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QuarkJets posted:Tell these people about the Dunning-Kruger effect and that even if you're mega-genius that doesn't make you a master of all things. This is part of what makes Mensa such a joke organization; being generally smart does not make you an expert on everything I've tried the latter, but it seems to bounce off without having any real effect. Arguing with them is like punching bread dough. Latest argument was over them taking their kids (all 12 and under) to a chiropractor for adjustments. I'd gotten out of the habit of arguing with them, but couldn't leave that one. Not sure if it's had any effect so far. I sure as hell hope so, or at least hope that they don't end up with a kid dead or paralyzed due to a stroke. (And if they do, I hope they take that as a sign that they need to re-examine their approach and not a sign that they need to double down on the batshit-itude.)
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Feb 9, 2015 02:53
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Mercury_Storm posted:That'd work great until they decide that it's actually you who is the big dummy. After all they've done tons of research into how well a piece of nightshade diluted down 100 times into nothingness cures cancer! People who bash you over the head with their credentials like that are generally egotistical twits that can't stand the idea of being wrong. If they believe something it must be right and they'll go through whatever mental gymnastics they need to to prove that. I think the other thing worth mentioning is the difference between what the medical world says and what the snake oil world says. In medicine land they basically never tell you something is guaranteed to work an what the potential side effects are. Most people do not get the side effects or if they do they're mild. Even so, the treatments are often billed as "well it will probably work but you might also have something else happen." It sounds terrible; you might get better but there is the chance to get worse. Snake oil land says "this will 100% fix everything and nothing bad will happen at all ever." Then you have stuff like chemotherapy. Yeah it can fix your cancer but it isn't exactly guaranteed. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. In the mean time your hair will fall out and you'll be sick as gently caress and maybe consider just dying and being done with it. Snake oil land is offering you a magical potion that will make your cancer vanish with no side effects. That or magical fruit that makes you immune to cancer. Sometimes the arguments are as dumb as "99% of the people that eat X never get foot cancer!" Well no poo poo, 99% of people don't get foot cancer in the first place. 100% of the people I've punched in the head haven't died of cancer so obviously me punching somebody in the head prevents cancer! For $10 a month you can come to me and get a cancer preventing head punch. If you get cancer you obviously didn't let me punch you in the head enough times. ToxicSlurpee fucked around with this message at 06:10 on Feb 9, 2015 |
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Feb 9, 2015 04:50
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farfegnugent posted:I've tried the latter, but it seems to bounce off without having any real effect. Arguing with them is like punching bread dough. Latest argument was over them taking their kids (all 12 and under) to a chiropractor for adjustments. I'd gotten out of the habit of arguing with them, but couldn't leave that one. Not sure if it's had any effect so far. I sure as hell hope so, or at least hope that they don't end up with a kid dead or paralyzed due to a stroke. (And if they do, I hope they take that as a sign that they need to re-examine their approach and not a sign that they need to double down on the batshit-itude.) If somebody wants to believe something badly enough, it's essentially impossible to dissuade them. Don't forget that there are parents out there who refused to bring their ill child to a doctor because they thought they could pray the disease away, the child died of an easily treatable disease because of that, and then when their next child got sick they refused to bring them to a doctor because - even after losing one child to an easily treatable disease because they refused to seek real medical care - they still thought they could just pray the disease away.
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Feb 9, 2015 05:54
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farfegnugent posted:
Isaac loving Asimov, one-time Vice President of Mensa International posted:
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Feb 9, 2015 06:34
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ToxicSlurpee posted:People who bash you over the head with their credentials like that are generally egotistical twits that can't stand the idea of being wrong. If they believe something it must be right and they'll go through whatever mental gymnastics they need to to prove that. People dont like to be told there is any chance for failure, no matter how small, and its the biggest factor in this all naturals movement. Its something that really didnt sink in with me until this semester where one of my profs started bringing it up. Ironically its a class about herbals/alt medicine.  As someone that got chicken pox (no vaccination back then  ) and whooping cough despite being vaccinated, I would still recommend vaccinations 100% of the time without hesitation. These diseases scar you for life, both physically and emotionally, and there just isnt a sane reason to make your kid suffer through that kind of poo poo, especially when some of them can outright kill a child. Im being taught that these situations are a great opportunity to inform not preach, but man its really hard sometimes to keep your cool when its clear they just dont want to learn. Or even listen.
