SIO320: Patreon QnA 8!

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:12 Thomas: And welcome to Serious Inquiries Only, this is Q &A something something, January 2022, I can't remember what number it is, but uh, how's it going, Lindsey?

0:00:22 Lindsey: All right, are you sure it's 2022?

0:00:25 Thomas: No, you called me on it, uh, now that you've called my bluff, I don't know. We'll tell you what, we could answer a question related to time. Where was that one? It was in one of the Q &As. So we have, we have some cues to a, from like November and then this latest one. Uh, oh, there we go. Roger. Why don't, why don't we answer Roger's question in honor of the end of the year? How will you remember 2021? Uh, what happened that stood out personally or in the world that will stick with you?

0:00:27 Lindsey: Yeah. Oh, I would be delighted.

0:01:00 Lindsey: I mean, the easy answer is the insurrection, I guess. I don't know. Do you think Roger wants like a happy thing?

0:01:03 Thomas: Oh crap. Was that that year? God.

0:01:08 Lindsey: I mean 2021 was also the year that I became the official co-host of Serious Inquiries Only. That was pretty exciting.

0:01:15 Thomas: Oh man. I would have thought that was 2020. I don't have no sense of time, this year is just so, I guess my answer is no, I won't remember 2021 because I don't think it happened. It's tough, man, I, it's hard, it's also really hard having young kids because the the amount that they changed in the time, in two years, basically two years of the pandemic, the amount that they've changed is so much that it, it's a little heartbreaking, like, oh yeah, this thing's been around since I had different humans, because

0:01:17 Lindsey: No.

0:01:44 Lindsey: Yeah. Hmm? Yeah,

0:01:49 Thomas: They do, if anyone has kids, like, they're different humans. That I know it's the same human but not really, you just sort of like throw away one and it turns into another or something, you know what I mean, like, it just, or like, I don't know what the analogy is, but yeah, so that sucks and I'm having memories of like the first lockdown and it's just it feels so long ago, but also not, but also yes. I just, it sucks.

0:01:54 Lindsey: It's not really. No, yeah.

0:02:17 Lindsey: I think time having no meaning has been a theme that we've been going on for a a really long time now. Impossible to say how long.

0:02:21 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. I would like a controversial statement. I Would Like To Be Done With This Pandemic. You come here for the hot take. They will try to cancel me for this take. Don't let them win. I am not a fan of the pandemic.

0:02:33 Lindsey: How dare you, sir?

0:02:45 Thomas: You won't want to hear that anywhere else. Spotify, can you give me a hundred million dollars, please? I tell the truths that no one, you know, no, no, one wants

0:02:43 Lindsey: No, me neither.

0:02:55 Lindsey: It's true. That's why people come to SIO. It is true. Yeah.

0:02:57 Thomas: Yeah oh man, so what will I remember? Yeah, that, yeah, Jan 6 is pretty, uh, pretty big there, that's a big one. And for you, you covered the personal too, what it was, a personal, uh, well, I moved, I guess it'll always be the year I moved, move to a different house, which is weird because so many of my pandemic memories are from the last house. And, uh, that's, that's a weird thing too. It's two, two houses in the pandemic, two different places, all, but all the same, it's all the the same memory still. Um, I think that's about it. I can't think of anything else.

0:03:05 Lindsey: Mm-hmm. Yeah? Mm hmm?

0:03:31 Lindsey: That's terrible. Yeah, well, we both got haircuts. That was exciting.

0:03:36 Thomas: I got, oh, how many, I was going to say one, but no, I did start getting haircuts. I didn't get my haircut for a long time, I probably got like two haircuts in 2021. This is important, we all need to know only one, wow.

0:03:41 Lindsey: Mm hm. Oh, really? I only got one. Mm

0:03:52 Thomas: I mean, it really depends on what style your hair is in, you know, kind of mine doesn't, yeah, we

0:03:52 Lindsey: Mm. Yeah! Yeah. Yes, it does. Mine is still in the pandemic style. So you don't really need to get that maintained too often.

0:04:03 Thomas: Keep wanting to cut Phoebe's, Phoebe's hair is so long and she just was like, "Yeah, I want to grow it for longer and longer and forever," and then we try to brush it and it's all like, it just gets so tangled and it was a nightmare for her. So she, she has not gotten a haircut in quite a while. Anyway. So that's that first question. I think we covered it, Roger.

0:04:23 Lindsey: I think we did it justice.

0:04:24 Thomas: Yeah. I, this is such a weird year. I really did disappear for me. I don't remember. And then like, you know, what's amazing is the primary, like the democratic primary took place kind of like before, just before and during the pandemic starting. Isn't that weird? It feels like a lifetime ago.

0:04:25 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it is. Yeah, I remember that when I went to vote in the primary that people were like vaguely aware of it and not shaking hands, but that was about all that was happening in response to it. Yeah, that is weird to think about.

0:04:53 Thomas: Wow. Well, here's a great question. Enough of the casual stuff. Let's get the hard info from Lobsterman over here. From William Patterson, what are some of the most common mistakes when reading or interpreting a paper or study? I feel like Like, you are the expert to answer that.

0:05:06 Lindsey: Oh, hmm.

0:05:17 Lindsey: Yeah. And there's a bunch that we could talk about here. And it might be a good like actual show topic at some point. I think if I spent some time with it, you know, this could be Like a really good full show topic. But two things occurred to me off the top of my head as issues that always arise in any classes where I'm having students read, like, a lot of primary research articles. So one is using a generalizability critique to suggest that a study did not demonstrate a causal effect. So, like, for instance, if we did a study of college freshmen on sleep deprivation, we deprived half of them of sleep and let the other half get a full eight hours, and then measured their reaction time to see if sleepy folks have impaired reaction time, which they do.

