The Empire Strikes Back -Part 2

If Part 1 was the "why we're losing," Part 2 is the battle plan for taking the empire back. Here are  four defensive strategies to help you hold down the fortress. 

Put a name to the invader. Just spot the 3 fallacies that run most of the feed; Appeal to Nature, Bandwagon, False Authority. You don't have to win the debate, just flag it in your head. Follow the money, not the claim. Who profits if you believe this without thinking? That cuts through packaging faster than fact-checking. Inoculate, don't isolate. You can't avoid the virus of the mind, you build immunity by picking apart bad arguments on purpose. Occupy your own empire — the Stoic drill: What did I believe today because it felt good, not because it was true? What did the algorithms want me to want?

1. Man The Walls - Name The Invader

You don't need to memorize a textbook of Latin to defend your mind. You need to spot the invasion when it's happening. In real time. On your feed, in the ad before your video, in the conversation at the grocery store.

Most of it runs on three common tactics.

Appeal to Nature. If it's all natural, chemical-free, ancient remedy — it must be good for you, right? Nature also made arsenic and rattlesnakes.

Bandwagon. Ten thousand people already switched. Your friends are already doing it. If everyone believes it, you don't have to think. That's the point.

False Authority. A guy in a lab coat selling you immune gummies. A former athlete selling you crypto. The costume is supposed to do the thinking for you.

Your job isn't to win a debate with these people. Your job is to flag it in your own head the second you hear it. Name it. "Ah, that's bandwagon." The second you name the invader, it loses half its power. It goes from invisible influence to obvious tactic.

2. Cut The Supply Line - Follow The Money, Not The Claim

Don't start by arguing the claim. Start by asking one question: Who profits if I believe this without thinking?

Follow that money. If the answer is the person telling you to be scared, to buy now, to distrust everyone else — you just found the motive. That cuts through packaging faster than any hour of fact-checking. Claims are cheap. Incentives don't lie. Cut the supply line and the fortress holds.

3. Fortify The Mind - Inoculate, Don't Isolate

You cannot avoid the virus of the mind. It's in the cracks every single day. If your strategy is to hide behind the walls and never open the gate, you will lose. The algorithm will find you.

You build immunity the same way your body does. A small dose on purpose.

Deliberately expose yourself to bad arguments and pick them apart. Watch the ad and spot the fallacy. Read the miracle cure post and ask where the evidence is. Teach your brain what a weak argument feels like when you are in control, so you don't get breached when you are not.

Isolation makes you fragile. Inoculation makes you dangerous.

4. Hold The Gate - Occupy Your Own Empire

An empire isn't occupied just once. It has to be patrolled. Every day.

This is how you patrol the perimeter of your brain, and it takes two minutes.

At the end of the day, ask yourself:

What did I believe today because it felt good, not because it was true?

What did the algorithms want me to want today?

That's it.

That's the patrol.

Keep the patrol and the walls hold on their own. You stop being an easy target. You go from being the weak point in the line to being the reason it holds. You start to actually live in your own head again, instead of renting space to whoever shouts the loudest.

Someone will always try to invade your empire. The question is whether you will be there to defend it.

Who taught you how to think?

The Fight for the Empire Between Your Ears

Every day, in between the cracks of our reality, superstitious thinking creeps into our lives. Like a virus of the mind. An idea that becomes infectious, that can ultimately lead to death. If you're asking what this has to do with you, I can bet you're already a victim to one of these.

Pseudoscience sells. The advertisements all around us tell us. Look at the health and beauty industry — much of it relies on packaging and marketing. Anything that has a claim like "supports the immune system" must be healthy, right?

Rhetoric is not new to everyday language. Socrates warned of this in ancient Greece. In school, we teach identifying logical fallacies in psychology classes for a reason — because they work.

The algorithms of social media have already predicted what you are going to want. The decline of critical thinking has left people vulnerable to online predators for the picking. It is a perfect storm.

The odds are stacked against you. That is the bad news. The good news is that we know the counterattack. It is called self-defense for your brain. The Stoics used to say the most important empire to occupy is the one between your ears.