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Feb 9, 2015 07:09
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The problem with using something like IQ score as a general measure of intelligence is that it's the composite of a bunch of different sub-scores that are all related to different types of aptitude. For example, having the ability to easily solve various puzzles might say something about an individual's spatial skills, etc. but nothing about their critical thinking ability and how prone they are to believing irrational things. For a long time I've had the feeling that intelligence in the sense of being able to solve complex problems isn't really strongly connected with intelligence in the sense of being able to think critically and evaluate things rationally. Unfortunately the vocabulary doesn't really exist to distinguish between this sort of intelligence and "can solve complex puzzles" intelligence, so you end up with people just assuming that being smart = being smart in every way. Basically, the type of intelligence the leads to not believing in dumb things like the stuff discussed in this thread is a sort of "low rate of false positives" intelligence. For whatever reason, some people are able to think in a way that results in them having very few false positive beliefs and generally being good at knowing how confident to be about different things and whether claims/arguments seem reasonable or valid. But most people tend to associate "being able to produce a large quantity of true positives" with intelligence (and to be fair, someone that is able to be correct about a bunch of things is a lot more useful to society, even if their ratio of true:false positives isn't as good as someone else). I hope that this post makes sense. Like I mentioned, it's sort of hard to explain, but I definitely think there's a very big difference between the type of intelligence that leads to someone being a very skilled problem-solver/etc and someone being able to thinking critically and accurately gauge their own knowledge/ability. Like, someone who can't really do anything (in the sense of like solving a puzzle, building something, etc) particularly well but is aware of that fact and able to understand whether various claims/arguments are reasonable or not is in some way (if not others) "smarter" than a genius engineer who is also a libertarian.
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Feb 9, 2015 07:24
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Mensa is about as hard to get into as Devry. The IQ scores that they throw out at people usually correspond to what would be akin to the level of genius produced once every 50 years.
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Feb 9, 2015 07:27
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They take the top 2%.
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Feb 9, 2015 07:39
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Somewhat related to the comments on the last page and a bit: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/65945980/dad-dismisses-hiv-treatment-for-son Choice quotes "HIV is a harmless virus and Aids is caused by the medicines prescribed to treat it" & "The father said he had done thousands of hours of research on the subject and he cited the Perth Group - a group of HIV/Aids deniers whose fringe views were espoused by former South African president Thabo Mbeki leading to the denial of effective treatment to many HIV sufferers in the country. "
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Feb 9, 2015 10:00
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thepaladin4488 posted:Somewhat related to the comments on the last page and a bit: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/65945980/dad-dismisses-hiv-treatment-for-son   I would be happy if it was him suffering, and not his child... 
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Feb 9, 2015 10:17
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For every parent who works hard and finds some form of treatment against all expectations, there are a thousand who come back from their work with gibberish.
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Feb 9, 2015 11:12
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Rigged Death Trap posted:Cocaine was also used as a local anesthetic. Actually. Cocaine is still widely used in ENT surgery for being an excellent vasoconstrictor as well as analgesic/anesthetic.
