Dr. Jay Bhatacharya’s Amazing Story

If you asked me five years ago, I might have struggled to name many people I considered to be heroes. I have many heroes now, many of them people who stood up to censorship. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is a highly credentialed doctor, which means that we should have been allowed to hear his opinions during the pandemic. But he was censored, so we did not learn of all of these harms that a lock-down would create:

In the following interview, Dr. Bhattacharya tells his story, including his contributions to the Great Barrington Declaration to his role in the case of Missouri v Biden, which appears destined to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

I created the following transcript for those who absorb details better through reading:

The sad fact is that we are living in a time where our once liberal societies are no longer liberal. We live in a deeply illiberal society that punishes people for openly expressing heretical thoughts. And that statement that I just made that we live in, in illiberal society requires some justification. I mean, nominally, we have democracies with constitutions, charters, whatever committed to essential civil liberties necessary for a liberal society.

And I admit, before the pandemic, I took these rights for granted. I took the right to free speech for granted. The right to worship. The right to protest the right to free movement across borders. But during the pandemic, what I learned was that the government could violate each and every one of these rights in the name of infection control. During the pandemic, governments made it nearly impossible for independent scientists to discuss and disseminate ideas contrary to government public health policy. The government censored smeared and defamed dissident scientists who criticized government authorities in the name of science. And I say this from firsthand experience.

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How Public Responds to its Recent Loss of Subscribers

Public, founded by Michael Shellenberger, has recently lost a significant number of subscribers. They responded with an editor's note, which IMO was beautifully written. Here's an excerpt:

Over the last week, we saw the single largest loss of subscribers we have seen in our nearly three years as a publication. Why?

These are some of the messages we received from unsubscribers:

“Don’t lecture us on human rights wrt fighting terrorism. The Geneva Convention wasn’t designed for this.”

“Unbalanced Pro-Israel garbage, amongst all the other garbage that's been accumulating recently.”

“Comparisons between depraved terrorist atrocity and actions designed to ensure that its population can live in safety and security show too much of an absence of moral clarity (or possibly even worse as bordering on antisemitism) to continue following.”

“This tone-deaf most recent post defending free speech of Pro-Hamas supporters turned me off completely.”

“Your support for Israel and their war crimes is reprehensible.”

At first glance, it may appear that the commenters disagree with each other. After all, some people thought we were too pro-Israel, and others thought we weren’t pro-Israel enough. In truth, the commenters agreed that everything they read from us must completely align with their opinions.

We don’t expect our readers to agree with us all the time. We don’t even always agree with each other. Not every article we publish reflects the views of all the editors. Obviously, if our disagreements were so great, we would not work together. But on issues ranging from Ukraine to UAPs to Israelis and Palestinians, you can expect that we have plenty of debates and hold a diversity of views here.

To reiterate: we hope you continue to be a subscriber, paid and free. We are deeply grateful to all of you who are subscribers, and intend to remain ones. We don’t want anyone to unsubscribe, even if — especially if — you disagree with us on some, and even most, things.

We think highly of our readers and welcome healthy disagreements in the comments. We strive to correct any errors we make, and to consider multiple perspectives. We want Public to be an outlet that sometimes confirms your views, sometimes challenges you to think differently, and always gives you new ideas or information to consider.

This is what we seek out from the publications we read, and we want that to be what you find here.

But we would sooner close up shop than compromise on the principles that we hold as journalists, and that we think all journalists should hold. We strongly believe that the principle of human rights must be universally applied, or they are not human rights. We have the same view about freedom of speech: we believe speech rights apply equally to everyone, even those we most firmly disagree with.

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One Approach for Dealing with Vague Verbal Attacks

Notice the simple technique used by this Canadian politician. He asks for examples. He asks the attacker to clarify what he is trying to say. Relentlessly asking for clarity does two things: It reveals the empty rhetoric and it shows that what is really going on is that the attacker is calling other people "bad." The politician was faced with an emotional feeling wrapped up in incomprehensible rhetoric. Not that emotional concerns are invalid. That said, things that look like an analytical argument should always be fair game for testing. We should always be invited to kick the tires and see what's under the hood.

This technique is non-partisan, however. Any person can use this technique to derail any conversation if used to an extreme. All language is inherently rickety, laden with conceptual metaphors. Using this technique incessantly will end almost every conversation. The only conversations that have any chance of surviving will be those involving only basic math and logic propositions (2 + 2 = 4) and "basic level categories," as described by Eleanor Rosch: Conversations like "I have a dog" or "It's raining outside." See also here, here and here.

There is balance to be had in the use of such inquisition and people of good faith do work together to make their conversations understandable and thus meaningful. If only there were more good faith and less suspicion in the world . . .

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California Judge Allows Case to Proceed Against Social Media Company for Addicting Children

From Bloomberg:

Meta Platforms Inc., Snap Inc., TikTok Inc., and Google LLC can’t invoke the First Amendment or the Communications Decency Act’s Section 230—a decades-old legal shield for online services—to block allegations that they designed their platforms to addict young people causing depression and anxiety, Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl ruled in an 89-page order.

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