Against "critical thinking"
The diary jumps right in to its topic -- lame thinking -- the preface is after the headline.
One of the distinguishing marks of what Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno called the "culture industry" is that of a general disparagement of critical thinking. But critical thinking is so essential to human existence that it won't go away, so the culture industry has itself devised a cheap substitute, hoping to lure the public in the same way that "Sunny Delight" proposes itself as an alternative to orange juice.
Here's a meme that typifies the "critical thinking" I'm arguing against here:
The first question any reader of this meme ought to be asking is: who's "they"? The second question is: whatever happened to the idea of evaluating topics according to what we know about them? The standard for "critical thinking" of our time is that received wisdom is wrong because it is based on a "they" who is lying to us. There's nothing specific about who the "they" are or about the substance of the supposed lies insinuated in this meme. Perhaps the problem is with memes in general -- a meme is too brief, too reliant upon images, whereas evaluation requires, at a minimum, 1) a gathering-up of available information about a topic, 2) an examination of the background against which the available information carries meanings, 3) a reasoning-through of the motives of the various presenters for why they offer opinions upon said topic (maybe true, maybe false), and 4) a conclusion explaining one's position as based upon an examination of competing opinions. That would be real critical thinking, as superior to any meme.
As for the meme itself, many of its insinuations are misleading, but some are misleading because, for instance, it might be good for one's health (on balance) to consume enough fluoride in one's toothpaste to avoid abscessed teeth (I had a good friend who had this problem: you don't want to know how it ended). Others are misleading because there's no "they" of any interest who is "lying" to us. Smoking, for instance, is publicly admitted to be bad for the lungs; there isn't a "they" who has been allowed to lie to us about smoking (except perhaps the Heartland Institute, advocates of "free market" slavery in all realms of life. Does anyone really pay attention to them?). There's of course nothing wrong with suspicion per se -- one might suspect some things while not suspecting others. The problem with memes like this is that they set up a standard for "critical thinking" which employs suspicion as a substitute for evaluation.
(Note how I criticized the meme in question as being "misleading" rather than "false." There can be plenty of truth to be found even in misleading portrayals -- what I wish to emphasize here is that separating truth from falsehood is a process which can't be avoided through cheap substitutes.)
We won't understand "critical thinking" as the Sunny D of thought unless we understand the "information" background against which it occurs. One recalls from famous books such as Herman and Chomsky's 1988 book Manufacturing Consent that corporate-owned media cherry-picking of facts and information contribute to biased and inaccurate public perceptions of the world. This thesis, in which mass media distortion contributes to a suppression of public action on essential issues, is core reading for this diary -- readers unfamiliar with it are advised to stop reading this diary and pick up Manufacturing Consent.
At any rate, recent developments in the world of manufacturing consent deserve especial notice. Media distortion has gotten to the point, now, at which significant groups of people demand (further) censorship as a "remedy" for problems of opinion-distortion. Glenn Greenwald:
Constitutional illiteracy to the side, the “hate speech” framework for justifying censorship is now insufficient because liberals are eager to silence a much broader range of voices than those they can credibly accuse of being hateful. That is why the newest, and now most popular, censorship framework is to claim that their targets are guilty of spreading “misinformation” or “disinformation.” These terms, by design, have no clear or concise meaning. Like the term “terrorism,” it is their elasticity that makes them so useful.
In evaluating Greenwald's piece one might consider that he puts a rather unfortunate spin upon the information he offers, targeting "liberals" as the primary advocates of censorship. His most pertinent citation of evidence suggests that Democrats favor censorship -- but it's kind of a "fast one" for Greenwald to cite Nancy Pelosi's self-identification as liberal and then use that as a basis for criticism of "liberals" in general. Are there other groups which identify as "liberal" but do not identify as "Democrats"? (By analogy, we might argue that Hitler was a vegetarian but that vegetarians are not necessarily Nazis.)
Nonetheless we might side with Greenwald in generally opposing censorship. Censorship does not eliminate opinion, nor does it change anyone's mind. Rather, censorship impels the censored to "hunker down" in their opinions. After repeated censorings the censored tend to argue that untenable "conspiracies" limit their rights to free expression. "Conspiracy" and "censorship" become quick ways of dismissing contrary opinions. People are not persuaded by limitations upon their abilities to critically examine received opinion; rather, they become incapable of examining, and "believe" in a shallow and easily-overturned way.
