“Joe Rogan is dangerous. He’s not a scientist. He’s not qualified to choose the appropriate guests to discuss science.“
Either you haven’t watched Rogan, or you forgot to tell him how dangerous he was when he interviewed these guests, some appearing 2, 3, 4 times:
Steven Pinker, Sean Carroll, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Greene, Nicholas Christakis, Edward Snowden, Debra Soh, Michael Shermer, Brian Cox, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Sir Roger Penrose, Lawrence Krauss, Carl Hart, Jonathan Haidt.
Detractors are annoyed that a guy that isn’t trained to evaluate science isn’t discriminating enough to always pick only those scientists THEY approve of.
They are very much like the religious: “You should listen to scholars, … wait, no, not not those scholars but these scholars.” Which always begs the question: what are YOUR qualifications for judging scholars? To which: “I don’t evaluate the scholars personally, I rely on mainstream scholars.” Which are? And why are they? How do you know?
Tell me you can see the problem here, that we all have, regarding fields in which we are not experts. You think MSM are experts? You think a cardiologists trumps another cardiologist, or a vaccinologist, or an immunologist.
While celebrating the rate with which vaccines have been produce through cooperation, we’re only two years in, and you think the science is done, there’ll be no surprises?
Let me remind you of what we’ve been told, and what we do, ragarding masks, here in the UK:
- Masks won’t help. This was based on two details: One, the mistaken belief that airborn infection wasn’t the risk it was – there were some ‘non-mainstream’ scientists saying it was from the start, so was this misinformation? Two, the intentional misinformation put out because there was an expectation of shortages of medical masks and they were needed in front line care.
- Masks, any masks, including simple cloth, do help. This became mainstream once supplies picked up, then became mandatory when it became clear that airborn infection was significant.
- Masks should be other than simple cloth. They should be surgical or with filtered to some not very consistently publicised specification … but masks with one way filters were dangerous.
- N95 or similar are what’s best.
Then there’s the implementation:
- Even now, January 2022, at three hospitals I’ve visited have this in place (whether it’s actual policy or not is unclear – different explanations): You cannot enter some areas with an N95 – you must remove it and put on one of their surgical masks. It’s not just because the new mask is clean, because if you enter with a surgical mask they don’t ask you to change it for a fresh one.
- Shops may or may not require masks. When they do they may or may not enforce their or the government’s policy. When they enforce it they may or may not call the police to remove you.
- You may be required to wear a masks in a sparsely populated well ventilated ‘indoor’ space, but not a crowded one if you are seated, eating and talking at a table.
And that’s just regarding masks, in the UK. Add all the other elements of this changing landscape, and it becomes a little challenging. It’s not a shock to see very well educated, well informed people disagreeing on what’s true and what’s not …
In the UK we have the UK government’s SAGE:
But we’ve also had Independent SAGE:
No surprise, they don’t always agree.
Obviously a lot of this variability is because there really is a balancing act to perform – living a life, saving the economic livelihood (often scoffed at, by people that also complain we should have no need for food banks), and dealing with a pandemic in its various phases and variants, where tehre’s changing science data and interpretation.
But even more reason to be a lot more compassionate to those that make mistakes, don’t see the risks as you do, … have the wrong people on their podcasts.
The madness of collectivism and the sacrifice of the individual has played out on ‘both sides’:
- Collective protectionaism and the demonisation of the unvaxxed is classic Marxism at work. Twitter based Struggle Sessions are being performed daily. The horrific end point is the refusal to offer medial aid to the unvaccinated – not just those that succumb to COVID, but those refused operations because they are unvaxxed, even if they’ve had coviod or not, whether they pass COVID tests or not. The hypocritic oath?
- The refusal to be caccianted on very slim grounds – sometimes no more than excuses to feed anti-vaxx conspiracy theories.
It’s a moving target, where we all have to balance protecting each other and ourselves from the virus, and protecting our health, mental and physical.
It’s ironic that some of those accusing Rogan of indulging conspiracy theorists on his show are busy concocting a conspiracy theory around Rogan. The demonization has been as insane as any religious denunciation of apostates.
The probability that many accusers have not even listened to the targeted episodes (of which there are only two ‘controversial’ medical scientists: McCullogh and Malone), let alone enough episodes to judge the character or intellectual capability of Rogan – the latter, in an era when we are told you can’t judge intelligence by attained education certificates alone.
I’ve been surprised how many anti-woke, free speech, science realism people have demonised either Rogan or his guests, or both. It’s not great, to be honest.
As someone that’s triple vaxxed, in a vulnerable category, complied with most COVID rules, I think he’s mistaken on some COVID issues, … but I’m not an expert either. I have a lot more respect for him than virtually all his demonising detractors, most of which aren’t experts themselves – and even some of those that are have sometimes failed themselves by joining in this witch hunt.
Anyway, here’s Rogan explaining himself. Decent guy.
Ramblings 