A lot of the top answers seem to all claim you need a PhD to be capable of comprehension of anything, because it's all just too complex for anyone else. A lot of this stuff couldn't be further from the
There's the saying "it's not rocket science" as if rocket science is totally incomprehensible, but even then it's not. Generally, rocket science is nothing more than fairly simple Newtonian physics. Could someone with a high school level understanding of that get a simplified idea of rocket trajectories? Sure, no problem. Would they be qualified to figure out and calculate a plan to orbit the moon, of course not.
Then you get to a lot of this virus crap. It's statistics, also a rather simple form of math. You don't need to be capable of developing a vaccine from scratch to understand that the risk factors of the vaccines for many age groups outweighs the risk of serious complications from the virus itself. Because the data is there and it's not all that difficult to look at.
I could go on and on for points of things that "the science" has demanded that doesn't stand up to basic logic and critical thinking. Greater knowledge and understanding of the specific field doesn't supersede this logic, it should supplement it. It's like if I constructed a very flimsy bridge out of glue and old newspaper and declared that it was stronger than steel and concrete, I'm an engineer you have to trust me as you couldn't possibly understand. Except it doesn't make sense at all--so at the very least some skepticism is valid.
But yeah, all my ranting and I don't think this all important critical thinking even exists amongst leftists anyway.
And a lot of what's confusing is understanding the jargon if it's in an unfamiliar field, and what all the symbols represent.
One of the first things I do when I start reading up in an unfamiliar area is create a glossary of terms and symbols, so I can actually understand what I'm reading.
That's not entirely true even if it has that effect. It can be useful to convey a lot of information to people with comparable expertise in a concise way.
If I'm talking to colleagues I use it. If I'm not or I'm not sure, I don't. Issue comes when people aren't able to say what they mean without using the jargon. Sadly those people exist.
Patent jargon, on the other hand, is supposed to scare you off. Even patent lawyers have trouble decoding that shit.
Jargon does serve a useful purpose in general, including gatekeeping, but it can also serves as circumlocutious abstruse obfuscation for power-hungry liars. The MIT paper on "COVID Skeptics“ you posted is the clergy straight up lamenting that the lay man can read scripture.
I heard somewhere that if you can't explain something to a layman, you don't truly understand it enough. I've always tried to have that level of understanding if I seek to speak with any authority on a subject.
It takes practice, like anything. I work with some people who I know know their stuff, but because they never have any need to explain it to people who aren't also experts they are terrible at explaining what they're doing to non-experts.
That said, there definitely are people who hide that they don't know what they're talking about in a bunch of jargon. I work with some of those. They use the jargon to convince people who know nothing about a topic that they know something in an attempt to climb up the totem pole.
I've spent much of my career explaining things to people who aren't experts, so that is something I'm pretty good at, at least in comparison to others I work with. Though I work with a PhD geologist who's an absolute master at it, and it's a joy listening to him explain stuff. But he's from an older breed of academic who took that as a source of pride.
It's all just the priests maintaining their monopoly on the bible and trying to fend off the advent of the printing press and literacy among the peasants.
I started becoming extremely skeptical of peer review when my employer published what was effectively a press release for one of our products in a scientific journal. One of the "co-authors" was someone I worked closely with, and I don't think a single word could actually be attributed to him; he just signed off on it.
Obviously there's good papers and bad papers, but that was the most egregious violation of the notions of scientific integrity I was taught that I had seen to date. And it's only gotten worse since.
I knew something was up when I saw how much money wasn't going to the standard college classes. Anthropology, archaeology, History and other departments have been slowly closed down till many universities don't even have them anymore.
Fucking 5th graders understand the scientific method, it doesn't take a phd to be able to make hypotheses, collect data, and draw up conclusions. The phd is for memorizing a fraction of the vast wealth knowledge already gained, and adding to it.
Having had to deal with Psychiatrists, I have no trust for any of the scientific institutions of the west, and in fact believe that the Catholic Inquisition did nothing wrong when it place Galileo under house arrest for creating an inaccurate version of the heliocentric model.
"Just believe what your priest says. You don't need to speak Latin. You don't need to read the bible. Just do what your priest tells you to know the will of God."
Well, to an extent, they're right. Unless you want to go get a masters degree in the relevant field, you are not going understand it.
But...
You do not need a masters to be skeptical of the safety and efficacy of these vaccines. There is no long term safety data, adverse (and fatal) reactions are very rare, but far higher than with normal vaccines.
I do not believe this is the 'depopulation vaccine' for ZOG's sterilization programme, but I will not be surprised if in 10, 20, 30 years, it turns out that tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions have had their health negatively impacted long-term by the vaccine.
