” without referencing what the actual descriptive stats say about the effect. Not to mention incorrectly interpreting conf. intervals, etc.
Navigator –
Sure. I’m not referencing them as authoritative, but as an example to show how bogus is the claim of “censorship” of anyone discussing the efficacy of the vaccines (as compared to Twitter booting people for promoting what they consider to be dangerous misinformation.)
I’ll let you stats folks argue about the legitimacy or p-values, but im not inclined to take Racaniello lightly – the reason being he’s the first person I heard cautioning against just looking at epidemiological evidence to evaluate variants (e.g., their virulence), and talking about the need to supplement that evidence with physical/biological evidence. I thought that was a really smart take, and one that proved to be substantiated as time went on.
Anon,
That’s a rather odd way to interpret “more cases than ever, increasing censorship of people who say otherwise”, but you know what you meant so I’ll chalk this up to a poor choice of wording.
But as for the claim that there is “increasing censorship” of people who say vaccines don’t reduce vaccine transmission, I don’t think that’s true either. Here https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/19/health/omicron-vaccines-efficacy.html is a New York Times article whose first sentence is “A growing body of preliminary research suggests the Covid vaccines used in most of the world offer almost no defense against becoming infected by the highly contagious Omicron variant.” A moment’s searching with your favorite search engine will find many similar stories. Nobody is censoring people who say vaccines don’t reduce transmission of omicron.
(For what it’s worth, if we had a way to know for sure I would offer substantial odds that vaccines -do- reduce transmission. I don’t see how the effect could be 0.00000000000 and I think reduced transmission is far, far, far more likely than increased transmission. I’d bet on a reduction, although I would not bet on a reduction that is big enough to be of practical significance. But this is very much a digression. Main point is that many people are saying vaccines probably do not reduce transmission and I see no effort to censor them).
Phil –
FWIW (this is from a couple of weeks ago and this pandemic is a very fast moving target)… but..
Regarding this:
> I think reduced transmission is far, far, far more likely than increased transmission
You might want to read this:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/12/is-omicron-a-new-wave-or-a-parallel-pandemic.html
Of course, that’s just one more example of what Anoneuoid will ignore with his selective logix about faux and self-victimizing entitlement about “censorship.”
Sorry – meant to provide this quote:
I think there’s reason to rethink the logic there based on evidence that’s surfaced over the last couple of weeks… And I always take Wallace Wells with a grain of salt… but still, at least as part of the theoretical discussion.
Well I was interpreting Roger’s post, now you appear to be making an attempt to decifer mine outside that context. That is causing you some confusion.
It is a few levels deep of interpretation at this point so forget it.
But it is a decent example of why some posters in this thread have trouble with characters like Joe Rogan.
Joshua,
Suppose vaccinated people are susceptible to infection with Omicron but not with Delta or other variants, whereas unvaccinated people are susceptible to all of them. In this case 100% of cases among vaccinated people would be Omicron — even if vaccination does provide some protection against it — whereas only some of the cases among the unvaccinated would be Omicron.
The “supposes” in the paragraph above are not literally true: vaccinated people can get infected with variants other than Omicron. But the phenomenon certainly occurs: vaccination is much much less effective at preventing infection with Omicron than with other variants, so the percentage of vaccinated people with Omicron is going to be higher than in the unvaccinated population.
That’s all explained in the article but unfortunately not all that clearly in my opinion.
Phil –
I agree the article wasn’t that clear – but I found it interesting nonetheless, including the speculation about why there seemed to be a higher proportion of vaccinated among omicron cases. I think there could be a number of reasons for that other than the possibility that vaccination somehow makes someone more susceptible to infection.
But anyway, from what I’ve seen, from more recent numbers, there’s reason to argue that omicron is replacing delta – so perhaps a very basic premise underlying the speculation in the article is flawed.
Phil –
> whereas only some of the cases among the unvaccinated would be Omicron.
That, of course, is a bit orthogonal to the quote –
(or a non-sequitur) – as the quote referenced “population as a whole” and not “the unvaccinated.
Joshua,
I may be missing something, or maybe we are talking past each other.
Most of the population is vaccinated. Vaccines provide little protection against omicron infection. So it’s no surprise that the majority of Omicron cases are vaccinated. One could imagine how it could be different — maybe vaccinated people could be a lot more careful, in which case even though the vaccines don’t give protection we could see lower infection rates among the vaccinated. But the default assumption is surely that, since most of the population is vaccinated, most of the Omicron infections will be in the vaccinated population.
The other thing in the article was that the proportion of Omicron cases in the vaccinated was higher than in the general population. Since the general population consists of the union of the vaccinated population with the unvaccinated population, saying the the proportion of Omicron cases is higher in the vaccinated population than in the general population is equivalent to saying the proportion is higher in the vaccinated population than in the unvaccinated population.
