I wrote an article on different kinds of "anticipatory cover-ups", where someone withholds information because they expect the other party to react badly to it or misuse it. This may then make things worse.

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Back when COVID vaccines were still a recent thing, I witnessed a debate that looked like something like the following was happening:

* Some official institution had collected information about the efficacy and reported side-effects of COVID vaccines. They felt that, correctly interpreted, this information was compatible with vaccines being broadly safe, but that someone with an anti-vaccine bias might misunderstand these statistics and misrepresent them as saying that the vaccines were dangerous.

* Because the authorities had reasonable grounds to suspect that vaccine skeptics would take those statistics out of context, they tried to cover up the information or lie about it.

* Vaccine skeptics found out that the institution was trying to cover up/lie about the statistics, so they made the reasonable assumption that the statistics were damning and that the other side was trying to paint the vaccines as safer than they were. So they took those statistics and interpreted them in exactly the way that the authorities hadn't wanted them to be interpreted, ignoring all protestations to the contrary.

* The authorities saw their distrust in the other side confirmed - the skeptics took the statistics out of context, just as predicted - and felt like their only mistake had been in not covering up the information well enough. [...]

What's notable to me is that both sides were acting reasonably, given the assumption that the other side is untrustworthy.

If you think your opponent will take statistics out of context, then it makes sense to try to keep those statistics hidden. And if your opponent is hiding some statistics, then it makes sense to assume that they're doing it because those statistics contain truths that are inconvenient for them.

By acting on their assumptions, both confirmed the opposing side's existing interpretation of being untrustworthy. They treated the other as a hostile actor and took hostile actions in return, which turned the opponent even more hostile.

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Full article: kajsotala.substack.com/p/how-a…

How anticipatory cover-ups go wrong

This is a paid post that will turn free in a week.

^{Kaj Sotala (Kaj’s Substack)}