Reasonable doubt zippy
To be fair, it wasn’t very hard for me to accept the evidence for the pandemic and its likely impact from very early on-probably because I teach microbiology and epidemiologists have been saying for years that we were due for another pandemic. It is interesting that so many people who are so committed to a worldview 6 centered around life change appear to be the most skeptical of other life-changing ideas. We subconsciously understand that if we choose to accept some ideas, our lives have to change-from smoking, to losing weight, to addressing climate change, to wearing masks and social distancing. I think this often has to do with the fact that people don’t like to change. However, it is interesting to me how our standards of evidence become very high in some cases, yet are extremely low in others. It is also interesting how our trust in expert interpretations and the consensus of institutions we have relied upon for so many other decisions is so easily overturned by a few dissenting voices. I also believe everyone has the right to make up their own mind on things I would even say that it is good moral exercise for people to wrestle with decisions that have important implications for them and their community. “It is important to engage in critical thinking and dialogue when it is done carefully and lovingly.”ĭon’t get me wrong, it is good to be appropriately skeptical. It is important to engage in critical thinking and dialogue when it is done carefully and lovingly.
#Reasonable doubt zippy professional
It was with horrified fascination that I watched misinformation and doubt spread through the internet like a disease. I remember a pair of doctors from California 4 taking positivity rate data from symptomatic and self-selected individuals and extrapolating these to the population at large, implying that millions of people in California had already been exposed and therefore the fatality rate and morbidity were negligible. This obvious abuse of statistics (representative sampling, anyone?) as well as their misrepresentation of how your immune system works were later condemned by their professional organizations 5, but the damage had already been done. The skepticism, even by a few health professionals early on, was baffling to me. Danny Faulkner, in his article “ Reflections on the Flat Earth Conspiracy,” argues that once you doubt something really fundamental, something that you may have taken for granted your entire life, it becomes very easy to find yourself doubting all kinds of things. Interesting. Why was it so hard for people to take COVID-19 seriously from the beginning? Has someone undermined our faith in science? People take many ideas like this at face value, but once doubt or fear set-in-or motivated reasoning-people will promote a line of reasonable doubt that causes them to misuse data, cherry picking, misrepresenting, or extrapolating in bizarre ways. Unfortunately, even “professionals” occasionally do this 3.ĭr. Is the general public asking for matched-pairs, controlled, experimental evidence? It doesn’t seem so in this case. Most people easily accept that smoking causes lung cancer, but does it? Only 10-20% of heavy smokers will ever develop lung cancer 1, and there are a variety of other causes of lung cancer 2. It is worth questioning why we trust some people, ideas, or institutions and not others. He later asks rhetorically, “Is reasonable doubt enough?” He answers his own question, “Yes.” He argues that it isn’t even all that hard to create reasonable doubt in a spherical globe. He starts by saying, “There’s lots of things in science that have been disproven over the years… can I prove to anyone right now… that the earth is flat? No, I cannot…” But he argues that he can create a lot of doubt, building enough distrust in the audience to change their minds and start them on a path. In an interview with Adam Yamaguchi at a flat earth convention, Mark Sargent, a prominent flat earth event organizer, makes the statement that it isn’t that hard to change people’s minds.
Do you believe in a flat earth? I am assuming no. But why not?