Unfortunately credentialism, and the slavish devotion to "official" studies is the displaced need for status, which is graven in humanity's bones.
A few years ago in the New York Times there was an article about the wretched -- at times debilitating, even fatal -- experience of some people trying to deprescribe from antidepressants.
Dozens of psychiatrists wrote in spitting the dummy, denying such a phenomena existed. After all, they were the experts, they had never witnessed such a thing.
Well of course not. Just as the patient is an unperson with no credibility, anything that crawls out of their mouth that conflicts with the official narrative is risible, deluded bullshit that goes in one ear and out the other.
Psychiatrists can blithely ignore what they see and hear, because when palpable reality isn't validated by industry corrupted studies and spin-doctored, ghost-written, pseudoscientific drivel, it doesn’t exist.
Their patient's humanity doesn't exist. That quirky, damaged psychotropic pet is just a moveable cipher, a dispensible bit-player in a grandiose medical myth.
Meanwhile lived-experience street-knowledge, lay community online forums build. This is what that officially dismissed thing, common sense, practical wisdom, looks like. When people trust their senses and their own bodies that's where real knowledge starts. Ivory tower mavens would invalidate that as "populism," but, honestly, fuck 'em. Sanity and staying above ground is more of a priority.
When *actual scientists* (who 100% know better) whipped out that phrase "believe the science" in early 2020 a chill went down my spine. I knew that we were in for a really, really rough ride and the masses were going to absolutely get hammered.
The high priests have spoken and they killed their science god.
This is wild to me, and so obvious - especially since 2020. Thank you so much for calling it out.
Even if many people aren’t convinced, it still feels important to say we’re not all in agreement on the “sanctioned” narratives. Something that really stuck with me over the past few years was hearing Mattias Desmet talk about how speaking out at least plants seeds of cognitive dissonance and doubt in people’s subconscious, offering at least some counter to atrocities fuelled by imagined consensus.
During COVID I had someone demand I back up obvious observations with studies. So I did. Then they pivoted and said I was weaponising studies to show how smart I was and how dumb everyone else was. I pointed out they demanded the studies over obvious observations. As you can imagine, I got unfriended. It's never about the studies. It's about shut the fuck up.
I grew up among "common sense" folks without degrees or credentials. They said a lot of things I found silly at the time. I went away and got a bunch of degrees and started working in Academica--I immediately found I was usually the odd guy out as my college went hyper-woke.
Now, in middle aged, having faced the disgusting slum that Portland became, the deep neuroticism of the educated class, former feminists calling for the castration of children, I go back to visit the "common sense" folks I grew up with. They're pretty much the same except they find things on Youtube that interests them, they look up problems they don't know how to solve, they still find degrees silly--and they're stronger, healthier, and overall happier than the people I knew in Academia.
Great article. I just experienced this with a friend, who fact checked using AI, my statement during a conversation, it felt weird being fact checked on the spot. Referring to AI to confirm everything is following pied piper, because the information is biased to begin with. What an incredible method of mind control. Automatic belief because AI says so. I guess AI is now God. I am not against citations, but I want the citations to come from reputable sources that are not influenced by pharma money or other conflicts of interest. At the same time, only a fool would believe a science study or expert who says elephants are extinct, while looking at an elephant in the room, yet that is what is happening. We can see giant viruses, yet some deny the existence of viruses. Society is destroying its youth for profit, getting them addicted to gaming, pornography, social media, vaping, and finally psychotropics. We don't have functional drones; we have worse, young people that are walking zombies. Adults are to blame. This is so huge, so heartbreaking, so devastating, and so disgusting that we are dropping the ball on the innocent. I think there should be limited access to gaming and social media, for the young, imposed by law on the companies that have addicted our youth. It is not legal to sell cigarettes or alcohol to our youth.
And remember those AI‘s the LLMs are being trained, not only on imperfect human data, but on data generated by other LLMs at this point.
All the AI companies have already run through their private data sets as well as the entire Internet and we know for damn sure that the Internet is full of errors as is every library in the world.
