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114. How lies become truth · Radically Genuine

• Sean (00:02.195) Welcome to the Radically Genuine Podcast. I am Dr. Roger MacPhillan. Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes truth. This is a law of propaganda often attributed to Joseph Goebbels, the head of propaganda for the Nazi Party. Among psychologists, there's something known as the illusion of truth effect. Here's how a typical experiment on the effect works. Participants rate how true maybe trivia items are. Things like a prune is a dried plum. Sometimes the items are true like that one. Sometimes participants see a parallel version, which isn't true. Something like a date is a dried plum. After a break of minutes or even weeks, the participants do the procedure again, but this time some of the items they rate are new and some they saw before in the first phase. The key finding is that people tend to rate items they've seen before as more likely to be true, regardless of whether they are true or not. And seemingly for the sole reason that they are just more familiar. If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes truth. And if you look around, you will find everyone from advertisers to politicians taking advantage of this effect. Yeah, it's basically it's called cognitive ease. Are you familiar with that? Raj? It, um, I think it originally came from Daniel Kahneman, who's an economist. So basically like your brain as, um, the ability to switch from, which is like an Making it really easy to make a decision or being a little more critical. So the cognitive ease has a tendency to, because we've heard it repeatedly, we tend to believe it. So it's easier for us to make a quick decision and we're actually happier. Because if we actually look at things critically and we start evaluating, we start to doubt ourselves and we're actually less happier. So like, there's all these studies that look at scientists and psychologists and how they happy, how happy they are or how they're perceived. Sean (02:20.439) And they're generally grumpy because their job or their careers require them to look at things more critically and not let that cognitive ease influence them. And when you want to comment on that? I think it's fascinating. Yeah. So but when it comes to advertising, I mean, we leveraged it all the time. It's when we're spending money on media, we're looking at reach, how many people are being exposed to our message. But I was always stressing the importance of frequency. You know, you can reach 80% of your audience two times, but that's not going to influence them in any way because you know you need to expose them to your message repeatedly. So I would rather hit 10% of our audience eight times and know that it's going to maybe translate to an influence of a purchase decision. And it happens with major media companies. That's why they look at Share Voice. They wanna make sure that their message is being shouted out greater than their competition. And as they continue to grow their business and they spend more on advertising, it's what makes it nearly impossible for any new competitors to enter into an established market because that influence has been so ingrained in us on simple things, you know, that actually that cognitive ease benefits us because you want to be able to make quick decisions on things that aren't important. So I'm going to buy this Nike basketball sneaker. because it's the best out there. But is it, you know, I may put on an Adidas and it may feel more comfortable to me, but I'll end up buying that Nike. Maybe because the entire basketball team has it or the NBA players I like have it. And it makes it easy to make a decision. So simple things like that. You don't overanalyze and you're over critically, you're just kind of like moving about your day. You're buying something that will satisfy that need. I feel like the food industry has done a great job of that. Like for a lot of years, if it was fat free, then it was healthy, right? People just assume that to be true. Fat is dangerous and they don't see that as something that was a propaganda piece. That was a lie that people discussed as truth. And some still do discuss it as truth. Speaking of which, I tortured myself last night. I decided to watch Ron DeSantis debate Gavin Newsom. Oh, I didn't even know that was on. I would have loved to have seen that. Sean (04:41.883) No, you wouldn't have. I would have loved to have seen it. Tell me, tell me why it was torture for you. So this is what politicians do now. They, well, they've always lied, but now they make up numbers on the spot to support a lie as if it's real, right? And Gavin Newsom scares the hell out of me. He is so good as a liar. He is such a strong politician. That's what makes him dangerous because I'm, you can't even tell if he believes his own lies or not. I mean, he is he is overseeing a beautiful, a once beautiful state that in my opinion is in social ruin. And you know, you have a lot of statistics to show