So I’m not sure what you’re saying is orthogonal to what. I think both of these phenomena have simple, obvious explanations…which doesn’t mean there isn’t also something else going on, of course, quite possibly there is. But just the facts that (1) most Omicron cases are vaccinated, and (2) that Omicron is a higher percentage of vaccinated cases than unvaccinated cases, -could- be explained by the vaccines offering some protection against other strains but little against Omicron.
Phil
I’m not sure I follow your reasoning about the relative prevalence of Omicron in the vaccinated vs unvaccinated population. The article cites 2 sources – one is on Twitter and I ignore that immediately. The other is from the UK and that report states:
“Vaccination status: those who have received three doses of a vaccine and test positive for COVID-19 are more likely to be infected with infections compatible with the Omicron variant compared with those who are unvaccinated, though individuals who had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine continued to be less likely to test positive for COVID-19, regardless of variant. It is too early to draw conclusions from our data on the effectiveness of vaccines against the Omicron variant.”
Aside from the probable lack of statistical significance, the statement is about the likelihood of testing positive – to me, this is not the same as the likelihood of getting COVID (unless tests are universal). I looked at their data report, but it does not appear to provide Omicron data separate from all COVID positive results, so I was unable to investigate further. But I’m not seeing how that report can tell us anything about prevalence of Omicron in the populations given that it is only about those that have been tested. It seems plausible to me that the unvaccinated may be tested at a lower rate than the vaccinated (although the reverse is certainly possible).
Phil –
Caveat- I thought the article was a bit unclear.
I haven’t gone back over it with a fine-tooth comb, but as I read it, the impression I got was that the logic was that prevalence of omicron infection was higher among the vaccinated than among the population on the whole, and that the significance of that was uncertain. But included in the uncertainty was that it could be that there’s a casual linkage between vaccination and omicron infection. And that they were looking to get more information to evaluate the evidence to determine whether that might be the explanation or whether it’s simply as you say.
Let’s say it WERE true that vaccination caused a higher likelihood of infection (from omicron). I get that seems unlikely. But let’s say it were true. If it were true, then you would see a higher prevalence of infection from omicron ing among the vaccinated than among the public in the whole.
More, specific data are needed to gain a better understanding.
I’m not saying that I think vaccination increases the prevalence of infection (from omicron) – rather than just increases prevalence of infection from omicron relative to delta – only that the data from two weeks ago allowed for that possibility.
Elsewhere in this thread, I mentioned that personally, I think trying to reverse engineer all this stuff from epidemiological data (only) is highly problematic. When I heard Vincent Rancanielo talking about how more specific virological information was needed to draw solid conclusions (he said this way back when with the first variant of concern), that made a whole lot of sense to me.
I would say that before trying to determine anything definitive about these sorts of questions, high quality biokinetic (is that the correct term?) data should be a prerequisite.
I should add to this…to help reduce ambiguity.
Let’s say it WERE true that vaccination caused a higher likelihood of infection (from omicron, in an absolute sense, not in a sense relative to infection from delta)…</i
IOW, that vaccination, biologically, actually made someone more susceptible to infection from omicron (but not from delta).
I’m with Phil, it’s obvious that most vaccinated and infected people will be infected with Omicron because they are protected against all other variants widely circulating. So p(omicron | infected, vaccinated) ~ 1 whereas p(omicron | infected, unvaccinated) was less than 1, though growing as omicron becomes dominant.
This is explained by vaccine effectiveness against initial infection by Delta being high. maybe 80% but effectiveness against infection by Omicron being low maybe 30%
There is nothing further needed to explain the fact that omicron dominates the vaccinated + infected group.
> There is nothing further needed to explain the fact that omicron dominates the vaccinated + infected group.
Just to be clear – I’m certainly not arguing that a casual connection is a likely explanation- even more so without a plausible causal mechanism described – merely that w/o more data I don’t understand how it can be ruled out.
> I’m with Phil, it’s obvious that most vaccinated and infected people will be infected with Omicron because they are protected against all other variants widely circulating. […] There is nothing further needed to explain the fact that omicron dominates the vaccinated + infected group.
Daniel, that’s not the question. The quote brought up by Joshua says:
> a larger share of Omicron cases are vaccinated than the share of vaccinated people in the population as a whole.
It’s about p(vaccinated|omicron) and p(vaccinated). It’s about p(omicron|vaccinated) and p(omicron|unvaccinated). It’s about why would we see higher prevalence of infection from omicron among the vaccinated (if that’s actually happening, I don’t know).
You can’t get there from p(omicron | infected, vaccinated) being larger than p(omicron | infected, unvaccinated).
I think a lot of this discussion is attributable to the fact that the source material is unclear or ambiguous.
Dale, you quote “Vaccination status: those who have received three doses of a vaccine and test positive for COVID-19 are more likely to be infected with infections compatible with the Omicron variant compared with those who are unvaccinated, though individuals who had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine continued to be less likely to test positive for COVID-19, regardless of variant.”
