

Discover more from Where are the numbers? by Norman Fenton and Martin Neil
A conversation with Mark Changizi
We discuss whether evidence supports premeditated collusion or are result of the emergent behaviour inherent in complex social systems.
After picking up on one of our posts about the effect of quarantines on flu detection Mark Changizi posted a very interesting piece giving his thoughts on the issue:
My impression is that Mark saw the CDC’s rules on flu testing as biased and yet another example of social systems operating with self-confirming feedback loops that reinforce and reward consensus.
Given his interest in this matter I DM’d him on twitter to ask about his opinion on our next flu post, which I personally think provides very strong evidence that flu surveillance and reporting systems were intentionally broken or disrupted to serve some nefarious interest and hence can’t simply be judged as reactions to the covid-19 panic.
We exchanged messages over the course of the evening and Mark has very kindly agreed to me writing this post and sharing our conversation. At the end I have posted a poll to ask what your views are on the issue.
Note that during the conversation some links to articles and videos were exchanged and these are embedded in the conversation. Feel free to skip them or visit Mark’s substack for all of his material.
According to ancient Jewish law if a panel of the Sanhedrin (23 Jewish judges) unanimously find a defendant guilty of murder then they must acquit on the assumption that their verdict is most likely to be “too good to be true”. The underlying assumption behind this rule is that, in this situation, the Sanhedrin’s judgement may be systematically biased, and hence the judgements may be dependant, one on another, rather than each judgement produced independently.