Previous articles in this series:
Assaying Entropy II: Dying During Covid
Assaying Entropy III: Thinking about Covid
Assaying Entropy IV: Covid and America
Assaying Entropy VI: Democracy in America
Assaying Entropy VII: American democracy
Assaying Entropy VIII: Education in America
Assaying Entropy IX: Reading, writing, and arithmetic
Assaying Entropy X: Science, non-writing, expertise, discussion
Covid, like politics, has become something that we do not want to talk about. Yet, talking, more than anything we do regularly, repeatedly, practically continuously, binds us in complex and human relations, not just because we can communicate with language but also because language mediates our understanding of the whole world of things, distinguishes them and renders them with qualities. Because language, as Helen Keller taught us, makes sense of the senses, we can think about the world and communicate our thoughts.
The ideological confusion about democracy, collectivity, objective reality, rights and freedom – which I see as endemic in our culture – expresses itself during the Covid era as a breakdown of language. This is why I keep harping on reading, misreading, non-writing, discussion and argumentation. Language is the location of a give and take, a speaker and a listener find themselves in their exchange of language. It appears that now we hear (rather than listen to) others, and we listen only to ourselves. We are losing listening, which entails a concept of an other.
In an exchange with a commenter about the meaning of a scientific research report, I finally understood that what I considered a misreading – because of a distortion of the report’s authors’ meaning – was that commenter’s idea of reading. I was thrown back to my earlier encounter with the professor of education who told me that what Milton meant in his poem Paradise Lost should not be the basis of reading the poem. The commenter simply transferred his understanding of the vaccine and attributed it to the authors of the report. This way of reading made every article he read, no matter what it concludes or what it is about, textual evidence of the reader’s thesis, a self-confirming reading.
Over the last few weeks, as I labored to analyze this reader’s abundant comments (non-writing is a lot faster than writing) as symptoms of the current malaise of democracy, I wondered how every single article he cited as evidence of the danger of the Covid vaccine in fact was meant by their authors to support vaccination. How could someone fairly knowledgeable, evidently a reader, clearly literate, make so many mistakes? Once, to show that vaccines cause heart muscle inflammation he cited an article which 1) was a study of the unvaccinated, and 2) showed that long Covid did not seem to affect the heart.
Yesterday, in order to show that vaccines caused heart problems he cited a case study of a young man who had arrhythmia after being vaccinated. The authors specifically say that the clinical symptoms could not be causally related to the vaccine and that their cause was unknown, but this did not deter a reading that the study showed the vaccine causing heart problems.
Today, to show that people were dying and being seriously damaged by the vaccine in large numbers, he cited a study of how social behavior and beliefs impact the decision to be vaccinated. The researchers found that according to a representative body of self-chosen informants an unusually large number of the informants’ friends had serious medical problems after vaccination. An interpretation of the survey’s numerical results must first consider that they are based on hearsay, as the authors repeated say every time they discuss the results. Understanding the survey also requires us to consider the fact that the informants and their friends may have ideas of what “serious” means that differ from what it means medically, and, further, we need to decide whether the people surveyed and the survey itself confuse sequence with cause; that is, if I fall off the curb after a vaccination, has the vaccine caused it? The study aimed to discover why people were not getting vaccinated, and the answer seems to be that people’s social interactions cause them to think the vaccine is dangerous. The commenter, however, uses those hearsay numbers as evidence of the reality that the vaccine injures those numbers of people, without regard for what the authors repeatedly say the numbers represent, that is, people reporting what happened to their friends after a vaccination.
I thought reading was revelation: a reader comes from a position of ignorance and learns something from the author. But the commenter comes to his reading from a position of assumed knowledge. His knowledge is superior to the authors’ because he brings to it additional information not considered by the authors. So what the authors intended is simply grist for his mill. What the authors conclude need not be respected (remember that the primary topic of the Declaration of Independence is a “decent respect”).
If this commenter is any indication, language no longer functions the way I thought it does. I remind the reader of the image of mirrors I posted for my last essay. Language has become an infinite regression of self-affirmation, the locus of self-expansion rather than the meeting place between self and others.
