Look around you. It’s so obvious to anyone not blinded by their own self-importance that all this free and open access to information is making our species dumber.
If no one can trust the experts, why should anyone be trusting you, in *any* capacity?
Please look up the graphs of measles deaths and cases 1900-present on Our World In Data. Note the freefall in death rates in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, decades before the 1963 measles vax.
Now Google "measles vaccine deaths" and note what the search engine feeds you.
Keep trusting the experts and institutions if you like.
You may now commence calling me names, as the experts and institutions have taught you to do.
OK, did that. Case rates: shoot up from 1919 (this is the US data) and are roughly steady from 1945 then fall off a cliff in.. 1963. Deaths fall consistently, arguably because of better medical care, and flatline at 1940 before collapsing in.. 1963. (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/measles-cases-and-death-rate)
"Measles vaccine deaths" gives me a peer-reviewed paper from Vaccine in 2015 showing tiny numbers and no blame attached to any measles vaccines. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4599698/)
I'd conclude that the measles vaccine in 1963 stopped both cases and deaths, and that the MMR vaccine isn't responsible for any significant adverse effects despite widespread use. Hurrah for science.
Your argument is one of the most bog standard canards used by anti-vax trash. Canards which have been refuted innumerable times.
Just because death rates have reduced due to improved care doesn’t mean getting measles is suddenly some minor problem. If you look at the morbidity rate on OWID, you see a drastically different picture. Predictably, measles cases dropped like a lead weight, ya deadweight.
Go on. Try to bring something that isn’t a Point Refuted A Thousand Times. I’ll wait.
Your comment has some truth, as long as by "improved care" you include improved urban conditions due to plumbing, sewerage, and the gradual retirement of the workhorse.
I believe I understand your perspective (since I used to hold it), but I don't think you understand mine. It's true my vax scepticism has been "refuted" many times, but that isn't the same as disproven. Perhaps if you examine the data, drawn from govt sources, laid out in "Dissolving Illusions" you can find fault with the data and reasoning. It would only make you a more powerful advocate for your position.
Experts are considered experts because they are credentialed by agencies, ultimately by the govt.
You get credentialed by following the teachings of schools which, in the health care field, are dominated by the pharmaceutical industry.
Yes, they can point to research, which is done by the pharma companies and is published by peer reviewed journals which are also funded by the pharma companies. And if you think any corruption in this system will be rooted out by govt regulatory agencies, guess who pays most of the agency budget through user fees?
Surely our elected representatives will step in if there is malfeasance? Sure. The 3 pharma lobbyists per member of congress are just there for fun.
In short, this is the system that decides who the experts are and what they are allowed to say.
Results have nothing to do with it. Because the results have been dismal. The US now lags behind every other developed country in terms of health outcomes as the system has ossified in recent years.
The crucial difference between text and audio or visual content is that we can stop and query and re-read text and see whether we are being deceived. By contrast audio and visual content washes past us, and it's very difficult to spot syllogisms or omissions or flaws in logic because, especially with prerecorded content, we aren't able to object and say "wait, that doesn't follow AT ALL." Even when someone is talking to you and spinning a line, it can be difficult to spot where they're skating over points; this is what makes good interviewers special, when they can identify such weaknesses and go back and worry them apart.
That is a big part of why the move to audio or visual content is a problem. This article is absolutely right. One could even get McLuhan-ish about it; text is a cold medium, podcasts and TikTok are hot. But what we really need is cooler heads.
(I wish I could say this basic analysis was all my own idea but I first saw it expounded by Rob Graham, @erratarob, on Twitter - he made the observation after attending conferences where people claiming to be able to prove the 2020 US election was "stolen" would give talks, and he noticed how they missed out crucial proof steps to reach their "conclusions".)
A nice observation about the precision of language.
1. I analyzed the most likely way to reach the truth in "Why Do You Believe What You Believe?" and identified 5 possibilities: senses, culture, experts, thinking, and feeling, concluding that expertise is the most reasonable choice.
2. In "The rise and fall of rationality in language", Scheffer, van de Leemput, Weinans & Bollen analyze language for the balance of rational to emotional words and show that rationality reached a maximum around 1975 and has been on the decline since then.
