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A large part is due to the "because science.." crutch used in order to stop any questions. Also, it's the classic "Don't meet your heroes", because when the sp

A large part is due to the "because science.." crutch used in order to stop any questions. Also, it's the classic "Don't meet your heroes", because when the spotlight was pointed at the "scientific community" ( whatever that means.. ), the "plebes" saw a bunch of liars, fraudsters, careerists and also the complete opposite of scientific reasoning. Just like any other field... In my opinion the main event is the removal of the pristine mask that covered the "scientists" and that's a good thing. However, most of those who "expose the lies" are 10 times worse than the exposed. The only good way forward is to "scientists" go back into doing actual Science and nothing more. Social media is "just" a multiplier of things due to the networking effect, it can only increase something if the thing is not zero to begin with.

ImHereToVote 4y ago
Also, administrators aren't scientists.
Workaccount2 4y ago
>the "plebes" saw a bunch of liars, fraudsters, careerists and also the complete opposite of scientific reasoning. Just like any other field... To me it was "The plebs read a bunch of words that they don't understand, running the information through their everyday layman brain and coming to totally wrong conclusions" This happens all the time. Remember "cell phones will fry your brain"? There is a large subset of the population who will never be able to understand the difference between a microwave oven, microwave communication, radiation, and ionizing radiation. Which leads to situations where someone from that subset stumbles upon some internal AT&T memo's reads them and comes away with "Holy shit, internally they blatantly talk about building towers that emit radiation over the whole population. Literally building huge microwaves to radiate over massive population centers!" More often than not, the scientists, engineers, big brains, whatever, have a good grip and the general population is fucking retarded.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  Remember "cell phones will fry your brain" There is a huge overlap between '5f panic', anti-vax, panic, and all kinds of other panics. A lot of people who wind up things like the Qanon cult end up there because they had some sort of technological or political anxiety, networked with other people who had similar uncertainties, and were drawn into a radicalization funnel. There is plenty of financial and political capital to be made by fleecing such people. Flat earth nonsense is another example of the same phenomenon. If you go down that rabbit hole you find a warren of religious fundamentalism, built on the idea that earth ain't flat, space is fake, the Bible explains the stars are tiny lights mounted on a firmament, NASA is a satanic conspiracy, and it's time to take up arms against the forces of evil. All radical funnels follow the same sort of pattern, which is derived from sales and marketing: goofballs > grifters > true believers > organizers> extremists > martyrs/terrorists. Of course, you can make similar observations about partisan politics, geopolitics and so on; institutions function as funnels for the production of future elites who maintain the status quo through increasingly coercive means. Radicalization funnels differ mainly in terms of transparency, accountability, visibility, and speed of transition.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    There's also the whole "half of america can't even read at a highschool level" thing.
- xnx 4y ago
  Also: Panic over "chemicals"
lamontcg 4y ago
The "plebs" have generally found a single scientific study which agreed with their preconceived notions, have ignored any data or argument which disagrees with them, and used that as a hammer against the scientific establishment--which is not actually the practice of science. It does reinforce your ego that you know more than the "liars, fraudsters and careerists" though.
- PedroBatista 4y ago
  Judging by some of the comments, the behavior and self-worth of the "enlightened" is just as reprehensible as your usual FoxNews dad parroting BS. The "enlightened" should know better since they are.. enlightened. Yet, the "plebs" found out they have exactly the same vices and reprehensible atitudes, plus the usual dismissive attitudes towards everyone "beneath" them. Many of the "not plebs" do exactly what you described and that's what "changed", the illusion of the benevolent white coat "egg head" was broken. And I think it's a good thing, just by principle. Highly educated people are just as nasty, flawed people as anyone else and if I make a statement, it should be judged by the statement's merits and not by who I am. The practice of science is something it can be done by everyone, as long as they.. follow the scientific method. Not even scientists follow the scientific method all the time, because they are.. flawed, lazy, greedy, dishonest sometimes. Just like everyone else.
  - lamontcg 4y ago
    > The practice of science is something it can be done by everyone, as long as they.. follow the scientific method. The actual scientific method requires some expertise though in order to determine if any given study is junk science or not. Someone who hasn't spent their lifetime studying the subject will be at a significant disadvantage, and will generally be completely unable to tell you if a given paper is junk science or not. And amateur can approximate this knowledge, but what they wind up doing is having read many scientific papers and arguments they have a good "gut feeling" over the skill of a paper, and then they seek out actual expert opinion to fill in the gaps in their knowledge of the procedures and weigh any competing expert opinion, combined with literature searches for review articles. You can also do things like read books / watch video courses of at least undergraduate-level dispassionate introductions to subjects. And since I don't have a scientific degree this is what I wind up doing all the time and I've practiced it for the past 30 years or so. I rarely see anyone on the internet who is a scientific novice with that level of analysis. They usually stop with the fact that they've got a reference they can cite to try to win an argument and it stops there. The reality of science is that the evidence is always going to be a mess and a morass of conflicting results. You can tease out the actual truth out of there but it requires assembling evidence which is consistent and not contradictory and discarding results which are probably the result of e.g. experimental error and procedural artifacts and not real science. If you have no process at all to do that, then you're not following the scientific method, you're just making biased arguments with scientific-looking references. And the scientific method ultimately requires trusting experts. Period. Full fucking stop. Nobody can possibly figure out all of science themselves, it is too vast, so actual scientists learn over time who and what to trust more or less. Anyone who rejects that approach entirely isn't doing science and most likely doesn't know what they're talking about. And I rarely see anyone on the Internet who has gone beyond read opinion blogs and spent the hours necessary to just get exposed to the basics of field. With everything that is accessible on the Internet, nearly everyone has access to an undergraduate level education in just about anything. I rarely see anyone railing against scientists and medical professionals who have bothered to take advantage of the free information that is out there though (e.g. for virology basics I'd recommend sitting through all of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlLgaHZpZS4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlLgaHZpZS4 which is just a course on virology).