If that is true, then we come upon a paradox: this centering of the world around one’s self removes the possibility of introspection, of self-interrogation. There is no room for the humility of recognizing one’s own limitations, for example, the limitations of Miller’s magic number seven. Kahneman’s errors are totally irrelevant, since one’s ideas, always being a reflection of one’s ideas, are always right. But this paradox is explainable.
To read by substituting one’s own conclusions and ideas for those of the author means that the methods of close reading – observation and analysis of the detailed path of reasoning in a text, a critical ability to debate the text, argumentation and engagement with the evidence, etc. – are not needed, not learned, and unpracticed. Language is full of knowledge, but this new way of reading reduces that knowledge to informational bits, commoditizes it (as appropriate to a market centered society).
This absence of reading skills affects the self-confirming reader’s own writing because he is unable to step back from his own text (or ideas or attitudes or positions) and view it objectively and critically. The resulting writing, then, must be what I call non-writing, assertive rather than demonstrative or argumentative: preaching or political speaking, that is, speaking truth to believers and followers who are images of oneself and share the same truth. It’s a coded language [rejection is “censorship,” criticism is “attack,” demonstrating false reasoning is called “maligning,” etc.]. It resembles oral speech more than considered writing (which always addresses an other, which is why it needs reasoning, argumentation, references, etc.). Self-reflective language lacks continuity but runs in spurts of exclamatory energy.
Unused to encountering opposition in reading, the self-viewing writer is unable to respond to disagreement. I have posted links to many very large scale studies (covering millions of vaccinees) showing the benefits of vaccination.* Not a single one has been responded to by a critical reading that tries to show these conclusions were wrong, and yet, their conclusions are simply ignored, undiscussed. Clearly, non-reading and non-writing ends in non-discussion.
Furthermore, this non-discussion is personalized because of the belief that reality is purely subjective. The text doesn’t exist as an independent object to be examined or argued over but exists only as an individual expression of individual identity. Thus, non-writing assumes that the way to argue is what Greek teachers of argumentation considered a false and illogical way to argue: attack the person (ad hominem) rather than the argument, which is what most of the disagreeing comments to my writing has been: what do I know, what are my qualifications, what business do I have to write about anything (all while deploring “censorship”), etc. This turn away from argument and evidence, then, is part of our cult of the individual.
None of this is ill-willed or even uncharitable even though it often spills into vituperation and name-calling [I’m an ass; I’m an idiot; I’m a mental masturbator – my favorite because it shows an unreformed 19th century health standard]. People moved by a conviction and dedication to service to others find themselves caught in this way of reading, believing that it is the only proper way to read. It’s just that the consequences of this mindset seem to me drastic for the culture. What is so great about non-reading rather than reading, non-writing instead of writing, shouting instead of talking just so every individual can say, “I am me”? I don’t see the freedom to do that can be the basis of a democratic society much less any polity (that is, any structure of decision-making for the whole).
*If one is going to talk about the dangers of the vaccine (and there are definitely unwanted effects), then it must be in the context of vaccination’s benefits. Three large studies I have linked to are these:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673621009478
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X22015614
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7043e2.htm
Since these are statistical studies, they are not difficult for laypeople to read, especially the abstracts.
Thank you, Kyle, for pointing out the faulty link. It took some time to find the problem, but I think it has been fixed.
The reason that the articles on vaccine safety I linked to were older studies is because they, along with hundreds of others, were the initial studies that formed the basis for the public policy to continue the vaccination program. They represent what the medical profession as a whole considered “settled” (in as much as any temporary conclusions must be used to deal with an emergency). On the basis of that assumption (and it is an assumption), almost all the research since has been an effort to fine tune that basic acceptance of settled opinion. Thus the flood of research on damages and harm that the vaccine caused. That flood should not lead to the impression that the vaccine just damages. Those harms are in the context of the earlier studies showing general over-all benefits of the vaccine. Your reading in science should have led you to understand the basis and the conditional nature of the current research. This is why all the researchers remind their readers that the vaccine is generally safe, even as they study the ill effects. There has not been, as far as I know, any change in the assumption based on sound statistical evidence that the vaccine is generally safe.