Yeah i hate it but i do to it back lol. We need to halt that cultural habit right now “Trust the AI” We soon will be just like that old Outer Limits Episode called "Stream of Consciousness” That will be us if we are not careful
"Stream of Consciousness" (Season 3, Episode 5 of The Outer Limits)
Do they deny the existence of viruses or just that there is no evidence that they "viruses" harm living tissue, no evidence that viruses originate outside the body, and no evidence that viruses are contagious.
Virus deniers, deny the existence of viruses, despite the fact giant viruses can be viewed under a scope. Despite the fact there are moving visuals of viruses infecting bacteria. I just had Lab Corp test for AB's to spike protein, the count was low.
Academia used to claim that sperm invade the egg cells, but now we know it is the egg actually allowing entrance for the best sperm. But either way, what research shows that viruses entrance into cells is the cause of disease? Will viruses enter into healthy cellular tissue, or only dead/dying tissue? What if viruses are the body's cleaning mechanism?
I think we are in an evolutionary arms race with pathological organisms. Most viruses are harmless, and beneficial in many ways. This is more than 'knowing' though, it is many people 'viewing' a virus penetrating a bacterium. There are videos online to watch the process of infection. People who subscribe to Terrain theory hold the belief that healthy cells cannot be infected. I take a more holistic approach, a pathogen can trick a healthy person's immune system, allowing for entry. I also believe that when healthy children develop measles soon after contact with a child with measles, the morbillivirus infected those children. I don't believe it has anything to do with the children not being healthy. In fact, many childhood infections train the immune system and are protective against later assaults and cancers. The girls with measles will as adults confer protection from the antibodies to their newborns in the early stages of life.
I'm an editor for an international arbitration stenography team. Lots of experts. High stakes, huge money involved. Each side engages competing experts. They produce reports from their analysis of whatever is the point at issue. The experts look over the other side's expert reports. There is usually a second report and analysis that lights into the other side's report and analysis. Lots of citations, footnotes, annexes, tables and graphs. They brief and advise their respective lawyers on what they see.
Okay, a lot of this is experts in law and economics. Sometimes very interesting, usually sleep inducing. There's usually some degree of agreement between the competing experts but not enough, since if there was total agreement we wouldn't have a hearing.
Case in a country so obscure I had to look up to see where it is. Cross examining a credentialed economist. The attorney had no doubt been alerted by HIS expert that the economist had made a simple math error that overstated losses a hundredfold. That erroneous number then informed the rest of the team credentialed experts' analyses. They didn't question their own side's expert and work, just accepted it as gospel and gleefully used the bad numbers.
The cross examination was BRUTAL. The expert was simply humiliated. Admitted to the error and the gravity of it. The dollar value of the investment involved was effectively zero at the key time.
Best thing I've read this Sunday morning. Thank you for taking the time to write this essay!
Speaking from personal experience, reflecting upon my own choices, I sometimes wonder how many potentially brilliant STEM and social scientists there are out there who simply didn't pursue a life in academia, maybe even part-time research and publishing, because of how we've structured our societies. I honestly truly believe we could have an amazing world with the contributions of hundreds of millions of people striving to find and implement solutions to our problems if we were just more honest, and less blinded by this fictitious money concept we've become enslaved to.
Maybe that's why substack is so great right now, even though it's doing it's best to follow the enshitification track.
People have outsourced their intellect to “experts” because they’re too busy being entertained by tv, sports ball, social media, whatever will give them that overpowering rush of dopamine. Humanity has been systematically dumbed down over the past 100 years, we’re now at the point where people are so stupid they will deny what they perceive around them unless some credentialed assclown tells them it’s okay to view it.
This piece is so good, I shall cite it in my essay! 😁
Unfortunately credentialism, and the slavish devotion to "official" studies is the displaced need for status, which is graven in humanity's bones.
A few years ago in the New York Times there was an article about the wretched -- at times debilitating, even fatal -- experience of some people trying to deprescribe from antidepressants.
Dozens of psychiatrists wrote in spitting the dummy, denying such a phenomena existed. After all, they were the experts, they had never witnessed such a thing.
Well of course not. Just as the patient is an unperson with no credibility, anything that crawls out of their mouth that conflicts with the official narrative is risible, deluded bullshit that goes in one ear and out the other.
