Dysevidentia

The Full Rant Text - 

I am fat. This isn’t healthy, all the doctors and experts agree. I am at higher risk of diabetes and heart issues and so is anyone else overweight. There are countless studies and boundless evidence to support this written and assembled by the best experts, I linked a few in the show notes.

Body shaming, needless berating, and insults don’t help. This seems obvious to some, If people are overweight then insulting them usually won’t help. It leads many people to stress eating and or to dodge the gym. Insults might help me, but I am a confrontational douche bag. Most people aren’t me and don’t start a podcast to escalate their confrontationalism.

That insults are bad isn’t obvious to all people. For this issue there people on the left and right of the political spectrum getting this wrong. See the show notes for bill maher and brietbart doing so. I almost expect this from an idiot comedian, but the latter is a slanted news outlet that actually cites sources that directly contradict them.

Again, this is all well studied and documented by experts, and again I linked a few in the show notes. So, I shouldn’t be a jerk to fat people and if I want to help my fat friend then being positive and compassionate is the way to do it. So long as I am not being an enabler of poor choices through excess “body positivity”, then great.

All these experts telling us what works and what doesn’t makes the  evidence feel far away and unapproachable. Today we are going to be discussing aliens and outer space, so evidence might feel even further away.

Evidence doesn’t need to be some distant thing made only by people in some ivy league school. The best evidence has always been instructions on how you can prove something to yourself.

To help with my fat problem I use a simple scale. I weigh myself every morning. This isn’t grand. This isn’t miraculous. This simple act is life changing. I am down more than 60 pounds, by doing trial and error to lose a few pounds every month. This isn’t me being special or seeking adulation, fuck that. Do not congratulate me for taking basic care of myself.

However, please, note my use of evidence. There is no fad diet. No miracle drug. There is no one secret that nutritionists hate. There is me realizing that if I skip sour cream in burritos I kept losing weight that month and that I liked the guacamole more anyway. Skipping sour cream is a small change and I noticed the result because I measured.

I do need to know how to use the scale as a tool. I need to understand that I can fluctuate up to 5 pounds (2 kilos for those of us in civilized countries) every day just on water weight. So I need to account for that, doing averages, or tracking record lows, or something. There are a few other things I need to know, but those details aren’t important today.

Understanding that you can gather evidence is the important part. Understanding that you can use a new tool to gather evidence is almost as important. There are a ton of tools that can be learned easily enough. Evidence doesn’t need to be far away if you are willing to do just a little work and learn some tooling.

Even many of the seemingly far off discussions of this episode can be impacted by amateurs gathering evidence with the right tools. The amatuer astronomy scene is kind of a big deal. Amatuer astronomers discovered the planet Uranus. In more recent times they discovered more than 40 exoplanets. Both the Hale-Bopp and Shoemaker-Levi 9 comets were at least partially discovered by amateurs.

Even for things that seem far away you can get into it for less than the price of a playstation. I am not saying that you should rush out and buy a telescope or binoculars today. But, you should at least consider what you can do, what you can learn that you hadn’t known before. Maybe get a kill-a-watt to lower your power bill. Get some new measuring tool or book for an interest you had but hadn’t dug into yet. You might be just one new tool away from gathering some information that can help you, help others, or just learn something new.

Again, I link to some I bought and used in the show notes, including the Kill-a-watt which is just a gizmo you stick between your electrical appliances and the wall outlets to see how electricity they’re really using.

Apparently, there aren’t any limits, I learned just hours before recording this that there is an amateur genetic engineering scene and they use living cells as tools and have good evidence on the best ways to grow dozens of strains of glow in the dark microbes. If these yahoos can invent microbe raves in their garage then you pick up a fresh tool to learn something new.

Health issues of being overweight [1:31]

• https://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/effects/index.html
• https://www.healthline.com/health/gastric-sleeve-vs-gastric-bypass#bottom-line
• https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention-source/obesity-consequences/health-effects/

Fat shaming doesn’t work [1:31]

• https://www.webmd.com/diet/obesity/news/20170803/fat-shaming-patients-can-cause-real-harm
• Some left leaning people fuck this up too [2:15] https://www.stvincentcharity.com/radiant/posts/obesity-expert-explains-why-body-shaming-is-harmful-not-helpful/
• These guys lied, their own sources contradict their claim that shaming helpied https://www.breitbart.com/social-justice/2016/07/05/fat-shaming-is-good-science/
  • Their source discussing collaboration - https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/chi.2014.0062

Getting Into Astronomy [5:09]

• https://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/watchtheskies/stars_hobby.html
• https://www.astrojunkies.com/how-to-get-started-amateur-astronomy/
• https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Get-Started-in-Amateur-Astronomy/

Amatuer Astronomer Discoveries [4:46]