Your comments on the survey are very interesting. You are absolutely correct that the authors of that survey conclude that the discrepancy between the CDC numbers and what the public believes requires further research. I hope that by recognizing that conclusion, you agree and so will not be using this study to demonstrate that the vaccine kills a lot more people than the CDC records in order to claim that 1) the vaccine is dangerous and 2) the government lies. Both claims may be true, but this study is not evidence of them. By the way, I did not hide this article but linked to it. If the link doesn’t work, I would appreciate being informed.
Also by the way, I should say that the further sociological research the authors of the survey recommends has already a basis. We know a great deal about how the public consumption of media information and misinformation affects the way individuals perceive reality and forms the narratives they tell, and believe, about their everyday lives. That is why it is absolutely important that scientific reports not be misrepresented. The authors know what they are doing. You and I do not.
“Infer”? Kyle gives me another example of the impasse and breakdown of language which I see as resulting from an overblown sense of self-confirming reading.
In this study, the subjects are unvaccinated and also cleared of the virus with which they had been infected, that is, they did not have SARS CoV-2 in their system, that is, they did not have Covid. They were found not to have developed heart problems. Kyle “infers” that this shows that the vaccinated get heart problems. Huh? A study of the unvaccinated can conclude something about the vaccinated? A study of no heart problems shows the cause of heart problems? A study of people without the virus shows the effects of the virus?
Kyle “reasons” that the study showed that the virus does not cause heart problems. It does not. It shows that after the virus is cleared, people who did not have heart problems during Covid remained for a long time free of heart problems. It does not address the direct impact of the virus on people. It addresses the problem of long Covid and concludes that long Covid is not heart related.
But let us give Kyle that reasoning. Say the study showed that Covid doesn’t cause heart problems either directly or indirectly after Covid. He then reasons that therefore the vaccine must cause heart problems because Covid did not cause them. Has he forgotten that Covid and the vaccine are not the only causes of heart problems? We’ve had Covid for three years and the vaccine for two. Were there no heart problems before? Why must heart problems be caused exclusively by Covid or the vaccine? That is the only way to make his “inference” work.
No, this study definitely does not imply that vaccine causes heart problems. It has nothing to do with that thesis (true or not) and can tell us nothing except what the authors say, which is that the peripheral damage of Covid, i.e., long Covid seems not to include heart damage.
I did not find a lot of articles linked to show how vaccines cause heart damage, so I can’t comment on those, but do those studies really say that or is it just more “inference”?
Just as in the earlier exchange I mentioned, where I learned that Kyle’s “reading” is not my reading, he also recognizes that difference. Earlier he admitted to leaping from the authors conclusions to his own. Here he admits that what he offers is not what the authors say but “inferences” he draws from the authors work, that is, his own conclusions. Again, he demonstrates what I mean by the breakdown of language under the new paradigm of reading the world as oneself.
The refusal to respect the authors’ intent through illogical “inferences” ab-use the authors work, which, after all, is for all our common benefit.
The paper about the 17 y/o having ventricular arrythmia after the jab is pretty clear. 3 days after jab, patient goes to hospital because of a number of ill effects. Troponin is checked, tropnin levels are way high, three days after jab. Troponin is a chemical released by cells is the heart to respond to damage to the tissues of the heart. Numerous doctors are recommeding people get both their troponin levels checked and their d-dimer levels checked (this checks for clotting) after these jabs. The patient also had prlonged capllary refill, meaning his blood wasn’t flowing properly. So three days after the kid got jabbed, he spent three days in the hospital- for, why? It’s in plain english in the authors words- “The patient was admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit for suspected COVID-19 vaccine-associated myocarditis”. Then, 7 months later, he went back to the hospital. How can you possibly say the authors don’t indicate it was the jab that caused the heart problems? It is right there in plain english!!!!
