Submitted 3 weeks ago by HootinNHollerin@lemmy.dbzer0.com to science_memes@mander.xyz
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I studied history (and by that I mean I liked to watch documentaries) and as a kid I saw educational cartoons and Anime (yes anime) that showed how there was a huge backlash against telephone and telegraphy when they first came out. With farmers blaming telegraph wire for destroying crops or crop diseases and they would sometimes even sabotage the wires and poles.
When I heard of the 5G bullshit that was literally what came to mind… it is incredible how eternal this form of ignorance is.
Which anime? I don’t recall watching anything along those lines, but it sounds like a show I’d enjoy
It was when I was growing up in the Middle East. They aired all manner of anime and mixed Japanese media (part live action part anime). That one I was thinking about was also Arabic dubbed and I dont recall the title.
IIRC even a passage of a novel by Giovanni Verga portrays Sicilian farmers discussing how telegraph wires absorb rain
I have no scientific education. I am still not retarded enough to believe any of the nonsensical conspiracies found online.
Could it be that the key here is media competence and not a doctors degree?
I’ve worked with doctors who believe this shit. When this all kicked off, they immediately discarded their education to entrance the Fox dogma.
Area of study is definitely not the issue.
I’ve worked IT in healthcare and let me tell you, I’ve met some incredibly stupid doctors and learned just cause you’re a doctor doesn’t make you smart. And then I realized, there is someone at the bottom of every graduating class out there.
What do you call someone who almost failed out of medical school? Doctor.
The key is, that for a lot of people reasoning and thinking is a hard work, because never learned it. I remember an interview with a MAGA voter about climate change and his response: “It’s a big lie, human beings can’t be the cause, because they are not capable of changing God’s creation”.
Tbh, reasoning and thinking is hard work, even if you learned how to.
And it’s getting increasingly harder to find reliable information, so you have to check the sources of your sources. And at some point down the rabbit hole stuff gets real complex, and maybe, you still haven’t figured out what’s true…
So the layman has to trust someone, and in our age of disinformation, someone isn’t necessarily trustworthy. So between the day to day struggles and constant indoctrination, I get why people just hear what they want to hear. Still doesn’t excuse it though.
Zoiks! 😵💫 I know people keep saying “we’re cooked” but I think I’m actually starting to feel the heat lately
I think it’s more about keeping yourself curious and reading stuff form reliable sources than actually getting a degree, which makes little sense. (I’m a physicist, and I’m totally ignorant about physiology, for instance, so I have to trust “people who know”, and these aren’t usually found on crappy YT or TikTok videos).
It’s not talking about a doctorate, it’s talking about actually taking education (of all levels) seriously because education is the primary means by which a populace becomes in innoculated against mis/disinformation.
I know quite a few MAGA doctors so I can assure you that a medical degree is not protective.
How do you determine they are “nonsensical conspiracies”?
Could it be media induces in us a belief that we think ourselves “media competent”, such that we begin to presume to know, without scrutiny?
… Certainly used to be my job, when I worked in advertising. Easier to induce in people, than to undo.
Few seem of a Socratic bent, such as “All I know is I know nothing. And sometimes I forget even that much.”, preferring instead the feels of believing themselves smart and wise, not confronting the horror of how readily manipulated they are. … Sorry for my part, doing that to everybody who saw the adverts and corporate branding I made when I was “just doing my job”. Had I stayed in the industry, I dread to think what I’d be doing now with the power at the advertiser’s/marketer’s/propagandist’s disposal, able to cold read smart phone users, 24/7.
I used to do it. And I’m not self deluded enough to think even my level of media awareness is in any way adequate a protection against it.
But having said that… Yes, better media awareness(/“competence”), than “a doctors degree”. Having a doctorate makes sure you were obedient enough to get through the system, and makes you a special influencer target for such manipulations. Always seek another “2nd opinion”.
