Let's Get Technical

A few comments on why things can't/shouldn't always be boiled down into simple terms.

If you’ve finally climbed out from under your rock you may have heard that the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down Roe v. Wade on Friday.

It’s been some time coming since the 6-3 decision was leaked in May with a lot of controversies following the leak.

After this decision there has been a marked outcry over the position of abortion in the US. Has abortion been removed? Is it now up to the states to decide? Are women’s rights now being targeted?

This post isn’t meant to actual provide my perspective on abortion, but it’s mean to ask a few questions.

More importantly, can anyone fighting about this decision describe what Roe v. Wade actually was about? Why was there a decision to overturn the landmark case? And is anyone who is arguing pro-choice or pro-life able to explain the subtleties of everything going on?

Such a feat in breaking down these subtleties and nuances requires a reading of the law, and therefore requires a “technical” mindset.

Which begs the question: what does it mean to be technical?

The word “technical” likely derives it’s roots from the same prefix as technique, and is usually defined as someone who is highly skilled in a certain trade or subject matter. As we use it commonly, it refers to someone being able to understand complex systems from various fields such as medicine, science, law, or even cooking and construction.

Being technical means that someone is able to read the nuances and complexities of the situation. When someone is told they are “technically correct”, it usually means that someone has analyzed the situation and have found cracks or loopholes that may be exploited (i.e. being technical). Therefore, being technically correct requires one understand what they are reading or arguing in order to be technical.

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Again, I’m not here to explain Roe v. Wade, mostly because it is outside of my wheelhouse. I’ll defer to a few so-called Lawtubers to break down the case. Here’s one from this morning done by Nate the Lawyer breaking down this decision:

Even as Nate goes through in describing the reason for the overturning, take a look at how the chat is responding. It makes sense that this is an emotional subject, but in order to elucidate the situation it requires a technical reading of the law- not emotions- in order to parse the information properly.

But if you look at this video and can’t understand a lot of what’s going on, it may be because you don’t have a technical reading of the law (I certainly don’t, and it’s why I avoid making weighing in on this topic!). And if you don’t have a technical reading of the law, how likely is it that you fully understand the situation that is playing out right now- and I mean that for people on both sides of the issue!

It’s one of the things I couldn’t quite describe when I was writing about the Depp v Heard trial and how the public were reacting so emotionally to what was going on.

When watching one of the livestreams many in the chat were angry at some Lawtubers for even considering that Depp may lose his trial. But as one of the lawyers mentioned: the law is technical. Just because you want someone to win doesn’t mean that is how it will play out in the court of law.

The technicalities of the law is likely why lawyers are hated so much. As many of us want things to be described in normalese many lawyers are likely to interpret policies and law from a much different perspective that may not be readily accessible for the layperson.

Take another recent case about concealed carry and the difference between “shall issue” and “may issue”. Do you know the subtle differences? Then you may be a lawyer, or at least someone who can see the technical nuances.

The same issue comes up in science. We’ve commonly argued whether many of the people preaching for trusting the science actually understand the science. Do many of these people have a technical grasp of the subject matter, or do they only have a superficial understanding?

There’s a big difference in having superficial knowledge, such as stating that vaccines are “safe and effective”, and a technical understanding which argues that using a spike that is known to be cytotoxic may cause several problems in a vaccine.

But the issue of technical ignorance doesn’t come from just the pro-vaccine crowd.

In my article about what I call “The Moderna Patent Paper“ I commented that the paper wasn’t actually anything of significance. If you follow the process put forth by the authors there really is no way you can come to the conclusions that they did (i.e. you can’t plug in a 12 nucleotide sequence into BLAST and just stumble onto the Moderna patent serendipitously). I also argued that there really was no explanation as to why a 19 nucleotide insertion was there without any indication that a nucleotide was deleted, or how this tiny fragment of a sequence is related to the MSH3 protein in the Moderna patent at all.

I’ve seen many people report on this study, and even some members of the FLCCC have included it in recent presentations.