Further, I’d encourage the readers to go back to Assaying Entropy 2. In the essay and in the comment line max makes a number of unsupported claims. One of his claims is that covid infection itself can cause myocarditis. To refute this unsupported claim of his, I shared with him a peer review paper showing the opposite– researchers found no covid induced myocarditis OR pericarditis due to covid infection in their studied population. Max shares this article in a very deceptive and manipulative way in this current Assaying Entropy XI.
Despite the obvious fact, as documented in the comment thread from Dec 15th and Assaying Entropy 2, that I was sharing that paper to show that covid infection is not associated with myocarditis- Max claims that I was sharing it implying it was a study of the vaccinated and myocarditis.. Here is what he recently wrote to try to mislead his readers – “Once, to show that vaccines cause heart muscle inflammation he [he’s referring to me] cited an article which 1) was a study of the unvaccinated, and 2) showed that long Covid did not seem to affect the heart.” He then linked to the article I shared with him- although notice that in no way did he describe the paper- which showed that covid doesn’t cause myocarditis. he not only mischaracterized my point, which is documented from Dec. 15th, and obvious that he is mischaracterizing it, he does so in an artful way so as to mislead the reader as to what the paper says as well. it’s insanely manipulative and can only either be done on purpose of by someone who is incapable of objectivity.
Further, Max so selectively allows comments to be published that it thoroughly disrupts any attempt at community discussion. Your website announces that it’s supposed to be for citizens voices, yet it seems so far, at least in this series, to be Max’s soapbozx to not only spout his opinion but to malign said members of the community who are trying to participate in what we all would hope to be fair, honest and good journalism and community discussion.
There is no possible way Max could have so misrepresented what I say unless he’s coming at it from a completely bad faith angle. This is not the first time he has completely maligned me. I started ending my comments to him with ‘your an idiot max” because, when I was taking my time to comment thoughtfully, he would refuse to publish my comments. This is because I go against his narrative. Notice that half the links he shares about Covid are ones that I have provided him. He doesn’t even publish the majority of the comments in which I provide the links. He than goes onto mischaracterize my words that he doesn’t allow the publis to see, while censoring my responses.
This could be a forum for community dialogue. Much of what max is writing are obvious insults directed towards myself and other readers. He uses his platform here for this, and then denies said readers a chance to respond.
Kyle again provides us with evidence of language breakdown. But I think we have had sufficient examples, so this will be the last time I detail the ways in which the language of his comments exhibit the various cultural problems I have been discussing.
I. Non-reading and reduction of meaning (one-size-fits-all)
The first study Kyle is talking about is “Ventricular Arrhythmia and COVID-19 Vaccine-associated Myocarditis” by Drs. Sheth and Ghandi. His narration of the case is very good, except he neglected to say that a year later there was no evidence of continuing heart muscle inflammation, that is, myocarditis. [This information is important only because Kyle disputed my having said that vaccine associated heart problems were largely temporary.]
However, Kyle’s grasp of the issues in this case study looks less firm than his narration. His misunderstanding comes from misreading the “plain English” quote he gives: “The patient was admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit for suspected COVID-19 vaccine-associated myocarditis.” He claims this sentence means that Covid vaccine “caused” the patient’s ailments. Note that the authors are describing the reasons for hospital admission, that is, before any tests or conclusions. If “suspected” means “caused,” plain English is in a bad way. It means that the doctors didn’t need to test, diagnose, or study the patient’s symptoms or history, thus canceling the whole study. Not just language in this study or plain English generally but the whole society would be in a bad way: all murder suspects should be jailed, and instead of wasting our money in investigation and in courts, we should just build many more prisons.
Further, notice that what is suspected in not that the vaccine caused myocarditis but “vaccine-associated myocarditis.” “Associated” has a wide, flexible usage, designating a range of possibilities and degrees of certainty. Basically, it arises from statistics which creates lesser and greater degrees of associations, but, as I explained in an earlier essay, the statistical view has to be distinguished from mechanistic, causal explanations. When we discover a mechanism for some happening in the body, we can start talking about causes, but until then we are in the tentative realm of association. So Covid-vaccine associated myocarditis (C-VAM) in itself does not mean that Covid vaccine caused any of the C-VAM cases; they are so far only associated until we learn more.