Psychiatrists can blithely ignore what they see and hear, because when palpable reality isn't validated by industry corrupted studies and spin-doctored, ghost-written, pseudoscientific drivel, it doesn’t exist.
Their patient's humanity doesn't exist. That quirky, damaged psychotropic pet is just a moveable cipher, a dispensible bit-player in a grandiose medical myth.
Meanwhile lived-experience street-knowledge, lay community online forums build. This is what that officially dismissed thing, common sense, practical wisdom, looks like. When people trust their senses and their own bodies that's where real knowledge starts. Ivory tower mavens would invalidate that as "populism," but, honestly, fuck 'em. Sanity and staying above ground is more of a priority.
When *actual scientists* (who 100% know better) whipped out that phrase "believe the science" in early 2020 a chill went down my spine. I knew that we were in for a really, really rough ride and the masses were going to absolutely get hammered.
The high priests have spoken and they killed their science god.
This is wild to me, and so obvious - especially since 2020. Thank you so much for calling it out.
Even if many people aren’t convinced, it still feels important to say we’re not all in agreement on the “sanctioned” narratives. Something that really stuck with me over the past few years was hearing Mattias Desmet talk about how speaking out at least plants seeds of cognitive dissonance and doubt in people’s subconscious, offering at least some counter to atrocities fuelled by imagined consensus.
During COVID I had someone demand I back up obvious observations with studies. So I did. Then they pivoted and said I was weaponising studies to show how smart I was and how dumb everyone else was. I pointed out they demanded the studies over obvious observations. As you can imagine, I got unfriended. It's never about the studies. It's about shut the fuck up.
I grew up among "common sense" folks without degrees or credentials. They said a lot of things I found silly at the time. I went away and got a bunch of degrees and started working in Academica--I immediately found I was usually the odd guy out as my college went hyper-woke.
Now, in middle aged, having faced the disgusting slum that Portland became, the deep neuroticism of the educated class, former feminists calling for the castration of children, I go back to visit the "common sense" folks I grew up with. They're pretty much the same except they find things on Youtube that interests them, they look up problems they don't know how to solve, they still find degrees silly--and they're stronger, healthier, and overall happier than the people I knew in Academia.
You should have fled Portland Oregon a decade ago. The Govt is completely insane.
Or leave now. Better late than never.
Great article. I just experienced this with a friend, who fact checked using AI, my statement during a conversation, it felt weird being fact checked on the spot. Referring to AI to confirm everything is following pied piper, because the information is biased to begin with. What an incredible method of mind control. Automatic belief because AI says so. I guess AI is now God. I am not against citations, but I want the citations to come from reputable sources that are not influenced by pharma money or other conflicts of interest. At the same time, only a fool would believe a science study or expert who says elephants are extinct, while looking at an elephant in the room, yet that is what is happening. We can see giant viruses, yet some deny the existence of viruses. Society is destroying its youth for profit, getting them addicted to gaming, pornography, social media, vaping, and finally psychotropics. We don't have functional drones; we have worse, young people that are walking zombies. Adults are to blame. This is so huge, so heartbreaking, so devastating, and so disgusting that we are dropping the ball on the innocent. I think there should be limited access to gaming and social media, for the young, imposed by law on the companies that have addicted our youth. It is not legal to sell cigarettes or alcohol to our youth.
And remember those AI‘s the LLMs are being trained, not only on imperfect human data, but on data generated by other LLMs at this point.
All the AI companies have already run through their private data sets as well as the entire Internet and we know for damn sure that the Internet is full of errors as is every library in the world.
AI is biased, it can be useful at a superficial level, but depending on it for the most part will shrink the brain from lack of critical thinking.
IDK the last 20 years has not struck me as the pinnacle of critical thinking. Not sure we will miss what we never had being widely practiced anyway.
I never had conversations in the past with someone using AI to fact check me in the moment, this happened recently, it was so weird.
Yeah i hate it but i do to it back lol. We need to halt that cultural habit right now “Trust the AI” We soon will be just like that old Outer Limits Episode called "Stream of Consciousness” That will be us if we are not careful
"Stream of Consciousness" (Season 3, Episode 5 of The Outer Limits)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vbDfzrh7x4&t=3s
Do they deny the existence of viruses or just that there is no evidence that they "viruses" harm living tissue, no evidence that viruses originate outside the body, and no evidence that viruses are contagious.