Persuasion, on the other hand, is a different process. There is a difference, then, between the dismissal of opinion as inferior based on hard evidence examined in context, and its outright censorship. Removing public access to opinion is, then, the substitute for engaged consideration (and thus probable rejection) of opinion: "critical thinking."
All critical thinking courses ought to have as required material Mark Pedelty's 1995 book War Stories, or at least Chapter 10 of that book: "The Narrative Structure and Agenda of Objective Journalism." In that chapter, Pedelty uncovers the template with which mainstream news media sources are modeled. The mainstream news media story is based on that old staple of American fiction, the Western: the news event is good guys versus bad guys engaged in a shootout at the OK Corral (181). What counts as a news story is the wandering eye of the mass media. The wandering eye is how the mainstream mass media establish continual revenue streams through a "shifting agenda" (188-189) and without a whit's concern for, I dunno, the survival of civilization or things like that. The wandering eye, you see, is how you "know" that Netflix movies are more important than climate change. The wandering eye is the starting point for "critical thinking," itself incapable of criticizing the wandering eye or, significantly, anything.
Today's wandering eye event is Neil Young removing his songs from Spotify. If you want to hear critical thinking about it, listen to David Rovics' podcast. The problem is not merely that people are paying inordinate amounts of attention to whatever the mainstream media oligopolists deem important at any particular time, and that they're doing so with really short attention spans. Though it is DEFINITELY that. The core of "critical thinking" and of its embrace of the wandering eye of the mass media is that it can't be bothered to ponder the world as a whole, instead focusing upon rich people (Neil Young) divesting from other rich people (Spotify), as Rovics points out, while musicians without nice contracts remain poor. Before, that is, "critical thinking" moves on to something else equally irrelevant.
It's like Greta Thunberg said in her TED talk of 2018: If we cared about climate change it would be in the news all the time.
Comments
This is a BIG topic
You could easily make a series of essays about this.
I've been saying for years that Americans aren't stupid, but they are very lazy thinkers. Instead of making their own opinions (which require critical thinking), they select them like they would select a brand of cereal in a supermarket.
When it comes to modern media propaganda, the real crime isn't what they are telling you. It's what they aren't telling you.
I needed to vent.
I am seeing WAAY too much "critical thinking" EVERYWHERE. Did nobody teach these people how to think critically in college?
"It's time for a revolution, but probably not in the terms that people imagine it" -- Frank Zappa
One thing I find odd,
is that so many people who have spoken about disliking that American media has become about "soundbites" are often the same people who despise Joe Rogan. Love him or hate him, he has made it clear that many listeners prefer long wandering conversations about any and all topics. Disproving that MSM needs to go to sound bites to keep our attention. Maybe they needed to go to sound bites for some other reason? Like to try dumb us down?
I recall some 30 years ago a friend talked about how much he liked Charlie Rose. I retorted, "that boring guy who does long monotone discussions in a studio with no background"? I was challenged by the friend to watch one entire episode, start to finish, no matter who the guest was. He said that if I felt that it had been a waste of time then I could punch him in the face as hard as I wanted. Fun challenge! I watched an episode and was hooked. Too bad it turned out Charlie was a friend of Epstein. And also, after some time I found him to be just a stepping stone to better more long winded voices and I left him in the dust.
But Rose got my young self to enjoy long interviews. And now I enjoy Useful Idiots, JR and others like that. I would rather waste 2 hours than 15 minutes. And long form interviews are never a waste of time. Have rarely regretted listening to long interviews.
I think living in the Meme world allows our leadership to sink to a very low level. If all presidential candidates had to give 3 hour interviews with Rogan (as Bernie and Tulsi did) we could sure weed out a bunch of losers.
Thanks Cassiodourus.
Thank you for your insight!
Not all long, meandering discussions contain critical thinking -- but the chances improve once the brain starts moving!
"It's time for a revolution, but probably not in the terms that people imagine it" -- Frank Zappa
Critical thinking...
is a relative term, dependent upon which side of an issue the "thinker" may take. I would posit that we all consider ourselves to be critical thinkers and those on the other side of the issue are against "critical thinking". Bias, it's a thing with humans.
I disagree
It's like scientific method versus faith.
