Many of you will already have heard of Nate Silver. He is an “American statistician, writer and poker player who analyses baseball, basketball and elections. He is the founder of FiveThirtyEight and held the position of Editor-in-Chief there, along with being a special correspondent for ABC News, until May 2023.
According to Wikipedia, “Silver was named one of the world’s 100 most influential people by Time in 2009… Much of Silver’s approach can be characterised by using probabilistic and statistical modelling to try and understand complex social systems, such as professional sports, the popularity of political platforms and elections”.
However, you probably haven’t heard of Sander van der Linden. He is introduced on Wikipedia as “a Dutch social psychologist and author who is Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Cambridge. He studies the psychology of social influence, risk, human judgment and decision-making. He is particularly known for his research on the psychology of social issues, such as fake news, COVID-19 and climate change”.
I started following Van der Linden after reading about a couple of his lectures at Cambridge University. Not only does Van der Linden want to stop misinformation (which I’m sure we all want), he wants to go further and actually ‘protect’ people from it via ‘inoculation’. Inoculating people to misinformation involves exposing them to weakened doses of fake news and then telling them which bits were fake. This apparently produces future psychological resistance.
The duo’s X/Twitter spat began when Van der Linden excitedly tweeted that the World Economic Forum ranks misinformation and disinformation as the number one societal risk in the next two years.
Even Elon Musk laughed at this, saying “by ‘misinformation’, WEF means anything that conflicts with its agenda”. To this, Van der Linden called Musk the “Chief Conspiracy Theorist”.
Nate Silver responded to Van der Linden’s post and I present their argument to you below:
Van der Linden then turned his attention to Professor Jay Bhattacharya from the Stanford School of Medicine and co-founder of the Great Barrington Declaration, after Bhattacharya tweeted the following:
Unsurprisingly, after the reaction Van der Linden received to his ‘fight’ with Silver, he has turned comments off on his response to Bhattacharya.
This piece was originally published on the Naked Emperor’s Substack. You can subscribe here.
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Actually, life is just a bowl of All Bran, to quote the song.
Indeed. What’s so offensive about asking whether a person is from Africa?
What could be more racist than thinking that coming from Africa is insulting?
I’m half British and have spent my adult life here. I identify as British, as least in part. I don’t care much for the character traits of the people with which I share my other nationality.
I’ve had people say I don’t have an accent, but sometimes at least I must do, as I occassionally do get asked where I am from. This does annoy me, as I feel it casts me as an outsider.
Also, it hurts my pride a bit, as I like to think my upper crust accent is near perfect.
I do realise that people think it is polite to show an interest, which to a point it is. What I would say is that this Lady whatshername should have realised that when the black lady with the African clothes said she was from Hackney, that was a massive hint to move on to the next conversation topic.
That would have been the right response IF the woman in question wasn’t wearing African Fancy Dress and was clearly signalling her ethnic origins and therefore inviting a question about her origins.
It was a set-up.
I was shopping in Wells market a couple of weeks ago and a chap running a stall spoke English with a strong accent so I asked him where he came from. I was interested in his background – I wanted to learn something. He seemed happy to chat and it turned out he was Romanian. I asked him about Bucherest and how I’d get from there to Transylvania to “Dracula’s castle.” He gave me some advice.
It was a perfectly civilised, interesting conversation. I wasn’t rude and neither was he. I bought something from him.
The British-born woman who chose to wear African Fancy Dress to the Palace was on a mission to “make a point and be offended” and unfortunately, Lady Hussey didn’t understand that so walked into the trap.
Charlie-boy and William’s reaction was disgraceful.
I have also read that the “African” lady has parents from Barbados and a birth name to match.
Fair enough, but wouldn’t that make her guilty of “Cultural Misappropriation”, at least as bad as some youth wearing a sombrero in a Mexican restaurant?
And strange that she and her chum managed to have the event on film?
A shame a curious 83 year old should have 62 years of service to the Crown vaporised, by the King and her Godson Prince. They should (but won’t be) thoroughly ashamed.