For we are not speaking of some small skirmish. This is for control of the whole kingdom. Someone is always trying to invade your empire. This is how you take it back.

Let's turn the tide and the tables, and get back in the fight.

Who taught you how to think?

Build a Better Tomorrow Today: Using Science and Skepticsm

Everyone is focusing on what is wrong with the world, when we should be turning our attention to what is great about it, and how we can make it better. That starts with becoming better thinkers and decision makers. Then, we can become leaders in anything we choose to do. 

"The point of an argument or debate should be progress, not victory." 

The initial intention behind the start of this blog was to help other people who were like me and felt lost amongst all of the spiritualness in the world. I could not find my place, but knew I was part of something bigger than just myself. Was I Apache, Navajo, or Hopi? Was I white? Where did my answers lie? In one of those tribal religions or perhaps in the white mans' religion? 

I am not trying to change people's minds about their beliefs just because I don't agree with them. I am not out searching the internet looking to debunk myths. I am simply trying to get people to think for themselves and become just a little more skeptical. But, when I say skeptical, I don't mean cynical. I mean scientifically-skeptical. A large portion of science and scientific skepticism is open-mindedness. That tenet should always be clear and present in the forefront of our minds. In order to understand science, you have to get to know skepticism. This is what makes us better critical thinkers. 

"You don't change people's minds, you give them the tools to decide on their own."

This is what science, critical thinking, and skepticism have done for me. These tools are proven to be the best ways for vetting new information and attaining knowledge. They can even act as a self-defense system for your brain!

My focus went from studying the things we don't know, to the things we are pretty certain about. Why are we here? What is the purpose of life? What is the meaning of these patterns I see in nature? These questions began to seem less relevant to me as my brain was now infatuated with learning as much as I could about the universe and our place in it. 

I started my journey thinking that science was all about math and facts. Cold, complex, and boring. Along the way, I found out that it was much more than that, it was "a way of thinking." Now, I see it as being humbling, awe-inspiring, and elegant.

"Who is making all the decisions about science and technology that are going to determine the kind of future our children will live in?" (Sagan 1996) 

 

Carl Sagan on Charlie Rose in 1996.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, are the implications to our civic duties. Socrates used to stress that it wasn't enough for the  people of Rome to vote. They needed to be well informed voters. Because, when we stop questioning authority, we leave ourselves open for them to take advantage. Then, the people don't run the government, the government runs the people. Thomas Jefferson was also a big fan of questioning authority because of these same reasons. 

Who will govern the governors?" There is only one force in the nation that can be depended upon to keep the government pure and the governors honest, and that is the people themselves. They alone, if well informed, are capable of preventing the corruption of power, and of restoring the nation to its rightful course if it should go astray. They alone are the safest depository of the ultimate powers of government. (Jefferson 1903-04)

Benjamin Franklin has been quoted as saying, "It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority." I hold a similar belief. Socrates believed that ordinary citizens were not fit to govern themselves. He didn't believe that the general public was informed enough to make big decisions and often voted against their best interests. But, I have more hope for people and would like to see a world where more can think for themselves and are not afraid to question authority or the status quo. A place where we can argue constructively and find progress, despite any differences. The aim isn't to win debates, but to be just a bit more skeptical. About as much as you would be when buying a car from someone. It is especially important when we are most vulnerable. 

This is the difference that I would like to make in the world. If I could leave a trail for others to follow like bread crumbs, that would be fulfilling. Whether it is through a story or shared experience, the end result is finding some common uniting factor and building upon it. 

Original Artwork by Noah Nez.

Sources: 

Sagan, Carl. 1996. Charlie Rose. YouTube. Can be accessed online at: http://youtu.be/d8O1e_TZHZo.

Jefferson, Thomas. 1903-04. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson on Politics and Government. Memorial Edition (Lipscomb and Bergh, editors). 20 Vols., Washington, D.C. Can be accessed online at: http://famguardian.org/Subjects/Politics/thomasjefferson/jeff0350.htm.