Science...
is for sale in today's world, that's how the bread gets buttered. I wish it wasn't that way but it is what it is.
That is not critical thinking
You are saying that because some scientists have been corrupted then science doesn't exist.
That's ridiculous. Science is science.
Truth and facts exist regardless of the disposition of the individual.
For example, I think Tucker Carlson is WITHOUT A SHADOW OF A DOUBT a corrupt liar that can't be trusted. Yet, he still manages to say something true every once in a while.
The trick to "critical thinking"
-- I'm not saying anyone here is doing it -- but the trick to "critical thinking" is to say that "the science is bought" in such a way so as to absolve the individual saying it of any responsibility for doing the sort of science that isn't bought. After all, if there's a conspiracy between every scientist in the world, their funders, and all of the world's peer-reviewed medical journals (with the global medical press in tow), how could one hope to break through against something so vast?
However, there IS a real problem with Big Pharma hoarding data.
To be sure, let's get Big Pharma to cough up the data they're hoarding. And let's try to avoid having "critical thinking" obscure our view of the real flaws in the existing setup.
"It's time for a revolution, but probably not in the terms that people imagine it" -- Frank Zappa
The shot at me aside...
Critical thinking isn't the problem, the problem is when people don't think at all. There's plenty of that going around.
No.
"Critical thinking," the cheap substitute for critical thinking, is the problem.
"It's time for a revolution, but probably not in the terms that people imagine it" -- Frank Zappa
My Middle School teacher for the German language
always told us, when the whole class sat silently stupefied and said nothing:
"yeah, yeah, I no thinking hurts the head, I do understand that you try to avoid it"
Well, it does hurt a lot to think, critically or not. So,better not think, I would say.
At least you think you can live for a while without headaches.
Have a good day without weather catastrophies. Good Night from my parts of the world.
https://www.euronews.com/live
John Campbells video
contains an interesting hidden nugget, with all sorts of implications.
He uses, as an example unreleased raw data, the antiviral "Tamiflu." The drug later proved to be ineffective, but only after the US purchased a stockpile large enough to include treatment of all Americans for a great sum of money.
What Campbell does not know, or does not point out, is that the creators of Tamiflu are also the creators of the one antiviral treatment in the US for Covid-19, Remdesivir. This drug also does not work — even at $5000 a pop. Nonetheless the FDA continues to allow it to be sold.
So how is this possible? Why did critical thinking fail to warn us that there might be a problem with pandemic medications when the maker refuses to release raw data? Is there a cover-up? Well, indeed there is. Because the Chairman of the Board of the drugmaker and the enabler of the sale of its pandemic drugs to the US government — Tamiflu and Remdezivir — is none other than Donald Rumsfeld, the Defense Secretary of the illegal and corrupt war on Iraq. He made the connections between the Government and drugmakers peddling stategic drugs that do not work — for tremendous sums of money.
What is established here, is not only the withholding of raw data on pandemic drugs purchased by the US government — but the fact that these drugs were all ineffective. How does this reflect on Vaccines purchased by the US government that also have secret raw data?
What does a thinking person do with this?
My critical thinking skills in this matter may help me. But I can only sit on the information and wait for a rare opportunity to point it out. I suppose John Campbell might be interested. But what conclusion can he draw. It's too late for meaningful conclusions.
You should contact him.
I'm sure you two could have a productive discussion.
"It's time for a revolution, but probably not in the terms that people imagine it" -- Frank Zappa
If only critical thinking were a slam dunk.
But that's certainly not your fault that it isn't.
And I know it's not your point.
Insults?
Again?
No.
I would actually like to see the discussion.
"It's time for a revolution, but probably not in the terms that people imagine it" -- Frank Zappa
You mean I wasn't exercising critical thinking...
When I criticized the money involved in science? I beg to differ on that point.
I ask you to take another look at the meme above, forget the bottom sentence and tell me how you disagree with the premise of the top sentence.
Dude, why the hostility? I thought we were having a civil discussion here. I feel like I've just been chastised by a finger wagging nun lecturing me on "faith".
You put a lot of words in my mouth that I never said. I thought you were better than that.
We seem to be talking about two different things
You are talking about "science" (aka some scientists). I'm talking about science.
You can't corrupt actual science, anymore than you can corrupt the truth. Because if you corrupt the truth then its no longer the truth.