I think they refer to school education
the problem is most emphatically not people skipping stuff in school, the problem is that the world is filled with people who have literally researched how to mislead and manipulate people. The only classes i think would actively help protect you against this is history and political science.
We can’t expect everyone to be educated in every field so they can recognize misinformation, what we need is for everyone to recognize fascism and general authoritarian methods.
To your point, I’ve met quite a few STEM educated people who fall for this type of information due to lack of historical and political literacy.
I’m really happy to see this discussion here. Intellectual self defense comes from a well rounded liberal arts education. The type of people who whine about having to take general education and non science courses are already displaying an alarming lack of critical thinking skills; they are exactly the ones who need it most.
Appeal to emotions, rather than logic, and if you pull the right lever, that person will get a bias confirmation, feel smarter for knowing something everyone else doesn't and in some cases, feel less insecure for not knowing enough.
I've met people that have a degree or that are even teaching and have the worst baseless believes. It's only a matter of getting to your levers.
Media literacy and how to validate sources. Unfortunately, the second part was primarily taught in college when I was still in school.
Critical thinking is very difficult to teach. Its so much easier for people to just accept whatever confirms their current preconceived notion. It also requires that the person is both open to learning new things and that they are open to the idea that they may be wrong, misinformed, or not know everything.
So many people are simply over confident about their own knowledge.
A bit of philosophy/media would help as well, it doesn’t help to teach someone science, if they don’t understand what science is.
the problem is that critical thinking should be a reflex and not a mental effort
It doesn’t help that there is way too much shitty, agenda-funded science today. And science we aren’t supposed to question. And science driven entirely by profit. Like, isn’t questioning science part of science? Of course the response is completely unreasonable too. All of my family are research scientists, and if a discovery doesn’t meet capitalistic goals, is it even a discovery at this point?
That’s why you teach philosophy and critical thinking. Science will follow if that’s the kid’s interest. But learning to be being self-aware of your own position amongst others, including the position of Science, is key.
Call it pseudo-science
Yea agreed. When shitty science is given as a reference then it becomes much harder to critically judge something but at least it is not a huge amount of work to see that there is conflicting scientific data on a topic. It is a huge effort to try to gauge which one is more credible. And it does not even have to be agenda driven. It can just be bad science, science driven by strong priors. Then you really have to be an expert on the topic to be able to spot the weaknesses in thay study. Luckily however most outrageously stupid statements made by politicians don’t refer to science and are easy to pick apart by realizing the.blatant contradictions in their statements.
Exactly
i think that conspiracy theories are more about feeling special about knowing some secret knowledge, lots of people fall for this and even create conspiracy theories without realizing, no matter how smart they are
Kelly johnson designed the SR71 Blackbird because he was given the alien tech from rosswell new mexico to reverse engineer! No other way could the government trust 1 man with a blank check book and complete authority and have the plane designed and flying in such a short amount of time!
-my favorite conspiracy theory
If it wasn’t alien tech, we would’ve built a faster plane by now…
Here’s a psychological discussion that expands on that idea: www.sciencedirect.com/…/S2352250X22000719
and even create conspiracy theories without realizing
Me when I feel like things are okay.
Ah so close. This comic should end with
“I did my own research”
But... I do my own research...
When I was a senior in high school, I needed one more science credit for graduation, so I took Human Anatomy. It was taught by a young hippie (it was the 70s), who also taught the exact same course at the local community college.
It was a great class, with lots of cool labs, experiments, and dissections. We had to memorize every bone, and every muscle. It was one of the hardest classes I’ve ever taken, but also the most fun.
That class was filled with future doctors and nurses, so none of them were whining about how they’d never use this stuff. But I wasn’t on a medical track (I was a music history major), and I could have probably said that (I didn’t), but I have used the knowledge I gained in that class literally every single day of my life, decades later. Easily one of the best classes I took in my entire life.
I will argue this is not the problem. It’s that vaccines were too good in their effectiveness. A victim of their own success.
