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5 Jul, 5 tweets, 1 min read
I can no longer remember the name of the professor who taught my intro to logic class. I can't even remember his face. But that class had more influence on me than any other I've had.
It was just a standard intro class. Basics of predicate and propositional logic, truth tables. But they got to me when I was young enough and my brain plastic enough that it *really* stuck. It had the effect on me of a religious conversion.
I don't know why logic is no longer considered the proper foundation of childhood education. It shouldn't be possible to get any kind of undergraduate degree--in the sciences or liberal arts--without taking a class like that.
But I wager the time to teach it is even earlier: Start when kids are about ten or eleven. The cost (monetary and opportunity) of teaching it would be rewarded many times over, and throughout the rest of these kids' lives.
If we taught kids basic logic at, say, age 10, we could stop worrying about whatever heresy we fear will infect them in high school or college. They'll just flick it off with a brisk, "That's not even a wff."

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More from @ClaireBerlinski

Claire Berlinski. Profile picture
5 Jul
I suspect some people won't read an argument about vaccines and risk if it means reading a long essay, but might read it if I tweet it, sentence by sentence. I don't have the patience, but I'll repeat some of the arguments: claireberlinski.substack.com/p/epistemic-ch…
If you want to base your views of the safety and efficacy of mRNA vaccines or ivermectin on the most reliable information--not perfect, not infallible, but "best we've got right now"--"we" being humanity--here's a reasonable way to do it:
1. Get off social media, stop listening to YouTube and podcasts, and instead open Google Scholar. This gives you access to literature that's been published, at least, in the goal of increasing humanity's stock of justified, true beliefs.
Read 19 tweets
Claire Berlinski. Profile picture
5 Jul
It may well turn out to be exactly the same film. So far the evidence for ivermectin is poor quality and limited, but there are genuinely some hints it may be of value. Definitely a good enough reason to study it properly. And if good quality evidence shows it has real efficacy--
I'll become the biggest ivermectin booster on the planet, and all of it's advocates will say, "See! We told you so." But they told us so based on bad reasoning. They may hold a *true* belief, but it isn't a *justified* true belief,
and thus it is not knowledge, but a hunch--be it a lucky or unlucky one. Some powerful things are working against the hypothesis--among them, that at doses required to have the effect ivermectin does on SARS-CoV-2 cells in vitro, it would cause an overdose in humans;
Read 18 tweets
Claire Berlinski. Profile picture
5 Jul
I listened. Carefully. I also created a transcript of everything they said, and read it, carefully. I cross-referenced every claim, and read the evidence for it. Carefully. This took me a while. I then wrote a long, careful response, explaining why I believe they're--
... bad at math, let's say charitably. Or another charitable thought is that they're so eager to heal the world--and so exhausted by the pandemic and its associated trauma and grief--that they're falling victim to wishful thinking, or even a persecutory delusion.
One thing, however, of which I'm sure, is this: No evidence we have now, or at least, none *they have presented,* suggests the conclusions we should draw from it are those they've drawn. And if I could just persuade you to read--
Read 5 tweets
Claire Berlinski. Profile picture
4 Jul
Everytime I write a newsletter--and that one not only took all day but was the best thing I've ever written--or maybe I'm punchdrunk from exhaustion--I hit "Send," post it on Twitter, and watch eagerly to see if might change the world. I kind of figured that one would.
No anti-vaxxer, on reading it, if he does the exercises, I offered, could continue to adhere to the ideology. It's impossible. So I get myself worked up with excitement, and expect within minutes to hear, "Wow, Claire, you were right! I'm going to be vaccinated posthaste,"
and urge everyone I know to do the same."
That would mean I'd done my part in the Great Pandemic.
But they're not even reading it.
That makes me sad.
That would mean I didn't do my part in the Great Pandemic,
Read 4 tweets
Claire Berlinski. Profile picture
4 Jul
But let's get to the deeper problem--and the glory--of America. Only Americans could have thought *invading Afghanistan* was a good idea.

"Dude, you ever hear something about 'Graveyard of Empires?'"
"No man, that on Netflix?" (Or at the time: "Is that at Blockbuster?")
This was an idea so stupid that only Americans could have tried to do it. And honestly, had we succeeded, no one would have been surprised. Our willingness to boldly go where no one was dumb enough to go before--
(or where everyone who do go before came back writing horrified books with titles like "WARNING, AMERICANS: DO NOT DO THIS! YOU WILL LOSE YOUR EMPIRE!") is what makes us American. You could call us "the country that's too dumb to know how dangerous that is."
Read 5 tweets
Claire Berlinski. Profile picture
3 Jul
Basically, yes, but it's more than that. The natural mechanisms of a marketplace of ideas don't work. The marketplace is a metaphor, but it's a good one. If you build a better, cheaper mouse trap, and bring it to people for whom it's useful, they'll buy it,
(just ask Australians), so the old mouse trap guy goes out of business. The idea of the "market" relies on there being a place, physical or virtual, in which you can compare competing things, and the person trying to sell his wares has to compete against the *actual thing*
his competitor is selling, not some crummy caricature of what he's selling. Customers can carefully examine both items, see the price, speak to other people who've tried them both. The better product, sold at the lower cost, will win;
Read 26 tweets

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