I didn't mean to sound hostile. Sorry.
Talk about splitting hairs
Has science never proved wrong?
Science is a process.
But I know! Let's point to the "error" part of the process of trial-and-error which constitutes part of science, and conclude from it that "science is wrong." /snark
This is NOT a trivial point.
"It's time for a revolution, but probably not in the terms that people imagine it" -- Frank Zappa
Are you saying
that an honest mistake, and corruption are the same?
Science and Truth are related, yet very different,
at least in my mind. I see science as a process, one of trial and error. It is empirical, and subject to both the limits of current technology and the inevitable distorting effects of preconceptions and bias of the observer(s). It will never be completely settled. Questions are essential to the continuation of the process.
Truth, on the other hand, is a concept which one may only aspire to apprehend, an absolute that may or may not actually exist. Searching for it is like taking half steps to a wall; one never actually arrives. And yet, it remains one of the most compelling, question driven, human pursuits.
I’ve recently come to appreciate questions more than answers. With a question comes movement, with an answer comes a stop. Without another question, there is no further progress.
“The story around the world gives a silent testimony:
— The Beresovka mammoth, frozen in mud, with buttercups in his mouth…..”
The Adam and Eve Story, Chan Thomas 1963
I couldn't help but notice
just how much your descriptions of truth and science sound the same.
It's subtle.
I know exactly what Oval is talking about. The difference is a powerful engine, for those who know how to use it.
Not everyone.
Not everyone makes arguments based on obvious cherry-pickings of evidence.
Not everyone makes arguments based on ideas that there's some vast conspiracy involving practically everyone in the world to deny what they so vehemently think is the truth.
Not everyone seeks the censorship of ideas they think are dangerous, based on their assumptions concerning the shoddy nature of the substitutes for critical thinking being peddled throughout America.
The people who do these things are for the most part acting upon a basic truth about America. And by truth I mean a genuine truth, resonant with the world. The problem is that they've so committed themselves to "critical thinking" that they buy into one or more cheap substitutes for reasoning about that world, obvious by comparison with the real thing.
NB: The wandering eye, by the way, is not really about "bias" so much as it's about confusing a momentary image caught in a spotlight with an eternal picture of the world. Do you think that a year from now anyone will care about Neil Young's and Spotify's mutual excommunications of each other?
"It's time for a revolution, but probably not in the terms that people imagine it" -- Frank Zappa
@JtC One would think that we
One would think that we would all consider ourselves to be critical thinkers. But I have come across more and more people (some of them very close to me, even married to me) who do not like to do critical thinking. And they are open about it. They choose to be reductionists and narrow their focus to what they see as in their control. They might label themselves as analytical, but not critical?
Many friends who just say "I don't want to think about it". They might be the end result of Memes and sound bites. They intuitively know that they are misleading but don't want to do the cognitive chore of sorting thru things?
The 'truth' is relative,
and bias is for certain, both academically and personally.
...
Maybe we have to define 'bias' with respect?
On a side note
I think Greenwald's essay on census was well written. I think we all know who he’s taking about when he says the left. People like Pelosi are pseudo left and most of us know that’s it just a handle she wears and spouts when running for election or to get people to vote for democrats who have abandoned everything that the true left stands for. But that the left who I call shitlibs that are embracing censorship and banning people that they disagree with are actually embracing authoritarianism. They would have been cheering on McCarthy if he came back they are that far around the bend.
I was going to essay it, but ran out of spoons. Worth a read.
The message echoes from Gaza back to the US. “Starving people is fine.”
I agree with this comment from Glenn's site
I’d add in the democrats pushing Russia Gate too since Trump descended the escalator. Hillary was calling him Putin's puppet from day one.
The message echoes from Gaza back to the US. “Starving people is fine.”
I will look at this from a different direction
To begin you must have an understanding of the word "relatively". I will refer to something as being "relatively larger" and by that I mean not a specific amount, but a specific amount compared to another specific amount. You do not have to know what the specific amounts are, but you do have to understand that one is much greater than the other. Also, when I call something a "fact" I mean it must be accepted as true to understand my argument.
On to my story.
Fact: Ingesting relatively small amounts of fluoride over time will give you a general amount of immunity from dental decay. This is a cumulative process, eventually the more the better, but it is assumed that the process must be gradual - too much at one time is toxic, but this does not matter to this argument.
