In the previous post I argued why I think "higher educated" show a higher willingness to vaccinate. Herman Steigstra retweeted And a lot of reactions followed. A lot along the lines of 'what is IQ actually' and 'higher education is not necessarily a higher IQ' and 'how did they measure that' but that wasn't the point. The starting point was the outcome of two studies that had established that fact. The article only looked at the conclusion that was attached to those measurement results. I objected to the interpretation 'whoever is smart, so get vaccinated'.
Another objection cut more wood. From a American study it turned out that the American PhDs, comparable to our PhD people with a PhD, had a remarkably high jab refusal rate. I'm being pointed out from different sides, so I'm addressing this criticism of my previous article.
Indeed, research has shown that PhDs (in America: the PhDs – not quite comparable to our PhD but we do it with it) had remarkably little pricking. This critical view in the highest echelons of our programmes would contradict the link between smart/high IQ/highly educated/literate and vaccination-related.
Now, PhDs are people who have actually invested in "selluf research," as the use of common sense is often belatedly called. Doing your own research, independently gathering information, that is part of a PhD. PhDs have searched for or been given their own thesis and substantiated it with references, tied together with their own arguments. From this they have learned how normal it is that "science" is not always conclusive and can even conflict with other "science".
They have seen what bias is, that commissioned research sometimes has to lead to certain results and that if you want to add or correct something, you can never indiscriminately accept everything you hear or read, not in scientific studies but CERTAINLY not indirectly, through an opinion program or a journalist. At the bottom of this article a list by a Ph.D. what distinguishes them from someone with an HBO degree or a master's degree.
Actually, these two pictures say the same thing:
Unfortunately, these are again foreign figures, for lack of domestic openness.
That very high bar at PhD does not stand for a large group of people. In the Netherlands, only ~1% of higher educated people (including HBO) have a PhD. That carries little statistical weight. It is therefore not the case that the statement that higher educated people are more prepared for vaccination is no longer correct: the doctors do not carry enough weight numerically.
You'd think. But then you see something like the OMT. That is not in line with the supposed critical attitude at the top.
Follow-up study: vaccine readiness to faculty
In the OMT, in the Think Tank, medical doctors and professors everywhere are sitting together promoting really ramshackle high-tech quackery. Nothing critical; It's narrative what counts! How is that possible, is it sometimes in the profession?
It could be interesting to investigate among PhD students how the vaccination rate is per field of science. There are undoubtedly courses in which you only emerge if you follow your professors. In fact, the vaccination rate among the highest echelons could, if possible, prove indicative of the 'scientificity' of the field in question. This vax degree says something about the innovative capacity, critical reflection and even the scientific quality of that sector.
The more vaccinated, the more insistent on the status quo, leading to less knowledge progression. Nice thesis right? Because what the TV professors and medics have vomited out of it gives cause for great concern. Entrepreneurs among themselves or entrepreneurs vs civil servants would also be a nice field of study. Employers vs. employees... It is a great pity that we are not allowed to have all that data. The declining willingness to vaccinate could be boosted in one fell swoop with pure arguments! Or... 😬
And so there are other indications that vaccination readiness goes hand in hand with views and influence by indirect sources, of which 'the media' are the main carrier.
Vaccination coverage and Ukraine
https://whatdoino.substack.com/p/copy-coping-with-disagreement-and
This is a very long but certainly worth reading article with some striking graphs about the relationship between the number of corona shots and views on the situation in Ukraine. More pricked = brighter against Russia (green). How is that possible?
Is there perhaps the same pattern in this? Compliance of reliable media, authorities in the provision of information?
The Gell-Mann Amnesia effect
In this context, it is nice to refer again to the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. You will certainly recognize that, at least if there is one subject that you really understand. This means that you look for sources for your information, not reviews, criticisms, TV or radio programs or newspapers. No: read the original pieces yourself and place them in the context of other pieces. With methodology, underlying data etc. Preferably with the flax comb through the data and see if the conclusions are really supported by the data. You just have to be able to make the time for it – but that's what a PhD student does. If he reads anything about his subject in the newspaper, he does so mainly out of curiosity: would the commentary make sense?
The Gell-Mann Amnesia effect describes what happens in the brain when people consume newspapers or media reports on all kinds of topics.
When it comes to what they themselves are experts at, they see that that information is at least inaccurate, simplified, wrong or otherwise completely wrong. The journalist in question goes wrong. Experts effortlessly recognize in the information the sources from which he must have derived it, and from what he himself adds, it appears that he either has not understood anything about it or is flouting the laws of logic, for some reason.
Then they turn the page to the page "Abroad" or "Politics" or whatever section, and start reading about Ukraine or the climate crisis, subject that they themselves have less knowledge about but still keep up pretty well thanks to the newspaper...