it right from the from the homeless rate to the cost of living out there to the how poor education is. to the crisis of energy, right? To the crime. And there are people leaving that state in mass growth. I mean, it's expensive to live there. Just look at the taxes you have to pay. It's probably not, there's probably another state in the union that you get less bang for your buck. Yeah, I mean, I left the state and I'll use the homeless situation as one of the contributing factors. And it's interesting that you just brought that up because let's think about what just happened in the state of California. So in San Francisco, they just had, um, uh, Chi, the, the guy from China, the, he came in along with a bunch of other influential, influential people. And they cleaned up the city of San Francisco. They basically moved out a whole bunch of the homeless population, put them in other areas. They cleaned up the streets. So they did that because. People globally. that they felt were influential, they wanted to represent the city in a certain way. So that means they always had the capability and the ability to do it. But for the people that were living in that community that have been arguing and fighting and trying to find some solutions for the last five years, nothing's happened. But all of a sudden it takes influential politicians coming to your area and other businessmen that now you're motivated to take action. That means you could have taken the action all along and you chose not to because you're just a citizen. Sean (07:02.019) Yeah, I personally believe the devil incarnate would look just like him and sound just like him. He is slick, good, good looking guy. And he can lie straight to your face and make you believe it. You know, he's like one of those guys who would who would steal something from you and then help you find it. I'll help you look for it. Right. And he'll make you think he's helping you right like he cares. Yeah. And Well, he's so good. I walked out of that thinking he's going to be our president because of what has happened to our country, we've lacked our ability to see through that. And if you're talking about tribalism, and if someone believes that democratic party some you believe it represents your values, which I think in all likelihood, it often doesn't, but they just attach to that tribe. Well, he's a great spokesperson. Ron DeSantis did a great job, too. It was so different than listening to like a Trump Biden. You know, you see too smart. politicians who are articulate going at it. And that was interesting, but they, you know, like anything they start yelling over each other, which feels like it's new to me. Like that didn't happen before Trump. Now they just yell over each other. They're just DeSantis and Gavin Newsom are just so much smarter. They really are. I mean, if you think about those two debating, you can kind of just look at the way our news media has transitioned over to like the last 15 years. You know, they stopped competing with one another. Let's look at like Fox news and CNN. They just decided like, you know what? Let's not compete with one another anymore. We know who our audience is pretty well. Let's just keep telling them what they want to hear because then we'll retain them because it's that goes back to that cognitive ease. If you just keep hearing the same things that you've heard multiple times, it's easier to believe it. So regardless of what the truth may be, you're just going to speak to your audience and tell them the things that they want to hear. because then they'll believe what you keep repeating to them, regardless of which camp you're in. It's a simple way to keep everything at 50 50%, which is why the election is always like 50.4 or 50.1 in this favor verse 49.6 and they're like, that's basically the way things go. Yeah. And what's interesting is they, they tend to go to certain issues that a president doesn't, isn't even going to have any involvement in. Um, listen, I know abortion pro life and Sean (09:27.191) pro-choice is a hot button issue in the United States, but it's not an issue at the presidential level. Even the Supreme Court said it's a state issue. Like, it's not even a federal issue. So your beliefs around that are somewhat irrelevant, right, to the day-to-day jobs. Zero influence. And it hasn't changed since, I don't know, like the 70s. Nothing's really changing. Maybe there's some states that are going to have or are implementing some certain restrictions around it or limitations, or they're trying to spell out the law for their constituents. But like... I don't really care at this point, right? So recently a team led by Lisa Fazio of Vanderbilt University set out to test how the illusion of truth effect interacts with our prior knowledge. Would it affect our already existing knowledge or what we believe to be truth? So they used paired true and untrue statements, but also split their items according to how likely participants were to know the truth. So The Pacific Ocean is the largest ocean