Scomo aiming for world domination? I'm not so sure.
So the Australia government released its tracking app this week.
(Note to the PR apartment – you’ve got to control the message more here. You really don’t want ‘government’, ‘tracking’ and ‘app’ appearing in the same sentence.)
I’m genuinely curious to see how it goes down. I’m going to do a little more research and write something up for Friday.
But I’m already hearing people say that this is all proof-positive that the Corona virus was engineered to bring the whole world under a one-government police state, right? I mean. The proof’s right there. Open your eyes, sheeple!
I’ve genuinely heard people making this argument. (Yep, you guessed it. I’m not buying it.)
And I think there are actually two important things to separate out here.
So while I’m fully open to the idea that some governments and players around the world are going to use this crisis as an opportunity to ram or sneak through some dodgy things, it’s another step again to believe that those actors actually engineered the crisis.
Particularly if it involves implausible levels of control (The Truman Filter) or implausible levels of beyond-human abilities (The Magical Lizard Filter).
You don’t want to mistake opportunism for intent.
I think it’s actually important to keep some social-distance between these two ideas. I mean, it’s always worth keeping your guard up with people in power.
Always.
Scomo and the government are going to have to do some pretty radical stuff here. That’s what the crisis demands. But the price of freedom is vigilance. We need to watch the situation carefully.
But if we start going down the rabbit hole of thinking that Scomo et al are part of some global conspiracy to orchestrate something like this, then you then have to start pulling in some weird ideas to keep that story consistent.
Like competency.
I reckon you’re always on dangerous ground assuming competency when no competency has been demonstrated.
Can you imagine how competent you’d have to be to pull a swifty like this? I’m not seeing those levels of competency in Canberra.
(No offence.)
And so this is our conspiracy filter for today. I call it The Contorted Competency Filter.
The Contorted Competency Filter
Does the theory ask me to believe in competency where no competency has been demonstrated, or in incompetency where no incompetency has been demonstrated?
As you can see, it cuts both ways.
You’re on dangerous ground assuming incompetence where competence has been amply demonstrated.
Like science. Science has done a crap-tonne for humanity in past 500 years or so. Science has, with enough time and enough trial and error, gotten results, again and again.
I wouldn’t take the other side of that bet.
Now, it is possible that virologists have completely misunderstood the nature of viruses for decades now, and there is, in fact, no such thing as a virus, as some people are arguing. It’s also possible that the tens of thousands of academics studying climate change are suffering from some sort of mass delusion.
It’s possible.
But it’s incredibly unlikely.
Science works on the law of large numbers. If you get enough people looking at a topic for long enough, bias and incompetence gets filtered out and you get something close to the truth.
(It’s the same story with jelly-bean counting competitions. If you get enough people to guess how many beans are in the jar, the average guess ends up being quite accurate.)
But to build a theory on an assumption that scientists are all wrong is, to my way of thinking, building a theory on incompetence where no incompetence has been demonstrated.
Not collectively. Not over time.
So that’s what the Contorted Competency Filter is about. We need to ask ourselves, do the agents behind this conspiracy have the competence to do this? Are the safeguards against this theory incompetent and weak enough to let it happen?
You’d be surprised how much noise this filter filters out.
JG.
Bill says
Hi Jon,
For many years, the Morrison government was fixated on bringing our budget into surplus. Then the corona virus breakout occurred and suddenly years of strict fiscal responsibility were abandoned as the economy was shut down, thousands of workers were laid off and massive government expenditure was announced. No time for cautious debate or consideration of the long-term consequences; just spend spend spend! All in sync with governments around the world! Doesn’t that look like our government was given a directive from a higher authority?
South Australian politician Ann Bressington gave a speech about “Sustainable Development” back in 2013, you might still be able to see it on you tube here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sES6_OXPwOU
There used to be some interesting and lively debate on your forum, what happened?
Regards,
Bill