Drs. Sheth and Ghandi use these two terms, “associated” and “suspected,” with care and precision in describing the relationship between the vaccine and myocarditis. Kyle missed that. They also use the word “caused” in their final discussion: “It should be noted that this patient’s symptoms and arrhythmia could have been caused by unknown factors unrelated to C-VAM.” Kyle either didn’t read this cautionary sentence or simply disrespects what the doctors say.
This merging of several meanings into one, reducing differences so that one concept fits all is simply a version of the one-size-fits-all fallacy, common for people who think that every change in vaccination advice demonstrates the vaccine’s danger, whereas there are many other considerations in vaccine policy. In his comment, Kyle also gives another example of this fallacy. He insists that falling ill three days after vaccination clearly shows causality. He seems not to have read the text he is commenting on where I point out the illogicality of equating priority in time with causality. I understand that we all do this in everyday thinking, assuming precedence in time is causative. Kahneman calls this “fast thinking,” and he thinks it is a survival instinct, and in my essay on individualism I called it “heroism.” It may be perfectly adequate on the battlefield, but in law and in science, in public debate, we need slow thinking. Kyle’s writing always overstates a single cause when he knows perfectly well that there are many factors.
Kyle’s interpretation and use of this article to demonstrate that vaccines cause myocarditis must be rejected because of misreading, because of fallacies of thinking, and also because he ignores the authors when they warn against a causal reading. Finally, his interpretation fails because it ignores the authors specifically warning him not to extrapolate the study: the fact that their patient’s symptoms may be caused by factors unrelated to C-VAM, they say, “… is a limitation of case reports.” Kyle’s interpretation knows no limits. For him there are no other causes, and for him this one case speaks for all cases.
I wrote in this essay, “The authors specifically say that the clinical symptoms could not be causally related to the vaccine and that their cause was unknown, but this did not deter a reading that the study showed the vaccine causing heart problems.” Even reading that (mis-reading, non-reading?), Kyle is still not deterred. To me, his intrepid pursuit of his theme in spite of attempts to clarify the text clearly indicates a failure in language that results from a heroic steadfastness to stick by his guns no matter what.
II. Illogic, lack of self-criticism, comedy of errors
Kyle moves next to another article he cited over which we have had a long interpretive tussle: “The Incidence of Myocarditis and Pericarditis in Post COVID-19 Unvaccinated Patients—A Large Population-Based Study” by Drs. Tuvali, and others. Kyle references the beginning of the dispute. He leaves out the more recent exchange, which is above in this chain. Ignoring my criticism of illogicality, he leaves that charge on the table: a study of people without the virus in their bodies cannot conclude anything about what the virus does when in their bodies. I cannot do more than repeat that as the title says, the study deals with “post Covid” patients, that is, as I keep saying, with patients cleared of the virus, so it is not about the Covid infection (repeatedly said in the study) but about possible after-effects of illness. Therefore, the fact that these patients did not get myocarditis or pericarditis as an aftermath of Covid infection does not show that Covid infection itself, the action of the virus in the body during infection, does not cause myocarditis or pericarditis. The study does not intend to deal with the various ways the virus attacks the heart system, which is why it only started monitoring the patients ten days after infection, that is, during convalescence and after. The study intends to research post-Covid effects (i.e. long Covid) not Covid effects. Misreading or non-reading or prejudiced reading cause the false claims of non-writing.
Furthermore, in another comment, which I’ve not published, Kyle wanted me to retract this statement: “Please do not think that Covid has nothing to do with heart problems. It does. And the dramatic rise that Kyle mentions is not the rise in number of people with heart problems but the rise of deaths from heart attacks because of Covid infections.” His evidence of my spreading misinformation is this Tuvali article. But this is another one-word-fits-all fallacy.
The Tuvali article is about myocarditis and pericarditis. My statement is about heart problems and heart attacks. Let me count the ways you can have mortal heart problems and heart attacks: cor pumonale, congenital heart disease, congestive heart failure, cardiac arrythmias of all kinds, like atrial fibrillation, heart blocks, tachycardias, brachycardias, cardiovascular diseases, valve disorders, cardiopulmonary conditions, other myocardial ischemic disorders besides myocarditis, like arteriosclerosis or angina, as there are other pericardial diseases besides pericarditis. They all get rolled into the one for Kyle. There is even the thing called Sudden Cardiac Arrest, which happens not because of a direct attack on the heart but where the heart fails because of an infection in another part of the body. Like the lungs?
