Using open knowledge to avoid a new Holy Inquisition

The pyramids of Egypt are a marvel of architecture, engineering, and planning. Building with the technology and knowledge of the time such buildings that still survive is a feat that is very difficult to repeat. And, one cannot help but wonder why the Egyptian taxpayers didn't kick their rulers out when they decided to waste their resources on something so useless.

The answer is that the pharaohs knew something that no one else knew. And on that depended the survival of its inhabitants.

The origin of Egyptian wealth was agriculture, and agriculture depended on the Nile River. The Nile periodically flooded the banks of the country, and as from its tributaries it carried chemical compounds and plant waste, it left the land fertile and ready for cultivation. The pharaoh was the only one capable of determining when and how far the flood was going to occur.

Pharaoh's secret was that a day before the river rose, the star Sirius was visible in the sky. For more information, this appearance occurred every 365 days. Determining the height was a matter of making a prediction based on the heights reached in previous years.

It would have been enough for someone to take the trouble to look at the sky, or to keep a registration form so that the usefulness of the pharaoh would have been diminished.

Along the history, restricting access to knowledge was a way of maintaining power. Those who spread it without authorization were punished. It is no coincidence that one of our oldest myths is that of Prometheus, punished for stealing fire from the gods to give it to human beings. Those who, like Galileo, learned something that defied authorized knowledge, were imprisoned and tortured.

The current COVID-19 pandemic brought us back to those dark times. As Winston Churchill might well say, his first victim was the truth.

Depending on the political ideology of each one, a certain sanitary measure is supported or not.to. Death numbers are cheerfully compared without taking into account other numbers such as population size, availability of toilet facilities, ages, and other relevant factors.

And of course, we cannot forget the experts. Those university professionals who have dedicated their entire lives to a discipline and do not allow anyone outside their specialty to discuss their recommendations. Even if those other people have the same experience in other disciplines that are also relevant. Or, even if reality shows that these recommendations are not correct.
And, as was the case with theologians (and probably the pharaohs) have volunteer collaborators willing to side with authority (just because it's the authority) in this case, they take the form of journalists and users of social networks willing to discipline those who think differently with a zeal that Torquemada himself would envy.

Using open source to form our own opinions.

If we can take a lesson from the current pandemic, it is that both political and scientific elites, regardless of their ideology, are using it as a way to concentrate power. I'm not talking about conspiracy theories. The disease exists. I'm talking about human nature to take advantage of what gives us advantages over others. In this case fear.

Y, the only way to combat fear is not to let them have a monopoly on knowledge.

Of course, I am not saying that a housewife or truck driver can weigh in on medical matters. What they can do is determine if the measures implemented by the authorities (following the recommendation of the experts) were effective. in relation to its consequences and compared to those of other countries.

The exact translation of open source es open resourcess. And this does not only refer to the software code, also to the data. And, data such as the number of people infected and killed by COVID are public. The same with the mortality rates of previous years and other relevant statistical information.

On the web there are many manuals of Applied Statistics that are very easy to understand, whiles free software provides us with excellent tools to analyze information.

Some tools to consider

• GNU Octave: Programming language for creating statistical graphs
• Jamovi: Statistical software based on the programming language R. It has an interface and a mode of use similar to that of spreadsheets.
• RStudio: Integrated development environment for the statistical language R.
• JASP: Statistical software great for beginners.
• Gretl: Other program ideal for beginners, also based on R and with the ability to share information with GNU Octave and spreadsheets.
• Explorer: Ideal To analyze a small amount of data, this program has excellent documentation in the form of video tutorials. Just drag a data file in a supported format to start using it.