Fact: Ingesting relatively too much fluoride over time will result in very bad results, eventually - but not not exclusively - crippling deformities.
Now the story proper:
In the late 50s dental experts proposed that the easiest and most effective way to benefit the most people would be to put fluoride into the drinking water. Today it is generally accepted that they were right, but at the time a relatively small but very vocal group of people objected, on ultimately untrue grounds. They misdefined "relatively large" to mean "any and all amounts" and ascribed the most horrific and logically absurd motives to those proposing the fluoride policy. The proponents did what people do when they are attacked, especially if the attack is moral and unjust - they defended themselves, and understandably that defense made a mistake - remember how I said "relatively too much... over time"? well that became "but it takes 20 years". While it does indeed take about 20 years to manifest, it is a cumulative process, not a switch. There are people whose communities over fluoridated for more like 10 years who are suffering lesser but not no results. Fortunately the point is moot - these people are rare and elderly by now, but that is an illustration.
Why does this matter? Because in the mandate war both sides have reason to believe that they are both sides of the fluoride evil. Disclaimer: I am all but unalterably anti mandate, but I admit that there are bad actors claiming to be on my side. Similarly I believe that most pro mandate people are not outright Nazis, but just normal people who are afraid, and fear makes people act out of fear
On to Biden since 1973
Interesting topic
I consider myself a ‘thinker', although lacking at times the knowledge to make ‘critical’ decisions except for myself. I wonder where ’thinking’ and ‘knowing’ meet? Informing oneself is critical, but so is a life built on experience and feeling.
I think what is critically needed has more to do with taking responsibility for oneself in interactions with humanity and the environment. If you’re largely out of touch with that, then how can any critical thinking or choices be constructive?
Perhaps taking responsibility will solve the problem
Gee, if we just apply enough "critical thinking" to the problem of taking responsibility, gee, maybe something will happen. But I am just voicing this sentiment sarcastically. Of course nothing will happen. "Critical thinking" is designed to avoid responsibility.
Here's the most portentous example of "critical thinking" as applied to "responsibility" I can imagine. Every year since the Nineties the nation-states have gotten together to plan out strategies for dealing with climate change -- these are called the "COP meetings." You know, so they can take collective responsibility for the Earth's environment. And every year the nation-states have come up with nothing of any consequence. You would think they would get bored with their repeated failures, 28 now and counting, and quit -- yet the call of responsibility beckons. You can see for yourself the substance of these meetings by clicking on the links that will take you to the UN webpages -- they've lavished all sorts of attention on planning them out, proposing "effective" strategies, and so on. The net benefit of all of this activity, year after year after year: zip, zero, zilch, nada. So, gee, maybe something is wrong with the "critical thinking" they use to deal with the problem. You think so?
Fortunately, the wandering eye has been identified. The insertion of "critical thinking" into this whole process occurred at the preparatory meeting in 1992, at the Rio Earth Summit in Brazil. Camila Moreno summarizes the process well: "Instead of changing our economic system to make it fit within the natural limits of the planet, we are redefining nature so that it fits within the economic system." How do they do that? Well, every year we are told that we need to "reduce carbon emissions" without reference to the numerous processes, extraction, refinement, distribution, and so on, which made (and make) the "carbon emissions" possible in the first place. So we send the wandering eye out -- look! Carbon emissions here! Carbon emissions there! Carbon emissions everywhere!
Meanwhile, no effort has been applied to, say, propose a point at which fossil fuel extraction will come to a complete halt, or do anything minimally effective of that sort. Doing so would require displays of real critical thinking. You can tell that it has crossed their minds, in secret. But not in the way we want. Here was a headline from 2010: "Saudi Arabia to seek compensation for climate pact oil losses." In such a way global ecosystems are being cast into ruin for the principle of "he who dies with the most toys wins." But will anyone admit to that? No! We take responsibility! We hold COP meetings every year!
"It's time for a revolution, but probably not in the terms that people imagine it" -- Frank Zappa
This is an interesting and well-told example.
In recent years, nations have pledged carbon-neutral deadlines.
Doesn't that change the thinking?
No.
"Carbon-neutral" has become another version of "making stuff up." The corporations outsource their stuff to countries which don't care too much about being "carbon-neutral" Like I said, "cutting carbon emissions" is promoted without reference to the vast infrastructure which makes the carbon emissions possible in the first place. "Critical thinking" y'know.
