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Nick Hudson on the Limitations of Binary Thinking · UK Column Radio

0:35
None, you know, not everything is binary and and I think
0:41
something that I've learned over the last year, particularly with
0:46
regards to those quote, UN quote on our side is how they are no
0:50
different to those on the other side.
0:52
Yes, absolutely. I mean, there's that old idea of
0:56
the horseshoe where, you know, the the idea is that you have
1:01
this spectrum, let's call it, let's accept that the left right
1:04
structure for a second, just for analytical purposes.
1:07
OK, So you've got people on the left and people on the right.
1:09
And then they become more and more vociferous and more and
1:12
more polarized. And the idea is that instead of
1:15
getting further apart, they actually come closer together
1:18
because they become increasingly doctrinaire and dogmatic, you
1:24
know, inclined to force their views onto other people.
1:27
And in doing so, they adopt more and more a shared set of
1:32
behaviours and insistences or demands.
1:36
And I think there's a lot of truth in that.
1:39
That extremity just converges on a sort of weird, somewhat
1:44
arbitrary authoritarianism. Which certainly feeds into the
1:50
conversation that you and I had some time back about the whole
1:53
left right dichotomy. Yes, I've discussed that one so
1:56
many times. I'm bored with it.
1:58
There is no left, right? It's not a useful construct.
2:00
I mean, people defend it because there's so much political
2:03
writing that's based on it. And you know, the the framing
2:08
has come to mean something because of that writing, but I
2:11
just really find them somewhat empty.
2:15
So one of the things that I love about you, Nick, is your ability
2:18
to speak in front of groups of people.
2:22
And I watched a a documentary a while ago, maybe 2 weeks ago,
2:28
and there was a clip of you speaking in Europe.
2:32
You've done a lot of this kind of thing over the last few
2:35
years, haven't you? Hundreds of talks.
2:38
Yeah. And it, it's, it is a strange
2:43
thing. I sometimes wonder, you know, at
2:45
what point did I become completely, you know, I, I don't
2:50
have any sense. Oh, now I'm talking in front of
2:53
people. It's the same as if I was
2:54
talking to myself or just to one person.
2:57
What, what, what strange thing does that highlight about my
3:00
psychology that it, it's sort of never a threatening story.
3:05
I mean, I invest a lot of time in, in planning and, and, and
3:09
thinking through what I want to say.
3:11
But that's, that wouldn't really change if the audience was one
3:15
or 1000. You know, if, if, if there's an
3:19
event and somebody's asked you to think about something and
3:21
come and talk about it, then I'm going to, you know, do my best
3:26
And yeah. Yeah.
3:28
But I mean just on that, so we are kind of leading to was how
3:33
have you found general reactions?
3:36
I know that you spoke recently. What is, I mean, what has been
3:39
has, have you seen a shift over the years?
3:42
I've, I've noticed a recent shift that has totally surprised
3:46
me. I did, I did 2 recent live
3:50
audience events and I love those.
3:53
It's my favorite is to be able to look at the faces and see how
3:55
people are reacting as you're talking.
3:58
And then you notice somebody who's got like an whoa, he's
4:01
really upset or he's objecting to something you're saying and
4:05
you can sort of start interacting.
4:07
Even if it's not verbally, you know, you at least get a sense
4:10
of the, the ineffable parts of the communication or the non
4:15
verbal parts, I should rather say.
4:17
So the, the, the most recent two of those live events, there was
4:21
one for the, for, you know, Professor Tim Noakes's World
4:25
Nutrition Summit. I'm a huge Noakes fan and a big
4:30
admirer of his scientific integrity and independence.
4:34
So I was, so I was hugely honoured to, to, to be
4:38
presenting there and I did a talk highlighting the, the, the
4:44
structure of propaganda and propagandized narratives.
4:49
And I the, the, the, the structure of the talk was to
4:53
show the parallels between the climate change narrative, the,
5:00
the saturated fats hypothesis and cholesterolemia hypothesis
5:06
that led to the whole statins fraud.
5:10
And then the third one was of course the COVID fraud.
5:14
And I, I just very carefully went through and, and show the
5:19
audience how the propaganda elements and what are, what are
5:22
the key propaganda elements? You start with a latent agenda.
5:28
You then spew out propaganda to to in effect promote the latent
5:34
agenda. The the ideology begins to take
5:40
hold as a result of the propaganda.
5:43
And then after that you it's no longer necessary to keep the
5:47
agenda late latent. You can make it patent because
5:51
the ideology has taken hold. And then the second sort of
5:57
structural reality of propaganda is, is, is, is really when, how
6:03
do you, you know an identification methods, How do
6:05
you know when you're dealing with a scam?
6:08
First of all, you're being told it's a, it's a global problem,
6:11
admitting only global solutions in the, in the amid suppression
6:17
of dissent, those three elements.
6:19
And I just showed how those elements were all present for
6:22
all three of the scams of COVID, climate change and the saturated
6:26
fats hypothesis. And the audience reaction was
6:30
really interesting. There were, there was a divided
6:33
story. Amongst the audience were
6:35
doctors who simply did not want to accept the idea that there
6:38
was no COVID pandemic. They saw the sick people, their
6:42
their colleagues had patients dying in hospital.
6:46
And but the difference is here I am at a live event and there's a
6:49
lunch and there's a tea and so on.
6:51
So I can sit there sort of doing the, the Socratic method on
6:57
these people, you know, asking them questions.
6:59
So how do you know, how did your colleague know what the patient
7:03
was dying from? And they would say, oh, there's
7:07
a PCR test or whatever and and so on.
7:09
So it affords the opportunity now to, to do this, conduct this
7:14
kind of dialogue. And, and what I noticed is that
7:18
the, the light bulb people were not running away.
7:21
When, for example, I presented at the actuarial convention in
7:24
2023, people literally ran away. They were, they couldn't face
7:28
it, they couldn't discuss it. It was just outside of their
7:31
bandwidth. And it wasn't that they were,
7:33
they thought it was boring or uninteresting or that they were
7:35
just so offended by it, you know, no, they were afraid to
7:38
discuss it. It challenged too many of their
7:41
beliefs. Why would they be afraid?