0:05:26 Thomas: I agree.

0:05:59 Lindsey: In evaluating what that study demonstrates, one critique that I get a lot as students are sort of just starting to develop these skills is that, like, they think that that because the study was on college students, that this means that the effect they found is not valid. And really, you know, the generalizability critiques are very, very separate from whether a study compellingly demonstrated that X has a causal effect on Y, right? Those things don't really speak to each other that much.

0:06:15 Thomas: Okay. Hmm.

0:06:28 Lindsey: So it's like, it does limit your study in the sense that, you can only confidently generalize that causal effect to this specific age group, or maybe to college students for other reasons. And it's possible that younger folks than college students or older folks might show a larger or smaller effect based on age. But that doesn't mean that it undermines that they demonstrated the causal effect in the group that they demonstrated it in.

0:06:53 Thomas: Right.

0:06:53 Lindsey: So yeah, So that's a common one. And I think I hear that beyond the classroom as well. So that was one that occurred to me. The other one that I think is common is taking operational definitions of variables at face value, right? So like, one thing that we've talked about in like several studies that we have sort of torn apart on this show is that the researchers will say that they're studying one thing. And then when you look at how they measure that variable, they didn't really measure it very well.

0:06:54 Thomas: Yeah. Right. Yeah.

0:07:24 Lindsey: And that totally changes how you read the results, right. But if you if you're not an expert in that area, it might not be obvious, like why their measure was really problematic. So one example that occurred to me, we read an article, I taught a class on parasocial relationships last semester. And we read this article that was looking at correlations between personality traits and the frequency of parasoial relationship use, which is pretty cool.

But when we looked at their methods, the measure of parasoical relationships was just this three item measure that assessed whether participants spent time with a pet, prayed, or sought information about their favorite celebrity. And they use those three items, a composite of those three atoms as their measure of like engaging in parasocial relationships. And so we spent all this time talking about like, okay, what are the assumptions built into, you know, conceptualizing spending time with the pet as a parasozial relationship?

What about people's relationship with God, which is an interesting one, I think. So anyway, when if you if you can't evaluate, like how well something is being being operationalized that often means that you're missing a big piece of what's going on in a study so those are two that I see a lot but but there's a bunch more that we could talk about that maybe people would

0:08:35 Lindsey: Find interesting

0:08:35 Thomas: I'd add one. Big mistake to not listen to Sirius and Queers only if it does, if Lindsay takes us through one of these. That's my contribution to this.

0:08:36 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:08:45 Lindsey: Those are fun, yeah.

0:08:45 Thomas: That's a big mistake to make. Yeah. Good stuff. Yeah. Well, it'd be fun to go over more of those. I'm sure the listening audience would love to be better at dissecting studies. All right, let's tackle another one from, this is catch up, again, catch up Q &A.

0:08:48 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

0:09:05 Thomas: GCU Problem Child asks, this might be dated, I don't know, but we'll see. The other day, Scathing interviewed a guy who claimed he was denied the opportunity to get into a religious studies PhD program because he wrote and self-published a book called Disproving Christianity. The interview was entirely sympathetic, but I don't know if I agree that it's entirely unreasonable to think someone probably won't produce particularly good religious studies scholarship if they're an avowed anti-theist. Well, I don't know the details of this, but a book called Disproving Christianity doesn't necessarily make you an anti-theist, but maybe there's more information in the interview or something, thing.

0:09:46 Thomas: Anyway, I mean to give a non-religion related example. Imagine if someone wrote a book about how much they think North Korea sucks and then applied to do a PhD in North Korean history. Even though I think disliking North Korea is entirely reasonable, I don't think it would be unreasonable for the head of the department to be like, this person's bias means they're probably not going to produce very good scholarship and we only have so many people we can't accept. Um, religious studies PhD program, is that anything you know anything about?

0:09:46 Lindsey: Uh, Yeah, a little bit, I mean, it's very different from theology, right? Those are very different kinds of programs.

0:10:21 Thomas: Yeah. That's What that's Why I was wondering, yeah, this sound if it's more about, again, yeah, studies that suggest, is it, is it, um, like how, how broad of views do you think are usually represented there?

0:10:24 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:10:37 Lindsey: I, my guess is probably pretty broad. Um, I mean, you know, it's like, I don't, I don't have the sense that religious studies is a super like empirical quantitative discipline. I think it's more on the humanity side. And so it's, it's probably, you know, my, my understanding of what is happening in that, in that area is that it's the study of sort of like the content of religions and understanding the historical and cultural context of religions and the roles that they play in people's lives. So I, I actually, I mean, I'm skeptical that that people's personal religious views are actually that relevant to the scholarship they can do in religious studies, yeah.

0:11:19 Thomas: Interesting. Well, I got, while we're being skeptical, I got a question. And based on your experience, and again, generalizing, we can get incomplete information here, but would someone be able to have a good idea of why they might have gotten denied an opportunity to get into a religious study or any sort of PhD program?

0:11:23 Lindsey: In My experience, no, that is, that's not the kind of thing that you typically receive feedback on, um, I mean, you can imagine why, right? I mean, that opens up departments to to liability, they talk about the decision making process, process. So I, yeah, I don't know anything about this case either. I didn't hear this interview, but right.

0:11:40 Thomas: Yeah.

0:11:59 Thomas: In general, no, but who knows? They could have had some unique circumstance, I guess. Maybe they were in contact with somebody.

0:12:06 Lindsey: Yeah. I mean, it's possible that, you know, maybe the specific department they applied to really is being discriminatory based on people's personal views. If so, they're probably not a great example of religious studies department, but it seems also totally possible that maybe this person is not as good of a candidate as they think they are. And it's, I don't know how they would distinguish how that decision was made.

