Highly Educated People More Likely to Fall For QAnon's Conspiracy Theories (politico.com) 290
The more educated people are, the more likely they are to believe claims made by QAnon, according to a tracking poll by polling firm Morning Consult. From Politico:
Twenty-seven percent of people with a postgraduate degree responded that QAnon claims are either very accurate or somewhat accurate. That compared to 20% of those with a bachelor's degree and 14% of those with less than a college degree. The numbers were similar in Morning Consult's October poll.
But a new survey from the same pollsters also shows fewer Americans believing in QAnon's conspiracy theories. Newsweek writes: While eight percent of Americans still believe the radical conspiracy theory is "very accurate" and a further 10 percent consider its claims "somewhat accurate," this 18 percent figure is a six-point drop from a similar poll in October... Trust in the widely debunked conspiracy listed as a domestic terrorist threat by the FBI is also dropping among Republicans. According to the survey, 24 percent of GOP voters who have heard of QAnon say its claims are at least somewhat accurate — a 14-point drop from October...
And 51% of the adults surveyed also believe social media's spread of conspiracy theories is a "major problem."
But a new survey from the same pollsters also shows fewer Americans believing in QAnon's conspiracy theories. Newsweek writes: While eight percent of Americans still believe the radical conspiracy theory is "very accurate" and a further 10 percent consider its claims "somewhat accurate," this 18 percent figure is a six-point drop from a similar poll in October... Trust in the widely debunked conspiracy listed as a domestic terrorist threat by the FBI is also dropping among Republicans. According to the survey, 24 percent of GOP voters who have heard of QAnon say its claims are at least somewhat accurate — a 14-point drop from October...
And 51% of the adults surveyed also believe social media's spread of conspiracy theories is a "major problem."
People are lying about their education in polls (Score:3, Insightful)
Obvious explanation.
Re: (Score:2)
Obvious explanation.
And they also didn't control for field of degree. What are the figures for STEM vs traditional humanities vs critical theory junk?
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Obvious explanation.
How do they even find people to poll? I don't think I'd ever agree to do an opinion poll by phone or online. I've gotten a few calls that claim to being polls, but I end that call quickly. Have never seen an online poll that purports to be an unbiased poll.
This is all they say about their participant selection:
This poll was conducted between January 28-January 30, 2021 among a national sample of 2200Adults. The interviews were conducted online and the data were weighted to approximate a targetsample of Adults based on age, gender, educational attainment, race, and region. Results from thefull survey have a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points
Re:People are lying about their education in polls (Score:5, Insightful)
A degree, especially a post-graduate degree, indicates that you know a lot about a subject. Note the singular, a subject. If I have an advanced degree in English, that doesn't imply any knowledge of civics, biology, or physics. It doesn't even mean I am well-versed in Old English or the works of Charles Dickens. History majors in the US may know the American Civil War backwards and forwards but only have a passing knowledge of the English Civil War and be completely ignorant of Chinese history. A degree, outside of your field, means that you can learn and that's it.
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A degree also doesn't gaurantee you know anything about the subject past the date your got it either. There are entire schools known as "diploma mills" that are just for getting people credentials that are not worth the paper they're printed on. So just because someone has a diploma or degree in a subject, that doesn't guarantee anything about them except wanting a higher wage for the same work someone with no diploma or degree would have who has a lot more experience.
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I call BS here and everywhere this is touted. A PhD means you're an expert in that topic, but it in no way implies that that's the only subject about which you are well-versed. To get a PhD (in America), you have to go through primary and secondary education (multi-subject), attain a bachelor's degree (multi-subject with a courseload emphasis on a particular subject), and then go into studying/researching for your PhD in a highly targeted subject.
Getting a PhD does not negate the 4 years of advanced multi-s
Re: People are lying about their education in poll (Score:4, Interesting)
As a UK electronic engineer, I ask "WTF does this mean?"
Depends on Degree and Institute (Score:2)
Degree != Intelligence
That depends on the subject of the degree and where you got it from. You cannot get a PhD in physics, chemistry, maths etc. from a decent institution without a very high degree of logical reasoning and a sceptical approach to claims.