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Feb 9, 2015 11:31
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GreyPowerVan posted:
Why, because he's genuinely trying to do what he thinks is best for his child? Anti-retroviral therapy, much like chemotherapy, can have very serious side effects - and HIV, like cancer, can seem to have only mild effects if caught early. Put yourself in his shoes: his child seemed more or less perfectly healthy, maybe a little tired sometimes or getting sick a little more often than most people, and then a doctor takes a blood test and prescribes a medicine and suddenly, as soon as the kid starts taking the medicine he becomes horribly sick! Constant nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, rashes, loss of body fat, jaundice, spontaneous bleeding or hemophilia, diabetes, and "psychiatric events" ranging from headaches and dizziness to memory loss and psychosis...and those are just the side effects noticeable without lab tests. And these aren't rare side effects, either - everyone's going to experience at least one or two things off that list the first time they take anti-retrovirals, although doctors will often adjust the treatment regimen over time to try and find a drug mix that minimizes the effects. The father's quote "It's like I'm giving poison to my child" is pretty accurate, because anti-retrovirals and chemo essentially are poison, they massively gently caress up your body and cause majorly ruinous side effects. This kind of thing happens a lot with cancer patients and especially the parents of child cancer patients, because if the cancer is caught early then the cancer probably isn't displaying any real symptoms yet, and so they'll actually seem sicker when they're receiving treatment than when they're going untreated. Look at this dad. Although his kid is living with HIV, he's not really displaying any visible symptoms. His blood tests are showing that he's exceptionally vulnerable to disease, but that's just poo poo the doctor says - as far as the father is concerned, the kid seems perfectly healthy. He goes along with what the doctor says, even though he doesn't see how his healthy-seeming kid could possibly have a terminal illness, but within a couple of days of starting treatment the kid has lost all his energy, his skin has turned yellow, and his stomach and head are in constant pain. So the father stops the treatments, and his kid returns to looking and acting perfectly healthy - his energy comes back, his pains go away, and his skin and eyes return to their normal colors. People like to trust their own eyes over what the doctor tells them, and a lot of people have a real hard time wrapping their head around the idea that someone could be sicker when receiving treatment than when their supposed terminal disease is going untreated. I'm not saying that what that dad is doing is right - his child will almost certainly not live to adulthood if he keeps this poo poo up. On the other hand, he means well, and he's not some kind of woo-woo nature nutjob - it is very easily understandable how he came to his conclusions, and he's not alone in them as it can be very difficult to convince people to stay on anti-retrovirals or chemotherapy. The brain, which is wired for drawing conclusions based on what it sees, sees that the healthy-seeming kid started taking treatments for the invisible disease the doctor said he had and then he got really sick, and then when he stopped the treatments he returned to perfect health except that the doctors bitched him out because they said that the invisible disease they say he had is invisibly getting worse. You basically have to abandon all doubts and ignore what you see and just trust everything completely to the doctor; if you allow yourself to second-guess even a little bit, you'll probably find your brain racing toward that conclusion because the whole situation is so completely unintuitive for the layperson, and also because going through (or watching your child go through) all those drug side effects is a seriously stressful, miserable ordeal that can cloud one's judgement. He's not making the right decision, but I don't think it's fair to wish suffering on him. Besides, don't you think he's suffering enough, since the doctors are telling him his child has a terminal illness and the courts are trying to force him to give the child drugs that seriously worsened his condition and that he thinks are poison?
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Feb 9, 2015 11:31
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Main Paineframe posted:You basically have to abandon all doubts and ignore what you see and just trust everything completely to the doctor; if you allow yourself to second-guess even a little bit, you'll probably find your brain racing toward that conclusion because the whole situation is so completely unintuitive for the layperson, and also because going through (or watching your child go through) all those drug side effects is a seriously stressful, miserable ordeal that can cloud one's judgement. He's not making the right decision, but I don't think it's fair to wish suffering on him. Besides, don't you think he's suffering enough, since the doctors are telling him his child has a terminal illness and the courts are trying to force him to give the child drugs that seriously worsened his condition and that he thinks are poison? Right, and unless that person has actual medical school that is the correct course of action to take. Honestly I'm just a little pissed at seeing all the people with measles who didn't need to get it, plus reading about a local parent who let their child die instead of getting a surgery. It's just so loving irresponsible. I know every parent feels like they know best, but it is frustrating to accept.
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Feb 9, 2015 11:36
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From the crazy forwarded political email thread, Liberal Logic has come out anti-vax. Guess vaccines are going to be a partisan issue after all!  
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Feb 9, 2015 13:04
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Oh look, we have an outbreak of Mumps.
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Feb 9, 2015 15:26
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Are there loud, outspoken male antivaxxers? Like, I am aware of a few people who are anti-vaccine, but they are all women. I have yet to meet an outspoken male antivaxxer. Is there a higher incidence of female antivaxxer's than male? Are there stats to back it up? Or is it just the loudest proponents are female and mask the true number of both genders that harbor that belief? Or is it just my anecdotal experience in my social sphere that seems to imply there are more female antivaxxers?
