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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.
(I get that you’re playing into the conspiracy) the reason we haven’t is speed isn’t good enough anymore, you cannot build a plane that can outrun a missile
So the focus changed to stealth
That we know of
Here’s a psychological discussion that expands on that idea: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X22000719
and even create conspiracy theories without realizing
Me when I feel like things are okay.
Dunning-Kruger effect in full force in a land called Distopia States of Amerika
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.
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
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country
The US ranks in the position 33, best are China, Taiwan, Hongkong and South Corea, normal.
The used Test
IQ has a history of racism, literally eugenics stuff.
Probably not a good idea to trust this psudoscience BS. Racial minorities got sterilized over this.
Well, it is always needed to take IQ tests with a grain of salt, there are several type of intelligences and the tests normally show only the analytic capability to solve problems, but not the emotional or social intelligence to solve conflicts, which is equal or even more important. Not the tests as such are racists but the interpretation of priorities in the evaluation that is applied.
People need to learn how to build a “firewall” for their brain.
And epistemology to help build the firewall’s list?
“It is the mark of an educated mind, to be able to entertain an idea without necessarily accepting nor rejecting it” --Whoever said that.
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.
You have clearly not been to a high school in the Netherlands.
Please point out this material that’ll give you what you need to understand mrna. Because none of the Dutch I’ve worked with were particularly more educated than most other college grads.
It’s been a long time since I went to high school, I don’t recall which books we had exactly, but a quick google shows that now there are several tutoring websites aimed at high school kids that cover the subject.
- https://www.studeersnel.nl/nl/document/middelbare-school-nederland/biologie/bio-samenvatting-pp-rna/8114781
- https://biologielessen.nl/mrna/
- https://www.lessonup.com/nl/lesson/hhx9ojz3re2xA2Gx7/kBZQfigB6GjviSbbb
This is pretty similar to what I learned in high school.
So maybe this is definitions of “understand” but that looks exactly what I learned in HS but for cell bio/dna, and I wouldn’t say I have the education to be making medical decisions.
I may be splitting hairs at this point 🤷♂️.
Right, the education to make medical decisions generally takes ten years after high school. You can really expect schools that dont specialize in a specific field to teach knowledge like that. High schools are for general education, and thats fine.
The problem is that people who only have some hazy memories of their general education feel entitled to have an opinion about things they don’t understand and then think their opinion is just as valid as those of people who did take those 10 years to gain actual understanding.
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.
Wouldn’t a better thing to teach be innovating upon technology and social structure, such that we no longer even need taxes? Nor any other rents designed to keep us down and impoverished. Imagine where we’d be now if not for the suppression of all the emancipatory technologies. All those patents being sat on, or secreted[1]. All those inventors usurped or disappeared. We have so much more headroom.
If education were not so corrupted and riddled with nonsense and slave conditioning, perhaps there’d be fewer rejecting it; fewer throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We can all be polymaths in the making, not slaves in training.
[1: According to patent office whistle blower Tom Valone, (iirc) there were already over 3000 free energy device patents secreted by the year 2000. Seriously. We have so much headroom without the corruption. Even the rich parasites would be better off, with the release and proliferation of the emancipatory technologies. …Buuuuuut, that’s not in most people’s world view to which they’re attached, and so, they tend to go on attack upon encountering mention of such, as if this new information is a threat to their life.]
Total sidetrack and total missing the point.
I didn’t say “taxes are good” or “current education is good”.
The problem I posed is that knowledge transfer is an essential skill and people who are bad at it are–I would suppose–both oblivious to it and easier to take advantage of.
Edit: TBH your comment is so whacky and on your own terms I didn’t even read to the end section. It’s not even left field, it’s 2 counties over.
Edit 2: Now I read it in full and, bro, that’s a bunch of potentially well meaning conspiratorial retardation. Just no.
You are unfortunately, literally pictured in the OP meme with a veneer of “I’m 14 and this is deep”.
Total sidetrack and total missing the point.
I didn’t say “taxes are good” or “current education is good”.
The problem I posed is that knowledge transfer is an essential skill and people who are bad at it are–I would suppose–both oblivious to it and easier to take advantage of.