3. I believe that the disregard for truth among conservatives is because they are more fear-oriented than liberals. They reflexively distrust people, rather than trusting them. Obviously this is a spectrum rather than a binary position, but the net effect is that fear inhibits rational thought, which explains conservatives' beliefs about election fraud, global warming, vaccines, and many other areas. https://philmayes.substack.com/p/why-do-you-believe-what-you-believe
As someone steeped in the philosophy of science, but who is also a metaphysician, let me point out the problem with the foundational mechanism of science. Reality is made up and we are the ones making it up; our consciousness creates the reality we find ourselves in. In other words, the hard problem isn't just hard, it is impossible and will remain so until scientists grasp that our brains receive consciousness, rather than creates it. Just ask yourself how three pounds of flesh or any tangle of neurons holds pictures of a thousand trees, the memory of your mother's perfume, just the directions to the supermarket. Once you grasp that reality emerges from consciousness, then you understand not just the subjectiveness of reality, but the power of beliefs. Evidence follows belief, rather than the other way around. You believe the earth is flat, you will soon be an expert on the properties of a flat earth. You believe Trump is the greatest president, you will soon only see why this is so. You believe vaccines hurt people, you will discover oodles of evidence to support that belief and you will ignore or dismiss all evidence to the contrary. Likewise you believe that the only ideas, facts, beliefs that matter must come from rigorous scientific research, you will write a fine substack illustrating this very point. There is a greater reality operating here and the sooner we discover it, the better we will be able to create a fair and just and beautiful world. https://jjflowers.substack.com/publish/posts
I mean, I'm not sure. I read, often from books even, and I watch a lot of video/audio content. From science Youtubers like NileRed and The Octopus Lady to podcasts like Sawbones. There's even audio books of, well, books. I don't really see how changing book from being read to being spoken fundamentally changes how people absorb that information.
Empiricism alone is not enough to establish truth. We believe things we cannot *see* all the time, particularly when it comes to relationships. If we want to rehabilitate truth we're going to have to broaden our society's understanding of it and include the metaphysical. The problem here is about who to trust and why. We need to rebuild our epistemology to figure it out but the return to empircism alone ain't it. Arguably where we are now is downstream of a rigid Enlightenment empiricism (which denied the metaphysical i.e.Christianity even as it presumed heavily upon it) and the backlash against it. Pure science and logic is part of the puzzle, but it isn't the sum total. Empiricism alone doesn't work intuitively, or in actuality, in the real lives of real people.
Interesting article. One thing that has changed is that the printed word could not be easily changed or edited. The digital word can. We need a new mechanism for trusting the digital word.
It actually depends on the context of the written word being changed. If I hand you a book, I could have easily changed any number of words, and if I am skilled enough, it would be incredibly hard to tell. And you wouldn't be able to double check, I gave you the only copy of that book you'll likely see, unless you specifically go out of your way to search for other copies.
However, if I give you a link to a popular website, that is much harder to change. A website like Wikipedia (as flawed as it may be) has public records of every change made. Every tweak in wording, every added or removed statement, every new source. A different website might be backed up by various Internet archiving sites.
Of course, online websites can still be edited. Webmasters can basically change websites on a whim, and people can record that new changed website as "the original". But, the same is true of print books as well.
This is an interesting column. But do you really think the breakdown that you describe is attributed to a medium? You suggest that the oral and video form are less accurate, but I’m not sure why you say that as people can go back and look at/listen to the recording or even read the transcript if they want. So what is it about the medium of writing/reading that you think is inherently superior?
Some of the problem is that nuance often goes over people's heads—just like a non-baseball fan can't tell the difference between a .200 hitter and a .350 hitter. Honestly, even a true fan watching batting practice couldn’t tell either.
This metaphor reveals a few key points:
Even great hitters fail most of the time—experts can be wrong. Obviously different areas are going to have different metrics for success. A good basketball free throw shooter is 80% plus.
Most people can’t tell the difference between good and great, even up close.
Small differences in performance—one more hit in ten for baseball—can mean the difference between being a star or not making the team at all.
In the picture heading this article, the image is not of Yvette Mimieux, but of a male actor. Perhaps the caption follows the script and not the image.
"norms of journalistic rigor" that's the hill you want to die on?
The more people looking at good data freely distributed the better.
People are simply not stupid.
She’s not saying it’s bad to do that.
It’s that you have to have the skills to interpret them properly within context.
Seriously, you think these experts are unconficted? They lie by omission.
No?
The point is that if you are to get things correct, you have to have the skills to be able to interpret data correctly in context.
Again, you underestimate the wisdom of well informed people.
It takes little expertise to evaluate good data. Self serving experts are just that, self-serving. I've never met one without an agenda.
It's all the confusion and complexity built in to obfuscate reality that is the challenge.
Look around you. It’s so obvious to anyone not blinded by their own self-importance that all this free and open access to information is making our species dumber.
If no one can trust the experts, why should anyone be trusting you, in *any* capacity?
So are you suggesting that the experts shown to us by the media have no agenda? They wouldn't be on the program or in print I they didn't.
You are hopelessly naive.
Please look up the graphs of measles deaths and cases 1900-present on Our World In Data. Note the freefall in death rates in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, decades before the 1963 measles vax.
Now Google "measles vaccine deaths" and note what the search engine feeds you.