ImHereToVote 4y ago

Also, administrators aren't scientists.

Workaccount2 4y ago

>the "plebes" saw a bunch of liars, fraudsters, careerists and also the complete opposite of scientific reasoning. Just like any other field... To me it was "The plebs read a bunch of words that they don't understand, running the information through their everyday layman brain and coming to totally wrong conclusions" This happens all the time. Remember "cell phones will fry your brain"? There is a large subset of the population who will never be able to understand the difference between a microwave oven, microwave communication, radiation, and ionizing radiation. Which leads to situations where someone from that subset stumbles upon some internal AT&T memo's reads them and comes away with "Holy shit, internally they blatantly talk about building towers that emit radiation over the whole population. Literally building huge microwaves to radiate over massive population centers!" More often than not, the scientists, engineers, big brains, whatever, have a good grip and the general population is fucking retarded.

anigbrowl 4y ago
Remember "cell phones will fry your brain" There is a huge overlap between '5f panic', anti-vax, panic, and all kinds of other panics. A lot of people who wind up things like the Qanon cult end up there because they had some sort of technological or political anxiety, networked with other people who had similar uncertainties, and were drawn into a radicalization funnel. There is plenty of financial and political capital to be made by fleecing such people. Flat earth nonsense is another example of the same phenomenon. If you go down that rabbit hole you find a warren of religious fundamentalism, built on the idea that earth ain't flat, space is fake, the Bible explains the stars are tiny lights mounted on a firmament, NASA is a satanic conspiracy, and it's time to take up arms against the forces of evil. All radical funnels follow the same sort of pattern, which is derived from sales and marketing: goofballs > grifters > true believers > organizers> extremists > martyrs/terrorists. Of course, you can make similar observations about partisan politics, geopolitics and so on; institutions function as funnels for the production of future elites who maintain the status quo through increasingly coercive means. Radicalization funnels differ mainly in terms of transparency, accountability, visibility, and speed of transition.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  There's also the whole "half of america can't even read at a highschool level" thing.
xnx 4y ago
Also: Panic over "chemicals"

lamontcg 4y ago

The "plebs" have generally found a single scientific study which agreed with their preconceived notions, have ignored any data or argument which disagrees with them, and used that as a hammer against the scientific establishment--which is not actually the practice of science. It does reinforce your ego that you know more than the "liars, fraudsters and careerists" though.

PedroBatista 4y ago
Judging by some of the comments, the behavior and self-worth of the "enlightened" is just as reprehensible as your usual FoxNews dad parroting BS. The "enlightened" should know better since they are.. enlightened. Yet, the "plebs" found out they have exactly the same vices and reprehensible atitudes, plus the usual dismissive attitudes towards everyone "beneath" them. Many of the "not plebs" do exactly what you described and that's what "changed", the illusion of the benevolent white coat "egg head" was broken. And I think it's a good thing, just by principle. Highly educated people are just as nasty, flawed people as anyone else and if I make a statement, it should be judged by the statement's merits and not by who I am. The practice of science is something it can be done by everyone, as long as they.. follow the scientific method. Not even scientists follow the scientific method all the time, because they are.. flawed, lazy, greedy, dishonest sometimes. Just like everyone else.
- lamontcg 4y ago
  > The practice of science is something it can be done by everyone, as long as they.. follow the scientific method. The actual scientific method requires some expertise though in order to determine if any given study is junk science or not. Someone who hasn't spent their lifetime studying the subject will be at a significant disadvantage, and will generally be completely unable to tell you if a given paper is junk science or not. And amateur can approximate this knowledge, but what they wind up doing is having read many scientific papers and arguments they have a good "gut feeling" over the skill of a paper, and then they seek out actual expert opinion to fill in the gaps in their knowledge of the procedures and weigh any competing expert opinion, combined with literature searches for review articles. You can also do things like read books / watch video courses of at least undergraduate-level dispassionate introductions to subjects. And since I don't have a scientific degree this is what I wind up doing all the time and I've practiced it for the past 30 years or so. I rarely see anyone on the internet who is a scientific novice with that level of analysis. They usually stop with the fact that they've got a reference they can cite to try to win an argument and it stops there. The reality of science is that the evidence is always going to be a mess and a morass of conflicting results. You can tease out the actual truth out of there but it requires assembling evidence which is consistent and not contradictory and discarding results which are probably the result of e.g. experimental error and procedural artifacts and not real science. If you have no process at all to do that, then you're not following the scientific method, you're just making biased arguments with scientific-looking references. And the scientific method ultimately requires trusting experts. Period. Full fucking stop. Nobody can possibly figure out all of science themselves, it is too vast, so actual scientists learn over time who and what to trust more or less. Anyone who rejects that approach entirely isn't doing science and most likely doesn't know what they're talking about. And I rarely see anyone on the Internet who has gone beyond read opinion blogs and spent the hours necessary to just get exposed to the basics of field. With everything that is accessible on the Internet, nearly everyone has access to an undergraduate level education in just about anything. I rarely see anyone railing against scientists and medical professionals who have bothered to take advantage of the free information that is out there though (e.g. for virology basics I'd recommend sitting through all of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlLgaHZpZS4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlLgaHZpZS4 which is just a course on virology).