Of course, if you have an MBA from the University of MailOrderDegrees.com then you have selected a sample of people who think that this is a useful qualification and if they are gullible enough to believe that then is it really surprising they believe in QAnon?
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This pandemic is going to be a litmus test for remote learning seeing if there's a difference in methodology from MailOrderDegrees and a regular school.
counterintuitive (Score:2)
I've noticed this, too, perplexed, as I imagined greater intelligence would impart an insulation-like effect on conspiracy theories... I guess this is what they meant by too smart for your own good.
Re:counterintuitive (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sounds like an argument for not being intelligent.
Re:counterintuitive (Score:5, Insightful)
Being an idiot doesn't help with any of those things either, but it does provide a convenient excuse.
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I've always suspected intelligence and good judgement might not be linked... also, and no less importantly, it's been my admittedly small sample-sized experience that intelligence and willpower may not fly frequently in the same flock.
Re:counterintuitive (Score:5, Insightful)
Intelligent and education aren't the same thing. Just sayin'.
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Intelligent and education aren't the same thing. Just sayin'.
There is some weak correlation in there, but yes.
Re:counterintuitive (Score:5, Insightful)
You can get a lot of education without having critical thinking skills, and you can have critical thinking skills without ever getting an education.
Where I see the danger is that if you don't have critical thinking skills but get a lot of education, you'll end up vastly overestimating your abilities. I've met a lot of very well educated people who were absolutely certain that they know everything, because they actually do know virtually everything in one narrow field, but they aren't able to recognize that their narrow exceptional understanding doesn't translate to other areas.
While Dunning-Kruger is definitely an issue, this is the flip side of that. I've been in "the ivory tower", and while it's not an epidemic, it's definitely a real problem. This is compounded by real geniuses who people don't get. I've seen both - the genius who points out some fatal flaw that pretty much nobody understands, and the educated idiot who points out what he thinks is a flaw but it's actually a gap in his understanding. It's easy for the educated idiot to place himself on the same pedestal, because to most observers, the situation is identical.
I have the most respect for the people who are keenly aware of what they don't know. I don't care how much education they have, if they are aware of what they don't know, that's someone I trust. And it's someone I trust to not make dumb mistakes.
Re:counterintuitive (Score:4, Insightful)
Martin Luther King had something to say about this as an eighteen year old college student:
https://www.drmartinlutherking... [drmartinlutherkingjr.com]
Education must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively and to think for one's self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda. At this point, I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose. A great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.
The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.
Re:counterintuitive (Score:4, Insightful)
I have the most respect for the people who are keenly aware of what they don't know. I don't care how much education they have, if they are aware of what they don't know, that's someone I trust. And it's someone I trust to not make dumb mistakes.
Amen. And I'll extend that a bit: I respect people who realize that, no matter how sure they are, they may be wrong and will therefore listen to opposing opinions. Doesn't matter if this is about tech, political views, or anything else. I just want a chance to convince them and a chance for them to convince me. Otherwise neither I nor they will ever learn anything.
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There is a distinct difference between intelligence, and wisdom.
Sadly, society hardly values either of those anymore.
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Diploma mills give out a bunch of worthless degrees, as well.
And even a very good degree is no guarantee of in-subject, much less general, competence. In a very highly ranked computer science program (typically in the top 5 US universities for CS), my partner for projects in the Operating Systems course was both incompetent and lazy. That was well after the wash-out classes, so I suspect he graduated with the same CS degree as me.
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You seem to be confusing "highly intelligent" with "highly educated."
No, they're not synonyms. Nor is one the requirement for the other. Yes, it's possible for highly educated people to be dumb as rocks outside their field of specialization. Hell, it's possible for them to be dumb as rocks within their field of specialization if said field is esoteric enough that noone can understand them....
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And to make matters worse, many highly intelligent people chose to not apply that intelligence to certain questions hence turning themselves into complete morons. And they do not understand what they are doing because self-reflection is one of those questions. A tool becomes worthless if not applied competently. Intelligence is just a tool.
