When Orthomyxo says so of course. In a recent exchange I asserted that COVID-19 deaths may be overstated. Orthomyxo got red in the face, stamped his rhetorical feet, and petulantly insisted that no COVID-19 numbers are without the slightest doubt understated. There is strong evidence, however, that they are overstated, and when he asked me for data to support that claim, I gave him data in the form of this statement from the scientific advisor to the Italian Minister of Health: “On re-evaluation by the National Institute of Health, only 12 per cent of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88 per cent of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity – many had two or three.”
His response: “TO ME, that is not data.” Orthomyxo is so arrogant and consumed by confirmation bias, that he has arrogated unto himself the authority arbitrarily to expel from the category “data” anything that does not support his thesis.
His antics are not unique of course. For example, many times a materialist has come into these pages and announced there is no “evidence” for the existence of God. He is then shown multiple strands of evidence for the existence of God. I can’t tell you how many times the response has been: “That is not evidence.”
For Ortho, like the village atheist, evidence that does not persuade him is not “evidence that does not persuade me.” It is no evidence at all. It is really quite astonishing that a man who is by all appearances reasonably intelligent should have such a blinkered, almost adolescent, view of epistemology.
I suppose I shouldn’t be too hard on him. The best of us routinely succumb to confirmation bias. It’s just that he seems to have an especially nasty strain of that bug. Also, the problem is exacerbated by the arrogant certainty with which he asserts his views and dismisses any view to the contrary.