Edit: TBH your comment is so whacky and on your own terms I didn’t even read to the end section. It’s not even left field, it’s 2 counties over.
Edit 2: Now I read it in full and, bro, that’s a bunch of potentially well meaning conspiratorial retardation. Just no.
You are unfortunately, literally pictured in the OP meme with a veneer of “I’m 14 and this is deep”.
Fun to see such a retort, on same day as I posted a re-creation of the extended version of Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement.
Starts with a non-sequitor, follows with an apparent strawman argument refuting an accusation not made, then a “not even wrong”, then arguing tone coupled with a celebration of ignorance and unwitting mischaracterisation, ending on two ad-hominems. XD See? Epistemology’s fun.
Bro, come down out of your own asshole.
Your real, no kidding argument is that this meme template best explains that people believe windmills cause cancer / vaccines cause autism / XYZ crazy thing is that the current state of education is * checks notes * “slave conditioning” and patents are being conspiratorially hidden for “emancipating technologies”? Really?
This to you is a rational following of the discussion and context, not itself a wild non sequitur (note the spelling)?
I don’t care what branch of philosophy you’re studying or what argument logic piques your interest because it just isnt relevant here. You’ve shoehorned an unrequested and unsubstantiated conspiracy theory into a post about people believing improbable and/or deranged things. And no, making your own footnote isnt a substantiation.
You can’t “I am very smart” this into making sense, even by miscounting logical fallacies or trying to couch it as an epistemological discussion which this is not.
Just… yikes.
Edit: To save my own brain cells, I’m just going to laugh and block you. Considering you are having similar discussions with others in this thread, don’t take it from me, let me recommend “Fantasyland” by Kurt Andersen. I would specifically the middle and later chapters. Even if you don’t read it in a particularly introspective way, it’s a pretty interesting read / listen.
Cheers
Wow.
I feel like media literacy is more useful for preventing this crap than a scientific education would be, though both help to some degree.
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.
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.
I would argue the latter is a good way to learn the former
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.
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.
Exactly, it’s not about memorising formulas and facts, but about developing problem solving skills
When I was studying, I had a problem with a question in class and I asked the teacher and he, instead of giving me an answer or a tip, told me “Naturally I can explain it to you, also a second and third time, but soon you will forget it, first try better to find the solution by yourself, if you succeed you will have understood it and you will never forget it for the rest of your life”. It was a very good advice until now, almost 60 years after it. The need of help from others is always good, but only as last resource.
I repair stuff at work and this is my everyday almost. Check how stuff works, then try to fix it. Very good advice but most people are too lazy to even try to understand or explore today. When people seem interested at what i am doing i try to explain to them how I think and what I do or how stuff works. I love it.
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.”
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🤦♂️
The profit motive haunts me as well. regardless of what service or product im buying. Living on planet earth was not a good call.
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.
I think the flip side of this is Facebook or wherever the link was pushed to your in-laws (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. Their world’s telling them they’re right; of course your retort will feel offensive and wrong.
They’re in a trap.
And I still see lot of scientists posit ‘why is this happening?’ unironically on Twitter or something, which really frustrates me.
Every Facebook profile posted to /r/HermanCainAwards (the subreddit for mocking deluded people who died of COVID while spreading misinformation) was the same. Whatever the formula was it worked great at sucking in a specific sort of person
What’s incredible is Facebook is not liable for that at all.
What if… I dunno, a giant school peddled that same info? Or some religious figure got a ton of people killed? There’s really not a good metaphor for Facebook, which is why folks don’t really know of the sheer influence they command, yet are still treated like a garage startup operating a fair forum that needs legal protection.
Best way to change that is to shut down algorithms that have that bias, and mandate media literacy.
That doesn’t work because people like the algorithms, unfortunately. They win the attention war, and Trump is perfectly emblematic of this.
It’s also not even about ‘political bias’. Toxicity is the natural end state.
Some countries do take action. Mine does, by banning that.
Absolutely agree. The “internet” was not a harmful worldview reinforcing machine back when we were told not to cite GeoCities in our book reports.
