Thread by @MarkChangizi

🔥 Culpability Principle 🔥

1/ You’ve heard of the Precautionary Principle, but we desperately need a new principle, one I will describe in this thread.

It’s called…

The Intervention Culpability Principle.

2/ The Precautionary Principle is NOT that we should take precautions when there are perceived dangers.

Unfortunately, this is almost the exact opposite of what the Precautionary Principle actually says.

rumble.com/vr38xq-the-pre…

3/ The Precautionary Principle says that the burden of evidence is on those proposing the novel interventions to show that they will work, and will have low harms.

4/ What’s the justification for the Precautionary Principle?

Society culturally evolves into somewhat optimal spots, with no designer. When we make perturbations, it almost always shifts things from some current local optimum to something less optimal.

5/ And there’s a long history of our human interventions wrecking things.

The greatest historical democides (mass deaths by government) are usually due to the results of society’s well intentioned policies.

6/ So, that’s the what and why of the Precautionary Principle.

But I said we need another principle. What’s that?

7/ Whereas the Precautionary Principle concerns how to behave BEFORE initiating novel interventions, this new principle concerns how to behave AFTER having implemented the novel interventions.

8/ The mainstream covid narrative is that the interventions worked
~ they slowed spread
~ they saved hospitals
~ any costs were small relative to this
~ and they were certainly not the cause of most of the supposed covid deaths that the interventions were protecting us from

9/ It’s been the skeptics and narrative outsiders that have been having to provide evidence, mostly ignored, that the interventions
~ did not slow the spread
~ did not save hospitals
~ had devastating harms
~ and are quite probably the principal cause of most of the supposed… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

10/ That is to say, in the post-intervention situation we’re now in, the burden has been on those skeptical of the interventions to demonstrate the failure of the interventions.

Why is that?

11/ That has things backwards.

Why isn’t the burden on those that supported the draconian civil-liberties-violating interventions to demonstrate that the interventions were in fact successful?

12/ The wisdom of the Precautionary Principle is that, in the absence of very good arguments, we presume society’s current functioning has found some local optimum. Most deviations from that will lower the utility, often astronomically so.

13/ And this is in the best of circumstances.

It’s even more relevant when interventions are implemented quickly, when civil liberties are violated, or when they’re implemented under a perceived pressure to “do something to save us.”

14/ But those very reasons justifying the Precautionary Principle also argue that the post-intervention presumption should be that the interventions failed.

The presumption should definitely NOT be that the interventions worked as planned!

15/ They rarely do work as planned, and those in power that implemented the interventions are exactly the folks you cannot trust when they claim they worked as planned, no matter how well intentioned they might be.

16/ This is especially the case for interventions that were not implemented with an eye for the Precautionary Principle in the first place, as was the case for the covid interventions, where one was a “denier” to even suggest that cost-benefit analyses must be done.

17/ So, just as the Precautionary Principle puts the burden on the interventionists before their implementation, this new principle puts the burden on the interventionists after the interventions have been implemented.

Here’s the new principle…

18/ The Culpability Principle

The burden is on those supporting the novel interventions to show they worked as advertised.

19/ It is the interventionists’ responsibility to fully and independently audit the consequences of the interventions, against the starting assumption that they did NOT work, and that they DID have significant harms.

20/ And the Culpability Principle is even more relevant for interventions that
~ never took the Precautionary Principle seriously
~ were implemented in haste
~ were implemented in fear
~ were implemented with righteous justification
~ were perceived as “common sense”
~… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

21/ For covid, the Culpability Principle says the burden is on the lockdowners (maskers, supporters of mandatory vaccination, etc.) to show that
~ the interventions slowed the spread
~ the interventions saved hospitals
~ any costs were small relative to the benefits
~ the… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

22/ The Precautionary and Culpability Principles comprise the wisdom that our greatest threat comes from our own actions.

They’re just the pre- and post-game versions of the same core principle.

23/

Precautionary Principle:
The burden is on you to convince me twelve ways to Sunday that your ingenious scheme to save us ISN’T GOING TO royally fuck things up.

Culpability Principle:
The burden is on you to convince me twelve ways to Sunday that your ingenious scheme to… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

24/ But, some might reply, once the interventions have actually occurred, won’t it be obvious whether the interventions worked as advertised?

Not at all!

25/ Not even supposing everyone is acting as independent and objective scientists.

And especially not in a climate where a mainstream narrative will inevitably have formed post-hoc justifying the wisdom and ethics of the interventions.

26/ Finally, as an addendum, because the Precautionary Principle is commonly misunderstood to dangerously mean the opposite — “We must take all the precautions!” — it would greatly help to rename these two principles as follows:

27-end/

The Intervention Precautionary Principle

and the

The Intervention Culpability Principle

Both principles are also related to the Hippocratic Oath to “Do no harm,” except that the concern here is where the burden of evidence lies for those doing novel interventions.

In doctor terms…

The Precautionary Principle says,
“The burden is on the doctor to convince us that… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…