Keep trusting the experts and institutions if you like.
You may now commence calling me names, as the experts and institutions have taught you to do.
OK, did that. Case rates: shoot up from 1919 (this is the US data) and are roughly steady from 1945 then fall off a cliff in.. 1963. Deaths fall consistently, arguably because of better medical care, and flatline at 1940 before collapsing in.. 1963. (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/measles-cases-and-death-rate)
"Measles vaccine deaths" gives me a peer-reviewed paper from Vaccine in 2015 showing tiny numbers and no blame attached to any measles vaccines. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4599698/)
I'd conclude that the measles vaccine in 1963 stopped both cases and deaths, and that the MMR vaccine isn't responsible for any significant adverse effects despite widespread use. Hurrah for science.
I think you missed the 2nd chart (from your first link) - it shows that the vaccine began when the death rate for measles was 0.19/100,000
For most major diseases, 90-95% of the drop in death rates occured before vaccines were initiated.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F17912767-f14d-4c44-8390-6d095da7871d_2717x1724.png
Almost surely due to better medical care, yes. Widespread availability of vaccines were only part of the advances that were made in medicine during the first half of the 20th century, and notably the 1930s when the biggest obstacle to improvement was the Depression. https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/culture-magazines/1930s-medicine-and-health-overview
For polio, the vaccine was a key to ending its awful effects.
Thank you.
Aww… boo hoo hoo.
Your victim complex is showing?
I gave you a "like" for 1. Proving my last point and 2. Doing so with such delicious irony.
Your argument is one of the most bog standard canards used by anti-vax trash. Canards which have been refuted innumerable times.
Just because death rates have reduced due to improved care doesn’t mean getting measles is suddenly some minor problem. If you look at the morbidity rate on OWID, you see a drastically different picture. Predictably, measles cases dropped like a lead weight, ya deadweight.
Go on. Try to bring something that isn’t a Point Refuted A Thousand Times. I’ll wait.
Your comment has some truth, as long as by "improved care" you include improved urban conditions due to plumbing, sewerage, and the gradual retirement of the workhorse.
I believe I understand your perspective (since I used to hold it), but I don't think you understand mine. It's true my vax scepticism has been "refuted" many times, but that isn't the same as disproven. Perhaps if you examine the data, drawn from govt sources, laid out in "Dissolving Illusions" you can find fault with the data and reasoning. It would only make you a more powerful advocate for your position.
Thanks for reading, if you got this far! Be well.
Refuted does mean disproven, and it’s telling that your source is a book by a known anti-vax crank.
I have examined the data, that’s why I know this standard “it’s sanitation” anti-vax canard is a load of shit.
Morbidity matters just as much as mortality.
Yes I would like to continue trusting the experts because… wait for it., they are freaking experts 😆
Experts are considered experts because they are credentialed by agencies, ultimately by the govt.
You get credentialed by following the teachings of schools which, in the health care field, are dominated by the pharmaceutical industry.
Yes, they can point to research, which is done by the pharma companies and is published by peer reviewed journals which are also funded by the pharma companies. And if you think any corruption in this system will be rooted out by govt regulatory agencies, guess who pays most of the agency budget through user fees?
Surely our elected representatives will step in if there is malfeasance? Sure. The 3 pharma lobbyists per member of congress are just there for fun.
In short, this is the system that decides who the experts are and what they are allowed to say.
Results have nothing to do with it. Because the results have been dismal. The US now lags behind every other developed country in terms of health outcomes as the system has ossified in recent years.
https://www.idsociety.org/ID-topics/infectious-disease/measles/know-the-facts
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻😎👍🏻🙏🏻💪🏻🧠
The crucial difference between text and audio or visual content is that we can stop and query and re-read text and see whether we are being deceived. By contrast audio and visual content washes past us, and it's very difficult to spot syllogisms or omissions or flaws in logic because, especially with prerecorded content, we aren't able to object and say "wait, that doesn't follow AT ALL." Even when someone is talking to you and spinning a line, it can be difficult to spot where they're skating over points; this is what makes good interviewers special, when they can identify such weaknesses and go back and worry them apart.
That is a big part of why the move to audio or visual content is a problem. This article is absolutely right. One could even get McLuhan-ish about it; text is a cold medium, podcasts and TikTok are hot. But what we really need is cooler heads.
(I wish I could say this basic analysis was all my own idea but I first saw it expounded by Rob Graham, @erratarob, on Twitter - he made the observation after attending conferences where people claiming to be able to prove the 2020 US election was "stolen" would give talks, and he noticed how they missed out crucial proof steps to reach their "conclusions".)
Very good points, and easy to overlook. Thanks.
A nice observation about the precision of language.
