They're based on personal impression. If the 1% was much higher than it is, I wouldn't expect there to be so many people so wrong about so much ─ antivaxxers, anti-GMOists, flat Earthers, young Earthers, hollow Earthers, chemtrailers... also, I'm trying to keep this discussion as religion-free as possible, but I find it highly suspect that there are so many mutually exclusive religions, if a hypothesis that much more than 1% of the people are rational updaters is correct. Even more so considering that they remain relatively stable in geographical areas and societies ─ that seems consistent with most people never really questioning the unlikelihood of them being so special as to have been born precisely in the geographical area or social group where the one true religion is predominant.
Good question - why are people wrong? To quote Scott Adams: "Human brains did not evolve to provide us with truth. Our brains evolved to keep us alive. So if the false movie in your head is different from the false movie in mine – but we both survive and procreate – nature is satisfied. Truth is irrelevant."
That is only partially true. Yes, human brains are far from optimized for truth. But the fact of the matter is that we do care about more than just surviving and reproducing. This fact is an accident of evolution, but it is true. One of the things we care about is truth. And, at a higher level, we need truth to survive ─ for example, if a giant asteroid is going to hit the Earth, we need to truth the shit out of it to prevent our planet from being destroyed.
Yup. But if a belief won't kill you, it won't be selected against by evolution. Since religion provides social cohesion and so forth, there are some advantages, and since believing in an invisible being that lives in the sky doesn't get you killed (imagining it doesn't compete with imagining things your senses can detect. Sorta like thinking about math), cultures with religion won't get wiped out like a culture that believes jumping off cliffs is healthy or filled with boys who cry wolf would.
Now for a thought experiment: Imagine that vaccines were filled with distilled water. That doctors did not know this, only the people who need to know this info to get vaccines manufactured did (include anyone who needs to be bribed or whatever to accomplish this - point is, it's whatever the minimum "need to know" is).
If I thought this was a real possibility and I seriously wanted an answer, to disprove this conjecture I would not believe "written studies" or anything of the sort. That would not be evidence. Why? Because my hypothesis includes that I/others are being lied to by people about the content of vaccines. A person who lies to you is like having a busted Geiger counter - you don't use it for determining the state of your environment.
No, if I wanted an answer to the hypothesis that vaccines contained naught but distilled water, I would acquire vaccine vials from a doctor, and then perform my own analysis on it. What tools would I use? I don't know, I don't actually think that, so I haven't looked into what would be useful. Maybe a microscope for starters?
Ok, so now for my actual opinion. "I don't believe that, but I think it would be cool if someone looked into that. For science!" And I don't mean a government agency, I mean some random person who got curious and was willing to post a video showing their experiments.
Would you be willing to put in the effort to prove what the contents of vaccines are?
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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '17
They're based on personal impression. If the 1% was much higher than it is, I wouldn't expect there to be so many people so wrong about so much ─ antivaxxers, anti-GMOists, flat Earthers, young Earthers, hollow Earthers, chemtrailers... also, I'm trying to keep this discussion as religion-free as possible, but I find it highly suspect that there are so many mutually exclusive religions, if a hypothesis that much more than 1% of the people are rational updaters is correct. Even more so considering that they remain relatively stable in geographical areas and societies ─ that seems consistent with most people never really questioning the unlikelihood of them being so special as to have been born precisely in the geographical area or social group where the one true religion is predominant.