0:12:29 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:12:33 Lindsey: So I looked at least at the little summary on Amazon of this book, and says that he's using an analysis of the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament to build a, quote, "logical and reasonable case against their validity." So, I wonder if, I mean, one question I would have is, how did the admissions panel know that he'd read this book? It's not exactly the kind of thing I would like Google

0:12:58 Thomas: Written this book? No, that he had written the book?

0:12:59 Lindsey: Huh, yeah. Like, How they, how would they find that out? It's, I wouldn't go looking for that kind of information about a candidate. So I'm wondering if this candidate brought up this book as, like, evidence that they would be a good candidate in religious studies. And so if this person thinks that that's what good scholarship looks like in religious cities, like, maybe they aren't a great candidate It, because I don't think that the point of religious studies is to evaluate the truth claims of religions. I think, again, it's to look at it more as, like, an aspect of culture almost. And I'm speaking as an outsider here, but it just, I don't know.

0:13:02 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm.

0:13:37 Thomas: Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, who knows? Well, interesting. I had a chance to answer some questions about PhD-related stuff to people like me who have no idea how that tends to work. Another one from GCU Problem Child here that I think we can tackle from November.

0:14:00 Thomas: This is related to something Andrew said on Opening Arguments. If you say progressives should support any politician who acknowledges something needs to be done about climate change, that will, will that just create a situation where politicians just need to pay lip service to dealing with climate change? Um, the other day, Andrew made the argument that progressive should support anybody. He said you and Andrew, but I, I didn't, this was all Andrew.

I didn't actually, I didn't agree with, with, with this for reasons I'll talk, talk about necessarily. But anyway, Andrew made the argument that progressives should support any politician who admits something needs to be done about climate change, because that will eventually result in a situation where so many elected politicians have that viewpoint that something will actually get done. But here's some interesting perspective that I think is useful for US people here.

So GC Problem Child says, in the UK, basically every PM pays lip service to the idea that climate change is real and something needs to be done about it. Even our very reactionary Tory PM gives speeches where he says, we need to do something about climate change before it's too late. The thing is, it's all just talk, and we're not really doing anything about climate exchange.

I think if you made it so every Democrat and even a majority of GOP acknowledged the need to fight climate change, you'd just be in the same situation we are. You'd get a whole load of eloquent speeches about humanity being on the cliff edge, but nothing significant would actually get passed. Andrew made an analogy to the American right slowly normalizing being anti-abortion by supporting any politician that says anything negative, uh, any, anything negative stuff. So, okay.

So any, any negative stuff about abortion, but I think that analogy doesn't really work, because banning abortion doesn't affect powerful people, whereas tackling climate change most assuredly would. Well, that's interesting. Yeah. Um, I think I, I went with this question because I do think it's interesting to consider that idea that it's like, there could be, to us, we're so in the U.S., we're so used to, like, the major, um, hurdle in climate change being the Republican Party, but

0:16:06 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:16:07 Thomas: That's not necessarily true, like, it could be that even if Republicans were like, yeah, okay, let's do something, then some other nothing would get done for either, you know, um, kind of corrupt reasons, or or moneyed interest reasons, or maybe some sort of other systemic, systemic failure, or just the inability of people to agree on one solution, you know, like that, that's another issue here, that a lot of people may say, yeah, we got to do something to fight climate change. And then if they all disagree enough on what thing needs to be done, that, you know, you might have a situation where everyone acknowledges the problem and yet nothing's really getting done. And I think on a global scale, that happens a decent amount. Out.

0:16:51 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:16:52 Thomas: Pair that with the fact that there's no like real way to enforce global agreements. You know, there's like, we'll get into these global climate agreements and if Trump doesn't tear them up or whatever. But there's not like World Police, Team America, World Police coming out, you know, to enforce those. As far as Andrew's point about like having that be your baseline issue, I didn't really agree with that at the time. It's been too long to probably go go back and find the episode and all that.

But, um, I, I cause my, I think it's just simpler, uh, for me anyway, that my stance is I support the most progressive viable candidate at any given phase. Um, and there's going to be, I mean, that's, it's, that, that was, that wasn't just as simple as that. Like for me, it was just literally that simple. I think the times where it could be complicated is you might have genuine disagreements about who's more progressive.

And And these days, you know, there's so much I don't know if misinformation is the word, but there's... there's a lot of spin when it comes to any sort of candidate. So and that goes both ways. There's also a lot OF like, for example, I think that the Bernie Sanders left had a ridiculous amount of spin, negative spin about Elizabeth Warren that I don't

0:18:04 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:18:04 Thomas: Think was true. And I think that that makes it hard. So, you know, it's not as it won't be easy to get 100 percent consensus on these facts. But for me personally, I'm looking at who I think is the most progressive that is also viable at a given phase in the election. If you just say most progressive, then you just write in somebody every time who has no chance of winning and that's not going to do anything. I think in the primary, it's, you know, it's pretty easy. You just pick who's the most aggressive. And there can be some game theory, you Know, of like, well, this person is the most progressive but they are getting 2% of the primary vote.

Whereas this other person is less progressive, but has a better chance of beating, say, the like centrist mainstream Democrat, for example, you know, you might want to lend your support to that person. So it is a little bit of a complicated calculus there. But honestly, I think it's as simple as that, at least in terms of the best way to achieve more progressive policy. And then beyond that, I don't really know. I'm not sure there's anything additional you can do to ensure that politicians are going to like actually follow through, you know, or not, because like that, that's just that's a thing that's impossible to do.

0:18:05 Lindsey: Mm -hmm. Me too.

0:18:47 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah.

