First, I already agreed this was true. But if you write about the urgent need for planning for biosecurity a year before a pandemic, quote a biosecurity report that mentions 8ish diseases, you cut a few from your block quote for concision, and then one of the 8 that you didn’t specific use in your block quote (but which you were definitely writing about!) occurs in a global pandemic… I just think it’s pretty reasonable to say “I wrote about this”. I might not do it per se, but if a friend of mine did it, I wouldn’t bat an eyelid. If a random acquaintance did it, I would stop for a second, think about it, decide it seemed fine. If you write a fair amount about a report warning of some things, and then one of those things happens, you get to say “you wrote about that”.
Second, I think there’s a very important distinction between truth-seeking and truth-telling, as comes up regarding Cummings. I understand this is a pretty apologist stance but I think it’s super important here. Normally people have neither, and sometimes people have both. But I think it’s pretty consistent to have a model of him where he is truth-seeking but not always truth-telling.
For example, he talks about reading a lot of history in a truth-seeking way and how he’s literally trying to piece together what actually happened around Bismarck because everything is so untrustworthy, and he waxes extensively on how one should interact in government in a way that continuously excises the oft-repeated political narratives and seeks truth instead. BUT he also runs campaigns that make public slogans that are slightly misleading in an unimportant way (350M), or publicly says he warned of X when instead he wrote a warning about everything in a report that included X.
These statements are a little fishy, I agree, and you should flag him as someone who you might not want to directly believe all public statements from. It also seems fine if you go more extreme, and say he’s the type of person who you can’t trust, though others might personally still trust him and different people should have different takes on this.
BUT I still think we should describe him as truth-seeking, especially if I flag it as “from a different perspective”. I imagine you won’t want to read much of his writing, but I think probably if you read a few posts of it you would see that he’s making a weird distinction between {how you yourself think, and how you talk to your friends and colleagues while hugging the truth} and {communicating publicly, where everybody is constantly lying, in part because you can only get across a snippet of information to people}. I don’t really know how to reconcile these personally, because I don’t know much about public communication. And I personally am not happy that he does it—in fact, it’s super annoying, because it makes it so much harder for his allies to claim moral high ground, and in fact causes a bunch of people to distrust him. But I still think pretty strongly that we should describe him as truth-seeking, because A) it’s true, and B) hardly any people in politics are truth-seeking and I think we can learn a ton from him.
ETA: ryan_b makes the same point below more concisely, and provides a better example: that “the VoteLeave campaign applied basic epistemics, at his direction”. I think this is a great example, and there are other similar anecdotes, like their success in the referendum on the Northwest Regional Assembly.
I just think it’s pretty reasonable to say “I wrote about this”. I might not do it per se, but if a friend of mine did it, I wouldn’t bat an eyelid. If a random acquaintance did it, I would stop for a second, think about it, decide it seemed fine
Besides that, there’s the aspect that Cummings is a person who’s heavily investigated by journalists. If that’s one of the worst things someone can find, that shows good things.
And more: Kuenssberg challenged him on Vote Leave’s central promise – a £350m Brexit dividend for the NHS. “You knew very well then, and you know very well now, that that figure didn’t include the so-called rebate, the money that the UK got to keep,” she said. “Yes,” Cummings replied.
He explained that he used the figure to focus the debate on the “balance sheet” of Britain’s EU membership, and to “drive the Remain campaign and the people running it crazy”.
“So it was a deliberate trap for the other side?” asked Kuenssberg.
In a press conference, he claims. “Last year I wrote about the possible threat of coronaviruses and the urgent need for planning,” I am failing to find mention of coronavirus in that original. I also note https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/26/dominic-cummings-says-he-did-not-tell-whole-truth-about-journeys-to-durham-barnard-castle.
I remain unconvinced that he is “extremely committed to truth-seeking”.
First, I already agreed this was true. But if you write about the urgent need for planning for biosecurity a year before a pandemic, quote a biosecurity report that mentions 8ish diseases, you cut a few from your block quote for concision, and then one of the 8 that you didn’t specific use in your block quote (but which you were definitely writing about!) occurs in a global pandemic… I just think it’s pretty reasonable to say “I wrote about this”. I might not do it per se, but if a friend of mine did it, I wouldn’t bat an eyelid. If a random acquaintance did it, I would stop for a second, think about it, decide it seemed fine. If you write a fair amount about a report warning of some things, and then one of those things happens, you get to say “you wrote about that”.
Second, I think there’s a very important distinction between truth-seeking and truth-telling, as comes up regarding Cummings. I understand this is a pretty apologist stance but I think it’s super important here. Normally people have neither, and sometimes people have both. But I think it’s pretty consistent to have a model of him where he is truth-seeking but not always truth-telling.
For example, he talks about reading a lot of history in a truth-seeking way and how he’s literally trying to piece together what actually happened around Bismarck because everything is so untrustworthy, and he waxes extensively on how one should interact in government in a way that continuously excises the oft-repeated political narratives and seeks truth instead. BUT he also runs campaigns that make public slogans that are slightly misleading in an unimportant way (350M), or publicly says he warned of X when instead he wrote a warning about everything in a report that included X.
These statements are a little fishy, I agree, and you should flag him as someone who you might not want to directly believe all public statements from. It also seems fine if you go more extreme, and say he’s the type of person who you can’t trust, though others might personally still trust him and different people should have different takes on this.
BUT I still think we should describe him as truth-seeking, especially if I flag it as “from a different perspective”. I imagine you won’t want to read much of his writing, but I think probably if you read a few posts of it you would see that he’s making a weird distinction between {how you yourself think, and how you talk to your friends and colleagues while hugging the truth} and {communicating publicly, where everybody is constantly lying, in part because you can only get across a snippet of information to people}. I don’t really know how to reconcile these personally, because I don’t know much about public communication. And I personally am not happy that he does it—in fact, it’s super annoying, because it makes it so much harder for his allies to claim moral high ground, and in fact causes a bunch of people to distrust him. But I still think pretty strongly that we should describe him as truth-seeking, because A) it’s true, and B) hardly any people in politics are truth-seeking and I think we can learn a ton from him.
ETA: ryan_b makes the same point below more concisely, and provides a better example: that “the VoteLeave campaign applied basic epistemics, at his direction”. I think this is a great example, and there are other similar anecdotes, like their success in the referendum on the Northwest Regional Assembly.
Besides that, there’s the aspect that Cummings is a person who’s heavily investigated by journalists. If that’s one of the worst things someone can find, that shows good things.
And more:
Kuenssberg challenged him on Vote Leave’s central promise – a £350m Brexit dividend for the NHS. “You knew very well then, and you know very well now, that that figure didn’t include the so-called rebate, the money that the UK got to keep,” she said. “Yes,” Cummings replied.
He explained that he used the figure to focus the debate on the “balance sheet” of Britain’s EU membership, and to “drive the Remain campaign and the people running it crazy”.
“So it was a deliberate trap for the other side?” asked Kuenssberg.
“Yeah,” Cummings replied.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2021/07/dominic-cummings-has-admitted-leave-campaign-won-lying-we-should-never-forgive-him
Looks to me like your average political animal, focussed mainly on winning rather than truth.