7:44
Because that's a psychological issue.
7:49
It's very interesting, I think that at, at a certain level
7:56
people have awareness of the shallowness of their own
7:58
thinking, that they've just adopted a set of principles, A
8:03
mantra, A dogma, without ever having understood it.
8:11
And so they're, they, they're intuitively fearful of any
8:16
analysis of the axioms of that, that dogmatic structure.
8:23
Then I think also they're fearful of being seen to indulge
8:29
something that is the antithesis of that dogmatic, that dogmatic
8:34
structure. Because their reason for
8:36
adhering to the dogmatic structure is to stay in with an
8:41
in Group to to maintain social credit with a crowd of people
8:49
for whom tribal membership is tightly associated with signing
8:55
up to the dogmatic structure. And so it and that that
8:59
elaborates the fear because they they find themselves first of
9:06
all, not at all convinced of their own ability to defend the
9:10
dogmatic structure. And secondly, painfully aware
9:15
that just being seen to indulge the dissident might be a strong
9:20
enough signal to their community that they're not actually part
9:24
of the in Group, and so they risk excommunication from a
9:29
structure that they somehow depend upon.
9:31
But that basically echoes what Nassim Taleb has written about
9:36
extensively in terms of risk analysis and skin in the game.
9:42
In other words, in In other words, like Tim Noakes has lots
9:46
of skin in the game and ran huge risks by doing U turns on some
9:50
of his on some of his scientific views.
9:53
Yes. And, and, you know, the the
9:54
interesting thing about him is he's a man of such character
9:57
that, you know, he didn't pause the moment he realized that he
9:59
made a mistake or that he that a better explanation was in view.
10:03
I don't think, yeah, I don't think he's the type of person
10:06
who had to agonize late at night over what he was giving up.
10:09
I think he just moved on and that's why part of the reason
10:14
why I have such admiration for him.
10:17
I also have to give a disclaimer because whenever I talk about
10:20
Nassim Taleb, as much as I like his work, he got covered.
10:24
Completely wrong. He got everything wrong on COVID
10:28
and we haven't heard much from him since, have we?
10:30
No, I think, I think there's a degree.
10:32
Well, he blocked me. What's that?
10:35
He blocked me. I wanted to talk to you.
10:37
As well. Yeah, for a fairly, fairly
10:39
innocuous question. But the second presentation was
10:43
that was even more interesting. So another person who I greatly
10:47
admire is is Leon Lowe, who established the the Free Market
10:52
Foundation in South Africa some 40 or 50 years ago.
10:57
He also was a courageously independent voice during the the
11:01
the COVID phenomenon. I was invited to address the
11:05
40th annual libertarian seminar Lib SIM in Cape Town alongside
11:13
some luminaries. I mean, Rand Paul was addressing
11:16
the audience and Thomas Massie was there, you know, physically
11:19
present, also speaking. I had a delightful dinner with
11:24
him, by the way. But what a wonderful man.
11:27
And I, I was asked to, you know, to speak about how to, how to
11:37
sort of catch the lives of mainstream media or what to do
11:41
about mainstream media nonsense or something.
11:43
I can't remember the actual title, but I decided to give it
11:47
a no holds barred kind of talk. And I went in informing the
11:55
audience about Operation Gladio. You know, this, this whole
11:59
business of the, the, the Americans having left 10,000 or
12:04
something or more. Maybe there's even 20,000.
12:08
It's the largest. Did you know it's the largest
12:10
covert operation in history? The largest covert operation in
12:13
history and and possibly the largest terrorist operation in
12:16
history and longest anyway. So they leave these operatives
12:21
in Europe and proceed to create a series of destabilization and
12:29
terror events, including assassinations of sitting
12:34
presidents or a sitting president over the course of
12:39
some 42 years before the before the organization is sort of
12:44
altered in courts and the media. And George Bush senior, the
12:48
former head of the CIA, which supervened over Operation
12:51
Gladio, It was basically forced onto the stage to at least to
12:57
nominally shut it down. By which time of course, the
13:01
entire thing was operate, was still operating under the guise
13:05
of these NGOs like USAID and the National Endowment for
13:10
Democracy. So they really had no need for a
13:12
formal CIA structure, an illegal CIA structure.
13:16
But I went on from Operation Gladio to then discuss the
13:21
phenomenon of the colour revolution and, and, and its
13:25
frequency and how these are propagated around the world.
13:31
And I really gave it horns. Now, I, I would have expected
13:36
three years ago for people in that kind of audience to
13:40
completely switch off. Yeah, conspiracy theorists,
13:44
blah, blah, blah, all those stupid kind of comments, you
13:46
know, but not only did they not turn off, but, but in the
13:53
audience vote for best speaker, I won hands down.
13:58
So, so I was, and I was completely taken aback.
14:01
I, I, I decided that I didn't care and I was going to actually
14:04
get up there and just go, go for it and expecting a little bit of
14:08
complaint and retribution and whatever.
14:10
But what I got was the opposite. The audience loved it, lapped it
14:13
up and spoke to me in detail afterwards.
14:15
Wanted to understand more about kind of revolutions and how they
14:18
articulated. Do you think we've had one in
14:20
South Africa? Do we have S Africans who sit on
14:22
some of these committees, you know, like the Ned in South
14:25
Africa and so on? So, and and that was a pleasant
14:29
surprise for me in the, in the, in the sort of the, the days
14:34
after the seminar, I ended up having an informal dinner party
14:38
at my house with some of the other speakers and, and with
14:41
Leon. No, who who, by the way, has
14:43
just. Yeah.
14:44
Thanks for the invite, Nick. Thanks.
14:46
Yeah, just completed his his his biography working with is it Tom
14:53
Cohen or Tim Cohen? And, and, and I've just started
14:59
reading that. It's a good read.
15:00
He has had a very interesting life and met very interesting
15:02
people along the way. Yeah.
15:04
So I'd recommend that. So let me tell you something
15:07
about I noticed something very funny for the first time.
