zookoⓩ🛡 Profile picture
10 Apr, 12 tweets, 3 min read
When trying to learn about the state of the pandemic, I try avoid paying attention to the kinds of facts and data which are vulnerable to being manipulated and misrepresented and look for "harder data":
I'm convinced that the most effective tools for propaganda, panic-mongering, and thought-control are data that are *true facts* and *true data*, selected and framed to support a false narrative. True facts are more powerful tools for deception than falsehoods are.
Misinfo and disinfo are rampant. Media corporations, Tech Titans, governments, and probably other actors are running successful disinfo ops. Additionally, fear and anger are "cognitive pandemics" sweeping through populations and making people deceive themselves and their friends.
(Which reminds me of one of my favorite tweets of mine ever, in terms of luckily predicting, back in Feb 2020, what subsequently happened: )
In my experience, it is awfully difficult to find and use "harder data". It's laggy, it's missing a lot information that you want to use, and it's just less *fun*. You can't get frequent doses of emotional stimulation that affirm your feeling of being In The Right.
Also, of course, it isn't perfect. Harder data, too, is vulnerable to misinfo, disinfo, and bias, it is just *less* vulnerable.
When I'm trying to learn about the state of the cryptocurrency markets, I look at Messari's data set, filtered to show only coins with:

1. market cap ≥ $1 bn
2. real volume ≥ $100m / day
3. transaction volume ≥ $100m / day
4. payments ≥ 10,000 / day

messari.io/screener/bigge…
Again, it's not perfect, it's not immune to manipulation or misinterpretation, and it omits a lot of important and actionable data that I would want, but that's my current starting point.
I sometimes also look at this, which is the same columns but not filtering out any coins: messari.io/screener/cyber…
Anyway, the point of this thread is just that it is a beautiful morning here in Colorado, and I'm relaxing on my front porch with coffee, and I wanted to show you these data sets that I use. And at the same time, I wanted to noodle out loud on my growing sense of unease that …
Truth is necessary but not sufficient! The most successful propaganda, disinfo, and thought-control operations are probably built by using *true facts* and *true data*, and filtering and framing it in order to deceive and control you.
Thanks for listening. Be safe out there! No wait, don't be safe, be free (HT Snowden). Write back and tell me what you think! I'll be aggressively filtering out responses that I think aren't helpful to my readers. (Sorry if I hit yours. Nothing personal!.) ៚

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More from @zooko

10 Apr
I heard that Youtube (owned by Google/Alphabet) took down a video of Florida Gov DeSantis hosting a round-table retro on covid-19 with Scott Atlas, Jay Bhattacharya, and others. That interested me.
As I've previously tweeted, I'm profoundly concerned about censorship and other forms of thought-control beginning to be exercised by the Tech Titans like Google, among others.
Of course, they say that they're doing it for our own good! For good reasons. And honestly, I believe that they believe that. But that doesn't assuage my fear about its potentially deadly effects on our society.
Read 12 tweets
10 Apr
Total deaths in USA per week from all causes (the orange line is basically "how many deaths we'd have in a particularly bad year") cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr…
Note that the most recent few weeks haven't yet had all of the deaths that week fully counted, so those bars will get revised up over the next few weeks, which is why I excluded the most recent two weeks from the highlighted image (left).
But even taking that into account, it seems like USA is currently experiencing fewer deaths per week than an average week in April.
Read 9 tweets
14 Dec 20
Privacy technology (such as Zcash) doesn't *just* protect Americans from their own government (in accordance with quintessentially American values such the Fourth Amendment). Perhaps more importantly, it protects Americans from *enemy governments*.
Listen to Chairman Powell. Liberty, and limitations on central power, is the way we do things here. It's what makes us different and better.
In fact, because of the way law, technology, information security, and industry interact, fully-transparent blockchains expose normal everyday American users to foreign military/espionage operations *much more* than they expose criminal users to law enforcement.
Read 10 tweets
4 Jun 20
What the fuck? Amazon is now doing "Virtual Book Burnings" to prevent people from reading dangerous ideas. This trend will further destabilize human society and make it harder to learn and harder to make peace with each other.
Amazon has now joined the Hall of Shame of the Monopoly Tech Overlords who are giving into the inevitable human desire to control other people's thoughts:
Read 6 tweets
9 Apr 20
Low-carb researcher Amber O'Hearn studies evidence emerging from covid-19. People are asking "Can low-carb diet help?", but interestingly she instead argues that we can learn something from covid-19 — not just the standard low-carb theory. mostly-fat.com/mostly-fat/202…
Disclosure: I helped a little with the research and writing.
Disclosure: also we used to be married.
Read 6 tweets
29 Mar 20
I think that a lot of people, during a time of crisis, when they feel scared, have a negative emotional response to someone questioning the dominant narrative — they get a feeling as though the questioner is backstabbing their society. I've seen a lot of this on twitter recently.
Here's a one small example. I don't mean to pick on this person and I don't want anyone else to pick on this person either, but I've seen a lot of tweets *like* this, where the person seems to feel moral anger against someone for putting forward a different narrative.
I believe the opposite: that dissent is part of the nervous system of society, and it is necessary for society to see, learn, and adapt. Silencing dissent is like paralyzing part of your brain.
Read 9 tweets

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