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Independent thinking is not correlated with education or intelligence.
Re:counterintuitive (Score:4, Interesting)
Not all degrees in higher education inspire the same critical thinking skills. I would be surprised if someone with a postgraduate degree in history, as just one example, fell for QAnon's bullshit, but a Computer Programmer? Ultimately the failure here is in people's ability to think critically about the things they are reading online, and not every academic path helps with that.
I have two friends, one with a Masters in Italian, another with a PhD in Computer Science. They watched a two hour "documentary" (I won't name it because I don't want to give it press) and afterwards were convinced that 9/11 was an inside job and that George Bush was the mastermind. I watched the same documentary with them afterwards, and challenged them on many of the "facts" it presented. They thought I was naive. I then suggested we both look into it together and do more research. After all, if the president of the United planned an attack on American soil, that would be kind of important thing to understand and organize against, don't you think? They refused. They had seen enough. They were both very well educated, and were just as susceptible to confirmation bias as anyone else.
The annoying teacher in high school in or college that is constantly challenging students to rethink, rethink, and rethink their beliefs, the ways they read novels, the way they think about history, and the way they think about their own lives is very, very necessary in a functional democracy.
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Having subscribed to conspiracy myth at a youthful age, I understand the siren's lure and, thus, the fallacy of the belief set it propagates. I am distressed by the lack of critical thinking necessary to believe installing the antithesis of democracy improves the lot of us.
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Who SAY they have a Postgraduate degree (Score:5, Interesting)
Adherents relationship with the truth has always been tenuous at best. Given that desire to be viewed as more special than they actually are is a key tenet of conspiracy theory attraction, there is likely to be some considerable overlap between those who believe such theories, and are willing to falsely inflate their education, income, or other perceived measure of personal value.
Hey now (Score:2)
My ass pull theory (Score:2)
Highly educated people often confuse logical fallacies with inherently bad thinking. Thus they imagine that to refuse to even consider a ridiculous claim from a stupid person is ad hominem and therefore bad. Logical fallacies are certainly important when evaluating formal debates. In day to day life refusing to use the heuristics that lie behind said fallacies will waste your time and energy like nothing else possibly can.
This is a poll (Score:5, Insightful)
The links are busted so I can only guess, but my guess is that the people willing to answer the poll are skewing the results. Either that or people with more education are just more likely to be exposed (which is a worse thought, since it means the numbers among less education could be higher if they could be reached).
Either way we need to do more to teach critical thinking. It can be taught, but it's a lot of work, it's expensive and outside of preventing the collapse of human civilization it doesn't have any value. It's not like it's a job skill or anything. At least not outside of a handful of fields.
Donald Trump loves the poorly educated (Score:2, Insightful)
and this is exactly why.
"This is one of those views which are so absurd that only very learned men could possibly adopt them." - Bertrand Russell
"There is nothing so stupid as an educated man, if you get him off the thing he was educated in." - Will Rogers
This problem is also called Engineer's Syndrome (or Engineer's Disease) -- people assume that because they are highly qualified in one area, they are highly qualified in other areas as well.
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The links are busted so I can only guess
Looking at the poll-numbers for the mentioned question gives us this (sum very accurate + somewhat accurate) for some selected demographics:
GenZers: 1997-2012: 12% (1+11)
Millennials: 1981-1996: 44% (12+12)
GenXers: 1965-1980: 22% (13+19)
Baby Boomers: 1946-1964: 9% (14+18)
Ideo: Liberal (1-3): 23% (10+13)
Ideo: Moderate (4): 20% (8+12)
Ideo: Conservative (5-7): 30% (15+15)
Very Favorable of Trump: 46% (27+51)
Very Unfavorable of Trump: 12% (5+7)
2016 Vote: Hillary Clinton: 19% (8+11)
2016 Vote: Donald Trump: 37% (2
The problem isn't demographics (Score:2)
Parent informative. (Score:2)
I figured Millennials would do worst! I read an education study (not poll) on how that generation were the worst at telling fact from opinion! It was about double gen X. They didn't get to gen Z because this study was a while ago.
