I'm in the queue for my COVID booster as I thumb-type. Over a thousens people are pariently standing in line.

It just brings home what a crock of s*** the anti-vaxx delusion is.

Of course, we are not civilised people in their minds . We are the sheeple. You can't make it up.

Maybe Jon and Chris can argue if the anti-vaxxers are stupid. Or are we vaxed stupid. Sheesh..

I think the difference is in the degree of good judgement applied to the sources of information, pro and anti.

Some people take a rational approach. For others, the truth is whatever makes them feel important, as part of an imaginary community. If it has lots of likes in your Facebook feed it <l>must be true.

The anti-vaxx problem is a total absence of rational process, not faulty reasoning at all.

All done. Going home.

I had my booster a couple of weeks ago. No sore arm, no side effects, no line and the nurse told me I didn't have to abstain from alcohol. A great day. I had Pfizer.

I skipped from AstraZenaca to Pfizer because AZ doesn't do a booster yet. No problem. Some research is suggesting that a mixed approach has slight benefits so...

I had an appointment, but a walk-in lost patience with the wait (a whole 30 minutes, because all the computers had to be reset when the switchd batches) and went home.

Even if it knocks me down for a day, how can you get it over to people that not dying worth a little trouble?

Wow. Tracy gets the bold headline this morning and a total of 3 pages.. How are those secret LLC's working out for you Dave?

OT. Predictions are that British Columbia will be under a State of Emergency for another 2 weeks or more after wide-spread flooding over much of the interior. This after a heat dome this summer that killed 600 people and countless animals, followed by massive wildfires throughout the province. Major supply routs are cut off barring essential goods from getting to communities in desperate need of them.
The climate crisis is real! I has the sads for the thousands who have lost everything - and more rain coming!

And thousands upon thousands of farm animals haze perished and many thousands more are dying horribly, trapped in flooded barns, with no food or drinking water and farmers and veterinarians unable to get to them as the roads are impassible. It’s all a horrifying situation.

It's heart-breaking.

Are cult members stupid?
It's all relative.
I was unexperianced that's for sure.

But I sure felt stupid as soon as I started studying all the LRH stuff thinking there was something to learn when there really wasn't anything at all.

Just like an addiction once you start off getting that dopamine rush it's human nature to believe it's probably good. In that regard cults are similar.

Took apart my banjo cleaned it up and got it back together again today with new parts.
Fun stuff. https://uploads.disquscdn.c...

Grandkid #3 got her first tooth but mom tells me she can't get a picture of it. https://uploads.disquscdn.c...

Oh those eyes! That smile! What a delight.

Yah she's crawling all over the place. My daughter is loving every bit of it. Still breastfeeding and living healthy. I think it's a plus to wait till 40 to have kids. I'd had 6 by the time I was 33.

Crazy like a fox. Andy Thorn is a musician living in the mountains of Boulder, Colorado.

https://youtu.be/Nr_3MvtSgDE

Love it 💘

[Heart emoji]

I follow Andy on Facebook. That fox pops out every time Andy is playing his guitar or banjo.

“Stupidity” should be distinguished from “ignorance.”

Those who join cults/high control groups generally are not in possession of all the facts about the rabbit-hole they are about to enter. They are ignorant of the truth.
To be stupid would be to be in possession of those facts and then choose to join anyway.

What happens later as the real nature of the group is revealed is about social contracts, sunk cost, webs of friendship and belonging, blackmail, threats of disfellowship and shame.

There are literally millions in a vast variety of dubious groups, political, yogic, religious, anarchic …
Members come from all sorts of backgrounds, all sorts of educations.
Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh aka Osho attracted a preponderance of people with doctorates, yet created one of the most pernicious of groups. The JWs shun education as much as they shun their former members. Anybody caught at the appropriate moment of vulnerability can be snared.
If people can believe in a flat earth when the lunar eclipse we have just seen flattens that idea, then people can believe anything.

https://uploads.disquscdn.c...

UTR, what you said is about one of the most honest and genuine declarations as I’ve read here. So very true.

I've observed that those who criticize cult survivors and victims of domestic abuse are actually the ones who are stupid. They are incapable of complex thought and understanding.

This showed up in my YouTube feed a few days ago.

"Dietrich Bonhoeffer argued that stupid people are more dangerous than evil ones. This is because while we can protest against or fight evil people, against stupid ones we are defenseless — reason falls on deaf ears. Bonhoeffer's famous text, which we slightly edited for this video, serves any free society as a warning of what can happen when certain people gain too much power."

"This much is certain: stupidity is in essence, not an intellectual defect, but a moral one."

https://youtu.be/ww47bR86wSc

Here's another one called 'The Five Laws of Stupidity'. It's around 15 minutes long.