15:10
I mean, I, I sort of consider myself to have made it a a bit
15:14
of a sort of sideline activity to disabuse people of
15:17
libertarianism. And I say that somewhat tongue
15:21
in cheek. But what I noticed at this
15:23
seminar is if you tell, tell, tell some a libertarian that you
15:27
are a libertarian, it'll take them 5 minutes to for them to
15:30
tell you that you're not a real libertarian.
15:33
Yes. And, and, and if you tell them
15:35
that you're not a libertarian, it'll take them 5 minutes before
15:39
they tell you you actually are one.
15:43
So it's it's a very amusing thing, But but yes, I mean,
15:49
libertarians for the most part were a complete no show in in
15:53
COVID skepticism. Yeah.
15:54
Shocked they all got ejected like every libertarian
15:57
self-described libertarian I know got a vaccine.
16:00
I know it's completely, completely stupid and, and, and
16:03
also just missed the idea. This was the ultimate sort of
16:09
authoritarian surveillance state move, erosion of civil liberties
16:13
and and independence and the the sovereign individual, you know,
16:18
it's never come bigger than this on such a scale.
16:21
And there so many of them just capitulated, went alone.
16:26
It's the power of fear, Jim. It's the power of fear.
16:28
Yes, I had a conversation with Libertarian.
16:32
I won't mention his name because both you and I know him and he
16:38
always talks about going against the state and, you know, not
16:42
trusting the government. But he got injected.
16:45
And I said I said to him, but that's the ultimate trust in the
16:47
government because it was the government that told you that
16:50
there was this there was this deadly pandemic.
16:54
Yeah. What did he say?
16:57
Well, it's it's the typical. Well, it's about choice.
17:02
So yeah, you see, that's the argument that that I think fails
17:05
miserably. Yeah, No, you needed to spot the
17:09
intrusion and fight it on all fronts and not say I'm going to
17:13
selectively participate. I mean, that's.
17:15
Absolutely. Because that's, but that's the
17:16
point. That's that's what you've been
17:17
talking about is, is propagandizing.
17:20
So in other words, you think you're making a choice, but you
17:22
actually aren't. Yeah, yeah.
17:27
Also, recently I've I've noticed at long last there seems to be
17:32
more and more people coming around to the idea not merely
17:36
that we should have all been skeptical about the the COVID
17:39
phenomenon, but but coming around to the idea that there
17:43
was in fact no pandemic of any sort whatsoever.
17:47
I have for many years now, since October 2020, felt rather alone
17:56
in in holding that view that there was no pandemic at all.
18:02
But and and over the next, I would say four years, the rate
18:08
at which people adhere to that view join joining the minority
18:14
who who hold it was was painfully slow.
18:19
But what I've noticed in the last couple of months is a much
18:22
greater willingness among let's just say more normally people to
18:29
to entertain the perspective. And I think that's that signals
18:33
something. I think it's very important.
18:35
But it goes so much further than that though.
18:37
I mean, COVID was a placeholder sustainable development.
18:42
That's it, that everything falls under that category.
18:45
I. I would say sustainable
18:46
development supervenes of pandemics and climate.
18:51
The the thing about the Sustainable development goals is
18:54
is, you know, did on on as discreet goals one at a time.
18:59
More of the goal is probably something that almost everybody
19:03
would sign up to because they're they're quite aridine bland
19:07
statements. But the, the problem of
19:12
bestowing upon a highly centralized grouping of people
19:17
like the United Nations and the people who supervene over them,
19:21
the ability to decide how you would go about satisfying this
19:26
panoply of, of feel good ambitions is that and, and, and
19:34
particularly when you frame those ambitions with absolutely
19:38
no attempt to provide a, a, a framework of trade off and with
19:43
no attempt to prove that those are exhaustive ambitions, that
19:47
there shouldn't be any other ambitions in life.
19:50
So you provide a powerful group of people with this list, no
19:54
basis for trade off and no obligation to consider where
19:58
there aren't other things that we should value is that they can
20:02
then basically do whatever the hell they want.
20:05
And they do. And what they want is not those
20:08
goals. What they want is control.
20:10
And, and this ultimate sort of technocratic surveillance state.
20:15
They've been aiming for it for more than 100 years.
20:18
And so, and, and what they will do is couch every policy
20:22
statement and determination in the wordings or of of one or
20:27
another of these strategic development goals.
20:30
And that provides the ethical justification for what they're
20:33
doing. And so the whole framework
20:35
becomes essentially evil. But I, I, I hold people in
20:41
absolute contempt who wear that little SDG lapel badge.
20:46
I mean, this is you. You are confessing to, you know,
20:51
a pathological level of stupidity and a complete void
20:58
when it comes to ethical nuance when you wear that lapel.
21:04
Bill Gates a few years ago actually said in an interview
21:07
the four major invisible enemies of humanity.
21:13
I mean, he said. He said it like this are climate
21:16
change, pandemics, AI and nuclear war.
21:21
OK. Yeah, I want to come.
21:23
You raise a good point. I want to come back to it, but
21:24
it just struck me that I want to highlight as a sort of a
21:28
structural play that's rolled out in several domains.
21:33
So, so I pointed to the the SDGS lacking a coherent trade off
21:38
framework. And you see you have this mult,
21:40
this complex of goals and, and nowhere to, to say which, which
21:44
is more important than the next. And, and no way to determine
21:47
whether it's exhaustive. If you move over into the
21:50
corporate world, a construct that I've railed against for
21:53
many years is that of stakeholder capitalism.
21:57
And the idea there is that you can't manage a company for its
22:00
owners. No, there are other
22:02
stakeholders. You need to take them into
22:03
account quietly ignoring the fact that in order to increase
22:08
the value of a company, you need to look at a look after a
22:10
multitude of stakeholders, you know, so for example, if you're,
22:14
if you want to increase the value of the company, one
22:18
important way of doing so is to increase the company's revenues.
22:22
Well, you can't increase its revenues and there's there more
22:24
people out there who want its products.
22:27
And that means you're satisfying you, you have a, you know, an
22:30
objective of satisfying a growing number of customers
22:34
along the way. And so, so there's this
22:39
construct called stakeholder capitalism.
22:41
And it too now poses that that you need to take into
22:46
consideration multiple stakeholders.
