In front of everyone!

From The Right to Risk Being Misinformed by Conor Fitzgerald.  The subheading is The War on Misinformation isn't driven by rationality or altruism, but by a visceral reaction against the wrong sort of opinions, and the people who hold them.  

One man's freedom of speech is another man's misinformation.  Regrettably, central planning authoritarians are getting comfortable with the idea that everyone else's freedom of speech should be curtailed for the convenience of the central planners.  May we never see the day.

Fitzgerald is writing in the context of Ireland's efforts to make the public mute when dealing with authoritarian central planners.

The people who decide what laws we will implement are successful people who have moved through the upper echelons of academia, business, and the civil service. These are details people, whose success and self-image are based on being decorous, introverted, hierarchical and fact-oriented. (I’m a bit like that and I recognise my type.)

This has been pointed out before in a million articles about “Somehweres Vs Anywheres” but what I’m highlighting here is the line of causation. They don’t adopt that style of interaction because they’ve become used to it via their careers; they sought out the careers most congenial to their personality types, and prospered because the fit was so good. The PMC style is first and foremost an aesthetic preference, and since they reached their position by merit, they have no problem imposing those preferences on other people.

Their problem with Misinformation is as much with the people who spread it as the thing itself. Technocrats by their nature are people who have suppressed their own views and precisely calibrated them in order to successfully manoeuvre through organisations their whole career. They’ve gotten where they are by attending working groups, committees and think tanks that weren’t easy to get invited to. Making alliances with like minded people in corridors. In the darkness of bedrooms and home offices, getting really good at learning facts, passing exams and making presentations. Now here are all these apes, who have never so much as put together a powerpoint slide, getting their big dirty paws all over our nice clean machine, upending it, turning it inside out - brazenly! In front of everyone!