I started to watch it a few months ago when it popped up, but quit part way through.

I saw it a couple of weeks ago, I thought it was pretty interesting.

I'll try again. I sometimes have trouble focusing on things. Or I figure, I'll get back to it, and then I forget. lol

Me too. :)

Uh, link

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

That particular malapropism by the video uploader — "death ears" — is really common, and one that has always particularly bothered me.

It's a mute point.

It's funny, I had just edited it - there were other errors too. I suppose I should (sic) 'em.

Source Code: There are three kinds of space.

Oh yeah? And there are Seven Different Kinds of Smoke.

https://youtu.be/DA6Lvj3Y1cA

There are five kinds of snow
https://www.youtube.com/wat...

https://m.youtube.com/watch...

I do love this song.

Ira Chaleff, one of the people mentioned in the podcast, turns out to be someone who seems to me a classic example of the sort of people $cn attracted in its heyday, but lost and can no longer recruit (much less produce). He went on to get a degree (after attended Berkeley for a while, i'm guessing before getting involved), and become a high regarded expert on management and leadership:

https://exscn2.net/threads/...

ETA: it also turns out that he's become a Unitarian Universalist, which would put him in one of the top groups for educational attainment on the chart i posted earler, and presumably towards the top of this as well even though they're not specifically listed:

https://uploads.disquscdn.c...

The problem with these sorts of tables is that the SD value is as important as the average value, because to cover the entire group you have to scale the range to + and - 3 times the standard deviation, though most of the people (68.2 percent) will be in the + and - 1 times standard deviation. So for example the Episcopalian/Anglican group would have a total range of 78.39 up to 148.47, with the largest group being in the 101.75 to 125.11 range. Of course this is also dependent on how well the people in the group group who where measured represent the actual range of IQ's in the total population of Episcopalian/Anglicans, otherwise these numbers will be skewed.

This has to do with how the so called standard deviation works in conjunction with the normal distribution (a.k.a the Bell Curve) as used by statisticians. There are other distribution function, which might be more suitable.

Funnily enough if you look at the numbers for Atheists and Agnostics, the ranges are not that dissimilar to those of the top ranking Episcopalians/Anglicans. The sample for Atheists is smaller though (and bigger for the Agnostics). But both groups exceed the range for the Episcopalians/Anglicans at the top and bottom end thanks to their larger standard deviations!

thanks, i agree IQ is problematic. but i think it points to some generalities, useful in a case like this.

Spike Robinson wrote:

"Despite years of evidence showing that those who are seduced into authoritarian groups are, in fact, intelligent, altruistic, idealistic and often highly educated, the myth of the “stupid” cult member persists."

I think that the words "intelligent, altruistic, idealistic" don't apply to ALL "who are seduced into authoritarian groups". In fact, David Miscavige would be a prime example of this.

Well, yes, nothing applies to ALL cases. But point of case: David Miscavige wasn't seduced into Scientology; he was brought in by his father (who I had the privilege to know personally, and was a delightful, caring man) - and then raised in the Sea Org. But you're right, no generalization applies to everyone.

it also doesn't apply to all groups, or at all points in their history.

JW's for example are at the bottom in educational attainment, but they have long (if not always) derided 'worldly' education as a matter of ideology so that's hardly any surprise.

as i've written, $cn seems to have attracted more educated if not even highly educated people in its heyday, but under under-educated Capt. Davey's leadership Hubs' derision of traditional education (which helped attract people from the 'tune in, drop out' era who had been disillusioned with college experiences) has turned into full-blown dismissal of 'wog' education that leaves them with a new crop of people who like Dear Leader didn't even graduate from high school.

Cult members stupid? How do we know this cult is a cult? Answer: ex-members have convinced the world that this cult is a cult. They were the cult members of yesterday.

It seems we might never know what went wrong when atleast 25 people were poisoned and one killed by a Scientologist's "Real Water" according to a CDC report - but the authors tear the company a new one https://arstechnica.com/sci...

Health investigators suspect additional poisonings went undetected. They noted in their report that hospital records indicated an unusual spike in unexplained "toxic liver diseases" around the time of the poisonings.

Hence "at least" 25.

Real Water concentrate??

https://cdn.arstechnica.net...

Which implies that something is added that needs diluting and...

No. Like homeopathy, they would have a meangless pitch to 'explain' this away.

Its just not a rational claim so it's impossible to refut by rational means.

"Just Add...... wait, what?"

dihydrogen monoxide...and you have Real Water!

No, no, Rasha, that’s our other product - “Instant Water”, available in handy sachets.

"Instant Water"

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/D...