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Feb 9, 2015 15:36
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Madmarker posted:Are there loud, outspoken male antivaxxers? Uh, yes? A quick look at the kook celebrities and quack doctors who promote antivax will show you this.
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Feb 9, 2015 15:57
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Madmarker posted:Are there loud, outspoken male antivaxxers? I've seen a good number of men, actually.
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Feb 9, 2015 16:03
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I'll venture to guess that if you do find more women expressing antivax views, it's probably because of the sexist division of labor that puts child rearing in the domain of women, and vaccination is largely a child rearing issue.
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Feb 9, 2015 16:10
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Vienna Circlejerk posted:I'll venture to guess that if you do find more women expressing antivax views, it's probably because of the sexist division of labor that puts child rearing in the domain of women, and vaccination is largely a child rearing issue. I mean, that wouldn't surprise me, which was why I phrased my question as I did. I just hadn't encountered one before, all the people who are vocal about it in my sphere are women and I found that puzzling.
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Feb 9, 2015 16:21
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quote:Symptoms of mumps include fever, headaches, muscle aches tiredness, loss of appetite, and swollen or tender salivary glands under the ears on one or both sides of the head. This is Darwin Awards material right here.
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Feb 9, 2015 16:25
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If only they were subjecting themselves to it and not their or other people's kids.
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Feb 9, 2015 16:28
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Ytlaya posted:The problem with using something like IQ score as a general measure of intelligence is that it's the composite of a bunch of different sub-scores that are all related to different types of aptitude. For example, having the ability to easily solve various puzzles might say something about an individual's spatial skills, etc. but nothing about their critical thinking ability and how prone they are to believing irrational things. For a long time I've had the feeling that intelligence in the sense of being able to solve complex problems isn't really strongly connected with intelligence in the sense of being able to think critically and evaluate things rationally. Unfortunately the vocabulary doesn't really exist to distinguish between this sort of intelligence and "can solve complex puzzles" intelligence, so you end up with people just assuming that being smart = being smart in every way. There's a big difference between people who are able to solve very clever and extremely contrived word puzzles and other things on paper, and people who can break down and analyze very complex systems and problems. I think it's also more a difference of data gathering: in the IQ tests, all the info you need is thrown at you, you don't have to look anything up or judge whether it's good evidence or not. To determine whether vaccines work you have to be capable of going through a large number of studies and reports, and pick out which ones are actually correct or not based on their merits. Mensa doesn't select for this ability, since they only test on very contrived, closed-form solutions with a specific right answer.
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Feb 9, 2015 16:33
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An article regarding vaccination rates at some VT schools.quote:Laura Slesar is comfortable sending her kids to the Lake Champlain Waldorf School. And to confirm what you're already thinking; yes, The Lake Champlain Waldorf School is exactly the type of school you think it is, and the type of parents who send their kids there are exactly as you picture them.
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Feb 9, 2015 16:34
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Pegged Lamb posted:Mensa is about as hard to get into as Devry. The IQ scores that they throw out at people usually correspond to what would be akin to the level of genius produced once every 50 years. Doesn't a proper IQ test also cost hundreds or thousands of dollars to actually administer properly anyway? And they're usually only accurate during childhood? Sounds like a scam all the way around. Having been in the "gifted" program at school, I can tell you that IQ test results do not correlate strongly with one's ability to function or succeed in society. Many of my classmates are now working lovely retail jobs or doing nothing at all, more than a couple didn't even make it through any kind of higher education whatsoever. Hard to say whether they'd be bright enough to vaccinate their hypothetical kids across the board, but I'm guessing no. In fact, I'm going to guess that a few of them would end up being so stubborn about something they think or feel is right that they'd be even harder to convince than the general population (because, remember, they're Smarter Than You even if they work at a comic book store for minimum wage).
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Feb 9, 2015 16:40
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DrBouvenstein posted:An article regarding vaccination rates at some VT schools. I'm not sure what you think I'm supposed to think here, but everything I've ever read about Waldorf education is pretty good?
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Feb 9, 2015 16:43
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There's nothing really wrong with Waldorf education relative to normal public schooling, its alternative nature just sort of attracts "crunchy" (god I hate that term, can we get a better word?) folks and everything that comes with it.
