ABE GREENWALD:
“…A hard problem. The CEO of Google thinks that the question of whether or not to permit minority opinions on social media is a hard problem. Let’s hope Big Tech works that one out wisely because if the thumbs-down side of the debate wins, the likes of Nicholas Lewis and Climate Etc. would be lumped in with anti-vaxxers and banished from the digital public square. So when faulty, tendentious science appears in places like Nature, it will go uncorrected—by design. Pinchai’s understanding of climate-change skepticism as propaganda and misinformation is itself an example of the propaganda and misinformation that dominates public discourse.
Many in the liberal mainstream have determined that their convictions rest on a priori knowledge. That is, knowledge that doesn’t rely on evidence or experience. They know things because these things are true. They sometimes apply this to claims of sexual assault, and they usually apply it to climate change. Keeting, for example, says that he’s certain of the Nature study’s findings even though those findings are uncertain. In actual fact, such matters belong to the realm of a posteriori knowledge. We need evidence to determine whether they are true or false. But if mainstream institutions can pathologize dissent, they’ll never need to provide evidence for the convictions they peddle.
It’s true that the U.S. Constitution protects citizens against totalitarian government. But for all the Founders’ stunning foresight, they couldn’t have envisioned a world in which non-government parties would close in on a cultural monopoly of public debate. The forces of obscurantism are making an end-run around our brilliantly conceived checks and balances and appealing to Big Tech to shut down dissent. Constitutional guardrails constrain demagogic presidents. But CEOs, social-media behemoths, and academic institutions are free to dictate the terms of reality as they see fit. Against them, we have people like Nicholas Lewis. That’s about it…”