This actually seems less ambiguous than most of the other material, but still not perfectly clear. Taking that last bit, they are saying
p(positive | vaccinated) is less than p(positive | unvaccinated) “regardless of variant”, but what does “regardless of variant” mean? Does it mean “for every variant”, e.g.
p(positive for Delta | vaccinated) is less than p(positive for Delta | unvaccinated) and so on for every variant? Or does it just refer to the overall infection probabilities? I assume the latter but I’m not sure.
At any rate though, the first part of the statement is clear enough:
“Vaccination status: those who have received three doses of a vaccine AND TEST POSITIVE for COVID-19 are more likely to be infected with infections compatible with the Omicron variant…”
So that tells us nothing about the probability of testing positive for Omicron if you are vaccinated; they are conditioning on testing positive.
I think Daniel has clearly laid out what I think is the most likely explanation for what I _think_ are the facts that are being presented to us. But it’s possible that I am misinterpreting them, I agree.
If someone does want to compare infection susceptibility in the vaccinated vs unvaccinated populations, they have a very hard task unless they are willing to do challenge trials: you don’t know how much each group is exposed to each variant, nor how many have been previously infected by which variant. You can make some strong assumptions, like assuming vaccinated and unvaccinated people are exposed to all variants at equal rates, but obviously those will be wrong and it’s just a question of how much.
At any rate, I agree with Joshua that it’s possible in principle that if you get a vaccine you’re more susceptible to Omicron than if you didn’t get one. I just don’t think that’s likely, nor is such a phenomenon needed in order to explain the facts as I understand them.
There is still a problem with the prob(positive|vaccination status), regardless of whether we are talking about Omicron or COVID overall. That conditional probability is also conditioned on being tested and I see no reason to assume that the rates of testing are the same for the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups (though I can think of reasons in both directions). So, the conditional probabilities don’t tell us anything about relative susceptibility to Omicron without making additional assumptions (that seem to require evidence not provided).
Dale,
I think we are in agreement. From the available data we are unable to say whether vaccinated people are more susceptible to Omicron than unvaccinated people. I would be very surprised if the answer is “yes” but we can’t tell from the available information.
What we do know is that if a vaccinated person tests positive for covid, it is much more likely to be Omicron than if an unvaccinated person tests positive for covid. To me, the most parsimonious explanation is that vaccines are less protective against Omicron infection than against other strains. But just because that’s a simple and reasonable explanation does not guarantee it’s the correct one or that there’s nothing else going on.
Maybe it isn’t omicron, but eventually there will be multiple strains where immunity towards one makes you more susceptible to the others.
This is pretty much guaranteed at this point.
Anon, what’s the mechanism for that?
Anoneuoid –
> This is pretty much guaranteed at this point
Would you call that a “near certainty?”
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2021/09/16/wanna-bet-a-covid-19-example/
@Phil
It is just natural selection. As a simple example, strain A has a positive charge at some location while strain B has negative. So strong antibodies towards one will be weak towards the other.
In fact it is probably better to think of selection acting on swarms of viral variants rather than individual strains.
You can read more about this here:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/11/211118203436.htm
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC7573563/
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.10.241414v1.full
Anoneuoid –
> It is just natural selection. As a simple example, strain A has a positive charge at some location while strain B has negative. So strong antibodies towards one will be weak towards the other.
Seems a to me that might be an explanation for why immunity from one variant wouldn’t provide immunity for another, but not for what you asserted.
Could you give a brief explanation of the mechanism by which immunity to strain A would make one more susceptible to infection from strain B (than they would be without immunity from strain A) ?
Could you explain why that is almost a certainty?
Hand-waving to articles about dengue fever and ADE and “evolution” wouldn’t seem to me to suffice as an explanation for your assertion.
And of course, if you’re saying this almost certainty is in any way associated with vaccine-induced immunity as compared to infection-induced immunity, an explanation there would also be appreciated.
Or maybe you’re not saying that and just brought up this issue here despite no connection to vaccination even though this conversation was related to vaccine-induced immunity?
Anon,
Of course antibodies that develop in response to COVID Strain A will be less effective against some other strains, such as strain B. But you’re claiming they will be less effective than no COVID antibodies at all! I could stretch to imagine that it is theoretically possible that that could happen, but…well, let me put it this way, all you’ve got is a vague hand-waving argument and yet you’re saying this is almost inevitable. I’m not buying.
You asked for the mechanism…
It is something that happens all the time, weak (non-neutralizing) antibodies enhance infection. Dengue is just the prototypical instance, it has also been reported many times for coronaviruses. From the second link:
There are also dozens of other in vitro results showing ADE of sars-2 under various circumstances. You can search “covid ADE” on pubmed or look at the early papers when they still reported the individual dilution curves. Here is a recent one:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC8704563/
Anon,
Yes, I see that there are diseases that have this behavior: antibodies for one of them can enhance infection by another. But you didn’t just say this can happen, and does sometimes happen, you said it’s “almost inevitable” with this specific virus.