The problem is not and has not been science. The problem is messaging.
This is the same reason why anti-vax is so popular, you think that’s about science? It’s idiots like RFK Jr and Trump have the ear of people. It’s all messaging folks.
A person is smart. People are dumb.
I have to agree about the too good in their effectiveness. To get to a point where people are just like, “Nah, it ain’t a big deal” is built atop the millions of dead.
The problem is not and has not been science. The problem is messaging.
Yes, but the actual factor driving this is the meteoric rise of the top 1% richest, it is *wealth inequality that creates a coherence to misinformation by establishing systematic incentives.
A person is smart. People are dumb.
Well between the anti-vaxxers and any-vaxxers, the any-vaxxers won, by measure of how many took the jabs, believing “follow the science” without detecting an oxymoron.
Beware the power of advertising and ignorance of epistemology.
Dunning-Kruger effect in full force in a land called Distopia States of Amerika
Not only there, it’s a world wide phenomenon. I keep hearing this kind of shit from people here in Germany and my family in Brazil.
Same here in Belgium
Yet another reminder that all the mentions of Dunning-Kruger are a better display of it’s perceived effect than the original study ever was. In the original study, people correctly predicted their performance relative to others, but the discrepancy was in the scale of that difference, which can be attributed to numerous factors. Dumb people just took it as “stupid people think they’re smart” and run around saying “Dunning-Kruger” to sound smarter… oh the irony.
And yes, given two mentions in the above text, this is, indeed, a suicide by words.
the bigger problem is that some teachers are so mentally checked out that they make those subjects actively unappealing. I wonder what makes them that way…
This is an important comment. We do not teach science on high schools , we stream students to science if they are self directed, then everyone else takes bullshit courses for an easy grade, these days acheived with LLMs.
yeah, and this approach is so bullshit it is ridiculous - it depends on a child being self-conscious and motivated enough to get into stuff that A LOT of time and effort to understand even with significant adult assistance and proper focus. Of course there will be a significant segment that won’t handle it well
Students. Students make them that way. It’s no coincidence that most older teachers feel like they’ve checked out.
I did substitute teaching for about two years. I got to see a lot of my old teachers, Some classes were wonderful, a true joy to teach. Others, not so much. I can understand why some people, as you say, mentally check out. It’s a coping mechanism. They were not all the same people I remember. Maybe part of growing older. Maybe part of years of difficult students sucking out all the joy of teaching they had in them
my mom is a teacher and she has similar observation. It also has a lot to do with how parents treat their children. i don’t know if that’s a problem in US, in Ukraine my generation (born late 80s early 90s) is very insecure about their social performance and stats and it’s a complete bullshit. The current middle and school kids are affected by that. There is a lot of stuff in children’s heads that just needs time to settle and forcing to push through at someone’s else pace is counterproductive. it is a regular pattern when a student starts with solid grades but the chase for the highest grade over the years completely wrecks them and their overall grades start to slip hard because their parents conditioned them to perform and they try to brute force their way to high grades like it’s a competition when it is anything but. The burnout they go through is brutal. And by the time they finish school - it’s just a performer of sorts - a person who is able to do enough for a grade or rewards but there’s just no substance no passion behind it. Meanwhile, students who starts off mediocre or low grades at middle school level up significantly by the time they get to high school simply because they commit to figure it out and once they tap into what clicks for them (math, sciences, languages, arts) they just start pieces together their personality jigsaws and it is way less dramatic then with high performers who would do anything for a grade.
I’ve seen a lot of the counter balance to this which is STEM folk not having respect for the humanities, rendering them empathetically underdeveloped.
People need to learn how to build a “firewall” for their brain.
None of the basic bio taught in American or Western schools is enough to actually understand mrna and how modern immunization works. Physics has ONLY been helpful to me racing cars.
The issue is tearing down institutions that serve as experts.
If smart people are so smart, why are they in charge? Checkmate nerds!