on Earth, is an example of a known item, which also happens to be true. And the Atlantic Ocean is the largest ocean on Earth, which is an untrue item, for which people are likely to know this is actual truth. Their results show that the illusion of truth effect worked just as strongly for known as for unknown items, suggesting that Prior knowledge won't prevent repetition from swaying our judgments of plausibility. So to cover all bases, the researchers performed one study in which the participants were asked to rate how true each statement seemed on a six-point scale and one where they just categorized each fact as true or false. Sean (11:19.739) and increase the odds that a statement would be categorized as true. For statements that were actually fact or fiction, known or unknown, repetition made them all seem more believable. Basically it's this, you say things enough times, it doesn't matter if it's factual. It will become the truth for people who hear it. And this is the problem with my field. We accept these ideas as truth because we're conditioned to blindly follow authority without question. But today I want to ask questions, not necessarily to provide you the answer, but to get us questioning again. It's our right. It's our duty. And we'll use the mental health and medical field as a way of trying to highlight the problems that exist where we speak falsehoods enough that it becomes a collective truth. I've spoken about John Aynidis before the researcher from Stanford. He asserts as much as 90% of the published medical literature that doctors rely on is flawed. But doctors are told this is science and science is equated as truth in their eyes. Therefore, if you debate them or you debate these lies, then you are anti-science. According to Dr. Ioannidis, the medical misinformation mess that exists comprises of four key problems. Much published medical research is not reliable or is of uncertain reliability, offers no benefit to patients, or is not useful to decision makers. Most healthcare professionals are not even aware of this problem. Sean (13:24.851) And even if they are aware of this problem, most healthcare professionals lack the skills necessary to evaluate the reliability and usefulness of medical evidence. So they're unable to really determine the strengths of the evidence, the degree of truth, and to balance it with uncertainty, to balance it with potential harms and risks. And as we found out with even talking to Dr. Kristin Ryman, you're not even expected. as a medical professional in a lot of settings to provide what is a legal and ethical imperative informed consent because it takes too much time. And they need, when they provide eight to 10 minutes, and some of that includes writing up the notes so you can bill it to the insurance company and get paid. Patients and families lack relevant, accurate medical evidence and skilled guidance at the time of medical decision-making. So you are making decisions in your medical health for your wellbeing, not based on best available evidence, but what you think to be true. And that's my big problem. And one of the problems I have with the mental health field, because it's so bad, is you now have therapists and psychologists saying things over and over again as if they're true. And they have no idea. Like many of them have never even read a paper. start to finish, let alone can understand it. They are just repeating the lies over and over and over again. I'm tired of the glossed over looks to be honest with you. You know, like I'm the crazy one. I know you look at somebody, you try to have a conversation with you and they look at you like, well, this is what I was told and this is what I know. So this is the truth and this is what you should be doing. And I'll tell some stories today with some of the consults I've been doing around the country. But I wanna start with the first one. So I just want to ask questions, right? Reasonable person. Yeah. And I think we should probably ask some really critical questions. So I'll start with reading some things. November 10th, 2021, the FDA updated the safety level label for effects or XR, widely prescribed antidepressant. I think it's an SNRI. Sean (15:51.115) to include post-marketing reports of serious discontinuation symptoms including completed suicide, suicidal thoughts, aggression, violent behavior. Sean (16:04.499) On that same day, the FDA updated the safety label for Pristique, another SNRI. To note that there have been post-marketing reports of serious discontinuation symptoms, including completed suicide, suicidal thoughts, and aggression, including hostility, rage, and homicidal ideation, when people start to reduce the dosage. November 13, 2020, the FDA updated the safety label for TRINTELIX to include aggression, agitation, anger, hostility and irritability under post marketing experience in the adverse reaction center section. Italy, May 18, 2017, the Italian Medicines Agency sent out a reminder to healthcare professionals about the use of anti-depressants. The