Turning a page, an in-between tune on a talk show, it's enough to start with a clean slate and immediately forget what kind of weird crap you were just served, when it's indicative of how experts in other fields will judge their own pages.
This is a typical media effect. If someone exaggerates or lies to you in ordinary life, you no longer trust him or her, not even in other things. In the courtroom, there is also such a thing: Falsus in Uno, Falsus in Omnibus, which means: unreliable in one part, unreliable in everything. If it turns out that you deliberately lied on one point, then that is reason to question your entire statement.
But when it comes to the media, it works differently. Then we put aside the evidence that it is most likely a waste of time to read other parts of the newspaper = at least if you intend to be well informed. The only possible explanation for our behavior is memory loss: amnesia.1Nice to read: Wikipedia about Gell-Mann Amnesia
While writing this article, I found out that it was actually already written, by Diane Perlman, Ph.D. Everything that follows I have taken from her article https://coronawise.substack.com/p/who-refused-the-covid-shots
Unlike following protocols in the medical school, relying on precedents in the law faculty, teaching skills and systems in business, PhDs were once commissioned to write an original dissertation using the scientific method. They are trained, not just trained, to develop their own authority. Going through that process is a crucial experience.
Below is a long list of skills Ph.Ds gain during the years they work on their dissertation.
Toegift: wat hebben Ph.D's wat anderen niet hebben?
Ph.Ds must do the following for their PhD research:
- Choose an area of interest
- Choosing an advisory committee to guide our research
- Go through all the literature in that area to see what has been discovered so far
- Come up with an original question for further research
- Forming a hypothesis
- Design an experiment with methodology to test the hypothesis
- Experimental condition and drawing up a control condition
- Define independent variables and dependent variables
- Find participating subjects
- Run the experiment
- Data collection
- Analyze and interpret results
- Use statistics to determine how significant the results are
- Presenting and defending dissertation before the committee and other observers: because the work is critically examined, PhDs must be prepared to answer challenges.
- No preference for outcomes. It doesn't matter if the hypothesis is supported or not. Everything is interesting and leads to further study
- See which questions remain unanswered
- Consider questions for further research
Moreover [the author is a PhD herself and she writes in the 'we' form that I adopt from here]:
- We learn never to claim anything unless we can back it up with data from various sources. We are trained not to make indiscriminate claims.
- We learn to discern and judge the legitimacy of claims about anything.
- We can be hesitant about what we don't know
- We can become aware of political influences on which research is funded – or not
- We can recognize how studies can manipulate methodology to prove what they want
- If there is a controversy about something, we do not automatically believe one side. We have tools to determine what is true
- We may be less submissive to undeserved authority from others and respect proven legitimate authority
- We recognize propaganda, especially when it comes to a topic we know, but hopefully we can recognize BS in other areas as well.
Furthermore, we are trained to read original sources, to be aware of conflicts of interest, institutional biases, and to recognize scientific and academic fraud, statistical BS, and dirty tricks such as p-hacking in vaccine studies:
- The use of subjects who are not representative of the target population (only young and healthy people, not pregnant women, immunocompromised, elderly, children)
- The use of too few subjects to detect signs of adverse reactions, to determine safety and efficacy
- The experiment was conducted too short to detect medium and long-term effects
- Not using an inert placebo (saline) to hide actual differences in safety
- Sabotaging the control group to avoid uncomfortable safety comparisons
- Statistical BS such as using a geometric mean to hide outliers instead of an arithmetic mean (See Neutralize Dirty Tricksters: Immunize Yourself to Propaganda)
- Changing definitions of vaccine, pandemic, unvaccinated
- Global manipulation of the cycle thresholds of PCR tests to obtain false positives, inflate the number of cases and justify lockdowns and mandates
- People define as "unvaccinated" for 14 days after the last series jab. Since most side effects and deaths occur within a few days of the jab, this trick forms the basis for the "pandemic among the unvaccinated" propaganda claim.
- Dirty tricks and techniques to inflate Covid death rates and deny reactions to injections
- Recognizing propaganda, persuasion, manipulation, and distortion
- Knowing that they mistakenly use "antibody response" to claim efficacy, even though antibodies are not a "correlate of protection."
- Knowing that they are not studying T-cell immunity, which is a correlate of protection
- Unfounded claim that antibodies decrease as justification for requiring more injections
- Sudden denial of natural immunity known for 1500 years
We don't fall for mantras, slogans, and techniques designed to reject facts and stifle research while sounding intelligent. Common rejections include:
- "Correlation is not causation"(used to reject and deny vaccine harm, among other things) is not a reason to close the study. Correlation is a hypothesis to investigate further. If A is correlated with B, and if A is not the cause of B, then perhaps there is a third cause for A and B. Whether A is the cause of B can be determined by applying the Bradford-Hill Criteria.
