I received a call the other day from an acquaintance, he is a high-level sports doctor/trainer.
He has a medical degree and a Ph.D.
He deals with big-name athletes. You would recognize the names. When a player came down with an injury during a recent World Series, they flew him in to work with the athlete.
He called me for some investment-related advice, the talk turned to the riots and the Only Black Lives Matter movement. He is an anti-Trump guy that thinks Trump will use the military to stay in power if he loses the election.
I told him the leaders of the BLM, and those around them, were all committed Marxists that want to destroy the system. He disagreed.
I sent him an email that included two of my posts.
One featured Feminsta Jones (173,000 twitter followers) tweeting out:
Violence is the only way, of courseThe other post features the video of BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors saying "We are trained Marxists."
No votes. No marching. No spots on cable news. No high fashion magazine cover stories. No hashtags. No panels.
None of that is going to bring about the liberation Black folks deserve...
There’s a lot of $$ in the “anti-racism” space these days so look...go get that coin.
If you gotta rebrand and sprinkle the phrase across your website, please do. Take every dime they’re offering. Reparations and such.
Just make sure you’re not letting any of these Eurocentric notions of freedom fighting and liberation actually influence your ways of thinking.
His email response to me:
Don’t believe everything you read.At my office building, waiting for the elevator, I ran into a lawyer, around 50, who I see in the office corridor from time to time. He is always wearing a heavy-duty mask.
As we both stepped into the elevator, the conversation went like this:
Me: "Sorry, I am not wearing a mask but I am with the Stanford boys who think it is bullshit."
The Lawyer: "That's okay, but I hear differently ."
Me: "How's that?"
The Lawyer: "My brother is an emergency room doctor at [famous Ivy League university hospital], he says things are actually worse than is being reported."
It's a fast elevator, the doors opened and we went in separate directions.
-RW
"Don't believe everything you read" - just believe the stuff your biases already are formed by. It's called confirmation bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias -
ReplyDeletea wholly-owned subsidiary of Dunning-Kruger Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect - which may only be countered by judicious application of metacognition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacognition
"Worse than being reported": You mean CNN would not want to paint a bleaker picture, even if it was the truth?
ReplyDeleteDon't you think it's because they have a stake in the new status quo? They don't work for themselves and have too much to lose. They can't allow themselves to think otherwise. I love the people who smugly use Occam's razor to end conversations because it's easier for them to ignore inconvenient facts and they think it makes them sound smart. Anyone who thinks freely will be diagnosed with conspiracy theory disorder.
ReplyDeletehttps://psychcentral.com/blog/conspiracy-theory-disorder-understanding-why-people-believe/
I agree with Dan. No matter how generally intelligent a person may be, its nearly impossible to get them to see the truth when their livelihood depends on them not seeing it. But the article referenced on conspiracy theory disorder references so many different personality traits that it suggests that nearly everyone is a potential sufferer of this disorder. This borders on fear mongering. A tactic many use to drum up business. Particularly in the medical field. Politicians, bureaucrats and the mass media are also experts at fear mongering. While covid-19 panic is the latest example of hysteria stirred by fear mongering we have experienced this phenomenon since time began. This time seems more widespread but not quite as devastating as the many wars this mindset has motivated. And if metacognition is the only solution we can count on many more mass hysteria events.
ReplyDeleteI have nothing against fools wearing masks and slowly suffocating themselves. I do have an innue with these fools trying to foce me to do the same.
ReplyDelete