It ain’t what you know that gets you into trouble.
It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.
– Mark Twain
This tangle is hell to unravel.
I definitely don't have the answers, and I certainly try to avoid implying conclusions. The more I see, the more I try to open myself to the possibility of different perspectives. It is my hope to invite others along a similar path...to try and see through muck.
So much of the cage in which we find ourselves was built upon assumed postulates, binary thought, trusted altruism, and a belief in/reliance upon the benevolence of authority. These beliefs are so fundamental, inherent, in our culture that the trained thought habits of these paradigms persist, even despite conscious awareness.
Often we believe ourselves to be thinking outside the proverbial box, when we are indeed still operating within the framework of the invisible cage. A cage that continues to be reinforced with calculated precision.
Begging the Question
Begging the question (also called petitio principii or circular reasoning) is a logical fallacy that occurs when an argument’s premise depends on or is equivalent to the argument’s conclusion. In other words, an argument begs the question if one or more of its premises assume that the argument’s conclusion is necessarily true.
There are two main types of circularity that can be involved in begging the question:
Equivalency circularity, which occurs when a premise of an argument is functionally equivalent to its conclusion. The most basic form of this type of circularity is the argument “P, therefore P”, which is used, for example, in the argument “the sky is blue, therefore the sky is blue”.
-OR-
Dangerous germs can cause pandemics because dangerous germs cause pandemics.
Dependency circularity, which occurs when a premise of an argument depends on its conclusion. The most basic form of this type of circularity is the argument “P is true because Q, Q is true because P”, which is used, for example, in the argument “the sky is blue because it’s not raining, and it’s not raining because the sky is blue”.
-OR-
IT WOULD’VE BEEN SO MUCH WORSE if the murders of the world GOVERNMENTS HADN’T PROVIDED herd culling murder shots VACCINES, THEREFORE we have turbo cancer, dying suddenly is a thing, and all cause mortality is off the chart IT’S NOT SO MUCH WORSE BECAUSE GOVERNMENTS PROVIDED herd culling murder shots VACCINES.
The Indoctrination
By Robin Marantz Henig; May 25, 1987
"How many Harvard medical students does it take to change a light bulb?" asks Perri Klass in her book about Harvard Medical School, "A Not Entirely Benign Procedure." The answer: "One, to stand there and hold it while the world revolves around him."
This center-of-the-universe perspective of the medical student often persists, of course, when the student becomes the professional. If you want to know why doctors can sometimes seem arrogant, officious, impatient or in a world of their own, go back to medical school. Once you understand how they were taught, and the kind of sleepless nights, frantic rhythms and life-or-death stresses under which most of their training occurred, you can begin to understand the imperialism of medicine.
INDOCRINATE
1: to imbue with a usually partisan or sectarian opinion, point of view, or principle
2: to instruct especially in fundamentals or rudiments : TEACH
in + DOCTRINE + ate
late 14c., "the body of principles, dogmas, etc., in a religion or field of knowledge," from Old French doctrine (12c.) "teaching, doctrine" and directly from Latin doctrina "a teaching, body of teachings, learning," from doctor "teacher" (see doctor (n.))
The notion is "whatever is taught or laid down as true by a master or instructor," hence "any set of principles held as true."
DOCTOR
c. 1300, doctour, "Church father," from Old French doctour and directly from Medieval Latin doctor "religious teacher, adviser, scholar," in classical Latin "teacher," agent noun from docere "to show, teach, cause to know," originally "make to appear right," causative of decere "be seemly, fitting" (from PIE root *dek- "to take, accept").
Meaning "holder of the highest degree in a university, one who has passed all the degrees of a faculty and is thereby empowered to teach the subjects included in it" is from late 14c. Hence "teacher, instructor, learned man; one skilled in a learned profession" (late 14c.).
I realize that this post will probably make some people angry, however that is not my intention. As this augmented, pandemic-that-was-not, has unfolded, I have watched very intelligent people for whom I hold great respect, handcuff themselves to their existing beliefs despite the presentation of new, reasonable evidence to the contrary.
For example, in 2021 I argued with my brother about treatment protocols and vaccination. During this particular exchange, he dismissed my points by questioning my ability to understand what I was talking about…primarily because I’m not a doctor, and therefore didn’t have sufficient knowledge of viruses and how they work.
While belittling my research (and my ability to even do it) and condescendingly “explaining” viral infection to me, he also informed me that I didn’t understand statistics and why relative risk versus absolute risk would be used.
He cited studies that were funded by the pharmaceutical companies that stood to profit from the outcomes of the studies. He quoted the CDC and the NIH. And he simply refused to entertain the notion that anything I presented could have merit.
His words to me were something to the effect of, “This is one of the biggest tragedies of this pandemic. A bunch of moms that are armchair physicians thinking they can do their own research and understand what is going on.”
Over the summer I posted about the illness my completely vaccinated family has experienced, despite knowing much more than an idiot mom doing her own research.
This argument I have just described has happened across the globe, and continues to happen, with seemingly no end in sight. In my experience and in my observation of these interactions, I’ve noticed a combination of hubris and cognitive biases that create a very distinct resistance to the integration, or even the acknowledgement of, new information.
