Why Facebook and Other Social Media Entities Should be Allowed to Publish Utter Garbage

(Keep reading and you’ll see why this essay is coupled with a video of a silly but fun song that epitomized bubble-gum pop)

By

David Gottfried

A lot of garbage on Facebook prompted a  lot of morons to support the most loathsome President this country ever endured, Donald Trump. Many people on the Left are aghast at the arguably primitive and anti-scientific sentiments that rage on the internet and incite reactionary politics.   

Some liberals have argued that anything which contravenes the solemn truths of science must be banished from the media just as severely as Stalin banished the memory of Leon Trotsky.

Interestingly enough, the Left and the Right have reversed themselves on epistemology, a discipline which analyzes how we determine whether something is true or false. 

JUST A FEW YEARS AGO, the Left believed what the Right believes today and visa versa.

A FEW YEARS AGO, the left was under the spell of post-modernism.  The supposedly very cool cats of post modernism were sort of like sneering teenagers blowing spitballs into the faces of boring teachers who lectured us with facts.  The postmodernists told us that every fact was up for discussion and debate, that the received wisdom of the ages simply reflected reigning political biases, and that just about anything could be portrayed as either true or false with sufficient rhetorical verve and ideological commitment. 

However, now the Trumpers believe that truth is purely subjective and wholly malleable.  I think that one of Trump’s prime supporters, Kelly Anne Conway, said that the Trumpers were enlightening the people with “alternative facts.”   

JUST A FEW YEARS AGO, conservatives held that many things were enduring, absolutely true and above and beyond political debate, including Capitalism, fighting Russian self-assertion, the superiority of heterosexuality, and the ten commandments. 

Now, the left tells us that certain things are incontestably true and never subject to debate.  They tell us, like prissy schoolmarms, that A equals B because Science says so and science cannot be challenged. 

Actually, most of the liberal dodos who exalt science appear to know very little about science.   They approach science as Catholics used to approach religion.  If a scientist, or the priest for our times, says that A equals B, they accept his judgment, never dare to question his reasoning or factual findings and genuflect before the altar of the new sterile order.

But enough abstractions.  Let’s unmask their ignorance.   

A)   Carbon-phobia

Although carbon dioxide plays a role in global warming (I am not a
Trumper; I agree that too much carbon dioxide is a problem), they get completely bent out of shape when carbon dioxide enters the conversation.  They seem to think it is poisonous.  I once was involved in litigation in which the air coming out of a laundry exhaust was at issue.   A report showed that the exhaust emitted small quantities of carbon dioxide.  An engineer who was involved in the litigation shrieked with indignation at the presence of carbon dioxide, imagining that it had the potential to kill all the tenants without fifteen feet of the laundry exhaust.   (Maybe he though carbon dioxide was the same thing as carbon monoxide) 

Needless to say, some liberal environmentalists  have forgotten basic, junior high school science and the wonder of photosynthesis.    Needless to say, their carbon-phobia is so severe that they never heard of organic chemistry, or the chemistry of living things.  If you ever studied organic chemistry, you would know that all compounds, pertaining to life, contain carbon – sugars, fats, and proteins, for example, all contain carbon.  Getting rid of all carbon means getting rid of all living things, unless of course you want to replace humans with asexual robots, the sort envisioned in Woody Allen’s movie, “Sleeper.”   After all, asexual robots would be good little boys and girls and never commit sexual harassment.

When leftist dingbats advance a position,  they sometimes preface their conclusions with the words “Science says…” (Most of them don’t even know what ionic bonding is, can’t define entropy and don’t know how to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit, but they think they know what Science is) They exude all the intellectual rigor of preteens singing that juvenile pop hit from 1968, “ Simon Says.”  Since so many a holes who dominate the political discourse sound like blithering idiots, I think I am entitled to regress to a sweetly immature age, and this is my excuse for giving you a clip of that old bubblegum pop hit, “Simon Says.” 

B)  Cholesterol versus Calcium in the etiology of arterial blockages.  

Should we ban all public service announcements or news reports which indicate that cholesterol can clog your arteries because arteries are very often clogged by calcium deposits

Scientists say different things at different times.  It’s not necessarily their fault.  Since the truth as a scientist knows it is often a very expansive forest of facts, and since an idiot box news story has time for only a 37 second explanation as to why cholesterol or carbon dioxide is the modern era’s equivalent of the devil, he will only have time to mention one cause of arterial blockages.  For some reason, which I have yet to figure out, scientists say different things about arterial blockages in different places: 

i)   In medical textbooks, arteries often become hard and inflexible, and subject to blockages, because of calcium deposits on arterial walls.

ii)  The popular press,  by contrast, has been telling us for fifty years that arteries become blocked by cholesterol.  The popular press scarcely ever mentions calcium, except when it sings its praises. 

Should we get rid of all news stories that contend that fat causes arterial damage because the stuff doctors read often says that calcium is the culprit.  

Similarly, should we get rid of news stories that cast fat in a bad light because sometimes fat is very good for you.  For example, I have read that fat enables the body to produce testosterone.  Since the League of Liberal Censors believes that we should censor “fake news” that harms our health, shouldn’t we censor news stories that condemn fat because this will make boys refrain from eating fat and suffer deficits of testosterone.