This reminds me of the Renaissance art and how it was produced. In the early period, there were so few artists someone could get a job by showing up. Near the middle, so many people were artists they had a lottery just to be an apprentice, and most of the big names had others complete their paintings. There was a long t of competition to get sponsorship, especially by the big names so politics were used to show praise to these rich families. Then near the end, the money started to dry up, and artists became field workers to pay the bills. Getting into schools was very hard and even then, it didn't amount to much. By this time art and politics was unanimous, and treated that way even today.
We are doing that with science. In the 40's-60's anyone could be a scientist because we had so much need and so few scientists. My grandfather went from backwoods to nuclear chemist. If you could repeat things like experiments and testing, you were in. I can't get an academic job because they're getting rid of those departments, and not teaching students how to get jobs outside of academia. The politics within it is also winning over research and understanding.
If it's greater than 95% confidence, most papers say it's legit.
Question for D&D players: How often do you roll a "1" on a 1d20? Have you ever rolled a one twice in a row? More papers are published each quarter than are rolled in your D&D game. A double-1 is "peer reviewed and doubly confirmed".
Science is not meant to be believed in. And anyone who says so is a shyster and a liar. Science is about proving things wrong, not proving things right. Science does not say "if you sit in a chair, you won't spontaneously phase through it". It says "we can't reject the theory that a chair will not let you phase through it". That is the most concrete conclusion science can make: That it can't say "no, that's wrong" to an idea. It can never say "yes, that's right".
And that's something that I think even so-called "scientists" forget all too often. The most concrete thing it can say is "maybe". We assemble enough strong "maybes" to view the world, but we strictly speaking have no way of knowing if they're true. Does gravity exist? Some postulate no, if you look close enough. Can matter be created or destroyed? Yes, in fact, though that's a recent discovery. Which proves the point, because "matter cannot be created or destroyed, only changed in form" was being taught as a Law as recently as last decade. Now it's "Energy cannot...", with matter being a form of energy. (Or is it Force? Sorry, translating here...)
A lot of the top answers seem to all claim you need a PhD to be capable of comprehension of anything, because it's all just too complex for anyone else. A lot of this stuff couldn't be further from the
There's the saying "it's not rocket science" as if rocket science is totally incomprehensible, but even then it's not. Generally, rocket science is nothing more than fairly simple Newtonian physics. Could someone with a high school level understanding of that get a simplified idea of rocket trajectories? Sure, no problem. Would they be qualified to figure out and calculate a plan to orbit the moon, of course not.
Then you get to a lot of this virus crap. It's statistics, also a rather simple form of math. You don't need to be capable of developing a vaccine from scratch to understand that the risk factors of the vaccines for many age groups outweighs the risk of serious complications from the virus itself. Because the data is there and it's not all that difficult to look at.
I could go on and on for points of things that "the science" has demanded that doesn't stand up to basic logic and critical thinking. Greater knowledge and understanding of the specific field doesn't supersede this logic, it should supplement it. It's like if I constructed a very flimsy bridge out of glue and old newspaper and declared that it was stronger than steel and concrete, I'm an engineer you have to trust me as you couldn't possibly understand. Except it doesn't make sense at all--so at the very least some skepticism is valid.
But yeah, all my ranting and I don't think this all important critical thinking even exists amongst leftists anyway.
Agreed. While a lot of science is quite difficult, it's worth just reading the damn papers and comparing the data to the conclusions.
It's really not too bad even for laymen. It's just a bit confusing until you get used to it.
And a lot of what's confusing is understanding the jargon if it's in an unfamiliar field, and what all the symbols represent.
One of the first things I do when I start reading up in an unfamiliar area is create a glossary of terms and symbols, so I can actually understand what I'm reading.
The jargon is supposed to scare you off. They are degenerate clerics in white robes speaking dog latin.
That's not entirely true even if it has that effect. It can be useful to convey a lot of information to people with comparable expertise in a concise way.
If I'm talking to colleagues I use it. If I'm not or I'm not sure, I don't. Issue comes when people aren't able to say what they mean without using the jargon. Sadly those people exist.
Patent jargon, on the other hand, is supposed to scare you off. Even patent lawyers have trouble decoding that shit.
Jargon does serve a useful purpose in general, including gatekeeping, but it can also serves as circumlocutious abstruse obfuscation for power-hungry liars. The MIT paper on "COVID Skeptics“ you posted is the clergy straight up lamenting that the lay man can read scripture.
I heard somewhere that if you can't explain something to a layman, you don't truly understand it enough. I've always tried to have that level of understanding if I seek to speak with any authority on a subject.
It takes practice, like anything. I work with some people who I know know their stuff, but because they never have any need to explain it to people who aren't also experts they are terrible at explaining what they're doing to non-experts.
That said, there definitely are people who hide that they don't know what they're talking about in a bunch of jargon. I work with some of those. They use the jargon to convince people who know nothing about a topic that they know something in an attempt to climb up the totem pole.
