The blogotwitteryoutubosphere has been captivated by the debate between ‘comic’ Dave Smith and pundit Douglas Murray on the Joe Rogan podcast recently, and a fortnight later, the debate still rages. It was covered by my colleague, Libby T last week arguing that a cordon sanitaire was necessary to separate the Nazi-sympathising ‘woke’ far-right from sensible conservatives.
Without wanting to rehash too much, let me just note that most of the argument stemmed from a disagreement over “experts”, a class of people even Murray acknowledged had a bad rep primarily over the handling of Covid. I have been lured out of blogging semi-retirement to make the point that will follow.
But first let me start with the personal observation that got me thinking along these lines. It may be a short detour.
It begins with The Who, and with an inter-band spat that briefly caught the attention of the the media, who immediately grabbed the short end of the drum stick and proved they can indeed be fooled again.
It all kicked off with news that drummer Zak Starkey had been fired after three decades of service on the drum riser vacated first by the late maniac Keith Moon, then his replacement Kenny Jones, and sessioneer Simon Philips, and ultimately the Son-of-Ringo, who has served the band longer than all of his predecessors combined. But why? The band appeared tight-lipped, so the media decided to speculate. The seemingly collective decision was that Starkey “played too loud” and that this annoyed singer Roger Daltrey. As evidence they offered a clip from an Royal Albert Hall show in which the singer complained about the level of the drums in his earpiece, which made it hard for him to sing.
This is obviously rubbish. I’ll explain why in a moment. But first, a detour within a detour…
Let’s talk about a phenomenon known as the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.
In short: You read an article in the press on a subject you are very familiar with. The piece is littered with errors, misunderstandings, over-simplifications and half-baked notions. You’re disgusted and annoyed. You dismiss the piece as clueless bollocks. But then you turn the page. Now you read about an issue you know very little about, and you’re willing to trust the reporting again… that is, unless you come to the reasonable conclusion that an expert in this area might be having the a similar reaction to your own on the previous page. But most do not.
As author Michael Crichton – who coined the term noted, “You turn the page, and forget what you know”.
Now, I happen to know a fair bit about audio mixing and stage setups. Zack Starkey plays electronic drums. The expensive ones he uses look to the layperson exactly like a traditional kit, but they make no more sound on stage as if he were tapping his fingers on a table. It has a volume control, but he is not in charge of it. He plays as he normally plays and it is up to a front-of-house mixing engineer to set the level the audience hears, and it is for a monitor engineer to control what the band hears via their ear pieces and on-stage wedge monitors. Each member of the band can have what he hears customised to his own taste. Bass players might like more drums in their monitors so they can lock in with the beat. Singers might prefer more melodic instruments they can use to pitch against as well as their own voice. Guitarists… well, they typically don’t listen to anyone!
They point is, whatever the fight was about, it had nothing to do with “loud drums”. The entire line of speculation makes no sense at all.
But now, from the Starkey-Daltrey spat, back to the Murray-Smith one.
Smith is sceptical about “mainstream media narratives”. But he also mistrusts experts. But – as the Gell-Mann effect shows, without experts in fields exposing how absolutely shoddy and ill-informed the media can be, what’s the alternative? Believe nothing? Where will that leave us other than in the post-modern hellscape the Progressives and Marxists took us to, a place where there is no longer truth and you are forced to deny what you see with your own eyes?
Murray’s argument was more subtle and – in the baying and swaggering over the online crankosphere – entirely overlooked. What he told ‘comic’ Dave Smith was essentially this: If you do not trust established experts, you yourself must become an expert of sorts by, as far as possible, examining the things you wish to talk about with your own eyes.
If we do not want to be “fooled again”, the answer is to listen to more experts in as wide a range of fields as possible and to see as much with our own eyes as we can. The answer is not to close our eyes and not listen to anyone. If you want to expose the mainstream media for not knowing what they are talking about, you need more people who do know what they are talking about.
Instead, Dave Smith seems to want to ape the very ignorance he critiques, and then takes umbrage when someone – like Douglas Murray, who has taken the trouble to explore and investigate the topic – is annoyed and disgusted by that ignorance. His critique of the media is valid. But he should accept that when he turns to page to a topic he knows little about, someone else may be the ‘expert’ he is not.
