[desipis]

This is my line of thinking. Which is why I see professions that deal with the real world (engineers, doctors, lawyers to some extent) remaining more grounded in their thinking when compared to those that focus on people's opinions (politicians, media, academics, professional moralisers). The former are regularly conditioned to think in terms of unavoidable realities, while the later are repeatedly conditioned to drift further and further into their collective delusions.

[TeaDrunk]

I don’t actually know if this is true. Do you have studies to back this claim up? I don’t trust that the medical system is more grounded in their thinking- the Public Health Service purposefully withheld medical treatment for syphilis for hundreds of black men for over 40 years. They willfully decided to target black men with this disease and then refused to treat them when a cure became available, going so far as to prevent the military from informing or treating these men during war time. Even at the time the experiment began, the ethical guidelines recommended syphilis be treated with what they had at the time, and the doctors knowing ignored this ethical recommendation, and continued on passing through the hands of multiple doctors working on preventing healthcare from being issued to black men for over 40 years. The medical community promoted people participating in this act and it was only after repeated whistleblower attempts was the extent of this horrific behavior uncovered. Indeed it was only when the media started to cover it that the full extent of the inhumane, unjustifiable behavior at the hands of doctors came to light.

To this day we know that the medical field is systematically unable to accurately treat black and female patients equivalently to white and male patients. (Unable for example to realize heart attacks in female patients represent differently for decades).

I don’t buy without formal study that the average deviation from basic opinions of reality deviate more in certain fields of study than others. Claiming it without any evidence is itself a form of deviating from observed reality.

[mistermann]

> Which is why I see professions that deal with the real world (engineers, doctors, lawyers to some extent) remaining more grounded in their thinking when compared to those that focus on people's opinions (politicians, media, academics, professional moralisers).

I very much agree. However, a largely unrealized ~fact is that people from these professions (well, ones who hold the "right" ideas) are regularly portrayed by politicians and the media as flawless, omniscient, beyond reproach (which is increasingly being physically enforced on the internet, with a net that grows ever larger). The downstream consequences of this likely well-intended behavior are extremely complex - sure, censorship will provide a setback to conspiracy theorists' ability to speak their ideas freely, but how much fuel does this provide to their resolve, and how many mainstream people will see what is clearly happening and dip their toes into the pool, and have their eyes opened even further when they discover the vast amount of actually truthful information that doesn't make it into the "trustworthy mainstream news" (even further reinforcing the idea in their mind that the public is lied to, and illustrating that this is done regularly)?

A meme war approach to governance seems like not the best approach for the sole (for now) superpower on the planet, and they have a very delicate balancing act to truth-proof the internet without the mainstream masses noticing and starting to ask questions.

We've been warned about this behavior many times throughout history by people wiser than ourselves, perhaps as a species it might be an opportune time to pause for a moment and consider where the path we are currently heading down at stop speed eventually leads.

"A liar should have a good memory." - Quintilian

"If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything." - Mark Twain

"The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later thousandfold." - Aristotle