Intelligent People Excel at Fooling Themselves

This is an excellent 15-min video by After Sokol. Psychologist have found that highly intelligent people are great at fooling themselves, especially when they form tribes.

Here is an excerpt from the video:

Kahan and a team of researchers found that test subjects who scored highest in numeracy were better able to objectively evaluate statistical data when told it related to a skin rash treatment, but when the same data was presented as relating to a polarizing subject, gun control, those who scored highest on numeracy actually exhibited the greatest bias. The correlation between intelligence and ideological bias is robust, having been found in many other studies … These studies found stronger biases in clever people on both sides of the aisle.

And since such biases are mutually contradictory, they can't be a result of greater understanding. So what is it about intelligent people that makes them so prone to bias? To understand we must consider what intelligence actually is. In AI research, there's a concept called the orthogonality thesis. This is the idea that an intelligent agent can't just be intelligent, it must be intelligent at something because intelligence is nothing more than the effectiveness with which an agent pursues a goal. Rationality is intelligence in pursuit of objective truth. But intelligence can be used to pursue any number of other goals. And since the means by which the goal is selected is distinct from the means by which the goal is pursued. The intelligence with which an agent pursues its goal is no guarantee that the goal itself is intelligent.

As a case in point, human intelligence evolved less as a tool for pursuing objective truth than as a tool for pursuing personal well being, tribal belonging, social status, and sex. And this often required the adoption of what I call fashionably irrational beliefs and fibs which the brain has come to accept that. Since we're a social species, it is intelligent for us to convince ourselves of irrational beliefs if holding those beliefs increases our status and well being. Dan Kahan calls this behavior, identity protective cognition, or IPC, by engaging in IPC people bind their intelligence to the service of evolutionary impulses, leveraging their logic and learning not to correct delusions, but to justify them. Or, as the novelist Saul Bellow put it a great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. What this means is that while unintelligent people are more easily misled by other people, intelligent people are more easily misled by themselves.

See also, the work of Dan Sperber, discussed here.

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Belief in One’s Victimization: The Gift that Keeps on Giving

Classic scar experiment that is highly relevant to modern times, where people who believe that they are victims try to cash in on that purported victimization over and over, classic case of confirmation bias and WYSIATI.

More on the Dartmouth scar experiment at Psychology Today, along with commentary regarding Andy Clark's work on predictive processing, including a link to fascinating rubber hand experiments.

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JK. Rowling’s Recent Statement on the Contested Meaning of “Transphobic”

J.K. Rowling is often accused of being "transphobic." She is repeatedly threatened with physical harm and death in response to her views on transgender ideology. And see here. Why? What are her views? In this March 7, 2024 Tweet, she succinctly states her views, which are also my own:

The word ‘transphobic’, as used here, does not mean an irrational fear or dislike of trans people. It means refusing to use gender identity ideology’s jargon, refusing to parrot its slogans, refusing to accept that sex doesn't matter when it comes to sport and single-sex spaces, refusing to believe a bearded heterosexual man becomes a lesbian when he declares himself one, and refusing to believe an abusive, misogynistic male is a woman because he likes to wear mini-dresses and pout in selfies.

Like every other gender critical person I know, I believe everyone should be free to express themselves however they wish, dress however they please, call themselves whatever they want, sleep with any consenting adult who wishes to sleep with them, and that trans-identified people should have the same protections regarding employment, housing, freedom of speech and personal safety every other citizen is entitled to.

But this isn’t nearly enough for the dominant strain of trans activism, which asserts that unless freedom of speech is removed from dissenters, unless trans-identified men are permitted to strip away women’s rights, with particular reference to single sex spaces like rape crisis centres, prison cells, hospital wards, changing rooms and public bathrooms, until we all bow down to their neo-religion, accept their pseudo-scientific claims and embrace their circular reasoning, trans people are more oppressed, and more at risk, than any other group in society.

This is nonsense. 99.9% of the world knows it's nonsense. The emperor is naked. He might be wearing lipstick, but his balls are swinging in plain sight.