Boomers had Nixon etc. and the last of old media... they do seem to aim irrationally for the middle ground on everything from what I've seen.
Schools can't undo CULTURE. The culture forces us in education to churn out consumer robots at increasing rates and it's not easy to fight
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This is a poll not a study.
I was a good /.er and didn't even really read the summary.
So a poll, where people are able to say they have as much education as they wish they had? Or even more? Where we're 100% sure that there was a representative sample of the population?
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Either way we need to do more to teach critical thinking. It can be taught,
100% agree. Someone mentioned that Google should put a short movie in front of controversial videos that describes one logical fallacy in a humorous, understandable way. That way as people get more into conspiracy theories, they also get more understanding of logic.
I do think the "fact checks" that Facebook puts up are having a good effect (even if the fact checkers have no sense of humor). Posts are getting better at providing supporting links, and are getting sharper in the precision of their arguments.
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The poll was designed to give an excuse for censorship and to support authoritarianism. "See? Even the educated fall for this shit, it needs to be banned posthaste. For your own good of course."
Alternate hypothesis (Score:5, Insightful)
People who support QAnon are more likely to exaggerate their level of education on a survey-response form.
Re:Alternate hypothesis (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Alternate hypothesis (Score:5, Interesting)
Alternative title (Score:5, Funny)
Highly Educated People More Likely to Fall For QAnon's Conspiracy Theories
....or "Highly Educated People Turn Out Dumber Than Most Others"
The converse must also be true (Score:3)
So you have to be really uneducated and stupid to know that QAnon's ideas are all nonsense?
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I can think of a number of possible explanations.
Perhaps the “uneducated” are better versed at separating truth from falsehood because they need that as a survival skill?
Or maybe they either don’t have the same level of access to the online media often used to spread the stupidity - or are too busy working multiple low paying jobs to waste time online?
Or, more simply, the poll respondents who are into QAnon are already well-practiced liars.
Remembering stuff (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, that Westminster thing is pretty out-there. Thanks for the link.
In the context of the q anon stuff though, we should remind ourselves that just because some crazy things _do_ happen, not all crazy conspiracy theories are true.
Education cannot fix stupid (Score:2)
It is not that these people do not have the tools available to check the facts. The problem is that they chose to not use these tools. And at the same time their education gives them a high level of false confidence that they of course see what is going on.
This is not really a new effect. The number of independent thinkers is not higher among highly educated people.
Caveat: I have pretty much the maximum in education that you can get.
Dunning Kruger (Score:5, Insightful)
Or a corollary to that. People with post graduate degrees convince themselves that their education (usually in a narrow field) extends to many other domains. And if they back this up with a small amount of information (or mis information) they reach the peak of Mount Stupid.
This is also true for investment scams. Smart people tend to get taken in a lot. Of course, scammers tend to target the wealthy, who tend to be more highly educated. But it's pretty easy to stroke someone's ego or convince them that they must be stupid to pass up such a deal. The Left uses this tactic as well. You must be some sort of dumbshit hillbilly if you don't buy into what all the college professors and scientists say.
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Well, you are some dumbshit hillbilly if you don't listen to what the professors and research scientists say!
If it's outside their domain and you give them equal trust you are not so bright; however, it is STILL wise to just listen to them for everything!
If you are too slow to see the error trusting them on everything then it's unlikely that you will do better guessing than them anyway so it's a win to just tell everybody to trust them all the time. Certainly better than millennia of trusting religious lea
Re:Dunning Kruger (Score:4, Interesting)
Most people that I know are respectable adults that know that they don't fully understand issues outside of their domain. The problem is they don't recognize when they don't know something within their own domain. They can only learn from making mistakes and only realize the error of their ways when it's made clearly obvious.
An analogy might be someone who has a poorly working car that doesn't start well. Eventually they find out that when the car doesn't start right away, you keep trying to turn it over. But then some day someone else has a car that doesn't want to start. When they try, it makes a horrible sound. Except they keep trying because "that's what you do". They don't realize that the difference in sound means the situation is different and proceed to make the situation worse.
