On Knee Pain and Arbiters of Truth

I want to talk about something a little different today. At first it won’t seem at all related to my experience with knee pain, but I promise to connect the dots.

I want to talk about truth, and about arbiters of truth, and about powers given to those arbiters.

We’re still in the middle of a pandemic that has badly frightened and confused many of us. We are scared of getting the coronavirus and are desperately searching for guidance on what to do.

I’ve been vaccinated: both shots, and the second one walloped me. But I’m a data and science guy. I’ve read enough about Covid, and long Covid, that I don’t want to take my chances with either one.

Yes, the vaccines in rare cases can cause bad side effects, but if you’re playing the odds, Covid has a much higher chance of leading to serious damage.

Nationwide, there’s been a push to get more people vaccinated. Amid that has been an alarming rise of disinformation about the vaccines. On social media sites now, like Twitter, staffers have begun to label tweets that are considered false or misleading.

Apparently too, according to this ABC news story, people won’t be able to comment on, like, or retweet certain messages, such as “vaccines cause autism.”

As a guy who likes data and science, I suppose I should be delighted. But honestly, this entire project makes me deeply uncomfortable.

Yes, we have a bad problem in the United States right now. The inability of many Americans to evaluate arguments, in a logical, methodical way, is stunning. We’ve increasingly abandoned reason for tribal affiliations. We’ve become a nation of Team Democrat vs. Team Republican.

And your team apparently determines how you perceive truth, as insane as that sounds.

Still, this idea of “truth arbiters” cleaning up content bothers me. “Truth” is not a static, fixed thing. It changes. And “official truth” is even more suspect. Do you recall the early days of the pandemic when the country’s top health officials told us not to wear masks, that they weren’t effective?

Imagine if the Twitter truth sanitizers had gone through tweets, labeling any pro-mask tweets as “misleading.”

As for the Covid vaccines being safe: I honestly think they are. Am I 100% sure? Of course not. Could we find out, in some longitudinal study conducted in 30 years, that people who got these vaccines had a 60% higher risk of kidney disease, or some other thing?

It seems unlikely, but possible. We’re in the early days with these rapidly developed vaccines. I don’t regret for a moment getting one, but I also don’t know what the future holds.

Imagine that there was some terrible, as yet unknown side effect of getting these shots. And that a small number of people began to tweet about it. The self-appointed truth minders at Twitter would put a damper on that dialogue, fast.

Again, I want to be clear: I’m pro-vaccine. But I also look at things with a kind of radical open-mindedness. Anything I know, I realize, might be false. It doesn’t mean that I quickly ditch any well-founded beliefs that I hold in the face of a few bits of contravening evidence.

But part of me, deep inside, says: Anything is possible. That’s why I don’t like people who screen what’s true/not true for me.

Sure, you might be thinking, good for you. But not everyone asks the right questions, analyzes critically, weighs the evidence and probes for weaknesses in it.

And that’s a deep, deep problem in America today. But I think the answer lies in lifting people out of ignorance, even though that’s a harder thing to do. If you simply stamp that ignorance “false” or “misleading,” you drive them underground, into their little warrens of like-minded conspiracy theorists.

What does this have to do with bad knees?

My book, that I felt so strongly about writing, represents a minority viewpoint. I’m sure if it were passed around to many physical therapists and doctors, they would be inclined to label it “false” or at least “misleading.”

And because of that label, many people who might benefit from Saving My Knees would have been discouraged from reading it.

So just keep in mind: today’s “truth” may not be tomorrow’s. That’s one thing that my chronic knee pain experience taught me.

Okay, I’ve gone on far too long! If you have questions about your knees, leave them below. Or, if you have a good knee story, leave that too and I’ll devote a post to it.

Cheers!