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Related topic: I recently had my eyes opened on the psychology of autogynephilia. . And see here.

Continue ReadingJK. Rowling’s Recent Statement on the Contested Meaning of “Transphobic”

Robert Malone Analyzes a Self-Serving “Limited Hangout” Regarding mRNA

Robert Malone offers this definition of "limited hangout":

A limited hangout is a propaganda technique of displaying a subset of the available information. It involves deliberately revealing some information to try to confuse and/or prevent discovery of other information.

It misdirects an incautious audience, because information needs a context for correct interpretation. Subtly omitting information changes the interpretation of the surrounding information.

A modified limited hangout goes further by slightly changing the information disclosed. Commercially-controlled media is often a form of limited hangout, although it often also modifies information and so can represent a modified limited hangout.

Why is this important? Because "limited hangouts" are ubiquitous these days. They are a common tactic of those who use propaganda and censorship to create false consensuses and prevent robust national discussion of critically important national issues. When they are caught red-handed, they offer only a tiny subset of information, which has the psychological effect of satiating the audience, causing use to think that the full story has been disclosed. The cleverly disclose a tiny part of what is often their own misconduct and complicity in order to gain just enough credibility that they can they use that ill-gained credibility as a trojan horse for the next chapters of their misconduct.

Robert Malone takes a look at a very credible and scholarly-looking article, identifying it as a limited hangout, point by point. Here's the article:

“Lipid nanoparticle structural components, production methods, route of administration and proteins produced from complexed mRNAs all present toxicity concerns.”

Bitounis, D. et al. Strategies to reduce the risks of mRNA drug and vaccine toxicity. Nat Rev Drug Discov. 23 January 2024. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41573-023-00859-3; PMID: 38263456

Here is an excerpt from Malone's article, his take-away
In this recent review article (23 January, 2024), Bitounis et al. provide a partial disclosure and examination of known risks and toxicities associated with the modified messenger ribonucleic acid/lipid nanoparticle pharmaceutical delivery platform. In general, what makes this publication particularly remarkable is that (collectively) the authors have significant employment or other ties to Moderna therapeutics, a pharmaceutical company whose very name (MODified RNA) indicates its corporate dependency on the feasibility of this technology. As a veteran of prior biopharmaceutical corporations, it is inconceivable to me that these authors do not have pre-existing restrictive non-disclosure agreements with Moderna, and therefore it is highly likely that Moderna pre-approved this publication.

Therefore, my most generous interpretation of the overall intent of the article is that this article summarizes and represents information concerning risks and toxicities of this platform technology which Moderna wishes to have disclosed in a manner which puts the firm, its activities and the underlying platform technology in the best possible light. A less generous interpretation of intent is that this article represents a subtle form of propaganda strategy commonly referred to as a limited hangout.

The essay includes extensive speculation concerning how emerging new technologies such as artificial intelligence and organoids (simplified tissue culture structures mimicking an organ, that are derived from stem cells), as well as well established ‘high tech” approaches such as single cell sequencing can be used to minimize animal model use (a specific NIH objective). They are intended to facilitate more efficient pharmaceutical development and toxicologic analysis of modified-mRNA drug and vaccine development technologies.

Through the jaded eyes of this highly experienced proposal reviewer, this mostly reads like a forward looking justification for increased investment in a variety of expensive new pharmaco-toxicology infrastructure advances which would be in the financial and professional interest of the authors, while avoiding and overlooking time tested approaches to characterizing the profound and wide ranging toxicities of these pharmaceutical preparations.

In other words, this reads as an extended justification for spending a lot of money on new goodies for pharmacologists and toxicologists while avoiding the obvious and less sexy basics that still have yet to be performed and reported.

I highly recommend reading Malone's point-by-point analysis to understand how a limited hangout functions.

Continue ReadingRobert Malone Analyzes a Self-Serving “Limited Hangout” Regarding mRNA