0:19:16 Thomas: We don't have the ability to be like, what's that? A politician didn't follow through on their thing. Well, I'll just get them out and replace them with a better one immediately. Like it just, the system makes that so impossible that we just, I look at it as we do the thing we can do, which is the method I already outlined and lobby people really hard while they're in office and hope that gets stuff done. I don't know.

0:19:26 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah.

0:19:37 Lindsey: I don't know what else to do. Yeah, yep.

0:19:40 Thomas: All right. Yeah. But there was an interesting possibility to look at. I don't know if that will be, that could be us someday, you know? And it actually is increasingly becoming us, you know, like Republicans have transitioned to a phase of, or a lot of them have, where it's like, all right, yeah, sure. Climate change is real. Oh, by the way, disregard the past couple decades of us just denying reality, like just move all past that, because apparently they can do that. Like nobody, it doesn't, they don't pay any price for that. It's the most Frustrating thing in the world. So forget that, yeah, no, we all knew this all along, even though again we denied it for 20 years, but uh, but I just don't think there's a, either anything we can do about it, or B, they'll be like, I don't really think it's that bad, like, ah, whatever. So, if you, we've seen what happens with COVID, so a few, you know, thousand people per day die, who cares?

0:20:11 Lindsey: Mm -hm.

0:20:32 Thomas: You know, that seems to be our attitude, a 9/11 every day, and nobody, people are like, oh, it's mild, cool, it's just, it's One of those mild 9/11s per day.

0:20:39 Lindsey: Jesus. Yeah.

0:20:43 Thomas: Interesting. Can you imagine, by the way, I just thought of this today, like, as I was, I don't know, driving the kids to daycare, I was just thinking about that fact, because I, you know, it is like 2000 people a day right now dying. Could you imagine if, what, like what if, I know it's stupid. It's like the what if Obama thing during Trump. I know there's no point asking this question, but literally what if a plane hit a building every every day in our country. And 2000 people died. And we were just like, yeah, no, that's, that's just going to happen. Just hopefully don't be in that. The buildings are usually full of old people. So who cares? Like, what if that's. That's the equivalent of what we're doing. Really?

0:20:55 Lindsey: Yep, it sure is.

0:21:20 Lindsey: I don't disagree.

0:21:23 Thomas: It's amazing.

0:21:23 Lindsey: It's nuts.

0:21:25 Thomas: It's, we're so dumb as humans. Tell me, tell me about this psychologically. What's the mechanism that makes it so if we see a building get hit by a plane, even if it was like like 12 people died, we would react far more strongly than if literally 2000 people a day are dying. And we're like, yeah, whatever. We don't see it. So we don't care. What is that?

0:21:46 Lindsey: Yeah, Exactly. Well, probably what, the availability heuristic. It is a more vivid thing to see a plane crash into a building than it is to hear that there are 2,000 people dying every day from some disease. So it sticks with you more and

0:22:02 Thomas: Yeah. Or remember that? Oh, what book was that? Remember that thing? This is another psychology related thingy. Maybe you can tell me about, but where it's like humans have a hard time with bigger numbers. Maybe that plays a part where it is like, if you say a hundred people are starving or something, or even one person is starving, you're like, oh, what can I do? I'll give you some money, give us some food. If you say like, yeah, a million people are starving somewhere, you are just like... And actually, I think they did studies where people actually donate less if you give them a big enough number. I think that was the study I am Remembering. Remembering it

0:22:04 Lindsey: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I remember

0:22:38 Thomas: Might be something to do with that maybe

0:22:38 Lindsey: That I I don't know, I wonder too if it's partly about the fact that these numbers ramped up very gradually, like if the pandemic had started with the the the rapid spread, um, that Omicron has, like if this had been the characteristic of the first, um, the first variant, I wonder if, you know, it immediately ramping up to like 2,000 people dying a day would have had more than an impact. But the actual progression was that we started out with like, you know, I remember the first time that we saw the daily case counts hitting a thousand and I was like, holy crap, this is awful. And then it hit 10,000. It was like whoa, this is crazy. And what was it last week or the week before that it hits like a million and a half cases in a single day? And it was like at that point we're just desensitized to it, you you know?

0:22:40 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:23:30 Lindsey: So I think that's a lot of it too. And, you know, people, I think a lot of people that are downplaying the severity are interpreting that 2,000 person case count as, you know, they're talking about, well, it's only a fraction of a percent of the people who actually get it. So, you know, it is not that big of a deal.

0:23:47 Thomas: It's, I don't know, I guess I don't even know what to say, like, it's just, I, this whole time I've wished we could have a prop, what I wonder what it would take to have an appropriate reaction to the, I wonder if the media, it, I mean, maybe we just can't handle this as humans, but like, what if the media, all they did was like every day they told stories of the people who died every single day, you know?

0:24:15 Lindsey: I had that same thought, like, right when the pandemic was ramping up. Like, during the first shutdowns when people weren't taking it seriously, I was like, I understand why they can't, but I I really wish that they could get camera crews inside of these ICUs So people could see what it looks like. Maybe then they would have to sort of take it seriously, but I don't know. I don't know. I think COVID is weird in how it hits our intuitions because it's like, it is very contagious and, you know, it is more deadly than things like the flu and stuff. But it's also like in this sort of like gray area where it's just not that enough for people to to be able to sort of maintain illusions about it not being a big deal.

0:24:20 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:24:56 Lindsey: I mean, if this had the characteristics of the Station 11 pandemic, nobody would be able to not take it seriously. Or even half of, you know...

0:25:00 Thomas: Right. You don't even have time to not take it seriously. Y'all just die.

0:25:05 Lindsey: Right, right, well, yeah. But I don't know, if you ramped up the percentage of fatality a little bit, I think people would have a harder time.

