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Sometimes I hear about nutrition/food studies done in academia which were funded by big food corporations. It's probably also common in the medical field to hav

Sometimes I hear about nutrition/food studies done in academia which were funded by big food corporations. It's probably also common in the medical field to have big pharma doing the sponsoring. I don't disagree with you. Lack of trust is a problem in some ways. But I've also become used to the idea that determining truth includes scrutinizing the source. It really is a lot of work.

sqeaky 2y ago
It absolutely can be a lot of work, but sometimes the statement or stance is self-disproving. I once worked with a conspiracy theory believer who thought that the Earth was simultaneously a flat disk and a hollow sphere. This person wasn't obviously a fool in normal conversation. They had no trouble writing C++, they had a master's degree in math, they recently purchased a second house and we're doing the repairs themselves to flip it, and he was comfortable with writing SQL for the application we're working in. But he absolutely refused to believe that "they" weren't out to get him. In retrospect it was clear that this was likely standing from anti-Semitic conspiracy backgrounds but more than once I asked him to verify if he meant actual lizard people or if that was code for something, and with great conviction he told me he actually believes some of our leaders were lizards. This person fundamentally didn't trust our institutions. He thought at the Airlines and that the government were being headed by literal lizard people in human suits. He had access to all the evidence to the contrary, but he had been betrayed so many times by the government that he saw no reason to trust anything from them and refused any photographs I produced from NASA. No how hard I worked to produce and vet information citing sources, or even produce experiments that he can reproduce, he just wouldn't trust anything that appeared to line up with what he perceived to be the goals of the government. Worse, something so many people attached to reality deny is that people like him are common. I fully believe that one in three Americans are as delusional as this guy at least some of the time.
- purple-leafy 2y ago
  Sounds like mental health issues tbh
  - sqeaky 2y ago
    You are probably correct. If you are it is something millions of people suffer from, an inability to work with evidence or vet sources. Like how symbols are hard to parse for some, dyslexia, or math incomprehensible to some dyscalculia. How are dysevidentia or dyslogia?

sqeaky 2y ago

It absolutely can be a lot of work, but sometimes the statement or stance is self-disproving. I once worked with a conspiracy theory believer who thought that the Earth was simultaneously a flat disk and a hollow sphere. This person wasn't obviously a fool in normal conversation. They had no trouble writing C++, they had a master's degree in math, they recently purchased a second house and we're doing the repairs themselves to flip it, and he was comfortable with writing SQL for the application we're working in. But he absolutely refused to believe that "they" weren't out to get him. In retrospect it was clear that this was likely standing from anti-Semitic conspiracy backgrounds but more than once I asked him to verify if he meant actual lizard people or if that was code for something, and with great conviction he told me he actually believes some of our leaders were lizards. This person fundamentally didn't trust our institutions. He thought at the Airlines and that the government were being headed by literal lizard people in human suits. He had access to all the evidence to the contrary, but he had been betrayed so many times by the government that he saw no reason to trust anything from them and refused any photographs I produced from NASA. No how hard I worked to produce and vet information citing sources, or even produce experiments that he can reproduce, he just wouldn't trust anything that appeared to line up with what he perceived to be the goals of the government. Worse, something so many people attached to reality deny is that people like him are common. I fully believe that one in three Americans are as delusional as this guy at least some of the time.

purple-leafy 2y ago
Sounds like mental health issues tbh
- sqeaky 2y ago
  You are probably correct. If you are it is something millions of people suffer from, an inability to work with evidence or vet sources. Like how symbols are hard to parse for some, dyslexia, or math incomprehensible to some dyscalculia. How are dysevidentia or dyslogia?