- "It's just anecdotal."Any scientific research starts with anecdotal evidence. It arouses curiosity. An anecdote shows that something that occurs even once in the body is possible (for example, a cure for a disease). By definition, anecdotal evidence is inconclusive. It is suggestive and invites further investigation, including finding debunking evidence. Thousands of similar anecdotes point to a pattern.
Bickering PhD students
Why PhD candidates who accept the official story are so hostile to PhD candidates who refuse to do a PhD:
- They rely on American non-profit media organization NPR, a seemingly authoritative source of information, seeNPR: Propaganda for Progressives. No further comment needed.
- Not all PhDs (e.g. philosophy, literature) are trained in the scientific method, but still have confidence in their own authority.
- PhDs with limited expertise in their own field trust experts in other fields. This is related to the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.
- They don't have the time or need to do their own research on Covid.
- The 24/7, 360-degree global media propaganda convinces them with language, images, and junk science, making claims seem plausible and convincing.
- Disbelief that trusted authorities are incompetent, negligent, or evil.
- Denial
- They have a cognitive bias for information that was intensely and emotionally instilled early in the pandemic, before there was data. That formed entrenched thought patterns that filtered later information, all constantly reinforced by all MSM.
- They rely on beliefs, concepts, existing knowledge, established information, and what they are told by reliable sources rather than on the direct perception of reality.
- They do not actively and constantly look for new data.
- They don't revise their beliefs with new data they may not perceive.
- Anxiety, anxiety, anxiety, causes regression and loss of cognitive functions at a higher level.
- Conformity, consensus – everyone who knows them believes this. Everyone can't be wrong.
- Fear of professional and economic consequences of going against the story: cancellation of subsidies, refusal of future subsidies, avoidance by colleagues, de-platforming
Why people with fewer years of formal education know to reject the propositions
These are my conjectures and speculations. Your thoughts are welcome.
- They have more 'street smartness' ['are streetwise'] and learn from direct experience rather than from indoctrination in systems of selected, approved, funded knowledge.
- They have less trust in the designated authorities and know when they are being lied to, because they know from experience, institutional and generational memory that they have been lied to before.
- They are more aware of what is happening around them, with heightened senses that are not filtered by the established powers.
- They are aware of conflicts of interest.
- They may have developed a sense of their own authority in non-academic fields and rely on their experience.
[... I'll skip a piece and jump to her conclusion...]
Conclusion – Developing your authority, thinking for yourself
When my kids were in 5th grade in the 90s, they learned about advertising and critical thinking. We can all do that. You don't need a PhD to learn to think for yourself. And those who are smart must be able to trust that they can resist propaganda.
There are ways to help people become individuals, think for themselves, and develop their own sense of authority. Here are a few. Add your ideas in the comments.
- Parenting Practices – Training parents to raise children with a sense of autonomy. This includes not punishing children.
- Education from kindergarten for critical thinking, appropriate to any age level
- Encouraging dialogue instead of 2-sided, right/wrong debate processes
- Teaching propaganda techniques so that people recognize them and become immune to them.
- Teaching media literacy
- Learn from PhD training and adapt the process to other levels and contexts
- Learn what streetwise people with less formal education can teach us.
- Celebrities used to influence their audiences should feel the weight of responsibility, including life and death. They should take a critical look at what they are paid for, to avoid harming anyone.
- Using programs, such as Dr. Phil Zimbardo's Heroic Imagination Project, that teach courage.
- Reforming systems to stop punishing individuality by rewarding conformity and submission.
References
- 1Nice to read: Wikipedia about Gell-Mann Amnesia
Higher educated people just have a good memory to remember nonsense, you don't have to think logically for that.
Isn't it common that higher educated people simply know better what makes them wiser and thus preach what always benefits them?
And if you add that to the desire "to belong", and add "difficult to think, it will be good because then I don't have to make an effort is so simple", you already come to a very large group of vaccine believers.
Look at the food industry, we've been poisoned by them for decades.
All year round there are fundraising campaigns for heart and blood vessels, your kidneys, Parkinson's, rheumatism etc.
And that money then goes (yes, of course...) to research for medicines.
Yes, of course we are not going to investigate how we can prevent it because you do not earn anything from that.
If the food industry only produced healthy and responsible food, health care could probably be 80% cheaper.
That's not something we want of course.
And all those PHD and high IQ suckers eat and drink themselves madly at the poison served.
So why not get a vaccine?
Well, PhD's don't...
I miss something in this discourse that only Eliza has hinted at (helicopter view) but that doesn't really come out anywhere, and that is daring to take responsibility for large numbers.