0:25:12 Thomas: Yeah. I think that's true. Maybe if it had affected kids more, that would have been, Um, yeah, I know. Anyway, this was all a branch off of, uh, you know, um, the fact that I think it's, I think GCU problem child brings up a very real possibility in our future that like, it won't be, denialism won't be as big a problem of climate change. It'll just be, we still aren't getting things done. And I think there's different reasons for that, but, uh. All right. Um, let's see. Let's, let'S get to January's questions. I think that'll, that'll bring us into January. Uh, well, Well, we did already answer Roger's January question.

0:25:17 Lindsey: Yes. Yeah.

0:25:48 Lindsey: Well, of course,

0:25:49 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Here we go. Here's another, let's see. Oh, here's Slardabarfast. Slardobarfist. I don't know how you're supposed to say that. How do you see the problem of maintaining awareness of U.S. history if teachers are afraid to breathe a word about it? Writing as a former homeschooler slash Christian schooler who learned U.S. history more or less by accident. Yeah.

0:25:49 Lindsey: Yeah, hey, me too.

0:26:17 Thomas: Yeah. Isn't that the truth? How can we better disrupt the false vision of American exceptionalism? Wow. I can't read now. Of American exceptionalism. How do you see the challenge of promoting social democracy in the U.S. and or elsewhere? Do you want to talk about the intersection with our failure in Afghanistan? Well, there's a lot of stuff there. What do you think?

0:26:17 Lindsey: Cool. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Oh, boy. Yeah. Maybe in the stuff about the schools and history. Yeah, actually, there was an article in the New York Times yesterday that my husband sent me and was like, you all should do an episode on this, covering the massive rise in book bannings across the country.

0:27:02 Lindsey: Yeah, Moms for Liberty, ironically, is among the groups that appears to be super vocal and putting pressure on schools to ban books with themes about like sexuality and racism and stuff, so that's, that's cool. Yeah, Moms really. Anyway, I, yeah, I don't, I don't really know what to do about this, aside from making as as much noise in school board meetings as conservatives are right now.

Now, I, you know, I was kind of reassured, like, when they, months ago, when they first started, like proposing state legislation to ban CRT in schools, I went and read some of the bills that were up, and took a little bit of solace in the fact that it didn't seem like any of the language would actually prevent teachers from doing what they were already doing.

Like, the things that they, they seem to be banning had nothing to do with, I think, what's actually being taught in schools, but I don't know, I think there have been efforts since then that maybe are more of a problem, but I don't know, I don't know what to do about it. I find it really depressing and overwhelming, and um, I don't know, maybe a silver lining,

0:28:08 Lindsey: Is that this this shit has been happening on a cycle for years and it seems like people are still eventually able to educate themselves but I right

0:28:08 Thomas: Where Yeah, that's true. It can't be. Well, I was going to say, yeah, it can't be that this is the worst time of book banning considering our past. But I don't know. I did see a thing that said it was like record-breaking amounts of books. But I guess back then you wouldn't have had as many alternative avenues of information, maybe.

0:28:25 Lindsey: Yeah it's It's bad. Exactly. I was thinking about that too. I mean, and honestly, the best possible outcome of all of this nonsense is that it piques kids' interest that adults are trying so strenuously to keep them away from this information. And they do actually have the potential to access it without parental consent, given the internet, right? I mean they have more access to this stuff than people ever have. So I don't know. That's what I would have done at that age if I'd had the Internet.

0:28:46 Thomas: Yeah.

0:29:03 Lindsey: I just would have.

0:28:57 Thomas: For me, I guess the issue and maybe I think that I have the same feeling where it's like, I'm overwhelmed. What do we do? Is that it's sort of, I think it just restates the problem we're already in, you know, it's not like a different thing that we can solve any differently than the problem that is the number one problem in our society right now, which is what do we do about some percentage of people living in alternate universe?

0:29:29 Thomas: And I don't, I don't have a solution for that. And I don't think this is that different to problem. I think like, if I could solve that, I could sell this. If I could could solve this I could solve that, you know, like, so I don't, I guess that's why I haven't put it, but maybe I should put a little more time, as you say, because maybe there are things like we can do in a local level to

0:29:15 Lindsey: Yeah. Yes. Yeah, I agree with that. Mm hmm. Mm

0:29:47 Thomas: Try to fight back about this, that is something, something we should be doing, but then in a lot of those areas, they're overwhelmingly conservative, it's like those people aren't there to even do that work to fight back, or they're outnumbered by a zillion, mm

0:29:47 Lindsey: Hm. Yeah, that That is, that is true, but I, you know, I think that we've, that there's also a lot of areas where it's very mixed, but the you know, there's an inequality in terms of who's speaking out, like I've got a friend that's been very active because there's this whole thing going on locally, it's going on all over the country, I'm sure, but because of our awesome new government, Glenn Youngkin, there's this whole thing in public schools now, this battle over whether they should still be requiring masks of kids in schools, Which is awesome. And thank you, Governor Youngkin. Fantastic. So anyway, so there's been several school board meetings recently, and all of these parents coming in and talking about, you know, you're not going to muzzle my child and all this stuff. And what my friend has been telling me, because she's been going to these things and, you know, speaking and obviously in favor of masking. And what she was saying is like, it is obvious that it is a tiny minority of parents in this particular area that she lives in that actually don't want masks in schools.

0:30:07 Thomas: -hmm oh Yeah. Hmm. Yeah.

0:31:00 Lindsey: The vast majority of them want them, but they are so overrepresented at the school board meetings that it gives a completely distorted picture of how parents actually feel about this issue. So yeah, I think that being active Is probably really important right now, exactly.

