It's All Connected

It isn't hard to come to the realization that one of the common denominators in almost all of the existential threats currently facing humanity is our flawed natures; human folly, shortsightedness and credulity have much to answer for. Climate change, resource depletion and pandemics readily come to mind as examples of what our collective folly has led to.

Were we apt students of life, we would realize that our refusal to think critically makes us our own worst enemy. Connecting the dots should not be the gargantuan task that it is for far too many people. 

Today's Star examines the inevitability of another pandemic and the things scientists are doing to prepare for it. One such scientist is Gerry Wright, a McMaster professor in biochemistry and biomedicine, who identifies a major impediment in meeting the next pandemic.

Gerry Wright feels confident that science will find the solutions to the next pandemic.

Perhaps not as quickly as we’d like. And not without obstacles. The race to fight COVID, which drew on decades of research, revealed how quickly scientists could rally.

But the flip side to these successes is the corresponding and deeply alarming rise in misinformation online.

 “The thing that terrifies me is that a person with an iPhone can think they’re an expert,” he says. “That people think their opinions matter just as much as those of people who’ve dedicated their lives to understanding science — and that this is now almost a widely accepted concept — is going to result in a super-dangerous future.”

The claims of false cures, promoted by people like Trump, served as a major stumbling block in attacking Covid.

Wright says he first became alarmed in 2020, when then U.S. president Donald Trump flouted the advice of top science agencies by touting the unproven benefits of the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID.

He says his worries deepened the following year when ivermectin, an antiparasitic medicine used to treat some human conditions and which is also a veterinary drug, was falsely hyped as a COVID miracle cure, even as effective vaccines were being rolled out.

“I just knew that we were in deep, deep trouble.”

While McMaster researchers worked flat out to find solutions for COVID, Wright says he knew it was equally pressing to combat misinformation.

He now heads the Global Nexus for Pandemics and Biologic Threats, a McMaster-led initiative that brings together scientists and medical researchers, along with experts in economics, political science and the social sciences. 

“I understand molecules. I don’t understand people,” says Wright, noting the hub will also provide interdisciplinary training for students, so they can think across typically siloed fields. 

One has to wonder if such efforts will be sufficient, given the new capacities for deception driven by A.I.-generated imagery and voice mimicking. And remember that there will always be those who will quite eagerly exploit such technology for their own diabolical ends.

As it has always been, the fate of humanity rests in our hands and in our minds. Not too much reason for optimism, is there?

 

 

While The World Is Preoccupied

 

While the invasion of Ukraine is undoubtedly the world-shaking event that the media are reporting it as, it would be unwise as Canadians to feel blasé about our home-grown problems, problems made abundantly clear by the recent occupation of Ottawa by a domestic force known as the trucker convoy.

Peopled by idiots all too eager to subscribe to misinformation propagated both domestically and internationally, it was a worrying indictment of the the health of our own democracy. 

Writer Noelle Allen offers some examples and insights into this scourge.

There’s a tweet making the rounds right now about how if the Governor General receives 958,000 emails saying that the sender is casting a non-confidence vote against Justin Trudeau, she will remove him from office. Of course, it has been quickly debunked. 

 There appeared to have been an absurd belief at the occupation of Ottawa that police could not arrest you if you were singing “O Canada” and a much more dangerous belief that they could not arrest you if children were present. There has also been a lot of discussion about the participants’ First Amendment Rights at the various blockades. In the U.S., this is the protection of freedom of speech, the press and assembly. In Canada it doesn’t exist...

The sentiments behind these absurd contentions are worrying in that they betray a contempt for democracy:

It’s telling that the Ottawa anti-vax group started off stating in their “memorandum of understanding” posted on the Canada Unity website that they expected to “form a committee with the Senate and the Governor General to override all levels of Canadian government.” They wanted to wipe the slate clean of all elected politicians and install their own governing junta. The federal election we had less than six months ago simply wasn’t good enough for them, though instead of trying to pretend the election was stolen as Trump did in the U.S., they went straight to trying to overthrow the government.