"It's time for a revolution, but probably not in the terms that people imagine it" -- Frank Zappa
OK, now my brain hurts
I had to refresh what I thought critical thinking was, and who was encouraging it (John Dewey), and why.
The Process of Thinking Critically (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-thinking/)
Despite the diversity of our 11 examples, one can recognize a common pattern. Dewey analyzed it as consisting of five phases:
1) suggestions, in which the mind leaps forward to a possible solution;
2) an intellectualization of the difficulty or perplexity into a problem to be solved, a question for which the answer must be sought;
3) the use of one suggestion after another as a leading idea, or hypothesis, to initiate and guide observation and other operations in collection of factual material;
4) the mental elaboration of the idea or supposition as an idea or supposition (reasoning, in the sense on which reasoning is a part, not the whole, of inference); and
5) testing the hypothesis by overt or imaginative action. (Dewey 1933: 106–107; italics in original)
I'm not sure if I can add anything to this discussion, so maybe I am just doing the two finger polka on my keyboard. It seems that Dewey had a motivation in proposing critical thinking in that he recognized that most early education of his day did not have much to offer for the society of the industrial revolution at the beginning of the 20th/late 19th century. His motivation was that children grew up on the and farm and gained an informal education in the natural world, where the world was evolving into an industrial stage. Critical thinking was a way of teaching the thinking part of "manual arts" (industrial and manufacturing processes) enabling rural students a way of participating in the modern economy by evaluating and making choices mentally in any situation.
Deweys 5 phases mirror how I would diagnose a problem with my jeep stalling. Is a problem with cooling, or electrical or fuel systems? Is it the fuel quality, the filter, the lines, the pump? Do I smell gas? These are all physical "facts".
I am not sure there can be critical thinking beyond this, with out each and every "true" fact available on the table. There have always been people willing to throw chaff in the air, for profit, for power, to obscure the truth. Today we are presented with an array of statements given as fact when we can't tell what is true or not without individually tracking down each one to it's source, a huge undertaking. In that we have relied on the media and the politicians to do our critical thinking for us, and they can't be trusted in their motivation or "facts".
Or, I could have missed the point of this entirely, like my hero Emily Litella.
I, for one, am not ready to dismiss
...the alternative facts of Emily Litella as being irrelevant.
Alternative facts can often point to larger categories or systems of control or influence that we have not yet discovered.
Thre are some kinds of facts are science which means part of a
continuum. Which means we see them as continuously evolving.
Nobody knows the true answer to them, meaning they are questions.
Other things like how many fingers do I have on my right hand (five right now) are facts.
This is why the approach of some people to some of these things is so annoying. As they are not facts yet.
Finding this out was liberating because it meant that anybody can be a scientist. Just have something new to say, say it, properly, understand the process and what it is and what it isn't, and you are.
Right now --
the administrators of "safety," without reference to research, assume they can "stop COVID," as if the Omicron variants were the same as the Delta variant. This is not a fully-informed assumption. Part of the problem is that the Omicron variants are new. I really doubt that they will kill us all.
"It's time for a revolution, but probably not in the terms that people imagine it" -- Frank Zappa
However, facts suggest that Omicron
...may very well injure us all.
By February, half of all US citizens may have been infected with Omicron.
Covid-19 can injure the body's organs in ways that may show up later in life.
Omicron can continuously reinfect people who have been infected because it confers no immunity to itself.
Therefore, the health of the US population will be seriously degraded over the next decade or so as compared to the health of the Chinese population, for example.
This is a matter of national security, no doubt.
Sources?
As far as I know, Omicron confers significant immunity to itself because it attacks portions of the body more likely to generate immune responses.
https://www.marca.com/en/lifestyle/2022/01/14/61e1b056e2704efe128b459c.html
"It's time for a revolution, but probably not in the terms that people imagine it" -- Frank Zappa
Two thirds of all new cases of Omicron
...in the UK, for example, are reinfections of Covid-19.
There is no immunity. (I published the study link yesterday..)
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/26/more-than-two-thirds-of-omicron-cases-ar...
I would say that you only heard the lie.
Do you have a link for the lie? That Lifestyle article you linked does not contain a link to the source.
