Certitude, part 2

In my previous posts I have thought aloud about two phenomena: the over-emphasis of single or few data points; and then in the latter post talking about how certain data points (to me) have a certain invalidating power over the explanations often given by the data points gave birth to conspiracy theories. 

At the heart of it is, and this is the amateur non-well-read thinker understanding, are two engines to the variance in our understandings of how things are, and the departure from a common truth. These engines are attribution and the desire for narrative. 

Attribution is the explanation or cause you assign to something, for example, I might attribute my car crash to others cars parked too close together blocking my view of oncoming traffic on a difficult corner, rather than my approach to difficult corners that might inevitably lead to a crash. The problem with attribution is that it is prone to our cognitive biases. When we already have a generalisation about a category of things, we notice when things prove it and ignore those that don't fit the generalisation, even if the contrary examples are more plentiful (i.e. confirmation bias).

The desire for a narrative is that a stories that these explanations weave together to make the world understandable. The crash might be part of my narrative of being unlucky in everything; or a world-against-me, "people should learn to park" narrative. 

Conspiracy theories are the latent super-narratives linking all sorts of smaller narratives together. For example, in our current pandemic there is:

• Bill Gates wants to depopulate the world and inject microchips in people.  
• The virus was man-made and funded by the US government in the lab in China. Dr Fauci knows everything but can't reveal his complicity. The Chinese deliberately released the virus.
• The virus is not as bad as people mention and only kills those "on death's door", or have co-morbidities and would die anyway. Normal people have sufficient natural immunity to resist it.
• Big Pharma are suppressing simple cures to this virus and has bought out government and public health officials. The medical professionals are all in on in and profiting from it, claiming money for each "covid" death.
• The vaccine is ineffective and more dangerous than they want you to know but they are committed to it and using it to create a system to restrict freedom of speech and movement from their enemies.
• ...

Some people believe in none, one, some or all of these narratives, and when a new event or data point comes along it could be fit into any one of these, even if it contradicts another that may be simultaneously held. When a fully vaccinated person dies with or of Covid, which is fully expected to happen, especially in the older age group, it fits the narrative of vaccination being ineffective. When a recently vaccinated person dies, as they may when 9-10 people die each day in a given year and most of the population is getting two jabs this year. 

(Coincidentally NZ's excess deaths for 2021 might be the best evidence for whether vaccinating the whole country with Pfizer has a disproportionate death rate than the disease, which I would already say is unlikely. In many countries, doubters could say that vaccination deaths are covered up in the Covid numbers, or that excess deaths in 2021 not reported officially as Covid deaths are vaccination-related. 2021, while not over yet, in NZ would be expected to have an almost insignificant number of actual Covid deaths and there would be room to analyse whether a year where between 50%-90% of the population being fully vaccinated without widespread community transmission to confound the figures.)

There can be a lot of contradictions between the narratives we believe. Often we have a narrative of ourselves and one for the world and the data points are attributed in different ways if something happens to oneself versus if it is seen in others. An example given would be something like "I was speeding because I had something urgent to do and it won't hurt anyone" while others "are speeding because they are young/female/Polynesian/on drugs/have toxic masculinity and they'll crash and kill someone". The contradiction between the narrative for own choices and life and the narrative you understand for the world and for others do not necessarily have to correspond. There are funny examples of American politicians trying to refute accusations of sexism by saying that they couldn't possibly be sexist when they have a daughter, wife and mother. There are those that say they have no racist or homophobic inclinations by saying "some of my best friends are (fill in the gap)". Again, that's a matter of attribution. Not many people have a narrative that they themselves are a bad person, so when critical things are said, there is an immediate attribution for the criticism: the speaker doesn't like me; the speaker does has questionable judgement, etc. Of course, there are people who take criticism well - and their narrative might be as a humble learner in life, or a "growth mindset" individual. 

Some people are motivated enough to go in front of a building in London where Bill Gates was having a meeting and chant: "Arrest Bill Gates". It is rather extraordinary the dehumanising power of narrative when it comes to someone who does fit the mould of a philanthropist. He has views on climate change and poverty and had devoted a lot of time and money to try and make the world a better place. He does believe the global population is high and, for humanity's sake, should be restrained in some way as he said in a famous 2010 TED talk. There is a much quoted line about 4 minutes in: "First, we've got population. The world today has 6.8 billion people. That's headed up to about nine billion. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by, perhaps, 10 or 15 percent," which those with a conspiratorial narrative read as a reduction of the current population. The quote usually does not include what he said immediately after: "But there, we see an increase of about 1.3." (1.3, indicating it would be x1.3 its current size, 30% growth overall.) The point being that he would propose growth not to be to 9 billion but perhaps 8.3 billion, not as the selective quoting suggests of reducing the current population by 10 or 15 percent by vaccines. Raising vaccinations as a way to arrest population growth, though not spelled out, is because there is a correlation between infant mortality and having more children per person. Reducing the infant deaths increases the investment results in fewer children, greater investment in the smaller number and smaller families.  

The irony is that the funny not-so-secret plot to depopulate the world by vaccinations would work if you want a virulent virus run rampant, rather than fund the production of vaccines to blunt it, which Gates did, or if even the vaccines are meant to be some secret death sterilising "death chemicals" to depopulate, you'd charitably fund them to get to more than 2% of Africa and a still low rate in India and other countries. You wouldn't want India to be vaccinating with its own vaccine using very different technology. Or China to be using its own technology and not the Bill Gates sterilising death chemical. And you wouldn't want the wealthy elite to be the main recipients of vaccines, with targeted disinformation discouraging minorities and the poor from getting vaccinated. 

There is so much dissonance in this yet so much certitude in the narrative that force-fits the data point pieces as data points with questionable attribution. We are generally blind to our own cognitive biases, but narratives are easier to elicit. Ask anyone: "Why are successful/unsuccessful?" "Why are you healthy/unhealthy?" for one's own narratives. Generally, people will resolve this to their own attributes and habits and not the circumstances and environmental variables. Also ask them: "Why is the country going well/going to hell?" "Why is there so much conflict in the world/the world becoming more peaceful?" and you'll maybe get a narrative about the corruption of the elite; capitalism; the stimulation of technology; globalism; etc. but the world and the country are infinitely complicated systems. In many narratives there is some explanatory power over the cases and the data points, but nothing can really wrap things up in an explanation.