Kyle’s mistake here reminds me of something I think comes out elementary geometry classes: a square is a rectangle but a rectangle is not a square. This distinction between an object and the class it belongs to surely is basic to how language works. This is how dictionary definitions are formed.
As for the issue of heart problems caused by the Covid virus, I quote from a narrative overview “The importance of myocarditis in Covid-19” by Drs. Haryalchi et als.: “Overall, myocardial involvement occurs in 20%-30% of hospitalized patients with Covid-19.” We are justified to worry about heart conditions as a comorbidity that increases the risk of serious and mortal Covid. Reducing language’s variety of meanings can cause serious harm.
III. Absolute individualism personalizes everything
Personalization (individual subjectivism) in this comment is clearly evident. The off-handed and familiar reference to the articles shows Kyle assuming that this public discussion is just a personal argument between the two of us. His argumentative points are about my behavior, my character, my bad faith, my idiocy, my distortions, my maligning him, and in the past he has complained about my qualifications, my arrogance, etc. In these arguments reading is irrelevant since what I write seems only an expression of who I am, and so there is simply a clash of personalities: it’s all about and only about good guys and bad guys. Again, I think I am watching a display of self and identity.
IV. Public Discussion tests facts and reasoning
Kyle is right that I choose not to publish all the comments he submits. What he non-writes is almost always a mix of incorrect facts and unreasonable conclusions, and that cannot be published without editing, which I do not do, or without my correcting those errors of fact and thought, which I don’t always have time to do. Also, I don’t see the public benefit of publishing abuse. Nor do I see the point of publishing comments by Kyle that are not about the subject of my discussion. He has written several times that he does not understand what I am writing about, yet he wants to comment on it. I’ve tried to accommodate his hobby horse anti-vaccination subject by studying what he writes as examples of my topic, but he relentlessly thinks the subject is vaccine danger and not even as a topic experts debate but as truths he himself knows.
V. Public Discussion’s aim is common, not one-sided, understanding
Not being published as much as he likes, he is led to the topic of the public forum. But a public forum requires a public, not private language; that is, it requires engagement rather than assertion of opinion. Ironically, Kyle’s doesn’t recognize engagement when he sees it. He notes accusingly that so many of the articles I discuss are introduced by him [in another unpublished comment he complained that I cherry pick my sources]. He fails to recognize that analyzing his citations is my engagement with all there is of his sparse argumentation which always takes the form of an assertion followed by a citation (show and tell). What function his citations serve is ambiguous to me. On the one hand he seems to appeal to authority, the expertise of the doctors. On the other hand, he disrespects with his cited authorities by overriding them.
VI. Public writing is a linguistic object not a person
One part of my topic through these assayings is the assumption that the self, and thus identity and individuality, is culturally formed. I don’t think the individual is self-created, self-constructed, and independent of the culture. This forms the basis of my objection to personalized and ad hominem arguments. Consequently, I can’t blame Kyle personally for his non-writings. As a product of his culture, he like myself, only represents aspects of our culture. I make no judgments about Kyle, only about his writings read as artefacts of the culture.
I’m doing my own self evaluation as to whether I’m guilty of misreading. You could help by indicating if you are a liberal and supporter of the democratic party. What say?
I do think of myself as liberal but not in the normal, traditional sense of western “liberalism.” Liberalism as it has developed is full of racist and classist undercurrents. Being a committed egalitarian, there are many aspects of liberalism I reject; even though, I appreciate the rhetoric of liberalism. I definitely am not a supporter of the Democratic party, though, again, I have at times voted for a Democratic candidate. However, being an egalitarian, I have always thought of myself as a democrat with a small “d” in the sense I described in the article: power to the people, with the caveat that the people need to take the responsibility to read and think with respect and reason.