8 prominent Doctors and scientists ... ( Archived) (191)

No, science doesn't quite work like that, but it's a common fallacy that it does which maybe leads to some of the confusion.

Research can't 'prove' something to be correct, or 'a fact'. What it can do is disprove, or indicate a probability that something is true. That information is then used to create the next hypotheses to disprove, or demonstrate a probability. In this way likelihood is accumulated over time.

So, researching the hypothesis that men are taller than women may produce the result that it's probable, but it doesn't prove it as fact - some women are taller than some men even if most men are taller than most women.

How you apply that information may affect how you present the results depending on your goal: an ergonomically designed space might not use overall average size, but consider that women are usually shorter than men.

I don't know what information you're comparing across countries, but multiple interacting factors and probabilities may impact upon decision making in each country to reach specific goals.

Yes, but again, that trust is about our emotional investment; we want to feel safe, but distrust creates anxiety and maybe anger directed at leaders/countries.

If we have an emotional investment in our expectations we are far more likely to seek out information which confirms our beliefs, or misinterpret information, rather than evaluate each 'event' from a neutral perspective. That's what the video makers were relying on when they produced inconsistent and meaningless sequences with their editing.

If we haven't got an emotinal investment, it's clearer when we're being played, or when we don't have all the information which may lead to different things beng said by different people, or at different times.

One of the distrust issues with people like Anthony Fauci is that he's said different things at different times. He has been consistent, however, if you take into account that onging research during the pandemic has provided new information, probabilites and hypotheses that have been disproved.

I agree, a lot of stuff appeared bonkers, but I imagine there were a number of reasons for those inconsistencies.

One of them would have been the simplification of parameters, however complex that became in reality. For example, at one point we could buy food, but not clothes, household goods and other daily non-essentials. That meant grocery stores had to remove, or tape off certain displays - I could walk past the stationary to get to the Valentine's chocolates, but couldn't pick up a writing pad for my grandchildren's remote learning.

Other factors would have been politician's remoteness from everyday human existence and everyday humans remoteness from the complexities of trying to manage a pandemic with new information and research data constantly changing the picture.

None of that means our governments are totally evil, nor totally competent and caring. Inevitably there will be self-interest given how ambitious you have to be to become a leader, but that doesn't mean it's all one big global conspiracy.

And those practical inconsistencies aren't the same as the misinformation and manipulation kind that are on the video you cited.

I like the idea of a global community involving co-operation and fairness and I like the idea of small communities where everyone has an input. The one thing that doesn't seem to work very well is the one thing most of us have got - big, unwieldy countries.

I don't think 'gaslighting' is the term you're looking for, Conrad.

Unless President's comment has lead you to question your own reality and sanity.