0:31:06 Thomas: Good point, yeah. Stand and be counted kind of thing, like if If you don't let a a really pissed off motivated minority win the day, uh Minority View, yeah, that that's for sure, yeah, that makes sense, um, man, I was just, I was juste wondering, you know, how, uh, cloth masks are not, supposedly not really effective with, um, Omicron.

0:31:18 Lindsey: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

0:31:39 Thomas: I was, I, I've been a little conflicted lately. Cause I, you know, put the masks on my kids before daycare and I realized like, well, there, these aren't, we don't have any kid, uh, KN95, whatever masks. So like, am I just doing this for no reason? Like, is this just kind of theater and slash, you know, making my kids do an extra thing for no no reason. I'm still doing it, but part of me was like, I wonder if, I would like some clarification on that. You know, like somebody either, somebody give me a tiny little kid, KN95 mask, or just tell us like, yeah, there's no point in doing this if it's cloth masks, it's not making a difference.

0:31:53 Lindsey: I'll Have to look at that, because I mean, I, I doubt that it's like zero percent Effective, um, and all we were ever doing with the cloth masks was doing something slightly less effective than we could with an N95, but

0:32:26 Thomas: Yeah. Well, I think they were quite effective with the earlier strands, especially if, or strains or whatever, especially if, if everybody was doing that, I do think it was quite effective. Um, so yeah, I, I guess I need to check the percentages, but I don't know if it's, if it's something, I think there really, there is a trade-off there. You know, if it's 2% effective, I'm not, what's the, I'm not gonna, you know how hard it IS to get a tiny kid to wear a mask. It'S like, that'S not worth it. You KNOW, there'S a, there's a threshold percentage where, you know, if it's 70%, yeah, sure. But if it's, you know, 20, like, am I, is it worth it for 20%? What's the number? You know, I don't know. Cause it's already among the kids. It's, uh, you know, we're already dealing with a slightly or significantly decreased risk risk.

0:32:34 Lindsey: Right. Yeah. Yeah. So Yeah.

0:33:17 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:33:17 Thomas: But, uh. Anyway, I was just thinking about it. I haven't stopped. Don't worry. I'm still, still popping the mask on. I just was thinking about it. It would be interesting. And also there was, um, do you listen to the daily? I forget. Yeah. I, I'm so tired of these interviews with Fauci from people from from specifically Michael Barbaro from The Daily, where it's like they're Always trying to, because we have to be journalists, they have to be like smart journalists or whatever. They always have to be pushing everything and doing everything. And like the answer to every fucking question is, yeah, we are in a pandemic. Just do the fucking shit until we're done. That's the answer of everything. Every single question. Well, but can you see how, Michael Barbaro has asked all these questions. I'm just like, what are we doing here? Here.

You know, it's like we it's either the people that know we need to get vaccine boosted and do all the shit or doing the shit and other people aren't. I don't understand this middle of the road where you have a guy on in Dr. Fauci, and you give him like some questions that are like challenging the whole premise. And, you know, I just like I

0:33:27 Lindsey: Yeah, mm -hmm Yeah.

0:34:18 Thomas: Don't know. It just feels pointless to me. That's just personal griping, though, I suppose. I was actually going to ask If you listen to that show, because of the poll that the guy referenced last episode, I was curious of your thoughts. No, it was on Friday, I think.

0:34:18 Lindsey: No, I hear you, like Today's I Haven't Listened Oh, Uh, Remind Me what was it about? Oh,

0:34:39 Thomas: Well, it is about how like, oh, the people who are saying they are most scared of COVID are actually the younger people. And the people are saying the least scared of the older people. And it was sort of a like, therefore, politics is is playing into everybody's perceptions on both sides.

0:34:47 Lindsey: Yeah. That Was weird, and what wasn't It like the people, it was the people who are vaccinated are The Most Scared.

0:34:59 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. And it Was also age and it was. Yeah, there were several groups that I think they divided up by. But yeah.

0:35:07 Lindsey: Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't really see it was a very weird moment to me too, because it was like, it seemed like the interpretation of that was fairly obvious. And I think they did say it at some point that like, yeah, of course, the people are taking the pandemic seriously are the ones that are getting vaccinated. I know

0:35:17 Thomas: Yeah yeah. And It's like the they try to do this gotcha of like, yeah, but they're vaccinated. So they don't need to be afraid of it. It's Like that's not really how people work. Like, you know, if there's some danger to me and I'm like, okay, I'm really worried about this certain danger. I'm going to make sure to take precautions. I'm not going to answer a question as though like I never have to worry about it again. You know what I mean?

0:35:30 Lindsey: That was dumb.

0:35:50 Thomas: How afraid are you of acid, Lindsay, on your hands?

0:35:43 Lindsey: Mm hmm. Yes. No, no, absolutely. You know, the question, really,

0:35:54 Thomas: Pretty afraid. Well, you're wearing rubber gloves. It literally can't hurt you. You need to answer. You're not at all afraid, Lindsay. Otherwise, you just being political.

0:36:02 Lindsey: The, yeah, no, I really, I was very irritated by that exact same thing in the interview.

0:36:09 Lindsey: So the question that they could ask, or the way that they could sort of make the point that they were trying to make, is if they had like a within-person comparison they could do, like if they got from the same people, they got how afraid they were of the pandemic before and after. Yeah, yeah.

0:36:20 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah. Right. Longitudinal. There we go. I learned some terminology from you.

0:36:27 Lindsey: Yeah. So if they if they got those ratings before they got vaccinated and after or even even if they asked them retrospectively, they said, you know, how scared were you of the pandemic before you got vaccinated? How scared are you now? Even that, I think, could give you a better sense of like, Yeah, people's fear probably went down after they got vaccinated, but they're still taking it more seriously than conservatives, yeah.

