Alas. The fundamental problem, going back to the AMA/Endocrine Society nonsense, is that most people don’t know much about this issue. So the average person is going to see a statement like this one and, well, believe it. Those are very impressive-seeming organization names!
I’d argue the American Medical Association and Endocrine Society have a fundamental obligation to, at the very least, not spread outright nonsense. . . .
But highly respected institutions, like these organizations and like countless media outlets, do keep spreading misinformation on this subject. At a certain point, if you’re just trying to figure out the truth about these subjects, why wouldn’t you give up on the AMA or the Endocrine Society or the AAP or Scientific American or Science Vs? Seriously. Once it’s established that these institutions are much more interested in coming down on the “right” side of a hyper-politicized debate than in making a good-faith effort to communicate the truth — once they’ve shown, over and over and over, that they only deploy the full powers of their reasoning and skepticism selectively — what is the point of trusting them?
I’m not totally blackpilled. These organizations all still have good people working for them and are capable of solid work. I would still trust The New York Times or even Science Vs over the countless maniacs spreading conspiracy theories on YouTube. But I’m gaining a better and better understanding of how said maniacs gain a foothold. When someone comes to me and complains that they just can’t trust mainstream institutions anymore, what can I do, knowing what I know, other than shrug?
Folks like Alex Jones will always have some influence, unfortunately, even in otherwise healthy epistemic landscapes. Humans are imperfect and our brains are easily hijacked by charismatic madmen. But why make it such a cakewalk for the Joneses of the world? Why give people easy excuses to abandon mainstream sources of knowledge?
Don’t complain when you dislike where those disillusioned folks eventually end up, is all I’m saying.
I’m not really a fan of the “bothsidesing” business — dumb is dumb, wrong is wrong, you aren’t justified, no one made you do it — but that doesn’t mean that good points can’t be made and understood in terms of cumulative cultural extremes. It seems objectively true that, as Anne Applebaum put it, “the process of radicalization [is] mutually reinforcing.”
Here’s how she put it exactly:
Both would blame the other for accelerating the dynamic, but in fact the process of radicalization was mutually reinforcing. Milder, more moderate members of both communities began to choose sides. Being a bystander got harder; remaining neutral became impossible.
The reason I think it’s worth understanding — worth having a permanent place in our understanding — is not to make excuses for anyone, least of all ourselves. It’s important because it helps us to understand, or at least attempt to understand, those drawn to the most extreme sides of our current cultural battles. And doing so might actually take us a step or two closer to turning those battles back into conversations. The attempt really matters, because it reflects a disposition without which there can be no peace. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s mother said, in a letter to him not long after he was imprisoned,
What Augustine said was indeed right: “The ear hears according to the disposition of the heart.”
If I’m being completely honest, I don’t like the cardiac dispositions of almost everyone I meet these days. And I’m finding my own disposition to be increasingly negative and hopeless. I do attempt to find and pay attention to the best voices with the best dispositions, but that can be very hard work. Quite frankly, it’s exhausting. And I am often exhausted. But I also can’t think of many things more important than the task of finding truth-tellers, sharing what they are saying, and attempting to do the same truth-telling ourselves.
Here’s Daniel Dennet in 2017:
As usual with arms races, both in human warfare and in natural selection, advances in offense are cheaper than the defensive responses to counter them. This is especially true in epistemology, the world of fact, knowledge and belief. No matter how carefully you, or your organization, gathers, tests and evaluates evidence, your reputation for objectivity and truth-telling can be shattered with a few well-aimed lies by your opponents. With your reputation shattered, your goods, however valuable in fact, will be almost unsalable. Skepticism and doubt is cheap, confidence is expensive. This asymmetry is a major problem, and it will take patient and unrelenting effort to restore confidence in sources that deserve confidence.
Or, better, it will take patient effort and unrelenting courage. Patient (i.e. “long-suffering”) effort because it really is difficult, endless work (especially at the beginning) to find solid ground and to avoid the reactionary news set by the lowest possible bars. And unrelenting courage because, unless you are very lucky, you will often be doing this without the company or the approval of many around you.
As Stanislas Vinaver (known as Constantine) put it in Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: “Yes. For the sake of my country, and perhaps a little for the sake of my soul, I have given up on the deep peace of being in opposition.”
Dennet says something else that summarizes pretty well what it is I hope I’m doing—not as any sort of specific project as yet (although the blogging is something), but as the near-constant background noise of every single day, no matter the situation. He says, “What we need to do is enlarge these islands [of reliable trust], patiently building from small to large, creating resilient webs of trust to replace those that have been dissolving in the onslaught of the media.”
That sounds like pretty good daily work to me. But it’s always worth remembering what T. S. Eliot wrote in “East Coker”:
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.