Thank you for this well reasoned and thoughtful article. Happy New Year and may your continuing efforts help educate the public on the importance of energy in their everyday lives. Best wishes, Dick Storm
My grandfather might have put it differently, but it took some grit to write this piece. The first comments to the post illustrate the problem being addressed. Critical thinking is a subjective skill. For me it means being calm enough to consider new information, to try to put myself in the other person’s position. Try to play debates out in your head, and argue as fiercely as you can against what you believe to be true. Try to understand why a conclusion diametrically opposite to yours could be believed, even if emotionally motivated. Then do a little research. Read the protagonist and antagonist data, review anything you believe to be objective. Then do simple math. A pencil, calculator, and an envelope can do wonders for understanding. Artificial intelligence will most likely be able to present very believable videos, articles, etc., which have been weaponized to divide civil society more. Cooler heads must prevail.
There are some very profound truths in this article. And your examples of vaccination and nuclear power are well chosen. You ask the question, “Has it gotten worse?”
This is a very good question. One thing that has not helped is that misinformation has been creeping into the education system. Cheating and academic fraud has become increasingly commonplace with things like AI being used to compose and write student work and research.
A reason could be suggested as to why things may have gotten worse. All public education systems are intended to support the political narrative of the nation that created and supports them. As politics has become more polarized, the education system has become more polarized along with it. This has led to some strange situations of arithmetic or grammar being denounced as racist. Some disciplines such as grammar appear to have been abandoned entirely by some public education in some regions.
The new media has not helped. Mass hysteria now can be disseminated around the globe to millions in a matter of seconds or minutes. Churchill and Mark Twain both remarked that “a lie can travel around the world while truth is still getting its boots on.”
Interesting post, but I think you underestimate the difficulty of determining what is and isn't misinformation. You reference an article on Statista about vaccine "misinformation". Without paying a subscription I can't see how they define misinformation, but I have my suspicions based on some research done in Australia.
Australia is considering misinformation and disinformation legislation based on a survey and study done by Canberra University. Problem with the survey is that they didn't define misinformation in the first place when asking people whether they had seen any and where. And then they put up a number of propositions about COVID-19 to test for occurrences of misinformation. This was better, but then the problem was that the propositions themselves are now known to be wrong - propositions like the vaccines would stop you catching or transmitting COVID. It turns out when you reexamine the data that the best informed were those who used social media the most, and the worst informed were those who relied on government approved information.
So how do you determine what is true and what is false at any point in time, and therefore what is misinformation, and what needs to be inoculated against? I think the solution is the opposite to inoculation. It is free and open debate. There will be some people who believe some silly things, but then there always are, but you will arrive closer to the truth faster.
I love your writing, logic, depth, and personal experience. Thank you for your passion and integrity.
P.S. A minor comment. I love the content, but frequently find myself unable or unwilling (due to other demands on my time with work and family) to read your article due to their sheer length. My solution would be to have ChatGPT just summarize it for me, but I don't know if it would retain the core points. In short, if there were a way to "packetize" your excellent articles into more "bite-size news articles," I would likely feel less angst about each and more willing to share with my friends and family. As said in "Bolt" the movie, "Is the message long? You remember the first half, and I'll remember the second half..."
Keep up the great work! And feel free to disregard my feedback if I'm not your target audience. :)
Certainly suggesting that opponents to nuclear are to be compared to people concerned about vax safety is marketing that is likely to backfire badly. That the pharma industry knowingly releases damaging treatments and actively covers up safety information is not an unreasonable prior to have; see for example the story of Vioxx https://www.bmj.com/content/334/7585/120. While there are certainly far-fetched anti-vax claims to be found online, there is also no shortage of far-fetched pro-vax claims. David's suggestion of Turtles All the Way Down is a good one; for those in a hurry, the first chapter is key, explaining how the routine childhood vaccines have essentially been grandfathered in without the testing against a proper placebo that would be needed to demonstrate safety. The industry usually tries to counter that argument with circular logic that assumes in advance that the vaccines are safe in order to justify not running trials against an inert placebo, saying that it would be "unethical" to deprive the child of protection like that. The captive regulators and the way critics are censored and driven out of the medical profession are also not reassuring; it's not how we deal with vehicle safety for example.
It's not clear what you are suggesting. Are you claiming that all regulators are captive? Are you claiming that all pharma industry vaccines have adverse results? Are you claiming that there is no evidence of the effect of childhood vaccines and that they have never been properly tested?
If you're asking whether I personally am dogmatically anti-vax, the short answer (which unfortunately is all I have time for) is no. All medical interventions carry risks as well as benefits, which need to be weighed up. The reason the subject came up at all is just that Zion proposed to denigrate anti-nuclear people by comparing them with anti-vaxxers, with the implication that anti-vaxxers are "anti-science" and/or have no serious case to answer, which I don't think is correct. Mainstream media are heavily financed by pharma industry advertising nowadays (it was not always so), and this makes it difficult for them to present an objective view; given that, it's very understandable that somebody who's busy and hasn't looked into the issues might assume that anti-vaxxers are dummies.
Antinuclear agitators are anti-science. The net advantage of nuclear power, the safest form of generating electricity, is enormous. The mainstream media is heavily biased against nuclear power.
It's empty of any substance except normative statements. But then, that was the problem with your original statement in this thread. And claiming "excellence" for your own writing is grandiose to the point of absurdity.