Asking people to betray their dopamine is a monumental task. It’s like like challenging any other addiction.
Specifically epistemology and concrete notions of degrees of truth and how truth is approximated by science.
Sure, but a fundamental understanding of the basics, across all disciplines (science , history, literature, and math) helps one spot bullshit from a mile away. Science especially helps apply math and critical thinking.
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.
PS: Also more broadly in STEM, the structured and analytical way of thinking in those areas also helps in things like spotting logical inconsistencies, circular logic and other such tricks to make the illogical superficially seem logical.
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.
Also more broadly in STEM, the structured and analytical way of thinking
I find a historical approach is useful to highlight this.
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.
As you can imagine, statements like these were used to justify the Atlantic slave trade, the genocide of indigineous people ie. “manifest destiny” and other colonial era horrors.
One should not treat science or the words of scientists as absolute truth. Unfortunately it is not free from human greed or corruption.
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 misinformation due to lack of historical and political literacy.
Quite a few are also quite disrespectful to the humanities so they tend to be empathetically underdeveloped since they feel their whole life is about producing results and making progress at any cost necessary.
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.
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.
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.
Ah so close. This comic should end with
“I did my own research”
But… I do my own research…
i went to 4 science classes senior year and i gotta say i agree with the one on the right
The dogma of scientism and the obsession with STEM is just as responsible for this situation as anti intellectualism is.
Dogma of science is an oximoron, if it is dogmatic it isn’t science.
SCIENTISM
I assume that i will disagree, but i think it mainly is because “the dogma of science” is a phrase that i immediately recognize as a right wing talking point.
But since you kind of only put that out there and i don’t expect right wing idiots on Lemmy i’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and ask you to kindly elaborate a bit.
What is the dogma of science? Who holds it? What sciences? All of them? Just STEM? And speaking of, who is obsessed with STEM? How and where does that obsession express itself?
SCIENTISM
Damn, even threatened with being call right-wing. Science folks always balk when it is ever brought up. I suppose I can understand having to “defend” scientific findings from the dogmas of creationists, but this doesn’t mean science and scientists are not vulnerable to dogma or to the very epistemological supremacism that has been the intellectual basis for genocide and empire building.
I have very much NOT called you right wing. I pointed out, correctly, that calling science a “dogma” is a right wing talking point. I have asked you to elaborate your point, so one is able to determine if you use it in the same context (as a blanket statement to make your own position stronger) or not.
It is deeply ironic that you are ranting about how scientists don’t want to be questioned and “bulk” when told so, yet you have not elaborated a single one of your points yet (you are more than welcome to still do so) and have reacted to me asking you to do so in what i very much read as an aggressive tone.
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.
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!
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’ve seen a lot of the counter balance to this which is STEM folk not having respect for the humanities, rendering them empathetically underdeveloped.
I’m not even sure what you are trying to say here, science and empathy are 2 very different things. This is a very oversimplified version, but science should only be about answering if assumptions we have are true or false, based on enough evidence.
They’re complaining about how it is fashionable to say up with STEM down with Arts, to present them as opposed
Yeah the whole “STEM” thing is dumb and anti-science. This corny meme implies that philosophy majors become flat-earthers, etc. It’s a great example of the reactionary STEM mindset.
STEM is just another educational grift.
- https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/promoting-stem-education-foolishly
- https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2025/07/15/the_stem_education_bubble_has_burst_1122821.html
- https://www.educationworld.com/a_news/opinion-obsession-stem-education-dangerous-1575002673
- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02680939.2018.1467599
This corny meme implies that philosophy majors become flat-earthers, etc.
No, most philosophy majors still believe in gravity. While flat-earthers cease to believe in gravity once they realize that a flat earth is incompatible with gravity. They replace it with this notion that the earth disc (and the rest of the system) is accelerating upwards through the void at 9.8 m/s^2.
Though I’ve come across some interdisciplinary studies types who would probably argue that gravity is a social construct because we describe it with language.
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.
I mean most don’t go to their PhDs because it is effectively training for being an academic. Except there are very few jobs for academics so you’ll be an adjunct professor getting paid poverty wages.