risks in children and adolescents, the reminder warned against the use of Paxil in under the age of 18 because of lack of data on efficacy in addition to the increased risk of suicide and hostile behavior. United States, May 4th, 2017, the FDA updated the safety label of Zyban to that while Zyban is not indicated for depression, it has some active ingredients the same active ingredients as wellbutrin. Antidepressants increase the risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior in children, adolescents, and young adults. Some of the adverse effects include mania, psychosis, hallucinations, paranoia, delusions, homicidal ideation, hostility, agitation, anxiety, panic, suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and completed suicide that same day. They updated it for Wellbutrin as well. Sean (18:00.223) December 23rd, 2016, FDA updated the safety label for Zoloft to include a warning of suicidal thoughts or actions in patients age 24 and younger. Pediatric patients are to be monitored for suicidal thoughts, clinical worsening, and unusual behavior. February 2013, the FDA added the following side effect of side effect updates to Pristique. Suicidal thoughts mania, hypomania. Sean (18:33.931) Japan, May 2009, you're getting my point, right? The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare investigated news reports of antidepressants users who developed increased feelings of hostility or anxiety have even committed sudden acts of violence against others. After the investigation, the ministry decided to revise the label warnings on new or antidepressants stating these are cases where we cannot rule out a causal relationship with the medication. You're already aware of the black box warnings for antidepressants. Let me add a couple other facts here just in case you weren't aware. In June 2001, a Wyoming jury was awarded $8 million to the relatives of a non-violent family man and doting grandfather who had gone on a shooting rampage after taking an antidepressant prescribed for anxiety. Two days later, the father put three bullets each to the heads of his wife, his daughter, and his nine-month-old granddaughter before killing himself. The jury determined that paraxetine, which is Paxil, I believe, can cause people to become homicidal and suicide, and the drug was 80% responsible for the ensuing acts. In the same year, May 25th, 2001, an Australian judge blamed the antidepressant Sertraline for turning a peaceful law-abiding husband into a violent killer. The man had no history of violence or suicidality and had remained gainfully employed throughout his life. Judge Barry O'Keefe said the defendant had not taken an antidepressant. It's overwhelming probable that his wife would have not been killed. Go ahead, you can look at case law throughout the past 30 years. Sean (20:35.691) What's interesting enough is I found back when CNN used to be a journalistic station. January 3rd, 2005, CNN reported an internal document purportedly from Eli Lilly and Company was made public. It appears to show that the drug maker had data more than 15 years ago showing that patients on the antidepressant Prozac were far more likely to attempt suicide and show hostility than were patients on other antidepressants. the company attempted to minimize public awareness of these side effects. The 1988 document indicated that 3.7% of patients attempted suicide while on the blockbuster drug, a rate more than 12 times that's cited for any of the four other commonly used antidepressants. And if you remember, 12 out of 15 trials of Prozac, 4. childhood depression were unfounded. They created a statistical difference between three of them and published those. I don't know if people are aware, but I think that's That in neuroscience, and this is published in behavioral neuroscience by Professor Richard Maloney of Northwestern University, this is in 2012, repeated administration of a low dose of fluoxetine which is... Sean (22:07.927) Prozac, sorry. Repeated administration of a low dose of Prozac to adolescent hamsters, dramatically increased offensive aggression, and altered the development of brain areas directly associated with controlling aggressive responses. Here's a quote. This data shows clearly that repeated exposure to fluoxetine during adolescence directly stimulates aggressive responding and alters the normal development. of two important brain areas. Sean (22:42.827) So when I asked the question. Is it possible the mass psychiatric drugging of young people has led to a rise in mass shootings and school shootings that occur only after the years we started administering these drugs? highly possible, highly probable. And if we have all these regulatory advisements about these drugs, warnings, they're warnings. These international drug regulatory warnings. that these drugs create suicide, hostility, and violence, then why hasn't the United States government investigated the role of these drugs in our school shootings? Remember, I'm just asking questions. I don't have