Thank you for this well reasoned and thoughtful article. Happy New Year and may your continuing efforts help educate the public on the importance of energy in their everyday lives. Best wishes, Dick Storm
My grandfather might have put it differently, but it took some grit to write this piece. The first comments to the post illustrate the problem being addressed. Critical thinking is a subjective skill. For me it means being calm enough to consider new information, to try to put myself in the other person’s position. Try to play debates out in your head, and argue as fiercely as you can against what you believe to be true. Try to understand why a conclusion diametrically opposite to yours could be believed, even if emotionally motivated. Then do a little research. Read the protagonist and antagonist data, review anything you believe to be objective. Then do simple math. A pencil, calculator, and an envelope can do wonders for understanding. Artificial intelligence will most likely be able to present very believable videos, articles, etc., which have been weaponized to divide civil society more. Cooler heads must prevail.
There are some very profound truths in this article. And your examples of vaccination and nuclear power are well chosen. You ask the question, “Has it gotten worse?”
This is a very good question. One thing that has not helped is that misinformation has been creeping into the education system. Cheating and academic fraud has become increasingly commonplace with things like AI being used to compose and write student work and research.
A reason could be suggested as to why things may have gotten worse. All public education systems are intended to support the political narrative of the nation that created and supports them. As politics has become more polarized, the education system has become more polarized along with it. This has led to some strange situations of arithmetic or grammar being denounced as racist. Some disciplines such as grammar appear to have been abandoned entirely by some public education in some regions.
The new media has not helped. Mass hysteria now can be disseminated around the globe to millions in a matter of seconds or minutes. Churchill and Mark Twain both remarked that “a lie can travel around the world while truth is still getting its boots on.”
Happy New Year Zion.
Interesting post, but I think you underestimate the difficulty of determining what is and isn't misinformation. You reference an article on Statista about vaccine "misinformation". Without paying a subscription I can't see how they define misinformation, but I have my suspicions based on some research done in Australia.
Australia is considering misinformation and disinformation legislation based on a survey and study done by Canberra University. Problem with the survey is that they didn't define misinformation in the first place when asking people whether they had seen any and where. And then they put up a number of propositions about COVID-19 to test for occurrences of misinformation. This was better, but then the problem was that the propositions themselves are now known to be wrong - propositions like the vaccines would stop you catching or transmitting COVID. It turns out when you reexamine the data that the best informed were those who used social media the most, and the worst informed were those who relied on government approved information.
So how do you determine what is true and what is false at any point in time, and therefore what is misinformation, and what needs to be inoculated against? I think the solution is the opposite to inoculation. It is free and open debate. There will be some people who believe some silly things, but then there always are, but you will arrive closer to the truth faster.
I love your writing, logic, depth, and personal experience. Thank you for your passion and integrity.
P.S. A minor comment. I love the content, but frequently find myself unable or unwilling (due to other demands on my time with work and family) to read your article due to their sheer length. My solution would be to have ChatGPT just summarize it for me, but I don't know if it would retain the core points. In short, if there were a way to "packetize" your excellent articles into more "bite-size news articles," I would likely feel less angst about each and more willing to share with my friends and family. As said in "Bolt" the movie, "Is the message long? You remember the first half, and I'll remember the second half..."
Keep up the great work! And feel free to disregard my feedback if I'm not your target audience. :)
Certainly suggesting that opponents to nuclear are to be compared to people concerned about vax safety is marketing that is likely to backfire badly. That the pharma industry knowingly releases damaging treatments and actively covers up safety information is not an unreasonable prior to have; see for example the story of Vioxx https://www.bmj.com/content/334/7585/120. While there are certainly far-fetched anti-vax claims to be found online, there is also no shortage of far-fetched pro-vax claims. David's suggestion of Turtles All the Way Down is a good one; for those in a hurry, the first chapter is key, explaining how the routine childhood vaccines have essentially been grandfathered in without the testing against a proper placebo that would be needed to demonstrate safety. The industry usually tries to counter that argument with circular logic that assumes in advance that the vaccines are safe in order to justify not running trials against an inert placebo, saying that it would be "unethical" to deprive the child of protection like that. The captive regulators and the way critics are censored and driven out of the medical profession are also not reassuring; it's not how we deal with vehicle safety for example.
It's not clear what you are suggesting. Are you claiming that all regulators are captive? Are you claiming that all pharma industry vaccines have adverse results? Are you claiming that there is no evidence of the effect of childhood vaccines and that they have never been properly tested?
If you're asking whether I personally am dogmatically anti-vax, the short answer (which unfortunately is all I have time for) is no. All medical interventions carry risks as well as benefits, which need to be weighed up. The reason the subject came up at all is just that Zion proposed to denigrate anti-nuclear people by comparing them with anti-vaxxers, with the implication that anti-vaxxers are "anti-science" and/or have no serious case to answer, which I don't think is correct. Mainstream media are heavily financed by pharma industry advertising nowadays (it was not always so), and this makes it difficult for them to present an objective view; given that, it's very understandable that somebody who's busy and hasn't looked into the issues might assume that anti-vaxxers are dummies.
Antinuclear agitators are anti-science. The net advantage of nuclear power, the safest form of generating electricity, is enormous. The mainstream media is heavily biased against nuclear power.
"Degrowth has many great ideas that would correct social injustice."
Please explain who is expected to die off for everyone else. Also please explain how you expect this to be enforced.
Full of neologisms which dodge around the key questions I asked.
It's empty of any substance except normative statements. But then, that was the problem with your original statement in this thread. And claiming "excellence" for your own writing is grandiose to the point of absurdity.