Review: NYC Epicenters: 9/11 to 2021 1/2

 

I just watched the first episode of the Spike Lee joints on HBO, “NYC Epicenters: 9/11 to 2021 ½”. Here are some of the initial thoughts and feelings about the two-hour long episode. Firstly, it was such a relief to feel acknowledged by the past I experienced as being real. Sometimes, the past year can seem like it was a bad nightmare. This felt like an acknowledgment of all the feeling and emotions I had being validated. The betrayal of the government handling of the pandemic to the protest against police brutality and injustice around the world. This felt like a validation that it actually happened. It wasn't a dream. I was there. Here is the footage. It's want what the media presented at the time, from ANY side. It was peaceful, lovely, and inspiring. Honestly, I feel sorry for you if you didn't get to experience that global movement like most of humanity did during that time. Once again, I am so glad Spike documented and presented so it is immortalized as it happened.

 

Some may try and change that narrative, like it wasn't as magical as it was, like the global agreement acknowledging systematic racism and injustice under the law around the world didn't happen. But, it did. And it was just as glorious as Spike Lee depicts it. My memory doesn't have the same soundtrack, but the spirit and emotion of his score fits to what I felt during those first, uneasy moment of the COVID19 Pandemic.

 

The film reminds us of our own experiences in the unfolding of a contagion. Namely, the bad. For it wasn't until it got really bad that Americans took notice. The failure of leadership across the board leaves you dizzy trying to blame every level of government. But, ultimately I couldn't help thinking of Socrates and how we elect every person fumbling the ball now. For he did not think the “ordinary people [of Rome] were fit to govern themselves.”

 

That might sound offensive to read. But, his explanations were reasonable and convincing. I used to be one of these contrarian, hipster wannabe, armchair scholars watching YouTube thinking I was smarter than the entire scientific, and medical establishment. I get it. In a world of Dr. Oz selling BS on daytime TV, it can be tough for the lay person to follow. Now, when we see the general public science literacy every year, I get it and I agree. The question of whether the Earth rotates around the Sun or if ghosts are real should not be controversial. Certain scientific facts like evolution, get politicized. However, modern biology and medicine wouldn’t make sense without it, therefore they would not exist.  

 

Carl Sagan used to inspire me and leave me in a state of wow. Now, his words mostly just haunt me...

 

“A world built on science and technology, which no one understands it…is liable to blow up in our faces.” A recipe for a perfect storm of disaster.

 

Now, social media and the internet provide so much information that the BS is indistinguishable from the truth. There is no better example relevant than the misinformation, fear mongering, and conspiracy theories surrounding the COVID19 vaccines.

 

Turns out the modern age didn't give us flying cars, jet packs, and hover boards. The future made processing power smaller and more powerful. So, we get computer phones and digital cameras in our palms. You can thank space exploration and telescopes like the Hubble for technology in the phone you are using now. The spinoffs are not calculable.

 

But, this comes back to how it all works against us. Access to information quicker, also means access to disinformation quicker. Once I heard the question, if you were asked to prove the world is not flat, could you? Without the use of the internet, but sheer logic and experiment. I knew this was an important aspect because I couldn't do it. Ancient people could do it. What knowledge did they have that I did not?

 

Instead, I learned how all those ages ago, someone measured the angles of the shadows from a sun dial in two different locations at the same time. The results are what proved the truth of the universe as we know it today, the world is indeed not flat. They could even find the circumference of the Earth with the results they found with incredible accuracy.  

 

According to the Oxford dictionary, the definition of the word “epicenter”, means the central point of something, usually unpleasant or a difficult situation. New York City often serves as the center of many situations that we tend to forget about. We get examples of how the pandemic helped bring people closer together in certain ways and pushed us apart in others. Not just in a physical sense, but in a personal, psychological sense.   