No analogy is perfect, but I used this because it highlights what should be obvious but isn't. Recognizing what you don't know is actually part of the definition of abstract reasoning, which is core to creative problem solving.
A simple actual real world example is people under-valuing a skill. I've seen carpenters who were so skillful, they made the work look easy. And nearly every person who watched only took away "he got it perfect the first time, therefore the problem was easy". Far from correct. I immediately thought to myself, if I had to make a bunch of cuts of various angles, even with my problem solving abilities and strong application of math, I would have f'd that up horribly my first, and probably several subsequent attempts. For me, I saw that person as having done a beyond excellent job. Everyone else thought he was some unskilled worker who did "simple" things that anyone could do, and talked about how the service was over-paid and to go with someone cheaper next time.
Most people are rife with Dunning-Kruger, but the real adults that I work with generally recognize this and like to get input from others. If done correctly, a small collective of people of different skills can help compensate for each other. But there are a select few who stand out as almost never making such mistakes.
Yeah, Polls are Scientifically Accurate, NOT (Score:4, Interesting)
More stats needed (Score:3)
Looking at the numbers presented in the poll, it also seems that believing in Qanon in a predominantly white male thing; with about 50% of "ethinicity: black" who say they haven't heard of Qanon.
Provided the small number of minority who have advanced degrees, maybe that's what we are seeing here...
Fiction is more interesting than truth (Score:3)
I think it's just a case of the truth being boring, and a wild conspiracy theory being more interesting. Combine that with 4 years of Dear Leader telling people that they shouldn't listen to anyone but him, and a highly educated person's tendency to believe they're smarter than everyone else...it's a fertile combo. All of a sudden, they're convinced they've taken the red pill and now see what has been hidden from everyone else.
Which is more interesting, a global pandemic that killed almost half a million people in the US, or the global plot by a secret cabal led by Jeffrey Epstein from his secret submarine base in Arizona, working with Bill Gates and the telecom companies to implant tracking devices in all humans? Isolated people with a fair bit of downtime can often lead to wandering minds...
The QAnon conspiracy say a lot of things (Score:2)
I suspect while the outrageous claims like a pedo ring is widely rejected, the existence of a "Deep State" sort of makes sense.
If you take a look at all the political contributions, I think it is the same thing as saying that politicians can be bought.
Who wouldn't believe that?
Re: (Score:2)
The most believable lie is a half-truth.
Re: (Score:2)
We're seeing this logical fallacy a lot lately (I don't know its name, if someone knows it, please tell me). Someone repeats a truth, then another truth, then another truth. Finally at the end, they repeat three lies. Half of what they say is 100% percent true, so by the time listeners get to the false part, they aren't listening as carefully.
Outrageous (Score:2)
The craziest thing about the QAnon nonsense is that, as dumb as a lot of their allegations are, if you were to make similar allegations against certain high-profile celebrities and power brokers a decade ago, you would have been met with nearly the same level of disbelief.
I'm sure you've heard of Jeffrey Epstein, and maybe have an inkling of what Roman Polanski has been accused of. Ever hear of Jimmy Savile?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
If you were to write a novel following these events, you'd be laughe
Just like they fall for the BLM shit. (Score:2)
This is why college/university is becoming a horrible option.
It's teaching kids to regurgitate what they're told.
And discouraging the use of actual critical thinking skills.
A better title (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: A better title (Score:2)
It's teaching kids to regurgitate what they're told. Do you realise that people have been saying that since at least Plato's time?
Re: A better title (Score:2)
Says something about MBA holders (Score:2)
What a waste of 6yrs...
An old meme by me said: (Score:3)
"Education is not Intelligence"
Especially when our education is mostly rote memorization without understanding.
If you are looking for actually intelligent people, try looking for depressed misfits that did not drop out early but dumped *school* because it simply limited them. (Like Einstein, whose grades were C on average.)
Misfits because they are too advanced for our primitive society, and depressed because all the intelligence can't change a thing about the power of the masses of morons. (Unless they are also sociopaths and don't have that pesky conscience to hinder them.)
