The Washington State Measles Outbreak

Lower intelligence people are less able to judge whether an idea is sensible on its own merits. Furthermore, they are likely to be outwitted by people with higher intelligence. So their mode of operation becomes to not even attempt judging an idea by its merits, lest they end up fooled. Rather, they judge based solely on the perceived stature of whom the idea is coming from.

The breakdown of our media institutions furthers the problem - rather than presenting an opinionated application of common sense that condemns poor ideas, they've devolved into giving "each side" equal time to obscure their true power of defining what subjects are talked about. So once these memes get out there, they keep circulating as folk wisdom continually re-validated by appearances in mainstream media.

My money's mainly on the loss of prestige surrounding the teaching profession, and loss of the elite status of high education. It's simply not valued as it once was, and as a result everyone's 'highly' educated while simultaneously quite poorly educated, at least outside of stuff that is scored on tests. As the parent post says, 'Critical' reasoning/thinking skills are demonstrably lacking.

Reading back what I just wrote, I'm certainly entering 'old man yells at cloud' years of my life it seems :)

I have seen college educated people including those with advanced degrees who just as easily if not more so pedal anti-vaxxing bullshit. No, they are not scientists, but they and their peers would consider themselves intellectuals.

> you should simply defer to the critical mass of thousands of people with doctorates

I noticed a paradox in that people who have doctorates in unrelated fields just as easily decide that they can research on their own and other doctors might just not be as "smart". Unlike flat earth, contrails and other such bullshit, anti-vaxxing does seem to attract educated people as well as uneducated ones.

Even if you read the article, I wouldn't consider Washington state as the epicenter of anti-intellectualism in US. Quite the opposite I would say.

Doctors don't do differential diagnosis on most issues. They just suggest common approaches. They may be smart and educated, but they don't use their IQ to diagnose most cases. Relying on experts who aren't optimizing their time to utilize their expertise to help you isn't a great idea.

I was sleeping wrong on my elbow, and a doctor suggested a couple of different drugs for my elbow pain without investigating causes at all. I determined the cause pretty easily, and in the process helped several other people with a similar issue.

I'm just saying that you can't rely on the advice of doctors by default. It can kill you.

And the media didn't deserve it? Dan Rather? The Duke Lacrosse incident? Political donation habits of self described journalists? Media complicity in what should have been a MeToo moment for Bill Clinton in the 90s? Or how long Harvey Weinstein was an open secret? Hannibal Buress breaking the Cosby story? How about the crying wolf about how sexist Mitt Freaking Romney was so that there was no alarm left when a lech like Donald Trump came around?

It's interesting that you use the term "fake news", because besides being a synonym for "lies" on the left, it's used in the alt-right (don't worry, not my camp) to label cherry-picked facts that conform to an existing narrative. Lies of bias and omission, basically.

Mostly, though, to be more severe, the media concentrates on quick narratives, on sound bites, on visuals, and on fresh controversies. And increasingly these days, on reinforcing existing echo chambers. There are so many rumors, anonymous sources, and unverified stories that would have been left to tabloids 20 years ago. There are so many ridiculous articles rehashing twitter arguments in newsprint. And stories about what he-said-about-what-she-said-about-what-they-said.

The media pride themselves on speaking truth to power, but the power they are not willing to speak to is the collective power of their perceived audiences. That goes for nearly all media outlets. They are beholden to remain popular within their respective niches.

If it's not clear, I think there's a tribalism problem in most media organizations, and I think we have them to thank for being a significant contributor to Trump being elected. If people can blame the U.S. for instigating terrorism through its foreign policy, I can blame the media for instigating an ignorant and paranoid public through its pursuit of tribalism over truth.

I was born in the 1970's, and noone from my generation or younger in the west has really seen the bad effects, noone we knew died of measles or got paralyzed by polio, so we have no fear of the diseases.

And that's why the fears of the anti-vax movement are so strong, there's no counter-balance to them. Everything is a risk, having a vaccine is risky, but if people value the risk of the diseases as 0, of course some people are going to object to the vaccines, because they think it's the bigger risk.

I'm old enough to recall my patents' relief when I got a polio vaccination. There were multiple children on iron lungs among their age-peer friends.

I grew up in the age of antibiotic supremacy. It's still counterintuitive for me to realize that somebody can now die of a bacterial infection from a scratch.

I hope we don't have to return periodically to the bad old days to convince people of the worth of vaccination.

edit - missing word

Since we don't "routinely see or know people with the disease" it doesn't take analysis to realize that it may be worth taking vaccine risks into account.

The problem is more of an overlooked "tragedy of the commons", where people who are not vaccinated benefit from the vaccinations of others, until outbreak risks rise too greatly.

That risks from being unvaccinated are low as long as most people get vaccinated, and that vaccines have some risk, makes it a much more difficult decision for some parents than is generally acknowledged.

I don't know the answer, but I do think it is an interesting question.

The CDC web site is good, but a portion of people will say “That’s the Government” and thus be turned off. I don’t like it, but that’s the way it is, so we need to account for that (while working to change it, of course!).

As for Khan Academy, I didn’t know they had videos on this, and that’s cool! But there’s a large population who doesn’t know about it, and so won’t rank its videos any higher than other videos.

I am curious, does Khan Academy advertise on Fox News? I’m not trying to be flippant, I’m just noting that repetition breeds familiarity, and familiarity breeds trust.

Ideally, your PCP would be able to direct you to specific videos, and vouch for their content. But that might result in a conversation, and conversations take time that they don’t have. If Khan Academy was better-known among all segments of the population, then a quick pointer to one of their videos would be better-received!

The idea that a doctor should be removed from general health care concerns seems as poisonous as just about any other other part of the modern American dysfunctional health care system.

A doctor isn't on the top of the health care system merely to provide specialized services. They are there to do exactly this, give the broad public a sense of what science, medicine and general health are. Who else can speak as authoritatively? Especially when you crackpot authorities putting out wholly destructive ideas.

https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/childrens-health/...

In context I’d say they would take magic mushrooms, because they are natural. But they would avoid lsd, because that’s chemicals.

Sorry for the definition by example, can’t think of an obvious definition, but hopefully gets the idea across.

If the original post had contained the link yours does, that would be one thing entirely. Instead, neither post invites discussion (tip: insulting people is a bad way to start a conversation)