0:36:41 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. I and I think mine would have. It's also it's hard to with these scales, you know, like who knows what what how do you quantify your fear if it's a one to ten or if it was, you You know, like I, that would be, if you take it like a month later, I don't, I could imagine that being interesting depending on like, maybe you're always grading relatively. I don't know, but, but you're

0:36:56 Lindsey: Yeah, I think that's true. I mean, those are those are definitely concerns when you're interpreting

0:37:09 Thomas: Right. Like that would at least be better data. And I just was, especially too, because I think some of the, I think the question, some of them were worded specifically, like how afraid are you of getting it? But also if there's any ones that are general, like, how afraid of, are you of COVID? It's like, yeah, I'm afraid of other people getting it too. I'm afraid of a lot of the fact that we're losing over 2000 people a day like that. It doesn't matter how vaxxed I am like that sucks, you know, so any question that's not very specifically targeted is not telling you that I'm being unreasonably worried about it.

0:37:10 Lindsey: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, correct. No,

0:37:44 Thomas: Whatever.

0:37:46 Lindsey: That was really dumb. I'm glad you brought it up. Wait,

0:37:47 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. The only other thing I was going to say about the school thing is you mentioned like you accidentally learned history. I consider it the same way, but even though I wasn't homeschooled or anything, I just think that, and I mentioned this before, but I just the way, at least at my public school in California, pretty reasonably, it wasn't a small town, but I think we just taught California, whatever, public school, what's the word for uh, uh, what you teach. What is that? What word am I looking for? No, that what is taught a curriculum.

0:38:22 Lindsey: Did I teach? Oh, sorry. Yeah.

0:38:27 Thomas: It's okay. Uh, Cal, I think it's all the same, basically same curriculum, but I could be wrong. Anyway, point is we spent massive amounts of time on like the same three black people, you know, like Martin Luther King and like a couple other civil rights leaders. And And that's great. But like, as a result, I'm pretty sure nobody from that education, like if all your information was, was that specific education, I think it makes it real easy to just be like, yeah, well, that was a problem people used to have, you know. Know?

0:38:39 Lindsey: Yeah. Oh, absolutely.

0:39:02 Thomas: And I think that even, even in non -censored history, you know, like even in just like normal public school, non, uh, whatever conservative censorship history, just whatever. I think there's real drawbacks to it. And, and, you Know, that was 30 years ago or whatever. So maybe it's better. Maybe it's not, I don't know, but I think that is a real issue. Like we don't teach a, we don't teach reconstruction and the failure of Reconstruction and we also don't teach systemic racism enough. And maybe that is changing. I don't know. But this is definitely going to be a big barrier for that changing in a lot of places in the country.

0:39:02 Lindsey: Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah Absolutely. I mean, as evidenced by the fact that that so many of us white people were shocked by the things that unfolded in 2020. I mean, obviously, there's something broken, but I mean, my my history book when I, when I was homeschooling, was specifically chosen because it whitewashed a lot of things even more than the kind of curricula that you're talking about, um, you know, representing the the Civil War as though it was not, it was actually just about states rights and things like that, so, so yeah, no, I I definitely went into college and beyond with an incredibly impoverished and distorted view of U.S. history and I had a lot of catching up to do after that, so that's

0:39:49 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, wow. I didn't have that. Yeah, yep. I also just was a bad history student in school. So I was a bad student of every subject except math. That was in math and science, physics and science. That kind of physical science. Like, yeah, that was the only I mean, I'm not saying I, you know, I still did well. I still got OK grades, but I was not a good student. I wasn't like attentive. So anything I did learn in history, I could have forgotten. For all I know, we did teach. They did teach the stuff and I just sucked at retaining it. I don't know. No, I don't think they did. Anyway, final question that we have here, I think. Interesting one.

GCU Problem Child again asks, should responsible atheist podcasts refrain from criticizing stuff going on in the Islamic world to avoid fueling Islamophobia in the West? I already want to take a little bit of umbrage with Islamic world. I don't think that's good. I Don't think that's the preferred nomenclature. I dunno if that's a, anyway, it's such a vast overstate or like generalization kind of statement, but, uh, but whatever. It's fine.

Whenever Islam comes comes up on Scathing Atheist or How to Heretic or whatever, I get uncomfortable. Even if they're pointing out a real fucked up thing that's going on in Saudi Arabia or Iran or whatever. I worry that drawing attention to it will just serve to fuel the anti -Muslim bigotry that we know is not uncommon in the atheist community.

0:40:31 Lindsey: The best ones yeah Yeah.

0:41:38 Thomas: Well, what do you think?

0:41:40 Lindsey: I mean, this is still something that I feel like I have a lot of thinking and learning to do about, um, because I mean, yeah, there's a whole lot of stuff that's going on in our own backyard, um, in terms of the immediate threats posed by Christian fundamentalism, there is really fucked up stuff that's that's going on, and, you know, as as a GCU Problem Child says, in Saudi Arabia and stuff, and you now there's a lot of horrible stuff that's being perpetrated under Islam, there's a bunch of horrible stuff being perpetrated under Christianity, and it's it I I agree that it is so often used by folks that really just want to smuggle in xenophobia and bigotry that it makes me uncomfortable too. And I really, I've not, I'm not sure what the right approach is here. Um, I don't know.

0:42:31 Thomas: Yeah, I agree.

0:42:33 Lindsey: I'm interested to hear what you think about this.