OK, whatever. Thank you for those links, they’re quite interesting.
Anoneuoid –
All the references to ADE that I’ve seen discuss the potential of increased severity (i.e., enhancing replication in people already infected), mostly under specific circumstances and contexts (not as a general phenomenon), and none that document ADE with COVID – despite billions of vaccinations and infections world wide.
Given that you must be exhausted by all this handwaving by now, perhaps you could provide a link for what you’re asserting as a certainty, or just describe the mechanism that you’re saying is a certainty.
If you just continue with vague reference to something that actually isn’t what you’ve described, it suggests that you’re out over your skis.
Meanwhile…
While despite my requests, Anoneuoid has yet to provide links to support the assertion he hand waves towards
– that infection with one variant increases susceptibility to infection of another variant compared to baseline – evidence is suggesting that infection with omicron provides immunity to other variants (despite that it’s development likely took a significantly different pathway than delta and other variants of the original strain.
Another article by Wallace-Wells, touching on many of the same questions.
https://nymag.com/author/david-wallace-wells
Joshua,
Anon never said exposure to any _current_ variant makes you more susceptible to any other current variant. He said such a phenomenon is almost inevitable at some point.
I don’t believe the “almost inevitable” part — at all — but let’s not put words into his mouth.
It is really just natural selection. Why wouldn’t it happen, if it would be a selective advantage? I can’t think of any reason.
We already have two lineages (delta, omicron) that differ by ~3% in sequence and ~25% in t-cell epitopes, after only one year.
We have a substantial monoculture of people who have imprinted the original wuhan sequence onto their immune system multiple times.
We have that ADE is regularly observed for coronaviruses, including SARS-2.
Also, is delta even dropping due to omicron or is it only a smaller proportion of cases?
Phil –
> but let’s not put words into his mouth.
I don’t see I’m putting words into his mouth.
But let me try again to get my point across.
Anoneuoid said:
eventually there will be multiple strains where immunity towards one makes you more susceptible to the others.
This is pretty much guaranteed at this point.
Let’s look past the “pretty much guaranteed” part.
So he said “multiple strains” where immunity towards one (presumably from vaccination, but perhaps even from infection?) makes you more susceptible (presumably to infection?) to “the others” (as in more than one other variant…in fact, ALL the other variants?).
From what I’ve seen about ADE, it’s a concern about enhanced pathogenicity caused by infection or vaccination. As far as I can tell it’s a concern w/r/t individuals or particular contexts, not some kind of generalized phenomenon, and w/r/t enhanced severity with someone already infected, and not susceptibility across one strain to the next, or even more so from one strain to “the other.”
None of what I’ve seen, thus, seems consistent with what Anoneouid described. Sure, maybe I haven’t interpreted him correctly. Or maybe I interpreted him correctly and there ARE references that support that description. I am certainly prone to not understanding the technicalities here.
I’m certainly open to either, and would be more than happy to have either you or Anoneuoid explain that what he has described is different than what I interpreted (and the references support the claim thatimmunity towards one makes you more susceptible to the others., or that there are references to indeed, support what it was I that interpreted.
> Also, is delta even dropping due to omicron or is it only a smaller proportion of cases?
Of course, that is a false choice.
Anyway, there are data (say, from the UK) showing that delta is decreasing relative to Omicron AND in absolute terms. Of course, there is probably so some degree an open question as to whether delta may increase again in absolute numbers once omicron starts decreasing.
Are the censors of suicide posts simply too lazy to present compelling arguments against suicide?
If my brother, who committed suicide at 49, had been able to discuss openly his thoughts without being censored or forcibly restrained, would that have at least given us a chance to present compelling reasons why he shouldn’t do it?
Rsm:
I was referring to posts “advocating” suicide, that is promoting it to others. I wasn’t talking about posts where people express their own suicidal thoughts, nor about people sending messages to their families. In any case, I’m no expert on this, and I’m not advocating any particular policies here; I was just saying that the fact that a company has content restrictions should not be taking as evidence that there’s some sort of compelling argument being suppressed on the other side.
The idea that Malone was “censored” after appearing on a massively popular podcast, where undoubtedly might appear at any time again (among with the other massively popular media outlets where he appears regularly) is pretty funny and a great window into the phenomena of self-victimization and entitlement among people who enjoy massive privilege and power to communicate relative to most of the people in this country, certainly the majority of pwolw in the world, and undoubtedly among the vast majority of people who have ever lived.
“Censorship” doesn’t apply when a private sector entity exercises control over its terms of service agreement, based on its view of how best to serve its customer base.
Andrew can certainly reply as if “censorship” applies here if he wishes to do so, but imo entertaining the notion that “censorship” applies here only serves to trivialize the problem of real limits of “freedom of speech” in those places n the world where it actually occurs.