22:48
But once again, it does so while providing no basis for trading
22:52
off the interests of 1 stakeholder versus another and
22:56
no basis for determining whether you've got an exhaustive list of
23:00
stakeholders. So you have the same story again
23:04
and then another one in the corporate world, ESG, which
23:09
which stands for what's it environmental, social and
23:15
governance reporting as opposed to just financial reporting.
23:19
You must now report under these other categories.
23:22
But once again, it's it's now, you know, increasing the number
23:27
of objective functions, but not telling you how many brownie
23:34
points for environment you must trade or for how many financial
23:38
points. Another 1D EI.
23:40
Oh no, we, we need to show that as a corporate citizen, we are
23:44
attending to DEI on ADEI scorecard.
23:47
And what's that? Diversity, equity and and
23:50
inclusivity. OK, but once again, so we got
23:53
all these objectives, but exactly how many white lesbian
23:57
HR managers should I trade off for black male mine workers?
24:04
You know what, what, what is the framework?
24:07
What's actually being said here? And, and so it's a manatee of
24:11
our times that we allow people to insert these measurement
24:16
frameworks and and and objective functions all over the place
24:20
whilst providing no coherent framework for trading them off.
24:25
I believe if you forced them to do that, then the ludicrous
24:28
nature of these structures would become rapidly apparent and
24:33
they'd be far less destructive than they are.
24:36
Invisible enemies is a, is a, is a very old theme.
24:43
You know, it it it's of course he states it a little bit
24:47
strongly because whenever another person is being othered
24:51
or scapegoated in any kind of way, you're actually creating an
24:55
invisible enemy because the other in process involves
25:00
creating a false image of that that person or grouping of
25:04
people. So you create an enemy that
25:07
doesn't exist. So, and I think people do that
25:11
all the time when they're trying to motivate populations to do
25:15
things that are not in fact in their best interests.
25:19
But we saw when in 1972 or 90, sorry, 1972 or 74, I'm not sure,
25:25
Club of Rome document where they where they say, look, we came
25:27
across this idea of sort of using invisible threats because
25:31
creating real threats is too expensive and practically
25:34
difficult. So what we'll do is we'll focus
25:36
on invisible threats. And two very good invisible
25:38
threats are the threat of a deadly pathogen and the effect
25:43
of a change in the weather. So, so the, the scam has its
25:47
roots there. And it's, it's, it's all very
25:49
transparent. When you go back 50 years and
25:52
read all this, what the origins of the the supposed climate
25:56
crisis, where it's impossible not to conclude that all the
25:59
work that's ever been done on the greenhouse effect or
26:02
whatever they want to call it is, is complete fraud.
26:05
But it does make you question then if any of those enemies
26:08
which are invisible are in fact real.
26:13
Exactly. I mean, but, but the process of
26:18
othering is, is an older one and, and, and that has very
26:22
tangible effects. And I just see all the time I'm,
26:25
I've been dragged onto a number of, you know, social media
26:28
boards, WhatsApp groups and that kind of thing.
26:30
And the one group, there's this woman who was quite transparent
26:33
in terms of her, well, quite perceptive in her ability to see
26:37
through the COVID thing, but seems to have fallen for every
26:40
single scam since, you know, she's very quick to post all the
26:45
terrible things that these Muslims do.
26:47
You know, they're, they're so, they're so cruel and they, they
26:52
hate women and they're this, this and the next thing.
26:53
And whilst they must be there, there, there is clearly an
26:59
element of truth in underlying these kind of othering tactics.
27:06
The image that they foster is one that's completely divorced
27:10
from the reality. Yeah.
27:12
And I'm not somebody who is an advocate of multi ethnicity or
27:17
what, what is it called diversity on as as defined by
27:22
the work powers that be? I I think it's actually a, a
27:25
very dangerous thing. It's something you want to try
27:26
and avoid, but it's not because I have animosity towards other
27:33
groups. I just recognize there are
27:35
differences. I think that from a evolutionary
27:38
perspective, it's extremely healthy to have different groups
27:41
of people believing, well, animals.
27:43
Do it. Animals do it naturally.
27:45
Yeah. So I want there to be other
27:47
religions and I want there to be other political perspectives and
27:50
other cultural modes and other languages and other value
27:53
systems. I think that's healthy.
27:55
It's it, it, it creates anti fragility in the human
27:59
population overall, but it's just very sad to see how easily
28:07
manipulated people are because this kind of othering is not
28:12
organic. There's a there's an effort, you
28:15
know, at at a certain level in a power structure, there's an
28:18
effort to create polarization amongst the the laptop classes,
28:23
for example, in order to distract their attention from
28:28
the evil plans that are under way at their behest.
28:33
And it's horrible to see it being effective.
28:36
I mentioned colour revolutions earlier on.
28:38
OK, now I recently I was listening to podcast.
28:43
I don't know if you've come across EM Burlingham.
28:47
He was on my show. Oh, was he OK?
28:50
Well, then I knew that James Denningpole had interviewed him.
28:53
But, but, but he raised an interesting point.
28:55
He, he said that he, he thought and, and I, I'll apologise in
28:59
advance if I paraphrase him incorrectly, but he thought that
29:03
the CCC PS objective in asserting centralized control in
29:12
certain domains was very likely wrapped up in their desire to
29:16
avoid a color revolution. Because this is what the Anglo
29:21
American establishment does it it basically undermines every
29:25
single potential power block on earth by periodically conducting
29:32
color revolutions. And the the the Chinese know
29:35
that that's the case and that they have to set up their
29:38
country to avoid that at all costs.
29:41
And in order to do that, they need an element of control of
29:45
information flow over narratives of people movement.
29:50
And in order to wage a relentless war against the would
29:55
be color revolutionaries. And to an extent, Russia has had
30:00
to do the same. And, and that raises the
30:03
question of, well, OK, so the fight against the, the the Anglo
30:10
American establishment actually forces you into a political
30:14
structure that has authoritarian elements, which the Anglo
30:18
American establishment then turns against you by calling you
30:23
authoritarian, by calling you draconian, by accusing you of
30:28
wig your genocides, communism, whatever.