Virus deniers, deny the existence of viruses, despite the fact giant viruses can be viewed under a scope. Despite the fact there are moving visuals of viruses infecting bacteria. I just had Lab Corp test for AB's to spike protein, the count was low.
Can you expand on the "visuals" of viruses "infecting" bacteria?
A video of a virus infecting a bacterium, at least that is what my classmates and I watched as presented by the prof.
Ah yes, the Prof.
Academia used to claim that sperm invade the egg cells, but now we know it is the egg actually allowing entrance for the best sperm. But either way, what research shows that viruses entrance into cells is the cause of disease? Will viruses enter into healthy cellular tissue, or only dead/dying tissue? What if viruses are the body's cleaning mechanism?
I think we are in an evolutionary arms race with pathological organisms. Most viruses are harmless, and beneficial in many ways. This is more than 'knowing' though, it is many people 'viewing' a virus penetrating a bacterium. There are videos online to watch the process of infection. People who subscribe to Terrain theory hold the belief that healthy cells cannot be infected. I take a more holistic approach, a pathogen can trick a healthy person's immune system, allowing for entry. I also believe that when healthy children develop measles soon after contact with a child with measles, the morbillivirus infected those children. I don't believe it has anything to do with the children not being healthy. In fact, many childhood infections train the immune system and are protective against later assaults and cancers. The girls with measles will as adults confer protection from the antibodies to their newborns in the early stages of life.
The expert workforce is rife with incompetence, carelessness, and corruption. Who does not understand that by now?
Academia, and 20+ year gummint toadies.
I'm an editor for an international arbitration stenography team. Lots of experts. High stakes, huge money involved. Each side engages competing experts. They produce reports from their analysis of whatever is the point at issue. The experts look over the other side's expert reports. There is usually a second report and analysis that lights into the other side's report and analysis. Lots of citations, footnotes, annexes, tables and graphs. They brief and advise their respective lawyers on what they see.
Okay, a lot of this is experts in law and economics. Sometimes very interesting, usually sleep inducing. There's usually some degree of agreement between the competing experts but not enough, since if there was total agreement we wouldn't have a hearing.
Case in a country so obscure I had to look up to see where it is. Cross examining a credentialed economist. The attorney had no doubt been alerted by HIS expert that the economist had made a simple math error that overstated losses a hundredfold. That erroneous number then informed the rest of the team credentialed experts' analyses. They didn't question their own side's expert and work, just accepted it as gospel and gleefully used the bad numbers.
The cross examination was BRUTAL. The expert was simply humiliated. Admitted to the error and the gravity of it. The dollar value of the investment involved was effectively zero at the key time.
Wow.
The Post Covid Trauma Institute | Research | Education | Mental Health
Recommended Readings
"Welcome to the world where “source?” has become the new “shut the fuck up.”"
SAY WHAT?!
Do You Have a Study for That?
I Brilliant article!
cc: @pcti @yourcounsellingjourney
Best thing I've read this Sunday morning. Thank you for taking the time to write this essay!
Speaking from personal experience, reflecting upon my own choices, I sometimes wonder how many potentially brilliant STEM and social scientists there are out there who simply didn't pursue a life in academia, maybe even part-time research and publishing, because of how we've structured our societies. I honestly truly believe we could have an amazing world with the contributions of hundreds of millions of people striving to find and implement solutions to our problems if we were just more honest, and less blinded by this fictitious money concept we've become enslaved to.
Maybe that's why substack is so great right now, even though it's doing it's best to follow the enshitification track.
Absolutely spot on!
Orwell put it succinctly: "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
People have outsourced their intellect to “experts” because they’re too busy being entertained by tv, sports ball, social media, whatever will give them that overpowering rush of dopamine. Humanity has been systematically dumbed down over the past 100 years, we’re now at the point where people are so stupid they will deny what they perceive around them unless some credentialed assclown tells them it’s okay to view it.
Why is everybody sore and hurting all the time? It's everybody. One thing everyone consumes is fluoride in the water?
Oh please....
Go brush your teeth one more time this year.
Every single word resonates. Thank you for being a consistent voice of reason in an upside down world.