Your garden and kitchen = biochemistry and biology. Home improvement, crafting and anything to do with the trades = physics. Household cleaners, gas, automotive chemicals and plastics = chemistry + healthcare = more organic chemistry and biology. Just dealing with everyday life is science.
Look I think one of the fundamental problems here is we have a cultural divide between people with thousand dollar degrees and everyday people. When someone says “I’m not going to be a scientist” they’re probably thinking “I can’t afford to pay thousands of dollars to pay for a degree” whilst actual scientists are wondering “why don’t people pursue this subject more?” Money. Pure and simple. Real science = cooking, building something, worrying about that scum in your sink, trying to figure out the best cleaner that won’t set off an allergic reaction, and yes looking into the side effects of vaccines and assorted drugs. You want people to think scientifically then call them scientists. Don’t create an economic barrier for those who want to pursue knowledge. And don’t treat science like it only happens in labs. It’s an every day process. Science = the study of nature and everybody can do that every day. You don’t need an expensive degree to do that. So being a “scientist” shouldn’t be limited to those in white coats, getting grants and have a dozen plaques on their wall that cost a couple thousand dollars to buy.
Well the new world order is what the people in power want, but they only need smartphones and tv to do it. No chips in the brain needed, people are idiots.
I’m so glad that people finally start to grasp, how bad excessive specialisation really is.
society is healing
I was one of those people in college, the only reason I even graduated was because I found tutors to get me through my required math and science credits. I’m smart enough to know that there are many things I don’t understand so I listen to who do understand them to not do that is like going to a lawyer and explaining the practice of law or to a mechanic and telling them how to fix your car.
We need to split the US up into two parts so we can do A/B testing.
As others have said, the problem of vaccines isn’t that they don’t work. The problem of vaccines is that they work too well. They have completely eliminated the diseases that motivated their development, so people can’t imagine a world where these vaccines don’t exist anymore.
We need to split the US up into two parts. One gets vaccines, the other one does not. Wait 30 years. Then the people will see the effects and then the people will understand why we should have vaccines. If the people don’t see the alternative scenario, they can’t see the difference that vaccines make. We need to make these differences more visual, by making practical experiments.
Makes me think of this upcoming competition to find fossils that are not surrounded by the rocks that science expects.
I suspect a lot of people who believe (some subset of) the crazy nonsense are actually science inclined. But we (often/used to) teach science as about great people heroically defying the consensus and triggering a paradigm shift that changes the world. And that looks a lot more like vaccine denialism than pipetting samples for 50 hours. Some of the community spaces are clearly interested in thinking about the world, and there’s a self-isolating effect of asking someone
“Why is there a tree that’s fossilized across 5 different epochs of bedrock?”
and being told you’re a crank. Then layer on the grifters.
So yes; do remember to talk people through the facts before labeling them a conspiracy theorists, and focus on the shared amazement at how weird/complicated/nuanced the data is. Ask lots of questions!
You’ll never be a writer but you still learned how to write (if somewhat poorly).
i went to 4 science classes senior year and i gotta say i agree with the one on the right
Academia is completely captured by capitalism. That’s why “scientists” can’t/won’t/don’t go after their masters. How can people oppose genocide when they’re working to build the weapons of genocide? And a society that accepts genocide will accept anything.
The dogma of scientism and the obsession with STEM is just as responsible for this situation as anti intellectualism is.
Should add a sentence to top panel that says “they should teach useful things in school like how to do your taxes!”
spoiler alert: that’s just reading and basic math applied to something besides a test for a grade.
This ‘Today’ is outdated by 5+ years.
LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
I feel like media literacy is more useful for preventing this crap than a scientific education would be, though both help to some degree.
bobs_monkey@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Sure, but a fundamental understanding of the basics, across all disciplines (science , history, literature, and math) helps one spot bullshit from a mile away.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
IMHO, understanding the Scientific Method and, maybe more importantly, why it is as it is (so, understanding things like Confirmation Bias, including that we ourselves have it without noticing it, which skews our perception, recollection and conclusions as well as Logical Falacies) is what makes the most difference in how we mentally handle data, information and even offered knowledge from the outside.