30:31
I mean, it's actually very difficult to to see communism in
30:34
China. It's impossible to see it and
30:37
and people need to also go to Xinjiang, for example, to
30:40
understand the the political issue.
30:43
I mean that province, without getting into the discussion
30:47
about that, but that province borders Afghanistan, Pakistan
30:51
and a bunch of other areas that are targeted.
30:54
Silk Road, Yes. Right.
30:56
Yes, but people don't understand you once you.
30:59
Go to Urumqi. Yes, a few times.
31:04
The grads are all study. Fascinating place.
31:08
Delicious food, I'll tell you that.
31:10
I believe so. Very.
31:11
So, yeah. Very, very, very nice food.
31:14
Yeah, but but you know, there I I think the the gap between
31:20
Western perceptions and and and reality on the ground seems to
31:24
me to be vast. I mean, you used the word
31:27
earlier framework and I think this is really, really
31:29
important. I was chatting to Zoe Harcombe,
31:32
funny enough. Yeah, she's great.
31:35
Yeah. We were just having a chit chat
31:37
the other day and and she was asking me about do I think that
31:42
they are individuals who are in these positions of power or is
31:47
it actually something bigger than that?
31:49
And I, and I said, I think it's something bigger than that.
31:51
It's frameworks. It like it doesn't matter if
31:54
Klaus Schwab steps down from the World Economic Forum.
31:56
It doesn't matter if you've all Harare goes and does something
32:00
else with his life. The framework still exists.
32:03
Yes, bad. They're bad meme clusters is the
32:06
way I like to think of them. They're sort of, yeah, I mean,
32:10
they do, they do attain the level of highly sophisticated
32:15
and complex frameworks. And you can see these written
32:18
down and and agglomerating over time.
32:23
And they are consistent families that are involved, but tends not
32:27
to go beyond, you know, 456 in the extreme generations.
32:33
So there's some continuity. I sometimes wonder what they put
32:36
in the Rothschild drink, drinking water that that such
32:39
truly terrible ideas and ethical values persist with such
32:44
fidelity over so many generations.
32:46
But, and you can say the same for the Rockefellers.
32:50
But, but in general, I mean by the time you get to the 4th
32:55
generation, you are dealing with an idiot.
32:57
You know, the idiot grandson or great grandson comes to the fore
33:00
and messes everything up. That's that's a pretty reliable
33:04
pattern. But but I mean just sorry on
33:07
this, someone said to me the other day, but why is nobody
33:11
going after Fauci? But Fauci is just a he's just a
33:14
pawn on on the chess. Board, it's just.
33:17
A waste of time. He didn't.
33:18
He didn't actually. I mean, I'm not defending Fauci.
33:20
He's he, he was involved in the HIV scam in the 80s, but he
33:24
didn't actually do anything during COVID.
33:26
He just told people to wear mosques.
33:29
And take shots. Yeah.
33:32
No, I'd agree with that. I mean, he's just a bit player.
33:35
Nasty piece of work to be sure. But everybody who thinks that,
33:39
oh, the important thing here is to prosecute to Fauci, you know,
33:43
and if you did, because he's the kingpin and he organised all of
33:45
this, I mean, that's such an immature view because it's not
33:50
even close to the truth. And what would you be achieving?
33:53
And Nuremberg trials must do Nuremberg trials.
33:55
You know it. Yeah.
33:58
It's a bit comical really. But I've lost the the track here
34:03
where I know you were talking about it.
34:07
It's not so much that there's the same people or continuity of
34:11
families or an organization over time as, as it is about a
34:14
framework. And I said maybe even like
34:17
something less than that, like a meme cluster.
34:21
Yes, I, I think that's the case. And, and so the, there's almost
34:24
like you, you could call it another, another way of
34:28
referencing it would be to call it an ideological battle.
34:30
You know, the case for the sovereign individual versus the
34:34
case for feudalism or a kind of collectivism.
34:42
And, and I, I think that that that's, that's probably a more
34:49
useful way of, of, of looking at things.
34:53
It, it sometimes comes down to psychological features as well.
34:57
I was engaged in a discussion with an economist the other day.
35:01
And what it's often just absolutely annoys me and, and
35:06
deflates me about economists is that the field tends to attract
35:10
these, these very systematized thinkers, linear thinkers.
35:15
And, and so they, they want to believe that, you know, if they
35:17
were in charge, it would be very easy to get the country to full
35:19
employment or to increase living standards or something like
35:23
this, Because all you have to do is just put more resources
35:26
behind this project and, you know, put more money there and,
35:29
and build this bigger or, or, or, or employ these people in
35:32
the government sector. And then they would be able to
35:35
work in the hospitals and everybody would be able to get
35:37
healthcare. And that would create a circular
35:39
flow and the economy would grow and it would flourish.
35:42
They talk about these systems as if they're sort of just going to
35:45
be implemented by Fiat. And in the conversation with
35:49
him, I, I, I said to him, you know, it, it's, that is not just
35:53
wrong, it's, it's not even wrong.
35:56
It's so far from reality. I said, I describe to him what
35:59
happens when I invest in a business and that business does
36:04
well and it grows 100%. So it double s in size.
36:07
Well, when it double s in size, it delivers to me the most
36:12
complex set of, of problems that need to be resolved by
36:19
painstaking and complex structural adjustment.
36:24
You have to repurpose the organization.
36:27
And I, I don't really like that term repurpose because you, you
36:30
have to redesign the organization in such fundamental
36:33
ways. And the process of implementing
36:36
that new design is so perilous, economically perilous, and that
36:43
it takes decades to learn how to do that properly.
36:47
And that's just at the level of one fairly small company that
36:51
you're trying to take from $100 million of revenue to $250
36:56
million of revenue or whatever. That process is astonishingly
37:02
different. And so I, I, I, I said the, I
37:06
said to the guy, you know, look, you can't just scale
37:09
institutions. You can't just take a small
37:12
institution and keep all its structures and hierarchies the
37:15
same and blow it up, you know, expand it.
