Skepticism and critical thinking

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myscreenname said..
Lockdown in Victoria was ...... Looking back, it seems almost unbelievable what the government put us through.

Not sure you could only see it when you looked back. Seemed pretty obvious at the time.

Did you see Peter Costello's comments on it the other day ?

They should have an enquiry of some sort. Oh wait, yeah they did. Except everyone involved either refused to participate or had absolutely no recollection of anything that happened.

Maybe it is just something I know that you don't ?

Try here for a News Corp take on it. I suspect a Guardian article will come soon, as soon as they work out how to spell Costello and stop hyperventilating over whatever they think Trump posted to twitter yesterday.

www.news.com.au/national/victoria/politics/peter-costello-gave-victorias-former-premier-daniel-andrews-a-spray-at-the-alliance-for-responsible-citizenship/news-story/84782bf4d65031d6c56ba7fbfa2bace4

Conspiracy theory beliefs in the adolescent population: A systematic review
Anthony Byrne, David Martin, Claire Jones, Niall Galbraith, Tom Mercer
Journal of adolescence, 2024

Introduction
While the study of conspiracy theory beliefs is a relatively new research area, there has been a rise in academic interest in recent years. The literature provides evidence of relationships between conspiracy theory beliefs and a range of factors, but the vast majority of studies are limited to adult samples, and it is unclear how such beliefs present in adolescence.

Methods
The systematic review was conducted according to the PRISMA?S format. Relevant databases were searched up to February 23, 2023, for quantitative studies related to adolescent conspiracy theory beliefs.

Results
The six included articles show that conspiracy theory beliefs are present from the start of adolescence, and stable from age 14 upwards, with correlations reported for mistrust and paranoid thinking. Negative relationships were reported for cognitive factors such as ontological confusion, cognitive ability, and actively open?minded thinking. Health?related beliefs correlated with adverse childhood experiences, peer problems, conduct, and sociodemographic factors. Right?wing authoritarianism and anxiety positively correlated with intergroup conspiracy theory beliefs.

Conclusion
While some factors from adult studies are replicated in the review, there are differences between age groups. The age at which conspiracy theory beliefs begin to form indicate developmental aspects of adolescence, and possibly childhood, that require further examination. Cognitive factors show promise for interventions and should be explored further. However, the lack of studies using adolescent populations is an issue that must be resolved for a greater understanding of conspiracy theory beliefs and a move toward effective interventions.
s an extreme outcome of common cognitive processes.

^ not sure what you are asking, editing before the time-out will be helpful.

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Carantoc said..
Maybe it is just something I know that you don't ?

Did you know Dan Andrews is getting a statue? Funny thing is one of his biggest critics, former Premier, Jeff Kennet, made the law that entitled him to one.

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myscreenname said..

Carantoc said..
Maybe it is just something I know that you don't ?

Did you know Dan Andrews is getting a statue? Funny thing is one of his biggest critics, former Premier, Jeff Kennet, made the law that entitled him to one.

Public. Toilet.

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".... Negative relationships were reported for cognitive factors such as ontological confusion, cognitive ability, and actively open?minded thinking.... "

I didn't know what odontological confusion was all about. What an interesting little rabbit hole, especially the effect of environment in childhood and early adolescence. Can't see me popping my head up for a while.
FWIW here is a reasonably concise definition I found: (their emphasis)
'Ontological confusion refers to the difficulty or failure to differentiate between what is real and what is not, particularly when distinguishing between abstract concepts (like myths, beliefs, or supernatural entities) and physical reality. It occurs when people mistakenly attribute real-world existence to something that is merely symbolic, fictional, or metaphorical. This confusion can affect decision-making and perceptions of truth, often seen in areas like pseudoscience or conspiracy theories.'

I do have a handle on Haeckel - stressful flashbacks trying to remember all that stuff in Embryology all those years ago!

"A surge in far-right parties entering governments across Europe is raising concerns for science. Policy experts warn that these parties typically show no interest in research and innovation, leaving scientists vulnerable to budget cuts. In the Netherlands, researchers are bracing for ?1 billion (US$1.1 billion) in cuts to the university and research budget under a coalition government including the anti-Islam Party for Freedom. The coalition also wants to limit the intake of international students and implement rules that would require universities to apply for permission to teach courses in English, which could trigger an exodus of foreign academics who don't want to, or can't, teach in Dutch."

www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03506-y

"... the scientific community must fight scientific mis- and disinformation as though lives depended on truth and trust, because they do."

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu4907

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Pcdefender said..
I reckon you and Chris 249 are perfectly suited for Canberra - God help us

I did work in Canberra for a while. One contract was working on one of the teams that took on big business and won, scoring record fines and saving the country hundreds of millions of dollars. The last one included recommending action against high-ups in the military and a very prominent soldier or two. Before that I did things like getting rid of bad and corrupt lawyers. In other words, while pcdefender was playing with his keyboard, I and others were actually taking on crooks and bullies and winning for the good guys.

This is where these guys show their cowardice. There are plenty of other people out there who see things that should be fixed, and then go out and get an education and fix them. Some spend years living in tents to help out people in developing countries, some took big pay cuts (compared to where they could get elsewhere) year after year for decades or more so they could solve social issues, others worked in the desert far from their family.

Those people saw a problem and went out there and fixed it. The CT guys claim to see a problem and just sit inside and whine about it. They don't do any actual investigation themselves, like getting original documents. They don't go out and get degrees so they can find out what is really happening and try to fix it, like scientists and doctor and others do. Nope, they claim to see catastrophes around and yet all they do is sit on the internet and then go to the beach or the pub instead of getting qualifications and a job where they could actually do something.

They are too cowardly to go out and try to take effective action against these so-called perils. Wimps, the lot of them. Like an paralytic old dero with a goon skin, they are all whine and no action.

When a CTer has actually taken on powerful people and businesses and won, rather than whining and fantasising about it, then they can talk. Until then it's all bull**** and cowardice.

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Chris 249 said..


I did work in Canberra for a while...... blah blah ......am I a big boy mummy

Get over yourself

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japie said..
Here you go. Let's get critical:

x.com/0rf/status/1859702328015847914?s=46&t=1GB2TIBB90HpGgoUCFAO5w

A classic case of NOT applying critical thinking. The claim is that "the media and every late night comedian" did something - and yet there is no evidence whatsoever that the claim is true. So show us where "the media and every late night comedian" did what is claimed and people with critical thinking skills will believe you.

Until you give proof, only the sheep will listen.

USA ranked #14 - 3,642 deaths per million.
Australia #108 - 937 deaths per million
Japan ranked #129 - 595 deaths per million.

"What you can safely say is that if you divide the number of reported deaths by the number of reported cases, you will almost certainly get the wrong answer," said John Edmunds, a professor at the centre for mathematical modelling of infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

That's why World Health Organization (WHO) officials - who said last week that 3.4% of the people worldwide confirmed as having been infected with the new coronavirus had died - were careful not to describe that as a mortality rate or death rate.

"In an unfolding epidemic, it can be misleading to look at the naive estimate of deaths so far divided by cases so far," said Christl Donnelly, a disease specialist at Oxford University and Imperial College London. "This is due to the delay from the time it takes for individuals to progress from being diagnosed as cases to dying."

With COVID-19 - the infection caused by the new coronavirus - the time between onset of disease and death is fairly significant, at around two to three weeks or more.

So the sum involved would need to compare the number of deaths at a given point with the actual case numbers from some weeks beforehand.