 

When we get saved from this global pandemic, remember that it is not because of any politician or world leaders. You give credit where it is due, to the health care workers on the frontline and scientists developing new technologies such as the vaccinations that will help us win this war. Never has there been a time that peoples attention and interest should be in science. This is our moonshot. As Americans we should rally behind the efforts to find solutions and support the healthcare workers. We have a common enemy in the virus killing indiscriminately, whatever your beliefs might be. It is killing Republicans, Democrats, Independents, and even germ deniers all the same. During the moon missions, people complained about the cost of sending men to the moon. I am sure people asked how much it would cost to shut down St. Louis during the Flu of 1918, but the opening back up before it was safe, would cost them more than they could ever imagine.

 

I am sure there were people saying they overreacted in St. Louis closing the city down during the Flu of 1918. But, all of those people soon felt like assholes when the virus had a second wave worse than the first, and a third when science deniers protested the disease into each others uncovered, open mouths. I am sure most people have not heard of this, because those who do not know history, are doomed to repeat it.

 

Original Artwork By Noah Nez 

*Series is available on HBOMAX now

Conspiracy Theorists Will Not Read This!

While it is easy to shrug off and laugh at, we are seeing more and more grand conspiracies being highlighted by social media. Some are less concerning, while others are more. Superstitious thinking isn't harmless and has real world consequences. The internet has always had this problem, but information gets around quicker than it ever has in the past. A viral video can travel around the world before the truth can get its pants on. 

The problem with combating these types of things, is that they get emboldened when ridiculed.  It's easy to condemn and come off condescending in the process.  Have you ever been persuaded by being ridiculed?

People would rather be wrong on their own, than be ridiculed and proven wrong by someone else. Therefore, it can be tough to be cordial and understanding when talking about something like vaccines. When I first heard of anti-vaccine groups, it drove me crazy. Crazy enough to start this blog and thus my whole campaign of consumer protection advocacy.

I used to ridicule my cousins for getting flu vaccines every year, while making the same argument many vaccine hesitant people make today. "I am young and healthy, therefore I do not need a vaccine." But, that is wrong, followed by more wrong. Those are just more  reasons for getting a vaccine. You get vaccinated for the ones who cannot get the vaccines themselves. Like babies, old people, or the elderly. The immunological response the human body has when expose to immunizations is far safer and effective than any natural method. Vaccines are a technological marvel of science and should be celebrated for adding decades to the human lifespan. 

At the end of the day, conspiracy theories aren't about science or a search for the truth. It's about human psychology and the pitfalls in our thinking when we aren't taught how to reason. Our brains, like the internet, they  are powerful tools of information. But, if we aren't taught how to use them, we could end up with more misinformation than what is tried and true. Like a chimpanzee with a machine gun. 

There is a subtle difference between being skeptical and being cynical. Carl Sagan once said,

"Science is more than a body of knowledge. Is a way of thinking; a way of skeptically interrogating the universe. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs." 

One of our Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton, said something similar in "a man who does not stand for something, will fall for anything."

It turns out, researchers have found something similar to be true when they study it with experiment. An extreme example would be, highly educated individuals without any formal critical thinking skills or science literacy are not more likely to be right, but are more likely to rationalize with more elaborate explanations.  

In skeptic circles, we call it "hand waving". It reminds me of politicians who overuse gestures while they talk, or frauds who sell bunk science with over complicated technical terms. It's a psychological tool to convince you they know what they are talking about. 

Not having one skill is bad enough. Not having either is a recipe for disaster. Some fraudsters and con artists would say you deserve to be taken advantage of as a result. How do you feel about that? There are people out there who knowingly pull the wool over the eyes of the susceptible, and there are even more who know and do not care. Well, I care. People are taking advantage of others and exploiting this blindspot and nobody does anything. I can at least call it out. 

Critical-thinking is being able to challenge one's own beliefs and positions. It is the crux of any decision making process. 

So, mere doubt isn't good enough. Asking questions of all authority isn't good enough. We must ultimately demand evidence and be able to differentiate what credible with standards of validation. 

If you don't believe any of this, good, look it up. You do not have to take my word for it.  Challenge any, and all, preconcieved notions. Especially, your own. 

Original Artwork By Noah Nez