37:21
That will lead to disaster. So, so organizational structure
37:26
both in economics and in commerce and indeed in in
37:31
politics is not scale invariant. You've got to change the nature
37:38
of the organization as it grows. Decentralization becomes a more
37:44
important thing and a harder and harder thing to deal with as
37:47
organizational scale increases because you want to make sure
37:53
that decisions are being made on the periphery and as close to
37:58
the, the relevant information as possible by people who are
38:01
understanding that aerial, that segment of your target market.
38:07
And, and so and that challenge is huge.
38:09
It's very hard. And, and what invariably happens
38:15
is, is that despite gallant efforts to, to bring, to bear
38:21
such decentralization and subsidiarity in organizational
38:27
design, companies invariably fail along the way.
38:31
And you end up with this situation where almost no
38:33
innovation takes place at large corporations.
38:37
You know, they're taking the, the my observation to an extreme
38:40
level or, or, or they're there's, they're suffering from
38:44
what I'm observing at an extreme level in the sense that they're,
38:48
they're trying to radically centralized things on a global
38:50
level and to cast a single framework that's assessed at a
38:53
central location. All the trade-offs are
38:56
determined at a central location where all the ethical frameworks
38:59
are set and globalized and universalized.
39:02
As I've always said, very consistently said that that
39:06
aspiration is destined for failure.
39:09
It is doomed before they're out of the starting blocks and it's
39:13
not solved by AI or data availability or speed of
39:16
processing information or anything like that.
39:19
It's a doomed project. It's.
39:21
Irony, though, is that it keeps going.
39:25
Yes, because there's always there's a ready supply of linear
39:30
thinking idiots, systematizers, people who have no appreciation
39:35
for complexity or from this, this very fundamental problem
39:39
that optimal organizational design is scale variant.
39:46
As you change scale, what's optimal changes?
39:49
And part of that is very, very much based on modeling, isn't
39:54
it? Are you spoken about this in the
39:55
past? And this is precisely how how
39:57
the climate change scan works and virology.
40:02
Yeah, absolutely. And yeah.
40:04
And the models have limited value.
40:12
You know, when if you're building a bridge, you would be
40:15
quite nice to have a little bit of a model of load bearing and
40:17
that kind of thing. You know you'd want to have some
40:19
of that if you're. Yeah, but you can see the
40:23
results. So in other words, if your if
40:26
your model complex. Yeah, but as soon as you get up
40:30
to more complex phenomena, modelling is completely useless.
40:34
And and in fact, it's dangerous because it gives people overly
40:39
simplistic picture of how things are and and they start making
40:44
decisions as if they're operating in a simple framework.
40:46
And the COVID models were a wonderful thing.
40:48
You know, there's, they're, those are extremely simple
40:52
models with like 3 parameters, you know, to model this whole
40:57
complex scenario. And, and I think all we got to
40:59
do is control the rate of infection, you know, and then we
41:02
got to do that by locking down. Well, what an absurdity, you
41:05
know, so, so too with the climate models.
41:08
I mean, anybody, I, I, I think you should also like, what if
41:11
you're going to be a climate scientist, you should all, it
41:15
should almost automatically be a fireable defense offense.
41:18
If you, if you build a model, because you just, you have no
41:23
understanding for your field. If you think you can model the
41:25
climate usefully, it, you know, looking for statistical
41:33
regularities and so on is not the same thing as building a
41:35
model. Noticing that I don't know some
41:38
form of solar proximity or solar flares or whatever affects the
41:42
climate is that's a good statistical regularity to
41:44
observe and then you try and understand there was one of the
41:47
variables in the system and is it dominant.
41:49
I don't know what conditions is it dominant and so on.
41:52
And yeah, that that well that's useful.
41:54
OK, but basically modeling in in the face of complexity is a is a
41:59
fool's undertaking. The problem is that this
42:04
actually applies to a much broader category, because
42:07
modeling is 1. Is is is an instance of
42:11
explanation, you know, So within the broad, the very broad
42:17
category explanations of how reality works, one subset is a
42:23
mathematical model. Yeah.
42:27
But the problem we're pointing to here is general to
42:30
explanations. When faced with complexity,
42:36
explanations are likely to be hard to come by.
42:41
And our response to that is not to give up, but to have the
42:48
humility to recognize that we must address complexity not by
42:53
way of grand models and grand explanations, but by way of
42:58
systematically trialling systematic trial and error, by
43:04
trying things on the modern margin with no grand explanation
43:08
for whether they'll work or not. Just try something.
43:10
And does it seem to improve or not?
43:14
And of course, that's harder to do than than than it is to say.
43:18
And and there's still a lot of danger because something might
43:21
appear to work in the short term but be a disaster in the long
43:24
term. And how long is the long term?
43:29
So but but but yeah. Would you say that a lot of
43:35
medicine or pharmaceutical products are based on modeling?
43:40
I'm thinking of of of prophylactic type type stuff
43:43
like vaccination. They, they might have a model
43:48
for the benefits. I mean, you get these crazy
43:50
claims that vaccine, vaccines have saved 140 million lives or
43:53
whatever. It is absolutely absurd.
43:55
Again, people should be fired for attempting to calculate that
43:58
number. But no, it's not so much based
44:03
on modelling, it's based on an explanation, which is that if
44:06
you introduce the body to a pathogen or part of a pathogen
44:09
or a tenuated pathogen, that it learns how to respond to the
44:14
pathogen in a Safeway. OK, not an entirely stupid
44:17
proposition, but one which has never been proven and I I
44:22
increasingly suspect it's because the immune system
44:24
doesn't function as described and and pathogens by and large
44:28
don't function as described, so that the whole intellectual
44:34
construct is actually due due for defenestration.
44:41
So it's definitely based on an explanation, not not a model.
44:44
But but why were you asking that question?
44:46
Why is that of interest to you? The COVID era was driven by
44:50
models. Who was the guy?
44:53
The. Main Yeah, yeah, we go.
44:57
Horrible little man. No.
44:58
Yeah, a stunted intellect as well.
45:00
I mean, he's stupid. They are stupid.
45:03
You know, and then you had, and then you had Christian Drosten
45:05
with the peace out protocols. Yeah, which which were passed
45:10
very, very quickly by The Who. Yeah.