Roger –
> A prominent vaccine expert, Robert W. Malone, was just blocked from Twitter. This makes me skeptical also
I suspect this is a lot like the situation with climate change, where some people say that “climategate” increased their “skepticism” about the effects of ACO2 emissions on the climate and others say that “climategate” increased their belief that AGW is occurring and a serious risk.
When you compare those groups, what you see is an overwhelming ideological signal, with rightwingers and libertarians stating one reaction and leftwingers and moderates going in the other direction (I’ll let you guess who goes in which direction). And there is a “dose-effect” with those who tend to lean towards the edges of the political spectrum more solidly aligned in the one direction as opposed to the other.
Iow, while you may well be an outlier, the vast majority of people who are pushed into “skepticism” by Twitter removing what Twitter considers as a source of dangerous misinformation are likely essentially justifying an existing belief by filtering information so as to confirm a bias. Of course that mechanism would work similarly in the other direction as well – where people would see Malone’a removal as further evidence that he’s a purveyor of dangerous misinformation.
Joshua —
It’s meaningful to me that you picked the example of Climategate. I want to preface this comment by admitting that I am far leftist. I’m way beyond signaling: I’m actively engaged in political organizing and have been a long-time card-carrying member (or would be, if we had cards) of a leftist direct action organization.
I was also a very active editor of Wikipedia *until* I happened upon the Climategate pages and accidentally became embroiled in the edit-wars engaged in by “pro-Climate Change” editors. I expect your hackles will be raised by the term “pro-Climate Change”; there is no better term for it. Any credible indication of even slight dissent from the “scientific consensus” (whatever that means), and any hint of wrong-doing by the team at University of East Anglia, no matter how slight and no matter how well-cited, was systematically removed from the website using ridiculous bureaucratic tactics, or was minimized to an extent that was dishonest. The main page is no longer even called “Climategate” because this group of editors felt that it was too negative. I stopped actively editing on Wikipedia out of frustration and disgust, and have learned to go straight to the “Talk” page for articles containing remotely intellectually controversial material.
Your frantic comments on this comment thread remind me so much of these Climategate editors who were so much more interested in positioning than truth. The fact that my beliefs about the events related to Climategate ipso facto place me, **to people like you**, at a particular location on the political spectrum is incredibly troubling to me and, to me, takes away so much of your credibility in these contexts.
Peter –
> The fact that my beliefs about the events related to Climategate ipso facto place me, **to people like you**, at a particular location on the political spectrum is incredibly troubling to me
I made no assumptions about where you would fit on the spectrum re your ideology or your views on climate gate, and never made any reference to where it might be. In fact, I explicitly said “while you may very well be an outlier.”
I would suggest that you reserve being “troubled” to things that are more than merely an invention of your imagination.
It’s not meaningful to try to extrapolate from one individual, and as such you aren’t a particularly useful example regardless of your political orientation.
I was referring to the general pattern. “Climategate” changed few opinions on a societal scale, but if you spend time in the skept-o-sphere you will find no shortage of “skeptics” who will explain that “climategate.” caused them to doubt the evidence for AGW. And among the group who say that it did, you will find an overwhelming political and ideological signal. That you might be an outlier is not particularly meaningful. One mistake that I often see people making in blog comments is that they think they can extrapolate from themselves to identify societal patterns. That’s a fundamentally flawed line of thinking, even if it is a ubiquitous (and understandable) one.
In the same manner – your feelings about the editing at Wikipedia arent particularly instructive.
I am quite sure that you will see a very similar signal among those who say that their skepticism about vaccines was strengthened or reinforced by Twitter removing people they’ve identified as misinformers, such as Malone. That you might be an outlier in that regard, by virtue of YOUR political orientation, is likewise irrelevant to the larger patten I was speaking of.
The larger political signal in views on vaccines is unmistakable. If your own fit within that constellation is atypical, that doesn’t change the larger pattern.
Joshua–
I’m offering myself as an example of someone who (perhaps like Joe Rogan) began to doubt the “scientific consensus” due to the frantic and (weakly veiled) politically motivated behavior of people such as yourself. Of course, you’re not obligated to learn from experiences.
Peter –
Thanks. As long as you understand that you as an example isn’t instructive of much, then that seems fine.
As I’ve said, however, I’ve often seen where people offer those examples as if they’re generalizable in some sense – when no meaningful evidence regarding their generalizability exists. And what’s worse, as you did above, when informed that their testimonial isn’t generalizable, often people react as if they’re being lumped into some category when that hasn’t happened.
Peter –
At. Any rate, I’m glad to read that unlike myself, you (and nondibbt Joe Rogan) are above political motivations.
Perhaps you might consider the logic whereby those who you agee with ideologically are in a special group that differentially isn’t affected by political motivations.
> how do you decide what authorities you do trust?