When you want to vaccinate 7.5 billion people with a new product, every little mistake, even if it is so small, is magnified to horrible proportions. There is misery from that, without a doubt. From a responsibility alone, you can think that it is not wise to put all the eggs in one basket and thus take a bizarre gamble with the survival of humanity.
On top of that, the idea of one size fits all can never be right. The same product in the same dosage for all types of people, of all races and from baby to bodybuilder? Who can believe that can be good? And if it gets out of hand, no one has yet been trained to treat it, because it is a new product whose ingredients were secret (a little more is now known about that).
Responsibility towards large numbers, i.e. large, overarching responsibility, is something we are not trained to do. We just started specializing, further and further. This is even more important in the academic world than in the world of practical subjects. Plumbers and bakers need to develop a broader view than deeply specialized highly educated people. The former must be able to oversee the entire system because otherwise a mistake has far-reaching consequences (and they stand with their feet in the mud for days to fix it) while the latter can rely on colleagues with specializations in adjacent subjects.
I enjoyed your analysis, Anton, and am going to read another article, only this had to get me off my chest. I think that also has something to do with daring to take responsibility for a larger whole.
I miss something in this discourse that only Eliza has hinted at (helicopter view) but that doesn't really come out anywhere, and that is daring to take responsibility for large numbers.
When you want to vaccinate 7.5 billion people with a new product, every little mistake, even if it is so small, is magnified to horrible proportions. There is misery from that, without a doubt. From a responsibility alone, you can think that it is not wise to put all the eggs in one basket and thus take a bizarre gamble with the survival of humanity.
On top of that, the idea of one size fits all can never be right. The same product in the same dosage for all types of people, of all races and from baby to bodybuilder? Who can believe that can be good? And if it gets out of hand, no one has yet been trained to treat it, because it is a new product whose ingredients were secret (a little more is now known about that).
Responsibility towards large numbers, i.e. large, overarching responsibility, is something we are not trained to do. We just started specializing, further and further. This is even more important in the academic world than in the world of practical subjects. Plumbers and bakers need to develop a broader view than deeply specialized highly educated people. The former must be able to oversee the entire system because otherwise a mistake has far-reaching consequences (and they stand with their feet in the mud for days to fix it) while the latter can rely on colleagues with specializations in adjacent subjects.
I enjoyed your analysis, Anton, and am going to read another article, only this had to get me off my chest. I think that also has something to do with daring to take responsibility for a larger whole.
Thanks for your addition! What you write has everything to do with concentration of power. In my opinion, this is always derailed because it entails forces on a megalomaniac scale that only saints can cope with.
There's no way around that, I'm afraid.
If you were to set up a separate institute or a training programme for this, it would also be encapsulated in no time. The only thing that helps, in my opinion, is absolute transparency of governance.
I would say as a simple HBOer: never exclude anything. If everyone is shouting that the earth is flat, look for evidence that that might not be true before you walk with the masses and rely on people who have appearances against them.
Helkopterblik? To be able to oversee such an operation, you leave for the moon at warp speed and look at what happened on earth from there:
Operation ludicrous speed (level MAVO calculations)
Between 01-03-2020 and 6-10-2022, 12.7 trillion doses were distributed.
source: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-global-distribution/
How many vials had to be produced for this? We assume the smallest number, i.e. we assume that 5 doses are taken from a vial.
12,700,000,000 / 5=2,540,000,000 vials
How much time was available for this:
Between 01/03/2020 and 6/10/2022, 81 million seconds elapsed
https://www.timeanddate.com/date/durationresult.html
How much time was available to get a dose in an arm?
2,540,000,000/ 81,993,600 = 30.97802755337002 seconds from vial to (5) people.
31 seconds times 5 makes roughly 155 seconds, so there was about 2.5 minutes available to produce and administer the dose.
Conclusion:
In those two and a half minutes, the contents of the vial were designed, tested, pilot produced, mass-produced, and finally transported (partly very cold) and administered to a person.
Apparently, at the beginning of the time span between 01-03-2020 and 06-10-2022, an infrastructure was set up worldwide consisting of the following components:
R&D sites
Test sites
Trial production sites
Mass production sites
Suppliers scaled up
The logistics taken care of.
Ask:
Was it possible to scale up so quickly with existing infrastructure?
Why was nothing about the production and transport of the vials shown in the media?
Could the vials be filled with a sophisticated product in such a short time?
Was the data in the media (the source of the calculation) manipulated for the purpose of public perception.
Entrepreneurs are a separate people (I'm one myself). You are expected to run a business "at your own risk". As a result, entrepreneurs are particularly keen in assessing risk. That assessment of risk is not science, but more a matter of intuition. You read the newspaper, you look around your city, you google everything, read what people and companies are doing, know where you have hit your head in the past and you decide...
I am convinced that entrepreneurs are either unevacuated or dropped out after the 1st round.