I was listening to a podcast and this regular lady was sharing her opinion on a subject she had researched. A lot of what she had to say was super valid and was based on some really specific, anecdotal stuff. After a while she got a little ranty and we ended up with her going on about how mainstream media scrubs the news to promote specific narratives.
In her defence she participated in a documentary where her story was in fact manipulated (from her PRSPCTVS) to fit a narrative. If that had happened to me, I would feel funny about the media too. Something she said really stuck with me, and I misquote/paraphrase:
“People just believe what they hear all the time. Go do a little research, think for yourself and stop believing everyone.” This was such an ironic idea to me, let’s get into it.
Think for yourselves as long as you agree with me
I empathize with being treated like I’m crazy for things I say and believe. When I believe in something, it’s almost blind faith. I say almost because I know despite all the evidence of my faith, there is more to learn.
It becomes a lot harder to remember you can be wrong once you start pursuing expertise. Experts have to deal with people who really are coming from ignorance, but believe they know things. Like when I started asking about expensive unnecessary stuff at the dentist and he gave me a literal shake of his head like, “boy, fuck your Web MD Google shit”.
The lady in the podcast had gone down some rabbit holes. She had compiled a vast amount of evidence on topics she’s passionate about. She’s probably found a lot of people with expertise and it’s easy to follow her logic. That was until she effectively started calling people sheep.
The way she framed it, anyone who did the research she did would agree with her. Or else they were blindly believing what was told to them.
Whenever I hear something like that I question if they are willing to evolve their opinions with contrary evidence. My assumption is they would respond with something akin to, “The evidence was corrupted by the bigwigs at the media corps”. This lady literally felt that mass shootings were false flags to distract us.
They never really hear themselves. They don’t really see how they ingest a lot of information, parsed by parties that favour what they believe, and arguably do the same thing they accuse the masses of. Only, we are to trust they know better because they see through the wolves' lies.
But why?
Research is more complicated than people think
Google, jacking the Oxford definition for “research” says it means:
Noun - the systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions.
Verb - investigate systematically.
Arguably a lot of people actually do research. They read a lot of articles and look for information. They watch a lot of videos and documentaries. They sincerely in their hearts conduct research to the best of their ability. Depending on the topic, research really can be as simple as creating a timeline, vetted by sources and recapping what you found. Most of us can handle research like that.
A lot of research however, has math and stats thrown in. This is where I start to raise my eyebrow. I took 3 whole classes in Cegep on stats, and I barely understand how the math behind stats works. Some of the formulas required to do a statistical analysis are multiple lines of information. I just don’t see how someone who has read a bunch of books is all of a sudden able to handle the math side of research.
I watch people do bad data analysis all the time. They find stats and figures and with the knowledge they have, do their best to analyze it all. The thing is, there’s a lot of math that goes into taking random stats and making them meaningful. You have to know what way to slice the data up to make it something. If I saw a list of the number of cars that drove on the highway each hour and I saw another list with the number of highway accidents each hour, I would need to know to divide the number of cars by number of accidents.
That example is basic, but what happens when you add car make/model and age of driver. Now you need to add 4 columns of data into something. I’m not saying people cannot learn these skills, but the algorithms behind data analysis often require a LOT of learning at a university level.
I’m just saying I doubt a lot of you could write a multi parentheses math equation to figure out something from a giant data set.
You can’t be mad that people don’t believe you
I’m annoyed with what this lady on the podcast said because she insulted me. She made it clear that if I believed what the NEWS told me, I was an idiot. That’s the thing, I really have looked at a lot of conspiracy theory information. A lot of the time it’s a guy like me, who knows how to edit videos better than me, talking wild shit.
She’s mad that people don’t believe her and think she’s off base. A lot of the time it’s because we DO see the evidence people put forth.
You see compilation videos of out of context clips, attached together in a way to drill home a key point. While the person may be correct, the way they present their evidence is not scientific. It is more akin to propaganda. Literally anyone can write anything and post it online. Look at me, I’m doing that right now.
With enough evidence linked, I can make a very compelling argument. I can find the articles that say what I want. I can put some charts and data and boom, I can let my spin doctoring get to work. My favourite stat to make fun of is when people said during COVID, “50’000 medical professionals doubt vaccinations, will you really ignore that?”. I mean yeah, there are 392’000 nurses (and similar roles) 96’000 or so doctors in Canada. That is just Canada. How many are in the world? Where did that 50K medical professionals come from?
If 50’000 people in Montreal told me to stop smoking weed, I would ignore them. That is about 2.6% of Montreal who’d want me to stop. I don’t think most of you would change your behaviour because 2.6% of people said so.
I’m not trying to say you need to believe me. Nor do I think anyone needs to change what they believe in because they are a minority. A lot of my life is representing minority positions. However, you need to have empathy for why people find you preposterous, if they do.
That being said, believe what you want
I have learned that judging people for what they believe in doesn’t do a lot to create change. For whatever reason reading books is very easy for me. I can consume knowledge and it sticks at a level that is often faster than my peers. Trust me, I am full of areas of life where I am deficient, this isn’t being cocky.
My brain can absorb a lot of information quickly and get to making connections, seeing patterns and what not. That doesn’t mean I’m always right, though I can make a lot of sense.
You should be allowed to believe in whatever conspiracies you want. My dad used to go on at length about a bunch of “tin foil hat” sounding stuff when I was a kid. Then Edward Snowdon proved him right on a lot of it. Society never really apologized for bullying the conspiracy theorists of the past, they are a damaged goods crowd for real.
In a weird way, they even have a good point. Regular society ignored them so much. Turns out the government was spying on us and there are strange dystopian twists in modern society that could have been avoided, had we listened to them. Then we get Flat Earth nonsense mixed in and it’s like bruh that’s some wack shit, look we got this science stuff.
I empathize deeply with people who feel that their message is lost to the noise of life. Who feel powerless to share what they care so deeply about. That type of frustration motivates me to this day. I literally vent via a blog now.
I encourage you all to believe in what you want (though if you’re a racist or something I won’t respect you). Just be humble enough to know you don’t see the whole picture and chances are other people aren’t dumb for disagreeing with you. We all see life via our own PRSPCTVS. Also nominal statistics are trash as a debate tool, go a little deeper with stats.
Live Long and Prosper Everyone
Comentarios