What is the evidence that most people “decide”? Isn’t it more likely that the oodles of neurons in the person’s brain percolate up a belief? Of course, if you ask the person, then the conscious part of the brain will manufacture a reason for the belief. But, why believe that the brain knows why it believes something? And so, why believe the beliefs come from applying principles to data? Of course, they do for a few of us. But, I haven’t found many people like that.
You are trying too hard.
It’s is all about “owning the libs”. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s entertainment for the far right. Material is selected for the degree to which it irritates pointy-headed Columbia professors.
There’s no need for complicated theories, it’s simple, and Occam works just fine here.
David:
I don’t buy that reasoning. In what sense is it “owning the libs” to promote the Why We Sleep guy? Consider Matthew Walker’s argument that people around the world need more sleep. To the extent this has a political message, I’d say that “get more sleep” has more of a liberal than a conservative tinge. I think that a better explanation Rogan’s credulity regarding Walker, etc., is that (a) Rogan needs tons of content, and it’s a lot easier to book guests on your show if you’re gonna go easy on them, and (b) bullshitters like Walker tend to be more entertaining, compared to the sorts of experts who constrain themselves to the truth.
Andrew, I think part of the problem with Rogan for the commentariat is that he does not fit the neat Platonic polarized political categories that are popular these days. Calling a guy who publicly supports Bernie (and has him on for 3+ hour podcasts) a Right-winger after to “own the libs” is absurd.
This goes back to your earlier (imo great) point about the contradictions of Rogan. Ironically, I think these contradictions make him more trustworthy than someone who sticks to the party (either of the 2) line.
+1
Rogan argues that Nancy Pelosi may very well be killing people so she can continue her schemes of personal enrichment. He argues that widespread voter fraud in the past presidential election is plausible. He frequently argues about how Soros is funding all manner of nefarious activity, including vast judicial efforts to ignore criminality
He argues that there’s a vast difference in the nexus between the media and politicians on the left versus the right (I’ll let you guess where he sees the vast imbalance). He argues that not only was there a “deep state” conspiracy to get Trump, there was also absolutely no evidence of questionable activity vis a via the Trump campaign and Russia or the Ukraine, and that there was absolutely no valid basis for impeaching Trump on either occasion.
One doesn’t have to agree with the Democrats on these issues, or even believe that there was zero overreach in the media or among Democrats on these issues to recognize that those are right wing viewpoints. That doesn’t mean that Rogan doesn’t have a right to his views, just that it’s silly to argue as if none of those views exist, just because he says that he might vote for Bernie.
Andrew:
I don’t understand the myopic focus on Matthew Walker here. Rogan is far from the only venue to credulously platform the guy; do you also refuse years later to read the NYTs, watch CNN and TED talks, listen to NPR, etc. for this single sin? If anything, MW was presented as “the expert” by numerous mainstream media platforms and as a non-specialist JR probably thought he was following the expert consensus hosting this guy.
D:
Yeah, I also get irritated at NPR, NYT, and Ted for not correcting their errors. This comes up all the time on this blog, my annoyance at the news media for pushing the science-as-hero narrative and rarely acknowledging any errors. I don’t “refuse to read” or listen to media outlets that promulgate errors, but I still think it’s a big problem. Read this blog long enough and you’ll find lots and lots of pokes at these media outlets.
And, yes, Walker has been promoted as an expert by places like Ted and NPR, and that’s too bad. I’d just hope that Rogan, with his skepticism, could do better than that!
I guess I don’t follow the through-line of the criticism then. If at the time, Walker was supposedly the expert then on vaccines Rogan’s too “distrustful of authority” … but on sleep he’s overly credulous to experts?
D:
Yeah, what I’m saying is that Rogan has an image of being a skeptic, but that skepticism shows up as extreme credulity, whether of conspiracy theories or of Ted-talk bullshitters. That’s the point of the Chesterton quote, as discussed by some of the commenters earlier in this thread. The point here is not to slam Rogan for having some fakers on his show—as some commenters have said, he gets lots of his guests on his show, and some of them will be bullshitters, it’s hard to avoid it. Rogan’s doing just fine with his business model so I guess he doesn’t really have to change it unless he wants to. In my post, I’m using Rogan as an example of the general problem of balancing openness, skepticism, and credulity. One challenge for the Rogans of the world is that bullshitters like Gladwell and Walker have pretty well tailored their act to fake out casual interviewers. As I wrote earlier, I think it would be really cool for Rogan to invite critics of Gladwell and Walker on to his show, but I’m guessing that wouldn’t be so great for business, as it’s not quite what the audience wants to hear. It’s hard for a sobersided critic to be as entertaining a guest as a purported expert who feels free to just make things up. And that’s probably true for those conspiracy theories too. A good conspiracy theory can be entertaining and it can fire up your audience. It doesn’t really matter if it’s true.
Thanks for explaining.
I don’t disagree with most of what you’ve said here. As a casual listener of Rogan I can tell you there are certainly even more salient examples of lacking skepticism: for ex. Bob Lazar.