I've spent much of my career explaining things to people who aren't experts, so that is something I'm pretty good at, at least in comparison to others I work with. Though I work with a PhD geologist who's an absolute master at it, and it's a joy listening to him explain stuff. But he's from an older breed of academic who took that as a source of pride.
I prefer jargon to terms overloaded beyond any useful meaning.
Just try to guess if number 2 is normal.
A phone is very useful for that, and a good wiki site helps with the rest. Heck, most pros with PhDs do it that way.
Can't land a space vessel? Have you checked your phone?
It's all just the priests maintaining their monopoly on the bible and trying to fend off the advent of the printing press and literacy among the peasants.
I started becoming extremely skeptical of peer review when my employer published what was effectively a press release for one of our products in a scientific journal. One of the "co-authors" was someone I worked closely with, and I don't think a single word could actually be attributed to him; he just signed off on it.
Obviously there's good papers and bad papers, but that was the most egregious violation of the notions of scientific integrity I was taught that I had seen to date. And it's only gotten worse since.
I knew something was up when I saw how much money wasn't going to the standard college classes. Anthropology, archaeology, History and other departments have been slowly closed down till many universities don't even have them anymore.
History has a reactionary bias.
Which is why I seek employment elsewhere. Don't want to be considered a reactionary for knowing history.
The absolute state of the west.
Don't learn anything, that takes effort. Consoom soyience.
Tell that to thalidomide kids and their parents.
Fucking 5th graders understand the scientific method, it doesn't take a phd to be able to make hypotheses, collect data, and draw up conclusions. The phd is for memorizing a fraction of the vast wealth knowledge already gained, and adding to it.
These people are cultists.
Fucking clowns.
Having had to deal with Psychiatrists, I have no trust for any of the scientific institutions of the west, and in fact believe that the Catholic Inquisition did nothing wrong when it place Galileo under house arrest for creating an inaccurate version of the heliocentric model.
What was inaccurate about his model?
He used circular orbits.
Wasn’t his main thing having the planets orbit the sun which made earth not the center and that’s why he got arrested?
Iirc, in brief there was politics involved, the previous Pope liked him, the one to come after not so much.
"Just believe what your priest says. You don't need to speak Latin. You don't need to read the bible. Just do what your priest tells you to know the will of God."
Well, to an extent, they're right. Unless you want to go get a masters degree in the relevant field, you are not going understand it.
But...
You do not need a masters to be skeptical of the safety and efficacy of these vaccines. There is no long term safety data, adverse (and fatal) reactions are very rare, but far higher than with normal vaccines.
I do not believe this is the 'depopulation vaccine' for ZOG's sterilization programme, but I will not be surprised if in 10, 20, 30 years, it turns out that tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions have had their health negatively impacted long-term by the vaccine.
This reminds me of the Renaissance art and how it was produced. In the early period, there were so few artists someone could get a job by showing up. Near the middle, so many people were artists they had a lottery just to be an apprentice, and most of the big names had others complete their paintings. There was a long t of competition to get sponsorship, especially by the big names so politics were used to show praise to these rich families. Then near the end, the money started to dry up, and artists became field workers to pay the bills. Getting into schools was very hard and even then, it didn't amount to much. By this time art and politics was unanimous, and treated that way even today.
We are doing that with science. In the 40's-60's anyone could be a scientist because we had so much need and so few scientists. My grandfather went from backwoods to nuclear chemist. If you could repeat things like experiments and testing, you were in. I can't get an academic job because they're getting rid of those departments, and not teaching students how to get jobs outside of academia. The politics within it is also winning over research and understanding.
If you’re actually interested you’ll be able to figure it out. Most people aren’t interested.
If it's greater than 95% confidence, most papers say it's legit.
Question for D&D players: How often do you roll a "1" on a 1d20? Have you ever rolled a one twice in a row? More papers are published each quarter than are rolled in your D&D game. A double-1 is "peer reviewed and doubly confirmed".
Science is not meant to be believed in. And anyone who says so is a shyster and a liar. Science is about proving things wrong, not proving things right. Science does not say "if you sit in a chair, you won't spontaneously phase through it". It says "we can't reject the theory that a chair will not let you phase through it". That is the most concrete conclusion science can make: That it can't say "no, that's wrong" to an idea. It can never say "yes, that's right".
And that's something that I think even so-called "scientists" forget all too often. The most concrete thing it can say is "maybe". We assemble enough strong "maybes" to view the world, but we strictly speaking have no way of knowing if they're true. Does gravity exist? Some postulate no, if you look close enough. Can matter be created or destroyed? Yes, in fact, though that's a recent discovery. Which proves the point, because "matter cannot be created or destroyed, only changed in form" was being taught as a Law as recently as last decade. Now it's "Energy cannot...", with matter being a form of energy. (Or is it Force? Sorry, translating here...)