• https://listverse.com/2016/07/30/10-space-discoveries-made-by-amateur-astronomers/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Shoemaker%E2%80%93Levy_9
• https://mytelescopio.com/top-5-space-discoveries-made-by-amateur-astronomers/

DIY Microbe Rave [6:07]

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtmVfWj20nY

Get a tool [5:09]

• Amazon Affiliate link to the exact Kill-a-watt Sqeaky bought April 3, 2015 and easily paid for itself - https://amzn.to/3r1Fws6 
• Amazon Affiliate link to the exact Binoculars Sqeaky bought July 31. 2014 and work for light stargazing and happen to be paintball proof - https://amzn.to/37S43Zc  

Good Science Books Sqeaky has read

Sqeaky is listing these ahead of the terrible books below because these books don’t suck. Buy All of these, they are all great and he has read all of them. These are all fantastic  and we wholeheartedly recommend them all for skeptics and people suffering dysevidentia alike.

• Dawkins, Richard - Brilliant Biologist Leading expert on evolution
  • The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True - https://amzn.to/38lk89N
  • The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition - https://amzn.to/38i4gVJ
• Hawking, Stephen - Brilliant physicist who predicted features of black holes
  • A Brief History of Time - https://amzn.to/38lKuZr
  • The Universe in a Nutshell - https://amzn.to/38j3uYs
• Lugeons, Noah - Brilliant Skepticism communicator and Demigod of Anger
  • Diatribes: Volume One: 50 Essays From a Godless Misanthrope - https://amzn.to/3kTAtHI
  • Diatribes, Volume 2: 50 More Essays from a Scathing Atheist - https://amzn.to/3blNMh8
• Sagan, Carl - Brilliant Polymath who communicated science and wrote Scifi
  • The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark - https://amzn.to/3cexgyA 

Books From discredited Authors

Do not Buy these! But if you must buy them (hopefully to mock them) then at least buy them from our sponsor links:

• Sitchin - and some of his countless volumes of non-sense
  • The 12th Planet -

n his rant Sqeaky shares how evidence relates to methods of inquiry and complains about people who don’t understand either.

Then Sqeaky and Mako jump straight into a few current topics. The 4 topics they are to discuss today:

• The mixed truth of covid vaccine deaths;
• Shell declares peak oil (for themselves);
• rush limbaugh is dead;
• And the Annunaki AKA sumerian Ancient Astronauts.

Please Consider Supporting Us

• Become a Patron - https://www.patreon.com/dysevidentia 
• Nicehash Sponsor - https://www.nicehash.com/?refby=eda23ada-5de2-4374-8816-3631679dbf9e

The Rant Full Text (1:27) - Evidence Supports Algorithms

There is no algorithm for truth, and I don’t mean to reference the insightful Tom Scott video. I will leave a link in the show notes, though

For those who don’t know an algorithm is just a series of steps to solve a specific problem. This comes up often in software because computers are good at blithely following a series of steps to get to some result. But we humans can use them too.

Some people learn of the scientific method and presume this algorithm is the only way to learn unknown things. This is a good method and highlights the importance of understanding how a single change impacts a result, but there are other “methods” in other disciplines.

Historians have a documentary method , geologists have methods for learning the age of things, Astronomers have ways to date stars and planets based on distance and brightness. These are just algorithms performed by humans.

These methods say how to decide whether to use or reject historical documents. How to determine the age of a fossil or rocks and why there is a different approach for each. How to measure the distance to an object trillions of miles or kilometers away without being fooled by the many illusions the universe or our tools put in our way.

These algorithms are only as good as the information they have access to. If you give them garbage you will get garbage, if you start with clean reliable facts and pristine samples the computers and experts following these steps will produce answers as accurate as anything else they do.

These methods are all ways to draw conclusions from evidence. They help in preventing a researcher from bias towards a conclusion then cherry picking evidence that only supports it. This can be hard even for experts.

Some people say that if a method or algorithm doesn’t always work it should never be used. Some people expect some algorithm to be correct even with bad data. Some people will say anything to shoot down a conflicting viewpoint.

No tool is useful in every situation, using these methods correctly is like any other tool, there is a time and a place for each. Many of the arguments against them are useless equivocations claiming that a thing is broken if it isn’t perfect. These are of course idiotic rebuttals.

Why do people persist in believing that information can come from nothing,  which is what would need to happen for an algorithm to produce good data from bad? What do people decry anything they don’t like? For at least some people this is likely dysevidentia, you wouldn't be listening if you weren't at least open to the idea that not all people can understand how to work with evidence.

The real way to get to truth and knowledge is to do whatever it takes to not be fooled, even by your own goals and desires. This is why experts have so different many methods, they have worked out the methods that function in their domains of expertise.

Then we get the raving hordes online. Recently, I have been arguing with trump supporters. Many claim to have evidence the election was stolen from trump, and none of them provide evidence when I ask for it.