At the same time, I’m guessing you wouldn’t want endless skepticism of (say) Forrest Gallante’s stories about conservation and habitat loss. And you probably disapprove of Rogan’s pointed criticism of Sanjay Gupta’s vaccine promotion. So as you say, it’s a tough balance and one’s prior on the ground truth — is Gupta right or is Malone — inherently shades how much skepticism/credulity one thinks appropriate.
> It just makes me wonder. If you’re a comedian / podcaster / media figure and you’re distrustful of authority, distrustful of authority, distrustful of authority, then how do you decide what authorities you do trust? You don’t believe the Warren Commission which had all that public documentation, but you do trust some bozo with a Ted talk who makes stuff up about sleep . . . because the bozo is a University of California professor? That can’t be it, right? You wouldn’t trust every University of California professor.
I’d suggest that these people are essentially drama-led. You don’t believe the warren commission because it’s boring, it won’t drive clicks or engagement, but Walker can spin a good story that flatters Rogan’s sensibilities as a holder of secret knowledge. “Trust me and you get to be one of the Smart People who know the truth”.
Even in terms of the story about Trump’s collusion with Russia – well, it’s a really *boring* collusion, isn’t it? It’s all about the specific legalese about how much you can bend election campaigning law and the point at which turning a blind eye to bad actors on your side crosses the line. The idea of a vast judicial-media-democrat conspiracy to achieve something or other is much more dramatic and fun.
I’d suggest that people are led by the basic human nature dynamics of in-group vs. out-group, with all the good people on my side, all the bad ones on the other parties side.
Democracies depend on educated citizens who think for themselves, the conversion of our politics to sports-team like in-group/ out-group dynamics has been incredibly destructive. As a former Democrat turned independent, I hope better sense prevails soon.
Btw, here are some actual facts on the Russian collusion hoax, including links to court documents: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/aaugh-a-brief-list-of-official-russia
Self-styled independents exhibit some of the strongest in-group behaviours of them all.
The article you link to is an example. The author is hugely deceptive in key places – for example, his insinuation that the Russians didn’t hack the DNC, buried as point number 8. Taibbi fixates on the statement that there’s “no concrete evidence that data was exfiltrated from the DNC”, “never mind by whom”. But if you go to the actual transcript, the point is entirely different. Henry has a date the russians accessed the servers. Henry has evidence that the data was being collated, 70 gigs of it, being made ready for downloading on a specific date of April 22nd. Actual transfer from the server however is not something that can be logged. Similarly, the email server issue is a case where the Russians had direct access to the main server, and according to Henry, can read every email as it was being sent and received. Saying this adds up to a negative seems incredibly dubious. If you see me logging into your server, packing all your sensitive files into a big zip file, do I get to plead innocence just because you didn’t catch me in the act of transferring it to a thumbdrive?!
MR. CONAWAY: Okay. so you’re just aware of that one block that was ready to go, but you can’t tell whether it went or not. But as long as they’d been on there, they could have periodically come in and gotten data?
MR. HENRY: Yes.
MR. CONAWAY: Because we didn’t have any monitors on it, there wasn’t any evidence?
MR. HENRY: Yes
Taibbi even goes so far as to enlist Utah congressman Chris Stewart, who according to him “appeared dumbfounded”. This is absolute BS. Stewart is a republican. He’s not dumbfounded, he’s generating soundbites by adding leading questions that make it appear as if there’s some doubt.
So Taibbi is being hugely deceptive and the “independent” crowd eats it hook line and sinker because it flatters their viewpoint. Of course to contradict him on his blogpost, I’d have to pay him money. I don’t know if you can think of a firmer ingroup bias than that.
“Actual facts”, eh
I have read the transcript you’re referring to. If only courts worked on speculations, hearsay, patterns and indicators…you need evidence. Otherwise we are in Da Vinci Code territory seeking patterns in cherry-picked quotes and data.
Core issue is that there was no collusion, since you might prefer NPR over Taibbi, here’ their link:
https://www.npr.org/2019/03/24/706318191/trump-white-house-hasnt-seen-or-been-briefed-on-mueller-investigation-report
Imho the big issue is that this farce (amongst many others) has eroded public trust in major institutions and the establishment, and that is the result of a broader trend of pushing narratives that have no bearing on reality. That’ what makes the Rogan’ of the world popular.
Patterns are evidence. When Henry says there’s no “concrete evidence exfiltration took place”, he’s using a very narrow definition. As the transcript says, DNA evidence would also count as “circumstantial evidence”. The evidence he has is not weak.
The other article you link is a report on a memo written by William Barr. Do you really think *Barr* is any more credible than Taibbi?
Here’s an analysis by an independent lawyer of Mueller’s report: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f71Rasj_0JY
The short version is that Mueller ruled narrowly – he was not allowed to incriminate Trump, only exonerate them. Barr entirely misrepresented his findings.