Hubris: The Dangers of Excessive Pride and Confidence
The main danger of hubris is that it clouds people’s judgment in various ways, which causes the hubristic individual to make decisions that are bad for them and for others who are affected by those decisions.
For example, since hubris involves overconfidence in one’s knowledge and abilities, it can lead people to overestimate their ability to achieve positive outcomes in various domains, which causes them to take unnecessary risks. Similarly, hubris can lead people to overestimate the validity and reliability of their intuitions, and consequently to over-rely on those intuitions while avoiding a proper reasoning process, especially if it involves discussions with others.
Difficulties Unlearning
The first challenge of unlearning is that when something contradicts your current understanding, you are likely to dismiss it. This may be adaptive in a world where many of the things people say or information you encounter are false, or lies constructed to manipulate you. Things that you don’t currently believe are, ceteris paribus, more likely to be false. However, this confirmation bias can make it harder to unlearn when that’s valuable to you.
A deeper problem, I believe, is that human beings tend not to deeply represent doubt and uncertainties in a fine-grained way. That is, the things you believe now, you tend to believe completely, even if provisionally. However, whether those beliefs are near-certain or highly-doubtful, the way they are represented in the brain is much the same.
It’s true that a more doubtful belief is more likely to be dismissed than a certain one. If I try to argue that the moon is made of cheese, for instance, I’ll be met with a lot more resistance than if I try to argue something you only believed loosely. However, this revision occurs in an active sense—when one is directly assessing reasons for the belief in question. I believe that, when a belief isn’t being actively considered, it can still inform your thinking in other ways and, that, in those cases the relative certainty of the belief isn’t used.
If this view is true, then that means that many of the things we learned aren’t dangerous because they are immune to counterargument, but because they can subtly influence our thinking in adjacent areas when we aren’t being vigilant to how likely they are to be true.
The main challenge of unlearning, therefore, is that most of our false or doubtful assumptions about the areas that impact our lives are never examined. We use these assumptions to operate, but because they aren’t actively reflected upon, studied or challenged, they maintain their full force, even if fairly simple arguments could overturn them.
In many ways, unlearning has the same properties of the local maxima problem for your overall life situation. To get a more accurate picture, you have to first sacrifice some certainty in the things you take for granted. This sacrifice involves going against your natural local-optimization inclinations.
I am seeing in real time what the statistics and graphs are showing.
I am hugging my clients when then find out they have cancer.
I am listening to their heartache when they lose their husband and their children are not yet teenagers.
I see their tears. And I feel their pain.
Some people are able to see it and have a conversation that includes the possibility of the injectable bioweapon being responsible for what is happening. Some are not.
Some are able to hear me when I speak about the structural legal framework that has been systematically built to allow for this massive cull to happen LEGALLY.
There are many who simply will not see it, much less hear it.
Last week, a client found out her father has bladder cancer. Surgery will be challenging as he has recently undergone heart surgery for a newly diagnosed heart condition and is on blood thinners.
This was her third cancer report in the last two weeks.
When I emphasized the number of cancers, she said that she just can’t believe all the terrible toxins that are in our food. And climate change.
Cognitive Bias is a Bitch.
We are all, humans, susceptible to these biases; and please note that I consider myself no exception.
I also do not consider doctors to be exempt from these biases. In fact, their training is contingent upon creating biases on which lives depend. The years of rigorous schooling and high stakes create a well trained, finely tuned mind.
One could argue, that this mind is so well trained and sure of itself, that it becomes difficult to entertain the possibility of fallacy within the framework of early learned theories.
4 widespread cognitive biases
An article published in the AMA Journal of Ethics® (@JournalofEthics) by Tiffany S. Doherty, PhD, a post-doctoral researcher, and Aaron E. Carroll, MD, MS, professor of pediatrics and associate dean for research mentoring, at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis summarized the most common cognitive biases physicians face in practice.
Cognitive biases are worrisome for physicians because they can affect one’s ability to gather evidence, interpret evidence, take action and evaluate their decisions, the authors noted. Here are four biases that commonly surface in medicine.
Confirmation bias involves selectively gathering and interpretation evidence to conform with one’s beliefs, as well as neglecting evidence that contradicts them. An example is refusing to consider alternative diagnoses once an initial diagnosis has been established, even though data, such as laboratory results, might contradict it.
“This bias leads physicians to see what they want to see,” the authors wrote. “Since it occurs early in the treatment pathway, confirmation bias can lead to mistaken diagnoses being passed on to and accepted by other clinicians without their validity being questioned, a process referred to as diagnostic momentum."
Anchoring bias is much like confirmation bias and refers to the practice of prioritizing information and data that support one’s initial impressions of evidence, even when those impressions are incorrect. Imagine attributing a patient’s back pain to known osteoporosis without ruling out other potential causes.
Affect heuristic describes when a physician’s actions are swayed by emotional reactions instead of rational deliberation about risks and benefits. It is context or patient specific and can manifest when physician experiences positive or negative feelings toward a patient based on prior experiences.