They ask for evidence it wasn’t stolen and I provide the 60 or more court cases where trump’s lawyers chose not to present evidence. I suggest we consider the countless audit logs and oversight from observers provided by both parties. I point out that even republicans in charge of some contentious electoral districts say it was a clean election.

They attack mainstream sources like CNN or MSNBC, then I point out that I used alt-right sources and direct them to said sources and they mysteriously stop responding. When they see alex jones switch narratives exactly when I said he would or see that an alt-right stream presents the same facts, minus some key piece that allows their dishonest spin, most objecters are stopped completely. Those that aren’t stopped either can’t process evidence (dysevidentia) or won’t process evidence (liars).

They started this presuming all they needed to do was attack my “method”, and they presumed their method was mine but mirrored. They took in one or two sources that agreed with them and moved on. I actually research the things I argue about, because being correct is a very strong stance to argue from.

There are people so caught up in the act of shooting down sources, tracking finances to show bias, pointing political fingers, or otherwise scouring secondary effects for any imperfections they miss that all these methods are all about evidence. If I have a dozen sources that cross-corroborate I already know the facts, that one of my sources is biased doesn’t matter because I have already accounted for that. And of course don’t trust a source that is all by itself and biased.

Questioning sources is good and should be done often, but a bias doesn’t mean a thing is inaccurate if the other sources agree by different means.

First, get evidence, verify the quality of evidence, use evidence to make decisions, and be willing to change your mind when the evidence says you should. If you don’t, then you can and will make mistakes that might be more costly than looking foolish online, it could prevent you from becoming a supporter of a failed ideology.

No algorithm for truth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leX541Dr2rU 

HeadLines and Sources

• Covid Vaccine causing deaths [6:40]
  • https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/alex-jones-coronavirus-vaccine-conspiracy-theories-are-public-health-threat
  • https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-18/what-to-know-about-vaccine-related-deaths-allergies-quicktake
  • https://www.thehealthsite.com/news/23-elderly-people-die-in-norway-after-receiving-the-pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-cautionary-note-issued-791302/
  • https://www.deccanherald.com/international/covid-19-vaccine-23-senior-citizens-die-after-taking-pfizer-shot-939742.html
  • https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/01/06/death-florida-doctor-following-pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-under-investigation-gregory-michael/6574414002/.
  • Bonus source - Covid lethality [14:29] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-age.html
• Shell has reached peak oil production [15:49]
  • https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/11/business/shell-oil-production-peak/index.html
  • https://fortune.com/2021/02/11/peak-oil-2020-royal-dutch-shell-carbon-emissions/
  • https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/energy-environment/2021/02/11/391246/oil-major-shell-says-it-hit-peak-oil-production-in-2019-and-will-speed-up-move-to-net-zero-emissions-products/
• Rush Limbaugh died (to lung cancer) [18:31]
  • https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rush-limbaugh-arrested-on-drug-charges/
  • https://www.washingtonian.com/2021/02/17/never-forget-what-rush-limbaugh-said-about-sandra-fluke/
  • https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/rush-limbaugh-mock-aids-gays/
  • https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rush-limbaugh-consent_n_57fee9aae4b0e8c198a6076d

In his rant Sqeaky shares a first-hand story about a co-worker suffering from dysevidentia.

Then Sqeaky and Mako discuss the three source method, a simple way to get fooled a little less often when learning new stuff. The the recap five topics from 2020 that get too much discussion today:

• A faith-healer, pastor, and prophet who closes their door to covid permanently;
• How trump doesn't respect veterans no matter what the memes say;
• What trump actually could have about the pandemic;
• Why people who called it a "hoax" are now getting a vaccine for it;
• And why covid wasn't man-made.

Here is the full text of the rant and the sources we used in our discussion:

Rant - This is Dysevidentia (1:30)

I coined the word dysevidentia during a discussion with some people on Reddit. These people had good intentions. They meant to give evidence to trump supporters or religious people in hopes that this would change their mind, as if there is some piece of evidence you can give to someone who is still a trump supporter in 2021 that will spark change.
 
These well intentioned redditors are familiar with using evidence in their day to day lives, and they take this ability for granted. Perhaps they are doctors, or lawyers, or software developers or some other category of experts and they need to make new and complex inferences and presume everyone else does also. They ignore millions of people out there who don’t need to and they ignore the millions of people who are in similar professions yet simply don’t.
 
I have been a software developer for something like twenty years, and in one of my early software development jobs I worked with someone who simultaneously believed that the earth was flat and that the earth was hollow. I hope that I can rely on my audience to understand that either of ideas is ludicrous when compared against any evidence. But that isn’t the point here. We have all met someone who has denied something that was real, perhaps even done it ourselves. But it is rare to accept two such mutually contradictory things, real or false.
 