Ability to think critically and not fool yourself. (Score:3)
This has little to do with having a degree, supposedly a mark of superior intelligence.
It has *everything* to do with critical and lateral thinking.
The ability to view and research something from multiple angles.
The ability to leave any cognitive bias (where possible) aside.
The ability to gather facts, as best you can.
If you cannot gather all the facts needed to make a valid opinion on something, it is best not to have one at all.
Nothing wrong with saying "I don't know."
Lots wrong with saying "This is true!"
You can fill in small gaps in research, but if you try to fill a gaping hole - to bridge a connection with very little evidence - more fool you.
But, heck, people do it all the time, out of laziness, cognitive bias and a lack of ability to think and reason critically.
Correct in my experience. (Score:3)
The stupidest people I know are highly educated.
Stupid and educated are not antonyms.
Hypothis (Score:3)
Being highly educated means you are disproportionately more likely information worker. While having only a high school diploma means you probably do something on your feet (so to speak).
If you are information worker, in front of computer likely checking facebook and doom scrolling once every few hours. Your phone is on your desk vibrating as people you follow re-tweet stuff. You spend you entire day being constantly bombarded with both the conspiracy theories and other suspect information that might be the result of error. Its so much you can't filter it all. Some of sticks, you start make connections to badly remembered things you read the other day that seem to confirm the conspiratorial nonsense (which you don't recognize as such because its 'confirmed' by other things you think you know) its authored to work that way.
On the other hand if you don't have a fancy degree and spend your day ringing people up at the checkout counter or arranging sheets of metal ahead of the stamping press you are not bombarded wih this crap all day. You might school some of it once on facebook when you get home or whatever but you are probably tired and just want dinner, a beer, and some laughs and possibly a rhomp with your spouse if the kids go to bed on time. You know not to believe everything you read just like the guy with PHD does. Life has offered enough disappointments to confirm that lesson and just because you did not spend 12 years in college does not make you moron that misses that memo. You see some of the bullshit posted but *importantly* you did not spend a week and half reading about that pervert Epstine who mysteriously died in prison's political connection. So the yarn that some pizza chain is a tool for the Clintons to groom children sounds more like a yarn to you.
Nature hates vacuum (Score:3)
- Smart people want to know the truth
- Mainstream media reports bullshit
So smart people go and find bullshit that is more interesting, or more persuasive or more in line with their worldviews. It's a sad situation, because most of us can't tell if something is true as soon as it's out of our immediate expertise or is taking place out of our immediate neighborhood. Without diligent and minimally biased media, it's everyone having their own truth.
Critical Thinking isnt Automatic w/ more Education (Score:3)
I bet those who believe the conspiracies and have higher education are heavily weighted in these subjects.
Re: (Score:2)
This all happens because we have no trustworthy sources of information.
Reading Slashdot should fix that problem. ;-p
Re: (Score:3)
When the well-educated are more likely to vote Democrat it's proof the Democratic party has the right ideas.
Look at the polling data [morningconsult.com] and it's shows most QAnon believers are Republicans, self-employed and approve of Trump. What is really being said that education does not automatically mean you are less susceptible.
Based on what you know, how accurate or inaccurate are the claims made by QAnon?
Format:
info | very accurate | somewhat accuate
Political Affiliation:
Dem (no lean) | 07%(31) | 11%(46)
Ind (no lean) | 04%(11) | 12%(32)
Rep (no lean) | 21%(65) | 17
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't read the article because, well, I just don't care enough, but based on the numbers you reprinted it doesn't seem like a large sample size.
Re:The highly educated are always right. (Score:5, Interesting)
I looked at the survey,
https://assets.morningconsult.... [morningconsult.com]
Here is the methodology section:
This poll was conducted between January 28-January 30, 2021 among a national sample of 2200
Adults. The interviews were conducted online and the data were weighted to approximate a target
sample of Adults based on age, gender, educational attainment, race, and region. Results from the
full survey have a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
So already I'm suspicious. How were the 2200 selected and contacted?
