Carlo Engelbrecht

[Nick Norwitz MD PhD @nicknorwitz]

The internet has created a strange situation where people are overeducated in conclusions and undereducated in mechanisms.

[Carlo Engelbrecht @Carlo_Explorer]

@dr_ericberg Sweet potato

[Gareth Cliff @GarethCliff]

(3)

Everyone thinks they’d be brave enough, if they were in Nazi Germany, to cry out “This is wrong!”. Everyone thinks they’d stand up to a bully if they were magically transported back to school. Everyone thinks they’d be virtuous, skeptical and courageous. But they wouldn’t. They’d do what almost everyone did in 2020: They’d join the herd.

I did a mushroom 'journey' with a friend a few years ago and might’ve figured out why mobs terrify me. It’s purely anecdotal and in no way supports the argument I’ve made so far, but I experienced what I assume to be some kind of regression or fantasy of a past life - and in it, a mob decided to kill me. The details are sketchy, and I don’t know what I might’ve done to provoke them, but they cut my head off. In this life, for better or worse, I’m deeply suspicious of any large group of people - especially if they’re animated by certitude and righteousness. Mobs have done infinitely more damage to civilisation than they have good, and anyone who believes in the wisdom of the crowd needs to be given a wide berth.

Herd mentality, collective responsibility, the abdication of individual agency, prioritizing feelings of security and the desire to be liked sit together at one end of human nature. Honest curiosity, an appetite for risk, personal accountability, individual spirit and consent to consequence are at the other. That’s where character is formed. That’s where adventure begins. That’s where genius might appear. Every great story from history is about someone who swam upstream, who refused to bow, who said no when everyone else said yes. Evolution and our genes have bestowed on us an irresistible need to belong, but being alive in this century privileges us in ways our primitive ancestors could never have imagined.

Consensus has never impressed me. Courage always does.

[Gareth Cliff @GarethCliff]

(2)

Research on the “hidden-profile” problem finds that groups disproportionately discuss information already shared by most members. Unique information - the very information that could correct the group - is mentioned less often and carries less influence. A meta-analysis covering 65 studies and 3,189 groups found that groups discussed substantially more common information than unique information. This produces an absurd result: the group may collectively possess enough information to reach the right answer, yet they still choose the wrong one because it rewards familiarity rather than discovery.

Group-polarisation research shows that when like-minded people discuss an issue, their average position generally moves further in the direction they already favoured. Cautious groups become more cautious; risk-seeking groups become riskier; politically agitated groups become more zealous. Discussion therefore does not automatically moderate bad ideas. Among people with similar assumptions, it can refine the arguments, strengthen identity and remove remaining doubts, but a room full of people who are only slightly wrong can leave the room unanimously and spectacularly wrong.

Information-cascade theory explains how people rationally abandon their private information after observing what others have chosen. Once a few early decisions point in one direction, later participants infer that the earlier people must know something. They imitate them, creating further “evidence” for the next person. The result can be mass behaviour that is simultaneously widespread, fragile and poorly informed. This explains fashions, speculative bubbles, corporate fads, political slogans and moral panics: A million people can repeat an idea whose evidential ancestry leads back to one confident fool.

People routinely infer expertise from certainty, repetition, status and consensus. None of those things guarantees truth. A statement repeated ten thousand times does not acquire ten thousand pieces of evidence. It acquires familiarity, and familiarity masquerades as plausibility. This is one of the reasons that propaganda works. Its first purpose isn’t to convince you something is true. It’s to make disagreement feel abnormal.

Truth competes against narratives with superior marketing - but crowds can only be wise when a system protects independence. Crowds become foolish when the system rewards conformity.

John Stuart Mill understood that nonconformity has social value independent of whether every eccentric is correct: “The mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service.” H. L. Mencken offered the more acid formulation: “Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.” Tocqueville’s concern was not merely that the majority could pass bad laws. It was that majority opinion could exercise an intellectual despotism, making independent thought socially intolerable. His work describes democratic conformity as a threat to individuality and vigour - and democracy.

Crowds do not eliminate individual stupidity. They can coordinate it - and crowds are least trustworthy when they’re the most certain.

So let’s go back to COVID, Fauci and the millions of people all over the world who stopped sense-checking the wisdom of the crowd. The people who just conformed to new dictates, who believed everything they saw on the news, social media and what the “experts” told them. Some of them did all that, despite knowing how stupid it was to force toddlers to wear masks. Those people are still among us, pretending it never happened. Those people were the ones persecuting their own neighbours. Those people told the rest of us we were putting grandma at risk - and they’ll do it again.

(Continued)

[Gareth Cliff @GarethCliff]

(1) Herd Immunity

Apart from Fox News, some of the people I follow on X, and one or two Instagram reels, nobody, it seems, is very interested in Dr. Fauci’s latest appearance before Rand Paul’s committee in Congress. If you’re not interested, I can’t say I blame you. Most of us just want to forget COVID, masks, lockdowns, vaccines and that whole disgraceful episode in our recent history. But stay with me for a second, and I’ll tell you why you should:

The disastrous decisions made by elected and unelected officials; the destruction of public trust in experts, medicine and the media; and, most importantly, the damage done to children, businesses, families, and society should not so easily be memory-holed just because we’re embarrassed about the whole affair. In fact, unless we face up to how badly the world handled that pandemic, we will find ourselves dangerously unprepared for any crisis of that scale in the future.