It didn’t matter to him that a flat earth didn’t have a center, `cuz the merfolk armies or the mudmen armies, or whatever armies he believed in were poised to somehow strike out from the US military bases and the mid-ocean rifts to take over the surface and kill everyone. See, by being positioned in the center of the flat earth’s sphere they could rapidly access every strategic point on the surface. And this didn’t conflict or contradict with the notion that the one world government or new world order was propagating round globe misinformation to keep the flatness secret, presumably for their own sinister reasons.
 
This person had a master's degree. This person was a software developer for 20 years when I was only a few years in. This person was highly competent, earned a professional wage, was able to manage databases, troubleshoot software, and handle novel complex tasks. Yet somehow this person couldn’t handle some basic contradiction in logic using evidence. This person honestly believed that the one world government and that the mermen or subterranean armies were going to come out of the nearby military base to attack and kill everyone nearby.
 
Despite this he continued to do things like buying property and living near the military base. I mean extra property, like rental property with the goal of producing a secondary income. He had no reasoning reconciling these beliefs with these actions.
 
It is easy to think that maybe I just had passing conversations with this individual, but we carpooled together to go to work the next city over. Me and him carpooled to go to work every day for an hour in each direction. Two hours per day we spoke for the duration of my time at this job. I got to understand his ideas inside and out and they simply didn’t fit with each other.
 
This wasn’t a simple matter of the flat and hollow earth being donut shaped or bubble shaped or something similar.No. The earth was flat and a disk, and the earth was spherical and hollow. He believed both of these and it didn’t matter this simply couldn’t happen. This is Dysevidentia, an inability to reliably process and integrate evidence.
 
Other than holding mutually contradictory and therefore impossible views this person was intelligent, capable, and professional. People like this are why I have repeatedly compared dysevidentia to dyslexia or dyscalculia. These other issues are comparatively well understood, diagnosed by doctors, and don’t always prevent someone from leading a fulfilling life or having a successful career.
 
Someone suffering from one of these three issues doesn’t make them stupid. It doesn’t stop them from being stupid either, I suspect such people are stupid about as often as anyone else. I have worked closely with people who have dyslexia and when empowered with the right tools and environment their intelligence shows in their work. Perhaps we can do something to empower people with dysevidentia or somehow shelter them from people who would abuse and mislead them like cult leaders or traitorous ex-presidents.
 
Discussion - 2020 Recap

• Three source method to being less wrong (6:45)
• Faith healers close door to covid (13:44 )
  • https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2020/04/03/supernatural-healing-christian-faith-coronavirus-pandemic/
  • https://www.pewforum.org/2008/06/01/chapter-1-religious-beliefs-and-practices/#iv-spiritual-experiences
  • https://www.huffpost.com/entry/frankline-ndifor-pastor-cameroon_n_5ec60a00c5b6dfc078e0f7ee
  • https://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2020/05/megachurch-pastor-who-claimed-he-could-cure-covid-19-dies-from-virus/
  • Resurrection Bonus Sources! (17:15)
    • South Africa - https://newspunch.com/woman-wakes-up-morgue/
    • Mississippi + Poland + Egypt + Kenya + China - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/halloween-come-back-life-waking-dead-funerals-mortuaries-confirm-russia-egypt-a8023916.html
    • Nigeria - https://dailypost.ng/2013/08/18/dead-man-wakes-up-after-three-days-in-mortuary-recounts-ordeal/
• Ex-president trump supports veterans, or something (20:17) 
  • https://www.npr.org/2020/09/04/909599762/trump-faces-fallout-from-report-he-calls-military-losers-and-suckers
  • https://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/trump-attacks-mccain-i-like-people-who-werent-captured-120317
  • https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/times-trump-insulted-u-s-veterans-military-service-article-1.3204210
• Ex-president trump’s covid response (20:52)
  • https://doggett.house.gov/media-center/blog-posts/timeline-trump-s-coronavirus-responses
  • https://omaha.com/lifestyles/health-med-fit/unmc-pandemic-expert-says-trumps-covid-response-cost-thousands-of-lives/article_84abed50-5c0c-11eb-98c3-7f162717bf1d.html
  • https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-020-00689-2
  • https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/why-coronavirus-testing-us-so-delayed/607954/
  • Bonus Sources!
    • Bush minutes after 911  - https://abcnews.go.com/US/September_11/florida-students-witnessed-moment-bush-learned-911-terror/story?id=14474518 
    •  30 Extra Calls to poison control from drinking bleach to cure covid - https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2020/08/24/some-americans-are-tragically-still-drinking-bleach-as-a-coronavirus-cure/?sh=10f357266748 
    • Ricketts doing dumb covid stuff - https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ricketts-only-documented-workers-will-get-vaccine/ar-BB1cvexD
    • More Ricketts stupidity -