The poll asked "Based on what you know, how accurate or inaccurate are the claims made by QAnon?"
13% of self-described postgrads (25 out of 195) said "very accurate", vs 6% (38 out of 675) of the had-no-college respondents.
There is no central source of Qanon stories.
I suspect that very few educated people actually read any Q drops or hang out on 4chan/8chan/8kun or whereever it is now, but rather they get "Qanon says" links from like minded people. So highly educated people might forward Qanon articles about "Hollywood is full of pedophiles" to each other.
But they would not forward the story about a video of Hillary Clinton lapping up the blood of a child while wearing a mask made from skin taken from that child's face.
I believe that if the poll had taken a list of actual Q drops and Qanon theories and asked if they believed each one, there would have been a different result. This is not something I would actually bet on, though.
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And fail. It is quite enough for not very powerful small local groups or individuals to be supported by lots and lots of people that look away systematically. Some hysterical ones that accused a lot of people of child abuse and caused witch-hunts when nothing like that was true did the rest.
Re:The highly educated are always right. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Epstein case has proven beyond doubt that a very powerful group of pedophiles does in fact exist.
What is the motive for watering down the definition of paedophile like this?
None of Epstein's victims were pre-pubescent, they were young women, some of whom were under the age of consent.
Both bad, but what do you gain from conflating the two?
Re: (Score:2)
The definition I've seen was attraction to 13 years of age or younger, some of the girls Epstein had enslaved as prostitutes were of that age. Normal adults would call them children.
Maybe it's bad you are someone trying to claim that the perps weren't pedophiles.
Re:The highly educated are always right. (Score:5, Informative)
The definition I've seen was attraction to 13 years of age or younger
Pedophilia is a psychological condition of being sexually attracted to prepubescent children, whether the attraction is acted on or not. There is no specific age cutoff because children reach puberty at different ages.
It is not illegal to be a pedophile. Most pedophiles never commit any sex crimes.
It is illegal to be a child molester, but most child molesters are not pedophiles, because the "children" being molested are post-pubescent.
The distinction is important - Cancer vs Ebola (Score:3)
Quite a defense of the pedophiles.
Pedophiles are people that have or want to have sex (they believe they are sexually attracted to) children, children by most definitions being not adults and below the age of consent (16-18 in most jurisdictions).
There are ways to get treatment for people that believe they are attracted to children. Chemical castration is one way, but intense psychotherapy helps too. There is no redemption for child molesters though, once started they cannot help themselves.
So yeah, unpopular opinion here, but a pedophile likes prepubescent children. A sleazebag statutory rapist criminal likes people who have hit puberty, but not the age of consent. Protip, never argue this at parties....you look like an asshole. However, here's why I think it's important. It's like the difference between cancer and ebola...both will kill you and are terrible, but have different treatments and prevention mechanism. Or if you prefer ebola vs rabies if you want a virus to virus comparison.
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I've not seen anything to the contrary, but only read the more reliable sources.
An no, it does not mean there were not baby-eating cannibals in his circle either. I see where your logic is headed.
Re:The highly educated are always right. (Score:4, Interesting)
Those are unsubstantiated allegations made by someone with a huge financial incentive to make unsubstantiated allegations.
Look, Epstein was a horrible human being who did terrible things. The truth is good enough to establish that.
There is no need to pollute his proven crimes with additional allegations that are likely untrue. If, as alleged, three desperately poor French girls from three different French families were sold to him, then what is stopping these poor girls (who would be adults now) from coming forward and collecting millions from his estate? The obvious answer is that they don't exist.
He was a child molester and a sex trafficker. But there is no evidence that he was a pedophile.
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> How they managed to successfully play down Trump's friendship with Epstein I don't quite understand.
Because this was looked into during the original Pizzagate. Trump threw Epstein out of the Mar-a-Lago after he tried hitting on a kid there, helped the families seek justice decades ago, etc. not that you'd know by reading the front page of Reddit. Oh, he was once on a one-hop flight home, too. There's not a lot of stuff there and the comparison only gets worse once you realize how many prominent peop
Re:The highly educated are always right. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:The highly educated are always right. (Score:5, Funny)
I think the crux is that some of those theories started off pretty cleverly and there was often a lot of sarcasm involved. Then, other people actually run with it and take it far too seriously. Like with the boogaloo stuff.