1. I analyzed the most likely way to reach the truth in "Why Do You Believe What You Believe?" and identified 5 possibilities: senses, culture, experts, thinking, and feeling, concluding that expertise is the most reasonable choice.
2. In "The rise and fall of rationality in language", Scheffer, van de Leemput, Weinans & Bollen analyze language for the balance of rational to emotional words and show that rationality reached a maximum around 1975 and has been on the decline since then.
3. I believe that the disregard for truth among conservatives is because they are more fear-oriented than liberals. They reflexively distrust people, rather than trusting them. Obviously this is a spectrum rather than a binary position, but the net effect is that fear inhibits rational thought, which explains conservatives' beliefs about election fraud, global warming, vaccines, and many other areas. https://philmayes.substack.com/p/why-do-you-believe-what-you-believe
Helpful. Thank you.
As someone steeped in the philosophy of science, but who is also a metaphysician, let me point out the problem with the foundational mechanism of science. Reality is made up and we are the ones making it up; our consciousness creates the reality we find ourselves in. In other words, the hard problem isn't just hard, it is impossible and will remain so until scientists grasp that our brains receive consciousness, rather than creates it. Just ask yourself how three pounds of flesh or any tangle of neurons holds pictures of a thousand trees, the memory of your mother's perfume, just the directions to the supermarket. Once you grasp that reality emerges from consciousness, then you understand not just the subjectiveness of reality, but the power of beliefs. Evidence follows belief, rather than the other way around. You believe the earth is flat, you will soon be an expert on the properties of a flat earth. You believe Trump is the greatest president, you will soon only see why this is so. You believe vaccines hurt people, you will discover oodles of evidence to support that belief and you will ignore or dismiss all evidence to the contrary. Likewise you believe that the only ideas, facts, beliefs that matter must come from rigorous scientific research, you will write a fine substack illustrating this very point. There is a greater reality operating here and the sooner we discover it, the better we will be able to create a fair and just and beautiful world. https://jjflowers.substack.com/publish/posts
I mean, I'm not sure. I read, often from books even, and I watch a lot of video/audio content. From science Youtubers like NileRed and The Octopus Lady to podcasts like Sawbones. There's even audio books of, well, books. I don't really see how changing book from being read to being spoken fundamentally changes how people absorb that information.
Empiricism alone is not enough to establish truth. We believe things we cannot *see* all the time, particularly when it comes to relationships. If we want to rehabilitate truth we're going to have to broaden our society's understanding of it and include the metaphysical. The problem here is about who to trust and why. We need to rebuild our epistemology to figure it out but the return to empircism alone ain't it. Arguably where we are now is downstream of a rigid Enlightenment empiricism (which denied the metaphysical i.e.Christianity even as it presumed heavily upon it) and the backlash against it. Pure science and logic is part of the puzzle, but it isn't the sum total. Empiricism alone doesn't work intuitively, or in actuality, in the real lives of real people.
Interesting article. One thing that has changed is that the printed word could not be easily changed or edited. The digital word can. We need a new mechanism for trusting the digital word.
It actually depends on the context of the written word being changed. If I hand you a book, I could have easily changed any number of words, and if I am skilled enough, it would be incredibly hard to tell. And you wouldn't be able to double check, I gave you the only copy of that book you'll likely see, unless you specifically go out of your way to search for other copies.
However, if I give you a link to a popular website, that is much harder to change. A website like Wikipedia (as flawed as it may be) has public records of every change made. Every tweak in wording, every added or removed statement, every new source. A different website might be backed up by various Internet archiving sites.
Of course, online websites can still be edited. Webmasters can basically change websites on a whim, and people can record that new changed website as "the original". But, the same is true of print books as well.
Just to be sure - “aural” culture, as in aura? Not “oral” culture as in spoken?
Thank you!
Aural, as in “heard” (what has been spoken).
This is an interesting column. But do you really think the breakdown that you describe is attributed to a medium? You suggest that the oral and video form are less accurate, but I’m not sure why you say that as people can go back and look at/listen to the recording or even read the transcript if they want. So what is it about the medium of writing/reading that you think is inherently superior?
Some of the problem is that nuance often goes over people's heads—just like a non-baseball fan can't tell the difference between a .200 hitter and a .350 hitter. Honestly, even a true fan watching batting practice couldn’t tell either.
This metaphor reveals a few key points:
Even great hitters fail most of the time—experts can be wrong. Obviously different areas are going to have different metrics for success. A good basketball free throw shooter is 80% plus.
Most people can’t tell the difference between good and great, even up close.
Small differences in performance—one more hit in ten for baseball—can mean the difference between being a star or not making the team at all.
In the picture heading this article, the image is not of Yvette Mimieux, but of a male actor. Perhaps the caption follows the script and not the image.