I’ve also been told that my article was a bit too technical, and I would actually consider that to be a fair argument because I tend to have trouble boiling down information in a more accessible manner. At the same time, how many people who considered my assessment technical were able to properly discern the issues with the Moderna Patent Paper? How many people were able to understand the technical aspects of the paper?

I’ve seen many people comment, “what about the Moderna patent?” and essentially my answer is this: what about the Moderna patent?

Essentially, instead of me arguing in disagreement with your position why not provide valid arguments in favor of your own position? Why not explain why the 19 nucleotide sequence happened to have entered into SARS-COV2’s spike protein and thus breaking the codon rules of molecular biology? Why not explain the activities of this tiny 6-nucleotide sequence and how it could lead to cancer? How is such a small sequence related to a nearly 1,000 amino acid protein and yet only this tiny fragment can confer carcinogenic properties?

Being able to properly argue such a position requires a technical knowledge of the subject matter, and in some regard it’s one that appears to be lacking.

Not to belabor this point, but this is one of the reasons I was very critical of Dr. Ardis and his snake venom theory. Dr. Ardis never needed to provide any technical argument in favor of his ideas- it’s why he made such arguments as Remdesivir and snake venom being white powdery substances and thus may be the same. But when pressed about more technical aspects (what is the molecular makeup of Remdesivir, how are you capable of putting all of this snake venom into the water all over the world, how ingestion of snake venom is different than being injected, etc.) he always came back with the same argument: I’m not an expert- as if that somehow obfuscates the lack of technical details in his argument (not to mention he didn’t quite understand how monoclonal antibodies are developed).

And I’m seeing this occur with such issues as Original Antigenic Sin (OAS) and talk of vaccine-acquired immune deficiency syndrome (VAIDS), which usually emerges through improper use of the term OAS or improper applications of the above terms. Sometimes this may even come with improper citations or readings of cited articles. It raises questions as to how many proponents of these ideas have a technical understanding of the information needed.

And I want to make this very clear: this is not a castigation against anyone. This isn’t meant to attack people for not reading science properly, primarily because it is very likely that I misread studies as well. This also isn’t meant to target viewpoints to that stray from the mainstream narrative. It’s actually because they stray from the mainstream that we should be mindful of making sure our reasoning and technical details are sound.

Instead, see this as an argument in favor of encouraging others to not read papers and science on a superficial level. It’s an argument that asks people to dig deeper into the science, get a little dirty and try to figure out some of the nuances required to read a paper. Don’t read a paper or article and assume that they are correct, but understand why they may not be correct.

Essentially, get a little technical.

When you come across any post on Substack or any science paper always ask yourself: do I understand what I just read? If not, you may not have the technical underpinnings required to read the paper (or maybe it’s poorly written- please tell me if that happens with my posts!). Sometimes asking for clarification helps, but under some cases it may require that you read a little more in order to understand the topics needed to analyze an article. And if you still don’t understand the paper, always be hesitant in making claims for things you don’t understand.

As the saying goes, “Better to Remain Silent and Be Thought a Fool than to Speak and Remove All Doubt”.

Okay, this phrase is a bit harsh, but the point remains- before weighing in on something make sure you at least understand some of the technical details. It’s one of the remarks I also made in my post about Ukraine:

Before weighing in on Ukraine, make sure your comments are well-informed.

The same applies to this situation with Roe v. Wade. For everyone hurling ad hominem attacks at their opponents, how many people actually sat down and looked a bit at the reasonings for this overruling rather than resorting to talks of “baby killers” or misogynists wanting to control women?

On this I believe Heather Heying has made the right, technical argument, such that pro-abortion lawyers may still argue that Roe v. Wade was bad case law. It’s a take that is rather nuanced and takes into considerations the possible issues that have led to the current ruling by the Supreme Court.

Science is technical; the law is technical. In order to understand both one must forgo superficial knowledge in order to find the nuances and complexities required to read case law or science papers. Don’t be afraid when faced with complex details.

Sometimes things will be far too technical, but in those times it may be more important to embrace the technical aspects and meet where the nuances and complexities lie.

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