Allen laments the fact that discussion and compromise are not in the makeup of these miscreants: 

The hard-right fringe keeps coming up against the uncomfortable truth that there are other people in the country and they get to vote, too. But instead of leaving their bubbles, asking what they need to do to meet the rest of Canada in the middle and doing the hard work of democracy, they’ve turned to looking for ways to make our elected officials vanish. They’re like peevish customers who don’t agree with the approach of the front counter staff and are constantly trying to find a way to get what they want by demanding to speak to the manager, only in this case, they seem to believe the manager is the Governor General of Canada. 

Rather than mock or ignore these people, Allen sees them as dangerous:

... the willingness to press for what they want at any cost, to call our elected politicians traitors and threaten them with violence, to hold a city hostage, to simply expect to override the entire system of democracy to get what they want, makes this group dangerous. That way leads to a dictatorship. We need to prosecute those who participated in the illegal blockades fully and make it clear the cost of trying to break our democracy is high. Too high for them to try this again.

And on that last note, allow me to express my satisfaction that, like Tamara Lich, Pat King has been denied bail, the JP ruling against it due to the seriousness of the charges that will likely entail imprisonment. 

It would seem that Noelle Allen's hopes are being realized.

For further discussion on this topic, please click here.

 

Facebook And The Unravelling Of Truth

At a time when access to accurate, well-informed and well-researched information is crucial, it is probably not surprising that there are bad actors who promote disinformation. After all, chaos, their preferred state, constantly needs stoking, and oh, what a friend they have in Facebook.

Earlier this month, the BBC exposed the internet giant for the amoral, greedy and even nefarious entity it is, one quite content to promote the ranting of the far-right fringe as it exploits the Covid-19 pandemic. Here is a sample of the posts regarding the virus gleaned from Mark Zuckerberg's baby:

"What if [they] are trying to kill off as many people as possible" reads one Facebook post.

"Eventually, these scum will release something truly nasty to wipe us all out, but first they have to train us to be obedient slaves" reads another.

A third: "Coronavirus is the newest Islamist weapon."

That Facebook willingly makes itself a vehicle (a very profitable one, of course) for hatred, prejudice and conspiracy theories comes as no surprise to me. A post I wrote almost five years ago shows why. Yet in our current situation, it can be argued that the stakes are even higher today.

Writing in The Markup, Aaron Sankind explains Facebook's tactics of open solicitation, i.e. prostitution, which openly contradict its promise to combat misinformation about Covid-19.

Facebook was allowing advertisers to profit from ads targeting people that the company believes are interested in “pseudoscience.” According to

Facebook’s ad portal, the pseudoscience interest category contained more than 78 million people.

This week, The Markup paid to advertise a post targeting people interested in pseudoscience, and the ad was approved by Facebook.

Interestingly, after posting it, Sankin writes that

an ad for a hat that would supposedly protect my head from cellphone radiation appeared on my Facebook feed on Thursday, April 16.

Concerns about electromagnetic radiation coming from 5G cellular infrastructure have become a major part of the conspiracy theories swirling around the origin of the coronavirus.

The social media giant's synergistic (some would say parasitic) money-making techniques are obvious here.

Kate Starbird, a professor at the University of Washington studying how conspiracy theories spread online, said one hallmark of the ecosystem is that people who believe in one conspiracy theory are more likely to be convinced of other conspiracy theories.

By offering advertisers the ability to target people who are susceptible to conspiracy theories, she said, Facebook is taking “advantage of this sort of vulnerability that a person has once they’re going down these rabbit holes, both to pull them further down and to monetize that.”

Actions speak louder than words, as they say, and it appears that Facebook may talk the talk, but refuses to walk the walk:

Facebook has also said that it is cracking down on ads on products related to the pandemic. “We recently implemented a policy to prohibit ads that refer to the coronavirus and create a sense of urgency, like implying a limited supply, or guaranteeing a cure or prevention. We also have policies for surfaces like Marketplace that prohibit similar behavior”...

However, earlier this month, Consumer Reports was able to schedule seven paid ads that contained fake claims, such as stating that social distancing doesn’t work or that people could stay healthy by drinking small doses of bleach. Facebook approved all of the ads.

Business is business would seem to be the only ethos Facebook lives by. And the consequences for a credulous public couldn't be more lethal.