Besides, by reference to “court”, aren’t you shifting the evidential basis? When we say that Trump colluded with the Russians, we are not actually in court, we do not need to prove things beyond all reasonable doubt. I mean, I sure aren’t asking you to prove Taibbi isn’t a dumbass beyond all reasonable doubt. It’s you who think Taibbi’s findings and Trump Appointee Barr’s findings have apparently proven the existence of “a vast judicial-media-democrat conspiracy”, based, it seems, wholly on speculation and patterns and “well they didn’t catch the Russians in the act, did they”?
Taibbi isn’t saying “I don’t think seeing a bunch of files being prepared for download is enough evidence”. He would be allowed to do that, even if it’s a very odd argument to make, and odd in addition that he would hide that this is what is at stake. He’s claiming that his quotes *disprove* that the Russians hacked the DNC, that it disproves that people can *reasonably believe that* without some Joe Biden related ulterior motive. That’s pretty wild!
We know that Taibi isn’t in any in- group because he says he isn’t in any in-group.
I’ll bet Eklavya says he isn’t in any in-group either. In fact, I’ll bet there’s a large group of people who agree with Eklavya and Taibi about this issue as well as who is and who isn’t in any in-groups, and agree that none of those people on that group are in any in-groups.
Of course, it might seem that being aligned in their views about who is and isn’t in any in-groups would put those people into an in-group.
But it’s probably just all a big coincidence.
Joshua:
Regarding in-groups etc, I think this post is relevant: There often seems to be an assumption that being in the elite and being an outsider are mutually exclusive qualities, but they’re not.
I actually watched Matthew Walker’s entire interview with Rogan, and to be fair to the guy I don’t think he really upped the drama. He made some strong claims that we now know are not empirically founded but he was very soft spoken and even pleasant to listen to. He kind of reminded me of Andrew Wakefield in that regard, at least based on a few early interviews I watched of Wakefield.
I think the reason he’s gotten away with it (not just with Rogan, but with mainstream media as well) is because his claims *aren’t* dramatic. I think most people, even those aware of his shoddy research (myself included), probably agree with his overall message that “sleep is good for you”. As opposed to Wakefield, who continuously insists that he “proved” a link between autism and MMR vaccines in 1996/1997. “Get more sleep” is such a politically harmless position that I doubt most people bother to look into it more.
That’s not to say that drama isn’t a part of the story for some of his guests. But I don’t think it fits with Walker.
A gem for the list of Rogan defenders in this thread…
This is well worth a listen. It gives a great example of how sophisticated Joe is when he goes about his business conducting “research” when he’s debunking “experts.”
https://streamable.com/xx8yr9
While I’m at it, after stumbling across that other clip I just came across this also….
The moon landing was a hoax, doncha know.
https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/yu7fb/joe_rogan_says_we_never_went_to_the_moon_explains/
Actually here is a better Rogan clip directly both to COVID and statistics:
https://twitter.com/FullContactMTWF/status/1481638689415462916
Statistics because as the guest rightly states it is not enough to just look at the incidence of something after the vaccine, you have to compare it with the incidence if you get COVID.
And since I don’t know where else to put it, there has been so much on here about COVID is just the flu. I have said several times here why we so seem to be so dismissive of what people dealing with COVID on the front line say – an interesting article in the Atlantic – https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/01/omicron-mild-hospital-strain-health-care-workers/621193/
I feel the concept of “pseudoskepticism” is missing from this discussion.
For me, pseudoskepticism is the attempt to occupy the moral high ground of skepticism while obscuring the fact that you’re shirking responsibility. Joe Rogan’s “just asking questions” stance when his budget allows him to hire a staff that can deliver answers (and his interviews are mostly predictable!) is irresponsible, considering his reach and influence.
Okay,
I just listened to clips of the Rogan podcasts with Robert Malone and Peter McCullough…
I would like any of the Rogan defenders in this thread to listen to those pods and come back to discuss if they still think that:
1) Rogan doesn’t have an agenda
2) Rogan asks good questions
3) Rogan isn’t foolishly gullible and credulous
4) Rogan isn’t peddling dangerous information to a mass audience.
I particular, please pay attention to his rhetoric about the “mass formation psychosis” where the theory is that public health officials and doctors are “hypnotizing” massive numbers of “cowards” who are too afraid or foolish to think for themselves and thus are being duped into getting vaccinated.
And please note, this isn’t merely a matter of good guy Joe being just giving a platform for this nonsense. He’s actively pushing it.
In particular, I’m hoping that Matty will read this and respond.
And no, I’m not kidding. Rogan had McCullough and Malone on for hours, each. Each of them promoted this theory. And not only did Rogan never push back (in an significant way) against this nonsense, he actually promoted it independently.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/96633
Malone’s response:
https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/mass-formation-deployed-on-you-after?r=ta0o1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Wow.