Even subtle but common Propaganda techniques used in the modern age are a lot more obvious once one is aware of one’s one natural biases and how these techniques act on and via those biases, purposefully avoiding logic.
Personally I feel that that’s the part of my training in Science (which I never finished, since I changed the degree I was taking from Physics to EE half way) is what makes me a bit more robust (though not immune: none of us are, IMHO) to Propaganda.
shawn1122@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Science is powerful but, as you’ve stated, balance is most critical. It was one of the most impactful biologists of the modern era that wrote “the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races” based on his theory of natural selection.
wander1236@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I would argue the latter is a good way to learn the former
Droggelbecher@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yep, maths and science are only partially about learning maths and science. The even more important purpose is learning critical reasoning skills, which is a requirement for media literacy.
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
I’d say critical thinking is divorced from any one subject. You can learn it in a humanities context just as easily as a scientific one.
Sc00ter@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
This is something i noticed early on with the generational divide and misinformation on the internet. Older generations never had the internet in school, and this were never taught how to identify a truthful source. Those of us that grew up with the internet were drilled into our heads, “not everything on the internet is true.” From both our teachers and the generation who believes everything on the internet.
It was a big sticking point with my in-laws during covid. Theyd send me a link, and 5 minutes later id respond with, “that person never went to any college has no credentials to be commenting on the scientific and biological effects of vaccines. Here’s a published dr saying youre wrong.” Only to be met with, “you’re an idiot. Go get autism if you want.”
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I think the flip side of this is Facebook or wherever the link was pushed to them (which is what I’d guess happened) feels… empowering. Those apps are literally optimized, with billions of dollars (and extensive science, especially psychology), to validate folk’s views in the pursuit of keeping them clicking.
Soleos@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It’s not a new thing. The same issues were the case for television, radio, and newspapers. They had to teach media literacy before the internet too. You go back into the archives and you’ll see some wild misinformation that’s very reminiscent of what we see on the internet. We did have a brief few decades where we had a more consistent and adhered to set of standards, but these were by no means universal. The perception of reliable information is also skewed the combination of being less aware of misinformation when younger and by a unique period where mass reputable media were all saying the same thing… But that also meant they were leaving the same things out.
But the internet did change things. Standards have been blown up, misinformation is much faster and the volume of it is much higher. Our brains couldn’t keep up with 24hr news channels, let alone the cesspools of social media we have now.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I’ll provide a non-western perspective on this:
My mother was born in mainland China, according to her, doctors were corrupt and would prescribe unnecessary medications or perform unnecessary medical procedures because the doctors were incentivised and get more money by doing so.
That’s why now in the US, he maintains the same beliefs, reluctant to let me get antidepressant medication, because she see the as “crutches”, unnecessary “happy pills” for “weak” people, “too many side effects”, “harmful for health”, “these doctors probably don’t know anything”, “it’s all in your head”.
It goes far as: “try this necklace that repels evil”, wtf lol.
Also: Fucking Wechat and the fucking “herbal medicine”/TCM or whatever🤦♂️
Zyansheep@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
Specifically epistemology and concrete notions of degrees of truth and how truth is approximated by science.
primrosepathspeedrun@anarchist.nexus 3 weeks ago
Let’s not let this be a humanities vs stem argument.
You need some of both for a well rounded adult–from academic sources or otherwise.
Zerush@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
It is clear, you need some bases to be able to reasonice and understand the cause of an problem. You can find the cause of an problem why an engine don’t work with some basic knowledge about physics, but even an intelligent aborigen who has no knowledge about mecanics and physic never can, also not a person which only had memorized data without understandig it, can’t But the current education system priorice the latter, because of this there are a lot of integral idiots with graduation, which outside of their routine don’t understand anything.