0:42:35 Thomas: I definitely have have like maybe taken a journey on this question. I, on one hand, I'm, I wouldn't go so far as to say you can't ever cover something like that. Obviously I think it's worthy to be covered in some sense. But I do think that there are huge pitfalls that you mentioned, you know, and especially because if we're talking about like, what's going, having, trying to maintain some semblance of an accurate picture of what the biggest threats to the world are, you You know, I think that's important context because I think we saw through all the 9-11 years and the Bush years and all that, that like putting an undue focus on one area that, by the way, happens to contain people who are not not white, like brown people.

You know, like that's a powerful motivator in our society and it brings out the worst in a lot of people in this country and it's really powerful. And it's I think it's really powerful because there is the kernel of truth in that there is fucked up stuff going on in the name of Islam every day, of course, you know, and so like the examples are obviously always going to be or they could anyway be accurate and you would still have this problem.

It's not as though you're, it's not about making stuff up, which also happens. Even if you were to cover something completely accurately, the focus problem can be a real issue. I mean, if you just focus in on one kind of demographic of people and just bring negative stories, no matter how true they are, you are essentially contributing to, you know, kind of a bigoted worldview or at least the potential of somebody to have a really bigoted worldview.

0:42:45 Lindsey: Sure. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, yeah.

0:44:15 Thomas: And like, go ahead.

0:44:15 Lindsey: And like, yeah, Good. No, I just like, I think that one of the the things that bothers me about like Sam Harris's sort of just incredulity that people would be worried about this problem, um, I I think is part of what bothers me so much because it's just it's it's one other arena in which there's so much context that's being ignored when he's just just aghast that anybody could be worried that like criticisms of Islam ever have anything to to do with xenophobia and bigotry. It's it's very frustrating. Sure.

0:44:25 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:44:45 Thomas: And another thing I was going to say, I don't know if this is strictly speaking related. If you're talking about an atheism show, like I think there's some leeway to be given for covering specifically religious problems. But like when we talk about what's going on in the world, you know, China is basically committing a genocide. And it's like, I just hope that if we're trying to keep an accurate picture of what's happening and what are threats in the the world that like, I think it's, it's really important to try to bring perspective in and try to bring like balance into that conversation of like, yeah, there's a whole lot of, and, and you know, that's, I'm not saying that counts against atheism or anything.

I just think that it, it goes to show that like there are a lot of people from new atheism that were pretty explicitly convinced that like religion is the problem in the world, you know, like that's the thing that everything, everything. We would all be fine if it weren't for religion. And that's just so not true, obviously. And I that may sound like a straw man, but it's not like I literally talk to people like that in the movement who really believe that like religion is the like almost exclusive source of all the misery in the world. It's just not true.

And there's so much just to talk about, like under the heading of, oh, shit that goes on from religious people in other countries or whatever, like, you know, Russia and some of those countries that are awful to gay people, but because we don't think of them as typically like, you know, I, or I think in our minds, I think there is a bit of racism there of like, they're not Brown people. So people aren't like, Oh, this horrible place where all these, whatever. I think There's, there's, There's biases in the minds of Americans where it's like, oh yeah, the Muslim world is where the bad religious stuff happens or

0:44:57 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah.

0:45:39 Lindsey: Nope. Yeah. Yeah.

0:46:31 Thomas: Whatever. And it's Like, I don't know. I Think if you take a, an accurate look at a more fair look at the world, I Think there's a lot going on and doesn't excuse anything, but like, it just, that is important. And I think you said it like, just to be not worried about that issue at all, I think is totally off base.

0:46:44 Lindsey: Yeah. There are very few problems in the world that actually only have one cause, uh, Yeah, so anytime somebody's somebody's talking about the cause of something, I think it's worth inspecting that claim pretty carefully. Absolutely.

0:46:56 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, that's true.

0:47:06 Thomas: Yeah and especially with, again, talk about actually learning our history, you know, that you always get, it's become almost a meme at this point online, but you always get the posts about like oh Iran in 1979 pre-revolution or whatever you know and and the joke eventually became it's just more and more extreme like everybody's naked and stuff like all the stuff that that became the joke online about it but like the real truth of that is yeah there was a revolution that happened and like I I I mean it's kind of our fault you know like there's a lot of these things where it's hard to say for sure like where history would have gone had we not been fucking with these governments and people and all that for this long but like there's a case to be made that like things wouldn't be so repressive in the Middle East in places if not for America's involvement in backing certain regimes that were going to be you know helpful to our interests of the oil and all this shit like over the decades creating more and more conflict there and I think in times of conflict there you know that I think there's an argument to be paid that that contributes to people clinging to more conservative worldviews and more repressive

0:48:14 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:48:14 Thomas: Worldviews. So like a lot of that could, some portion of that I think is our fault, or at least could be, the case could be made.

0:48:15 Lindsey: Yeah. That's interesting and terrible.

0:48:24 Thomas: Yeah. All right. Well, that was a very interesting Q &A. Thanks so much, patrons, for asking the questions. Thanks everybody for listening. And we're trying to get back on track here. We did a Q &H and we'll do, maybe I'll set up the February one so that as we go and we We'll commit ourselves to doing episodes in February. You can post questions on that Q &A as we go.

0:48:43 Lindsey: Yeah. Excellent.

0:48:47 Thomas: Well, thanks so much, Lindsay. We'll see you next time.

0:48:49 Lindsey: Thank you.

0:49:00 Clip: Thank you so much for listening to Serious Inquiries Only. If you like the show, the absolute best thing you can do is support us at patreon.com/seriouspod. The second best thing you can do, is please share it on social media or by word of mouth. Speaking of social media, follow me on Twitter at Serious Pod. If would like to be Facebook friends, send me a request at facebook.com Thomas podcast. If not up for that level of intimacy, that's fine. Maybe you want to join the discussion at facebook.com/groups/SIO members. Thank you again for listening. We'll see you next time.