“How anticipatory cover-ups go wrong” by Kaj_Sotala

LessWrong (Curated & Popular)

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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 [...]

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First published:
August 8th, 2025
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ufj6J8QqyXFFdspid/how-anticipatory-cover-ups-go-wrong
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.