45:13
So that that the yeah, declared them the gold standard and yeah.
45:18
And yeah, we are now we now we are.
45:21
We're having impossible conversations.
45:23
I've been trolling 2 gentlemen on Twitter for the last two
45:27
weeks. Ian Copeland, PHDI think you
45:30
might know who he is? Let.
45:31
Me guess. Neil Stone and Neil Stone.
45:35
Two obvious Pharmaceutical industry Schulz, neither of them
45:39
very bright and and but just so naked in there consistent
45:49
rolling out of these shibboleths of the pharmaceutical edifice.
45:57
So you would argue that vaccines are not really based on on
46:01
modelling, because remember, they don't use double-blind
46:05
trials. No, no, I mean that that they do
46:08
definitely, as I said, try to model the benefits of vaccines.
46:11
But no, I, I think they're based on a very bad idea.
46:16
You know this this sort of notion.
46:19
No, actually, they're genius. They're genius because you can't
46:22
ever prove your argument. What do you mean you can't?
46:27
Say you, you can't say I was harmed by a vaccine.
46:30
You can't ever actually say it because it's, it's a
46:32
prophylactic. It's it's given to you years in
46:35
advance. Well, I mean, some people drop
46:39
dead the moment they receive a vaccine.
46:41
And it's an interesting question about what about the vaccine is
46:44
harming them. Yeah, I mean, I'll, I'll OK,
46:49
I'll share, share my thoughts. To the extent that we have an
46:56
immune system and and pathogens are relevant with respect to our
47:00
health, I think it's important to understand that the idea of
47:04
injecting the vaccine into the blood is, is a is a bad one.
47:10
OK. So that that's just that whole
47:11
category of injected vaccines is, is a stupid idea, even
47:14
conditioning on there being an immune system and there being
47:18
pathogens. But over and above that, I think
47:24
the understanding of the immune system and and what it what it
47:28
actually is doing, there's a lot of scrutiny.
47:33
I think, I think what's often interpreted as kind of a system
47:37
for dealing with non self elements is is is would be
47:42
better understood as a system for dealing with toxins, which
47:45
which may be self or non self. I mean, the idea of toxicity is
47:51
is is is an important one to understand you because every
47:54
single substance that you can consume or inject is toxic at
47:58
some dose. There's a, there's a notion of
48:01
a, a thing called the median fatal dose, median lethal dose,
48:09
MLDI think. And so something like coffee,
48:12
for example, espresso has a, a median lethal dose of about a
48:17
litre. So if you have 40 shots of the,
48:20
of espresso, you've got a 50% chance of dying.
48:24
I, I forget how many liters of water is fatal, but you can
48:27
definitely drink fresh water, fresh water until you die and
48:31
you'll die quite quickly. You're from a condition called
48:33
hypernatremia. So everything is toxic at a
48:37
certain dose and a lot of the systems in the body are designed
48:41
to maintain an equilibrium of one sort or another.
48:45
So the body is full of systems that are dealing with excess or,
48:51
or, or deficiency. And I think it, it strikes me
48:56
often that what's described as a system of dealing with non self
49:02
is, is is maybe more tangled up with the system of dealing with
49:05
disequilibrium. And there also this notion of
49:13
pathogens as being something foreign, something outside the
49:16
body that that comes in and then causes a disequilibrium of some
49:20
sort. I think that's also ought to be
49:23
suspended or, or or not taken as strongly or as heavily.
49:29
I think a lot of these observed structures, bacteria and and the
49:35
like, are in our systems all the time.
49:39
And when the, the system goes into this equilibrium for a
49:43
'cause that has nothing to do with this, this structure, then
49:49
what happens is that the structure proliferates and
49:52
people falsely attribute to it causality in the, this
50:00
equilibrium when they actually are consequential to it.
50:05
So I, I think both the idea of immunology and the idea of
50:10
pathology really require a great deal of, of scrutiny and, and we
50:15
should be taking a, a real white board approach to I, I, I would
50:21
even advocate for just just for the time being, suspend the term
50:24
immune system. Yeah, well, I mean, it's
50:29
effectively just white blood cells.
50:32
Well, it's, it's, it's a bit of different types of cells, yeah.
50:38
I remember back. In the apparatus.
50:41
Yes. Well, I remember in 2021 when I
50:43
started thinking about this whole thing.
50:45
Towards the end of 2020, I remember asking my wife, do you
50:49
think this, any of this is real? You know, And, and then I, and
50:53
then I came across a wonderful book written by Ethel Hume
50:57
called Beisha Pasteur or Beishamp.
51:00
And it was about the two contemporaries, Louis Pasteur
51:04
and, and, and Tony Beishamp. And Beishamp was effectively
51:08
arguing what you've just said. And that was already in the
51:10
1800s, but then the Pharmaceutical industry
51:14
basically shut him down and went with the whole Pasteur thing,
51:19
which is where we are now. Yes, no.
51:22
And if you look at Chinese medicine, you know that it's,
51:24
it's old. I mean, it's, it's central
51:26
theme. Is it, it, it emphasizes
51:30
equilibrium, you know, and, and is trying to and, and also
51:35
medieval medicine, you know, the balance of the humors.
51:38
That was the, the, the temperaments of the humors.
51:41
You know, what was it? Cholera, spleen, bile, and I'm
51:48
forgetting one now. Melancholia, I think it was.
51:55
But yeah, well, the the idea in that medicine, that primitive
51:58
medicine was that that you needed to keep these in balance,
52:04
the full temperaments. Yes, but that makes so much
52:07
sense. And The thing is, is that it
52:10
makes me realize also that we have an impoverished
52:12
understanding of health 1000 years ago.
52:14
I, I don't think, I mean the, the, the, the popular claim is
52:18
people didn't live past age 30. I think that's probably largely
52:21
bunk. That's probably because of wars
52:23
and other things. But health wise they would have
52:26
been very healthy because they didn't, they didn't even have
52:28
sugar. I mean, you would think then
52:31
chronologically today we should be immensely healthy.
52:35
Nick. Yes, well, I guess so.
