 G'day mate 40 here. I was just looking at comments to my blog I was thinking about how easy is it to dismiss information that you don't understand I remember one day in geometry class in high school. I was just plowing my way through an assignment I think I'd missed a day or two being sick So I was coming back to class the teacher gave an assignment and then he was walking around checking on our progress on the assignment and And he came to me looked at what I was doing and said you don't have a clue about what you're doing What we're doing You don't you don't understand what we're doing. Do you I mean, that's an awful feeling When you don't realize you don't understand what you're supposed to be doing what everyone's doing and I noticed this particularly with the online exchanges, but also just as much in real life that It's so easy to dismiss information. You don't understand that you didn't take the time to to process in the first place it's like I heard this statement that we distort or ignore 80% of the reality that we encounter to keep ourselves feeling safe And I think there's something to that like we want to feel safe and so we develop these these beliefs about how the world works And anything that contradicts or challenges these our fundamental beliefs about how the world works. We just ignore because we need these beliefs to feel safe, so maybe your beliefs as an orthodox Jew or your beliefs as a Christian or your beliefs as a conservative or your beliefs as a nationalist or a socialist or secular humanist or I don't know a gestalt psychologist or a cognitive behavioral therapist or Whatever your beliefs are that you have that make the world intelligible and safe to you And then you encounter reality that challenges that Or information that challenges that or perspectives that challenges that then you just got to dismiss it So a friend and I are reading Charles Darwin's origin of species and uh, my friends are a Christian. I'm an orthodox Jew And so when you're religious, it's very tempting to just dismiss any information that challenges your religious beliefs and Why not just like live with the uncertainty like there's so much information out there like reality is so confusing Why not just say okay? I I believe in God and I believe in my religion and then theory of evolution appears to challenge these fundamental beliefs of mine and uh I don't need to be after reconcile how to seemingly irreconcilable perspectives on reality Can be true so I notice with say distant right thinkers that uh, they are all hysterical about demographic changes in the united states and paying attention to demographic change makes sense and It makes sense to me that certain demographics And demographic directions make you feel more more happy more comfortable and More optimistic about life and other demographic changes will make you more pessimistic and less comfortable About life. So I see nothing wrong with wanting certain demographic Certain demographics in your neighborhood in your city in your state in your country On the other hand, do you simply accept us census bureau as God's honest truth? I notice people Just take a statistic or take a government Piece of research like the the census bureau And just assume that it's accurate and true without doing any thought introspection investigation about How did the government come to this conclusion? Or this academic paper They do a study. Let's say of 17 people who take aspirin And they find that it promotes sleep, right? But they only studied 17 people how seriously can you take it? It wasn't a double-blind study And so when you see us census bureau saying that the number of whites dropped between 2010 and 2020 and you're white And you feel like you're losing your country Well, how did the u.s census bureau come to this determination like how was the 2020 census done differently than the 2010 census? When you do that that investigation, you realize you just can't take So many reports just on face value But there's always More work to be done if you want to get hysterical and you want to You know devote your life to turning around demographic issues Why don't you take the time to understand the the issues that you want to devote your life to? And so what I see on the distant right is a complete failure of investigation To understand how the u.s census bureau How the census is conducted and How it distorts reality So for example, I'm 1 16th chinese So if I put down on the u.s census that I'm Caucasian and asian the u.s census would count me as solely as asian as a person of color You know 15 16th Caucasian So knowing how reports are produced Like knowing the process not knowing their bias knowing how they're distorting reality It seems to me Important you don't just take You know it used to be that you just took what your doctor said. That's it now people are much more likely to get a second opinion And much more likely to do their own independent investigation. So dentists. Okay dentists frequently Recommend unnecessary and expensive procedures because they make money that way doctors frequently recommend unnecessary and expensive procedures Because they make money that way and it's not even that they're consciously biased it's that When you've got a financial incentive you you're going to be very likely to be unconsciously biased So it's up to us to do some investigation. Is this This dental procedure is this medical procedure really necessary? Is it really in my best interest? What what are the life outcomes with people who undergo this procedure? All right, we no longer just trust our soul to our clergy and our body to the doctor and our finances the accountant and Our our politics to our favorite political party All right, we have to we have to work do a little bit of work and It does not serve us to have contempt prior to investigation and it's no it's no great accomplishment to dismiss information perspective That you don't understand That you haven't taken the time to understand