Outcomes bias refers to the practice of believing that clinical results—good or bad—are always attributable to prior decisions, even if the physician has no valid reason to think this, preventing him from assimilating feedback to improve his performance.
On mistakes within the medical field…
Inevitable Mistakes, Avoidable Harm
MARCH-APRIL 2008
The culture of medicine has long tried to keep doctors from making mistakes by indoctrinating them to believe that they shouldn’t make mistakes. “It’s the way we’re trained as physicians,” says Tejal Gandhi, executive director of quality and safety at the Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “Unfortunately, a lot of times, people feel like they need to be perfect.”
But doctors are human and therefore prone to error, so many in the healthcare industry are urging a culture shift: assume that mistakes will happen and focus on catching them before they harm a patient, by building double- and triple-checks and balances into systems. This way, mistakes become breakdowns in the system, rather than personal failings. “It isn’t a case of an individual failing a patient,” says Gregg Meyer, senior vice president for quality and safety at Massachusetts General Hospital. “It’s a case of the system failing both the patient and the provider.”
The old culture of perfection may actually hold hospitals back. Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis professor of leadership and management at Harvard Business School, has shown that the way hospitals handle mistakes, and employees who make them, is integral to improving patient safety (see “Secret Errors Kill,” March-April 2001, page 11). Consistent reporting of errors is crucial, but employees won’t report mistakes—colleagues’ or their own—unless the hospital has cultivated an environment of what Edmondson calls “psychological safety.” Nurses and other clinicians whose status is relatively low hesitate to speak up, even if they see a doctor making a mistake that could hurt a patient, if they feel the doctor will respond harshly to criticism or questioning. That dynamic exists in many workplaces, but in an operating room, the consequences can be grave. “We need surgeons to be unbelievably confident,” says Edmondson. “But they also need to be confident enough to embrace someone else bringing up something they might have missed, like the fact that the x-ray is on the light box backwards.”
A quick internet search shows that this is a contentious arena….
The cage that I mentioned in the beginning of the (lengthy, my apologies) post is referencing the kill box, articulately outlined at length by Katherine Watt.
This kill box is disproportionately dependent upon the belief that:
there are terribly dangerous, infectious germs that can cause global pandemics
these germs can be weaponized (by any idiot in a basement)
we need governments and regulation to protect us
If a terribly dangerous infectious germ caused a pandemic of global concern…
Do you think that you would need to be told to stay home?
Do you think you would need stickers to tell you where to stand?
Do you think that this deady killer would sometimes be completely asymptomatic and need questionable testing to confirm its existence?
Do you think people would be wearing masks on their chins?
Do you think that there would be nurses making dance videos from hospitals that were overrun?
Do you think donuts and lottery tickets would need to be offered to encourage vaccination?
Do you think there would be ANY question as to whether there actually was a pandemic once it was over?
This cage depends on the belief in biological terror.
The belief in biological terror depends heavily on virology and germ theory.
theory
a coherent group of tested general propositions, commonly regarded as correct, that can be used as principles of explanation and prediction for a class of phenomena:Einstein's theory of relativity.
a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural and subject to experimentation, in contrast to well-established propositions that are regarded as reporting matters of actual fact.
I am not here to debate the intricacies of germ or terrain theory.
I am observing that there is a very distinct presupposition that is vehemently defended from the right wing, the left wing, the medical freedom movement, the vaccine lovers, the early treatment vitamin lovers, and everywhere in between.
The authorities in the industry have been trained on it, are completely sure of its veracity, and not inclined to entertain any debate of its basic premises.
I left medical practice as a surgeon in 2012 because I saw the debasement that was coming. Hospitals and private equity owning docs, the electronic health record (fantastic boondoggle) the abuse of clinical trials funded by pharma among many other 1000 cuts. I left to join industry, in the med tech space, that we would now refer to as big pharma. At first it was a blessed relief, but again I saw the monster behind the “we’re here to create health and save lives” marketing mantra. In 2020 I had moved to a boutique design firm that dabbled in med tech. As the doc on staff, I was asked to manage the Covid response and vax “rollout.” I wrote fun missives in March and April poo pooing the hysterics and relying on what I knew about respiratory viruses, epidemiology and good old common sense. It kept us sane and our people in the office.
But, when I started reading about mRNA technology in November of ‘20 I freaked out. They wouldn’t. They couldn’t. No freaking way this gets through FDA. Then the forcing. The failure of consent. The fear mongering. FOR A FLU THAT ANYBODY UNDER 65 AND NOT OBESE WAS A BAD FLU. No death in 2020.
The monster is real. The monster is a thousand times worse than Grendel’s mother. It wants to destroy us in our mead halls. But, unlike the Saxons who imagined her, ours is here, real as fuck and merciless.
Your brother sounds like mine, I completely gave up on him. Being an armchair mom doctor i can confidently say my conscience is clear....i did not allow myself or my kids to be led down a path of lies for "the greater good". I do pray that those I love will one day realize they have been played but Im not holding my breath. This was excellent Sarah, 🙏❤️