I honestly can't imagine well educated people actually fall for these obvious fabrications. I highly question that poll. But I only have a bachelor degree,, so apparently I am somehow enlightened when it comes to these matters :D
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I think Russians did interfere in the 2016 election, and this was born out with evidence through investigations. But it did not effect the results that much, the big problem was bad campaigning by Hillary and an underestimation of core Trump supporters. Remember, things are not always 0% versus 100%, there's a lot in the middle. Bias is more more likely to cause someone to think that Russians were not involved in any way whatsoever, or that Russians were totally the cause of Trump winning, and you need to
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That's kind of an irrelevant point though. Of course there was somebody living in that part of the world, at that time, called Jesus. It was a fairly common name.
The only thing that was interesting about the existence of this person, was the things that were written about him later on. Among these things, were statements around his alleged divine parentage. So the "historical Jesus" is not separate from the idea of the "Son of God".
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But note that they cover Epstein's "suicide" as if it's connected to the Clintons and couldn't be possibly connected to Trump, and yet Trump is the one that made Alex Acosta one of his chief cabinet members and Trump is the one that has been accused of raping two very young girls along with Epstein.
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That's the thing, QAnon means all things to all people. The original was a bunch of bogus fortune cookie nonsense, with proclamations like "Trust Sessions. Trust the Plan" being one of the more infamous and clearly nonsensical predictions.
Some of the themes that came up--there are a lot of pedos in high places (Epstein, Weinstein, etc.) and some of them may be involved in intelligence, or that the media is mostly activists propagating outrage-porn as clickbait are even true, while the conspiracy rabbit hol
Re: The highly educated are always right. (Score:4)
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Based on your final line, I'm 99% sure you're trolling, but...
And those who read this in completion, and verify what I've written.
I read it, but was unable to verify the first thing I checked. Given that it was the easiest thing to check I find myself unimpressed with your rigour.
Since we are in the midst of the Covid "pandemic" here are a few fun facts for you...
If you visit the CDC website, and you look at total deaths from ALL causes, you will find that more people died in 2019 than did in 2020. If we have a "pandemic" then those deaths numbers attributed to Covid, which is actually named SARS-CoV-2, then it should reflect approximately Total Number of Deaths in 2019 PLUS the reported deaths by Covid for example.
This chart [ourworldindata.org] shows excess deaths last year for the US as a percentage of the average number of deaths (over the preceding 5 years), on a week by week basis.
Or, if you prefer, this chart [ourworldindata.org] shows the true number of deaths, on a week by week basis, for the last six years. You should be able to see that t
Re: The highly educated are always right. (Score:3)
If a vaccine could cause infertility it would be a fucking medical breakthrough that would get someone a fricking Nobel prize, and make a drugs company somewhere a shit load of money. The fact one does not exist right now marketed as one tells you its total made up crap.
Same goes the shit about it altering your DNA. Being able to reliably alter DNA is the stuff of science fiction right now, because if it was bloody real there are a shit load of genetic diseases that would be cured.
Claims it can dereligioniz
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Politico is pro-GOP; they've had to hide it over the last several years because Republicans are largely sociopaths, liars, grifters, and lunatics, but it's always skewed right,.
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Not true either. Some cases were dismissed due to lack of standing or other judicial doctrine, but many of the cases filed on behalf of his team were lost on the merits. Other cases were moot because even a success by the Trump campaign would have done nothing to change the outcome.
You can read through the complete list here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
In many cases, the Trump campaign lost because it could not supply sufficient evidence of their allegations to move the case forward. Note, that the Tru
Re: The highly educated are always right. (Score:2)
Before the election CNN claimed that it could take months to certify the election but when the election results went their way they quickly ran with it and didn't want any questions. So CNN said it might be close, big deal. Within hours the result became clear and in the end it was, to use Trump's own words for exactly the same result a landslide.