52:39
One of the things that happened was in medieval in later Europe,
52:44
when they've now the, the, the one of the things that happened
52:47
is the diversity of the diets dropped a lot because they, you
52:51
know, they were typically have a dominant crop or a handful of
52:53
dominant crops. So they were eating a lot of
52:55
grains. Diet was not diverse.
53:01
I'm a big fan of diversity in diet, right?
53:04
But, and, and you had these conditions like consumption,
53:09
tuberculosis. Now that's an example of
53:12
something. I, I, I've heard it said by a
53:15
South African, a well to do South African pathologist that
53:19
he thought that it was probably the case that every single South
53:23
African corpse had at least a small tubercular lesion on the
53:28
lungs. So everybody has, you know,
53:32
asymptomatic tuberculosis in essence, but that of course, so
53:39
only a minority of people actually succumb to the disease
53:42
or, or, or, or develop the disease.
53:46
And, and that's a really is, that really is a, a, a kind of
53:50
combination of the terrain and, and the, the pastor's germ
53:57
theory, where, where the, the germ is there.
54:00
But it, it, the germ is a thing, but it, it plays almost no role
54:07
in the causal structure. You need a person who's
54:09
malnourished, who doesn't have a, a diverse diet.
54:13
I never used the term balanced diet because that's aligned with
54:16
the whole USDA framework of food pyramid that's based on
54:21
carbohydrates, which is a very, very bad thing.
54:24
But, you know, so people who have this UN UN diverse diet end
54:34
up with systems that are on disequilibrium and then the
54:37
tubercular lesion grows. My daughter was killed by one of
54:43
these things, a bacterium called Klebsiella pneumonia, which is
54:49
often referred to as a hospital super bug.
54:52
It's when people die from the infections, from this this
54:58
thing, they often blame nosocomial infection, or in
55:03
other words, they're blaming the hospital for poor infection
55:06
control practices. But Klebsian and pneumonia
55:12
apparently exists in the digestive tracts of nearly all
55:15
people. So what's happening is there's
55:18
there's some instance of leaky gut is the, is the distal
55:21
equilibrium that led my daughter to be in the hospital in the
55:23
first place or the surgery that you went through.
55:27
Did that cause something that is meant to be on the immunological
55:32
outside, which means inside your digestive tract.
55:36
That's that that from an immunological point of view is
55:38
outside your body. So if you've got something in
55:42
your digestive tract going onto the inside that that that's
55:47
might that's caused by this other discontinuity or this
55:52
disequilibrium and then that that bacterium proliferates in a
55:57
way that's hard to control and is ultimately one of the part of
56:01
the causal structure of the the death.
56:05
So. So I think these things are
56:06
bound. The Pharmaceutical industry
56:08
likes to reduce complexity to a single cause with a single
56:14
response and a single solution. Yeah, yeah, that's right.
56:18
It's, it's a simplistic model. Again, that's attraction for the
56:22
simple narrative. Yeah.
56:24
So you picked up a virus, that's why you got flu.
56:26
Take the shot. Yeah, but but the important
56:32
thing is, you know, people say, oh, you know, you're going to
56:36
get tuberculosis if somebody coughs on you.
56:40
No, I think you could be the Princess Diana of tuberculosis
56:45
patients and, you know, hugging every single one of them and
56:47
walking around day on a daily basis with TB, TB sufferers.
56:53
And if you've got a normal diet and are healthy, you have
56:57
absolutely no elevated risk at all.
57:01
I know they can cough on you all day.
57:04
I think that's the reality. Whereas the the picture that's
57:06
presented is no. Well, there's this pathogen and
57:08
you've got to try and avoid getting it.
57:11
Just quickly, you mentioned healthy.
57:13
So I said the other day to somebody, if your system is
57:17
healthy then you won't get sick. I mean that that seems to be the
57:20
correct dichotomy. And then he said almost.
57:22
By definition, right? But then he said, OK, then why
57:26
don't we live forever? Yeah, I mean, that's a whole
57:30
different subject that's almost a mechanical subject or a, or at
57:33
least a sort of biochemical subject.
57:37
There's this phenomenon of programmed cell death,
57:39
apoptosis. It's quite hard to understand.
57:43
And it's a, you know, I don't for a minute believe that it's
57:47
been fully understood. I mean, I've seen explanations
57:50
for how apoptosis works that include quantum mechanics,
57:55
which, you know, it's, it's quite hairy.
57:56
But apoptosis or programmed cell death is, is, is this phenomenon
58:01
that we do run into. And it happens, by the way, in a
58:04
cascading fashion. Once, once apoptosis hits a
58:07
certain threshold in the body, it cascades into the rest of the
58:10
body. So you, you, you think people
58:13
die of like sort of one organ failure.
58:15
But actually what happens is the body starts collectively dying
58:17
and other organs start dying and, and the whole system shuts
58:20
down in this this cascade of program cell death or apoptosis.
58:25
And that describes death in normal circumstances.
58:29
So yeah, I mean it and it presents, as far as I understand
58:33
it, a hard limit. So all of these loony
58:36
billionaires who are trying various life extension methods
58:39
and so on, and who believe that they kind of survive long enough
58:42
to upload their brains and the computers are living a
58:45
completely delusional lie. But but, and, and I think
58:50
there's a hard limit and it's hitting humans at around the age
58:53
of 120. And at that point, cells that
58:56
don't get replaced by the body and probably can't plausibly be
58:59
replaced turn off and that's it. OK, so we are out of time, but I
59:06
just want to point out Nick, I am a fan of germ theory.
59:20
A few bottle of wine you've got and laughter that's really on
59:26
top that. It's been a wonderful chat job.
59:29
Thanks very much and I hope you have a wonderful festive season
59:32
and Merry Christmas to all the viewers out there.
59:35
I'm sorry if we rambled a bit, but I enjoyed the conversation.
59:39
Thanks a lot. We were just spit morning.
59:41
But before you go, Nick, how can my audience follow you?
59:45
You can follow me on the most heavily shadow band platform
59:48
that is X. My handle is Nick Hudson, CT and
59:53
I've got a sub stack that I'm threatening to crank up over the
59:55
Christmas holidays. Who knows?
1:00:00
Yeah, that's about it.