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Feb 9, 2015 16:47
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snorch posted:There's nothing really wrong with Waldorf education relative to normal public schooling, its alternative nature just sort of attracts "crunchy" (god I hate that term, can we get a better word?) folks and everything that comes with it. I prefer "granola" to "crunchy".
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Feb 9, 2015 16:48
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Right, I'm sure it's fine (nobody likes this opinion but honestly it's pretty hard to really gently caress up a kid's education if you're trying at all AND if they're coming from a secure / non-poverty base) it's just going to bring in the anti-establishment folks and that's going to suck in a lot of anti-vax folks, too.
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Feb 9, 2015 16:51
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It sounds like the common factors among antivaxxers are a distrust of authority and non-mainstream views, coupled with overconfidence in one's own ability to discern good information from bad. I wonder if there's a way to reach people like that in a way that won't cause them to double down.
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Feb 9, 2015 17:00
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Vienna Circlejerk posted:distrust of authority and non-mainstream views, coupled with overconfidence in one's own ability to discern good information from bad america.txt
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Feb 9, 2015 17:03
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nachos posted:america.txt Except most Americans have pretty bland views relative to one another and generally believe what they're told on TV. They're also mostly in favor of mandatory vaccinations.
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Feb 9, 2015 17:07
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Vienna Circlejerk posted:It sounds like the common factors among antivaxxers are a distrust of authority and non-mainstream views, coupled with overconfidence in one's own ability to discern good information from bad. I wonder if there's a way to reach people like that in a way that won't cause them to double down. Gulags.
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Feb 9, 2015 17:08
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Vienna Circlejerk posted:I wonder if there's a way to reach people like that in a way that won't cause them to double down.
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Feb 9, 2015 17:25
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I think the best facebook post approach is just to pound them with information and ask them to refute it. You'll never reach them, but there's an audience of friends and family that will see how badly one of them reasons. Like all conspiracy theories, the appeal of anti-vax is that it makes nobodies feel like they're special and dummies feel like they're smart. There's no reasoning with that because it's tied up in the person's sense of identity, and he or she will protect it like they're being attacked when you tell them they're wrong. All the facebook anti-vaxxers I've seen have been balding single guys way into infowars and the gold standard, so there's not a lot of chance any actual children will be endangered.
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Feb 9, 2015 17:35
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PT6A posted:Doesn't a proper IQ test also cost hundreds or thousands of dollars to actually administer properly anyway? And they're usually only accurate during childhood? No.
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Feb 9, 2015 17:45
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Madmarker posted:I mean, that wouldn't surprise me, which was why I phrased my question as I did. I just hadn't encountered one before, all the people who are vocal about it in my sphere are women and I found that puzzling.
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Feb 9, 2015 18:00
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PT6A posted:Doesn't a proper IQ test also cost hundreds or thousands of dollars to actually administer properly anyway? And they're usually only accurate during childhood? Gifted programs are also often at least partially bullshit. For the ones I encountered over the years poor kids got in exactly never while the children of prominent locals would get in if the parents wanted it bad enough. The gifted programs were, for the most part, full of upper middle class to wealthy white kids. Some of them were legitimately smart (one I can think of in particular is now an astrophysicist) while others just had the right last name.
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Feb 9, 2015 18:37
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To both parts? And, to clarify, I meant that to administer a proper IQ test, it takes long enough and requires a professional to do it, so their time is worth that amount of money. The one I took was done over the course of a few days, as I recall. ToxicSlurpee posted:Gifted programs are also often at least partially bullshit. For the ones I encountered over the years poor kids got in exactly never while the children of prominent locals would get in if the parents wanted it bad enough. The gifted programs were, for the most part, full of upper middle class to wealthy white kids. Some of them were legitimately smart (one I can think of in particular is now an astrophysicist) while others just had the right last name. Yeah, there's a pretty clear difference (or at least, there should be) between, basically, honours classes for high-achieving students, and programs for gifted students. Well over half of the people in my program, as I recall, got tested initially because they were causing so many behavioural problems in normal classes, not because they were diligent students or had particularly high grades, let me tell you. I would also guess that around half were classified as learning disabled in some capacity, in addition to gifted.
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Feb 9, 2015 18:46
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