A very good exploration of institutions, and trust. Societies are 100% social, and operate by the imitation…

A very good exploration of institutions, and trust. Societies are 100% social, and operate by the imitation and emulation of those we trust. Our institutions are the outcome, allowing us to live by trusting others with expertise in other areas. BUT…/1 https://t.co/EQNV3eHGpo

…what’s missing for me is that a lot of the new institutions Murray talks about here are largely driven by social media. It matters HOW you generate trust. The process described here of people with existing institutional reputation using it to generate new networks? /2

The economy of likes of social media is nothing like older scientific institutions. You can generate a trusted following doing very little scientific anything, on social media. As we’ve seen with Covid minimisers, with little connection to historical public health precedents. /3

What’s painted here as a positive process to me is nearly always doing irreparable damage to our institutional foundations. For all of their faults, existing institutions at least have a diversity of methods for testing claims. Not just likes on social media. /4

I’ve worked in universities for many years and can understand how brilliant, maverick thinkers sometimes need to branch out to escape the existing social hierarchies. Planck’s point again about progress in knowledge, one funeral at a time. But social media isn’t the way. /5

If we shift our trust economy for knowledge to social media, we surrender it to nothing but popularity. Sure there are a diversity of brilliant minds there too, but popularity will quickly overwhelm everything else, as it does in politics. /6

The large follower base for key Covid and climate minimisers for example aren’t scientists or other people of expertise. They’re mostly ordinary folk with no idea about public health or climate science, attracted to the framing of these ideas in social battles they’re part of. /7

Like a friend of mine, with no scientific background, but fanatically anti-renewables and anti-EVs, and latching onto key minimisers on social media in both of those areas because they give him ammunition against ‘Greenies’, whom he hates. /8

It’s quick and easy to trace these social networks, just look at the followers. The same minimising names will crop up across a whole range of seemingly unrelated issues, because the real game here is the team sport of culture wars. That’s one good thing about social media. /9

It allows you to instantly trace these connections, to assess the real game being played. It’s how many of us already assess whether a claim we see here can be trusted, or whether it’s just fodder for some idiot culture war. /end