A post-mortem is long overdue. Fauci is only the most megalomaniacal and self-serving manifestation of a worldview that set humanity back more than any disease should have. That worldview is one that many still live by - the government is right and will save us; trust the experts; believe what people say not what they do; force people to comply if they won’t; silence criticism and outlaw offense; follow the herd.

That last bit of received, perceived wisdom is precisely why so much of the human race is so utterly disappointing.

As we enter an era where billions of people already use artificial intelligence to do everything from answering their emails to writing laws - the ability to think for yourself, to function as the world changes around you and to apply your mind in the moment (whether you end up being right or wrong) - is the best weapon we have to create a future that is better than our past.

Modern public opinion - especially online - usually violates every condition required for wisdom and reason. People want to knowkiolp99 what others think before deciding what they think. Algorithms amplify the fashionable opinion. Social opprobrium discourages sincere dissent. Straightforward, obvious axioms are overridden by moral, political and emotional posturing.

A major 2011 experiment by Jan Lorenz and Heiko Rauhaut asked people to make factual estimates, then exposed them to other participants’ answers. Even modest social influence caused estimates to converge without making them more accurate. Worse, the narrowing range of answers created greater confidence in the group’s conclusion. The researchers called this the social-influence effect: diversity declines, confidence rises, but they don’t get any closer to the truth.

Solomon Asch’s famous conformity experiments gave participants an extremely simple visual task: matching lines of equal length. Alone, people were correct almost all the time. When surrounded by actors unanimously giving an obviously wrong answer, participants adopted the wrong answer on roughly a third of the critical trials. The question was not difficult. The social situation was uncomfortable. The most revealing variation was what happened when only one person dissented. Once unanimity was broken, conformity fell dramatically. The dissenter did not even always need to be correct; his existence showed that disagreement was socially possible. People do not need permission to believe something. They need permission to say it…. (Continued)

[Jentezen Franklin @Jentezen]

You don't just stumble upon a great relationship with God. You have to seek Him daily with all your heart.

[Abu @abuchanlife]

In 1995 Nvidia failed to deliver the chip Sega paid for.

Jensen Huang flew to Tokyo, admitted he picked the wrong architecture, and asked Sega to convert the $5M owed into equity.

He told them the money would probably be lost. Sega said yes anyway.

That $5M funded the RIVA 128. Yesterday Huang went back to the same Akihabara arcade to thank Irimajiri in person, 30 years later.

Nvidia survives, goes public. Sega sells early.

Held to today, that stake would be worth about $1 trillion.

[Carlo Engelbrecht @Carlo_Explorer]

@FirstSquawk Just maybe time for him to look in the mirror and ask himself that exact question

[Carlo Engelbrecht @Carlo_Explorer]

@TrumpDailyPosts Helicopter anyone, hypocrisy on full display in Stars and Stripes

[Bear Grylls OBE @BearGrylls]

Fear doesn't shrink when you wait it out. It grows. Every time I've walked towards the thing that scared me, it got smaller. Every time I avoided it, it grew bigger. Move towards it. Even an inch at a time.

[Bear Grylls OBE @BearGrylls]

I've learned that we lose our power when we try to live on our own strength alone. I need His helping hand, His peace within, and that quiet assurance.

[Lila Rose @LilaGraceRose]

“The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.”

 Psalm 19:1

[Anna Lulis @annamlulis]

We serve a God who created this

[Unapologetic @Unapologx]

🔥🚨BREAKING: It is being claimed on X that In 2009, Tim Tebow proved the existence of God, a post that is trending reveals the statistically impossible consistency with a bible verse and the former football player.

Trad West: ‘Tim Tebow wrote John 3:16” under his eyes during the National Championship Game. 94 million people searched the verse that night.

Exactly three years later to the day, Tebow played his first NFL playoff game against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

He threw for 316 yards. His yards per completion were 31.6. The TV rating peaked at 31.6. The opponent’s time of possession was 31:06. The only interception in the game was thrown on 3rd and 16. The game was played exactly 316 weeks after Tebow declared he would play college football for the University of Florida.

Six different statistics. All pointing to the same verse. On the same date. Three years apart.

Nobody planned this. Nobody could have.’

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

[Bear Grylls OBE @BearGrylls]

I’ve learned that courage isn’t a feeling. It’s a decision. A choice you make in the moment when every instinct is telling you to run. You don’t have to feel brave to be brave.

[Piers Morgan @piersmorgan]

Oh, and while I’m at it, why is this shocking story that dropped yesterday not getting the same attention as Kimmel’s 48-hour suspension? It’s far more egregious but the U.S. mainstream media doesn’t seem to care. Why?
(Obviously, I know why… )

[YoungHoon Kim @yhbryankimiq]

As the world’s highest IQ record holder, I believe that Jesus Christ is God, the way and the truth and the life.

[zerohedge @zerohedge]

China Doesn't Have The Economic Strength To Save South Africa https://t.co/vVdlQe2jsi

[Sean Feucht @seanfeucht]

One of the biggest wins in the 1st 100 days of Trump 2.0?

The normalization and celebration of children in the White House. 👏🏼🇺🇸👏🏼🇺🇸

[John C. Maxwell @TheJohnCMaxwell]

The only adequate preparation for tomorrow is the right use of today.