The headline is not specific
Perhaps the participants had previously had Delta, which offers no immunity for Omicron.
We will see if Omicron persists over the longer run, since Omicron is a new disease.
"It's time for a revolution, but probably not in the terms that people imagine it" -- Frank Zappa
I might add --
that the source discussing reinfection from Omicron (as cited in the CNBC source you cited) was from December, when we knew a lot less about Omicron than we do now. More recent data would help.
"It's time for a revolution, but probably not in the terms that people imagine it" -- Frank Zappa
I love your work. I don't want to argue with you.
But I hope your analysis of my link is not an example of critical thinking.
I only say this because I know how the Omicron story ends. Or, doesn't end, to be precise. Do you think that between then and now that no one has written papers and done studies on Omicrons's negative immunity? It's a pretty big deal, no? Omicron and its many variants that are currently unleashed upon the world are about to create a very big mess in fully vaccinated countries, like Denmark. Someone must have checked on this, no?
Anyway, this topic really doesn't belong here. Mea culpa.
It's a huge distraction from your thoughtful essay.
That study is based on the REACT study
I would think that these findings would be highly dependent on how accurate the home testing kits using swabs were. The REACT 2 study using blood from finger prick was concluded but I could not find the date they ended it - before Omicron or after.
One would assume that Omicron reinfection
....has been widely reported throughout the world by now, no?
There's not much I can say here without an outcry for links.
Critical thinking occurs when one does one's own research.
Donald Rumsfeld is dead, he died last year.
I'm pretty sure
Then, that's good news.
Too little too late.
Every mutated virus which with beta-coronaviruses is a constant
Have you ever heard of the Hayflick Limit? Its the limit on cell replication.
You understand that all cells in multi celled animals must replicate, over and over again. We are self replicating nano-machines.
Well, our cells cant replicate continuously, forever, if they could we would be immortal..or a cancer..
Coronavirus infection seems to be cumulative.
And re-infections may have a substantial impact on the body's self repair capability.
That may turn out to be the most important and perhaps even interesting things about it.
Obviously immune senescence is important when it comes to a strategy of
what is the cost of boosting over and over, endless booster shots. I dont mean costs of vaccines in money, I mean what happens to your immune system over the long term. And especially your body's self repair capacity. It seems COVID's various pathologies come at a high cost to your body's replicative senescence.
But .. But.. there are interesting aspects to that.
Almost two years ago I first read about the invasive aspects in the CNS of the SARS-CoV virus and watched an interesting video from scientists of another (non lethal) beta-coronavirus invading the brain via the OSNs. (the sensory neurons in the nsal passages, which link directly to the brain. This it turns out is SARS-CoV-2's means of invading the brain and subsequently, far too often, stopping respiration in peoples sleep. Nurses who have maaged to remain conscious despite the infection described realizing terrified that they were no longer breathing autonomously. (thank God its usually temporary) Often as people were starting to recover, the virus reaces their respiratory nucleus, the Pre-Bottinger complex. This is very bad. However, its invasion of the brain I am almost certain can be stopped, easily. Ive been trying to get people to see this and how. The method is simple enough to start saving lives tomorrow but they refuse to investigate it! But its already been shown to work, in pigs.
CNS-Covid's progress can be stopped, even after it reaches the brain. Research done with piglets shows us.
I've heard of the Hayflick Limit.
I read extensively (and sometimes write) on anti-aging therapies.
I understand your points.
Look at the verious negative problems covid leaves in its wake
What ties them all together, to some extent? What do they have in common?
I never said they would or could. If a virus could have done
that it would have long long ago, and would still be with us today. No, we have mechanisms that protect us, and all other similar life, from them, that is buried at a deeper level, Its a natural mechanism.
They are censoring on a vast scale
I see it first hand.
Do you have any link in the scientific literature?
Because what youre saying contradicts what we're being told.
BTW Lots of people (most of us who have gotten the common cold, some portion of whih are beta-CoVs) have been infected repeatedly with beta-coronaviridae... They seem to have some effect on the immune system that builds up and is cumulative. This was being hypothized at the beginning as one of the reasons older people got sicker from CoVs. I dont know where that went.
Lots is still unknown about effect of repeated reinfections.
How much of our "critical thinking skills"
are influenced and governed by the propaganda that we have been subjected to throughout our formative years and schooling?