C) Should we ban new stories which claim that homosexuality is caused by the environment because some news stories claim that it is caused by genes.  Or should we ban news stories which claim that homosexuality is caused by genes because other people say it is caused by the environment

D) When is something true.  Is it true when there is a 90 percent chance that it is true or only true when there is a 99 percent chance of it being true

DI) For example, what does it mean when the law says that someone is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and hence guilty of a crime.  In the first year of law school, I learned that even FEDERAL JUDGES WEREN’T SURE WHAT IT MEANT.  Some fcderal judges thought if there was a 75 percent chance that a defendant was guilty, he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.    Other judges said that the threshold was not met until there was a 95 percent chance that someone was guilty.

E) How does one interpret evidence.  Consider the early days of the AIDS epidemic:

In AIDS, HIV kills T 4 cells, a prime component of the body’s immune system.   Therefore T 4 cells are depressed.   Another kind of T cell, T 8 cells, are elevated.  T 8 cells, as I understand it, destroy diseased or damaged T 4 cells.

Before the virus was discovered some people thought that AIDS was a type of autoimmune disease, i.e., a disease in which the body attacks itself.    These scientists hypothesized that T 8 cells, for no good reason, were demolishing T 4 cells.  If this were correct, the cure for AIDS would have been the demolition of T8 cells as the T 8 cells were slaughtering the T 4 cells.  

If doctors had in fact demolished T8 cells they would have exacerbated their patients’ health, and amplified the severity of AIDS, as the T8 cells were killing T 4 cells for a very good reason:  The T 4 cells were infected with HIV.   (Some studies showed that extended survival was positively correlated with the number of T 8 cells in the patient’s body, i.e., those people with wildly high and abnormal levels of T 8 cells had a better chance of surviving)

This piece of medical history reveals that what scientists first thought was true was later found to be dead wrong.   Just as a doctor should not arrive at a diagnosis and render treatment on the basis of spotty and incomplete evidence, you should never believe that something is the scientific gospel truth because you heard it from Joe Biden.

In mid 19th century Paris, the great surgeons looked like butchers when they operated.  This is because their stodgy science held that there was no such thing as microscopic germs and that filth was okay.  Their coats were drenched with blood – after all their Fathers, who were also doctors, wore coats drenched with blood.   Since they were successful doctors practicing in Paris, and since Parisians were sure they were the cat’s miraculous meow, they were sure their medicine was based on the soundest science.  When Pasteur came along and said that microscopic things called germs lurk in filth, they were sure his ideas were rubbish.  Many Frenchmen had to die before the scientific elites of Paris realized that an operating room shouldn’t look like a pig stye, surgical instruments should be sterilized and a doctor should wash his paws before slicing up your body.  

Of course, the record reveals that doctors who have been regarded as sound thinkers, scientists and eminent and wonderful practitioners often had the dumbest ideas:  A) In Hebrew School, we were taught that the medieval Jewish scholar Maimonides was, among other things, a great doctor.  When I was grown, I read him.  Sample his scientific wisdom:  Solid food should not be eaten with liquids as the constant variation in the consistency of the foods swallowed will “confuse” the system; B) Years ago, filthy animals, known as leeches, were applied to the skin so they would bite the patient.  The patient would bleed, and the scientists of the American revolution believed that this would cleanse the patient of harmful substances in the blood; C) Years ago, electro convulsive shock treatment was given to all sorts of patients in psychiatric institutions.  Now it is understood as only being the least bit helpful in certain types of severe depression, such as involutional melancholia (Endogenous severe depression arising in late middle age)      

Today’s scientific wisdom can become tomorrow’s pitiful ignorance.

WHY WE SHOULD ALLOW JUNK “IDEAS” TO BE EXPRESSED EVEN THOUGH THEY CAN BE HARMFUL.

Certainly, some right-wing nuts advocate policies which are dangerous as they can, for example, impede the battle against Covid.   When they inveigh against masks and vaccines, they are the Quislings of infectious disease.  (Quisling was a Norwegian who helped Hitler conquer Norway).  Nevertheless, their poisoned speech should still be uncensored.  Why?      

When an idea is suppressed, it becomes particularly attractive.  A forbidden idea shimmers like forbidden sex.  The more it is repressed the greater its desirability.   The banished idea beckons like liberty might beckon in a land of tyranny.  The idea which is castigated and condemned will seem commendable and correct when a chorus, marching in lockstep uniformity, incessantly denounces the idea. 

Some champions of liberal democratic ideals and freedom of speech hold that all viewpoints should be aired in the public square and that the more valid viewpoints would eventually win the day.  Just as good manufactured wares would eventually dominate the commercial marketplace, good ideas would eventually dominate the ideational market place.  Of course, this presupposes the presence of an enlightened citizenry or at least people willing to learn.  Perhaps people have become so coarse and embittered that they have become unreachable and hopeless.  They have become what in Yiddish is called “Farbissen,” or too disgusted and hate-filled to even begin to listen.   If this is the case, then good ideas will not eventually defeat the fabrications of the far right.