answers. Sean (23:40.647) Instead, they want to take away your guns. Instead, they want to disarm the American people. Sean (23:50.675) But you'll pop that Prozac because you think it's going to make you happy. These are questions we don't ask. Where's our media? Sean (24:19.543) Why aren't we critically evaluating this? Mental health professionals. Sean (24:26.163) Ladies and gentlemen, I've been talking to, you know, parents across the country, because they don't know what to do anymore. They might have a child who's struggling with an eating disorder and underweight Sean (24:42.419) Is there evidence to suggest? that we should be providing an antidepressant for anorexia? It's not approved by the FDA, hasn't been studied, it hasn't been evaluated. I just spoke to you about all the warnings, mostly for young people that are at a much greater risk. Our eating disorder population tends to be adolescents and young adults. In fact, puberty is a risk factor. So you're going to tell me. Hey, I'm just asking questions here. You're going to tell me. that a nutritionally deprived and starved adolescent brain, you are going to institute a mood and mind-altering drug that has proven to increase hostility, violence, suicide amongst others, and has never been proven scientifically to actually make a damn difference in the treatment of that anorexia. Sean (25:51.731) But you're going to do it anyway because someone told you to do it. Because God forbids you think critically. Got a paper here in front of me, Roll of Antidepressants and the Treatment of Adults with Anorexia Nervosa, because no idiot would ever publish something for kids, because it doesn't exist. But in these treatment programs across the country, it's part of their treatment, Sean. Thank God there are some parents who are willing at this point to stand up against this authoritarian, nonsensical, harmful treatment. But many aren't. Because of some of what we've just talked about, you repeat a lie long enough it becomes truth, and they've been raised to trust the authority. And you know what? And my tribe, psychologists and therapists, they're just going along with it. Well, why wouldn't you put your kid on an antidepressant? It's going to help them eat. How do you know that? Based on what evidence? What about risks? You know, they... Other countries, even my country, they warn us against these drugs. The efficacy isn't established, the dangers are. And that's just for like depression. Now you're going to give it to my starved kid? Sean (27:13.247) You knucklehead. How did you get to that point? How did you get to the point where you no longer think critically and then you're going to harm somebody? Sean (27:26.439) Yeah, so anyway, Rise of Antidepressants and Treatment of Adults with Anorexia. Here's a paper, open access paper, review of drugs and pharmacotherapy, mental health clinician is the journal. Although we have no evidence that SSRIs have any effect for adults with anorexia. Here's the discussion, healthcare professionals should use clinical judgment regarding fluoxetine or possible other SSRIs. as an adjunctive treatment for psychotherapy for relapse prevention, improvement of depressive and anxiety symptoms, and or OCD behaviors that are unresolved with nutritional rehabilitation. So not that it works, but if once somebody becomes weight restored and they're healthy again, they're still struggling with their anxiety or depression. Well, now you can use your judgment. Your judgment? What's that based on? You assume that these drugs have efficacy? Why? Because somebody passed it along to you? Same thing with bulimia. Just because you have no idea how to evaluate a research study, don't read the conclusions. We just spoke to you about how poor quality this research evidence is. I went through the research. Some of this research is like old, like 1990, 1987 for bulimia with an antidepressant. It's such mixed research because studies are poor. The studies are poor. Shit goes in, shit comes out. But if you don't know what shit is, you just repeat shit. Sean (29:09.139) You've lost your minds, professionals out there in the eating disorder community, giving these young people antidepressants for an eating disorder outside any evidence. And yes, bulimia for bulimia in adults, it has approval. Fluoxetine is approved for adults over the age of 24 for the treatment of bulimia based on shit evidence, poorly constructed trials. Hey, Statistical significance between two measures when the measure is shit to begin with does not mean clinical relevance. Sean (29:46.571) There are real stated harms for taking this drug. It is not a happy pill. It's not even an antidepressant. That's a marketing term. It's a numbing agent. It affects people differently. Some of them it's fatal. Bulimia can be treated, trust me. Do it every day here. It's good evidence. People can do this. They can learn to tolerate their emotions. They can understand in context when they're more likely to binge eat. They can understand the function of the behavior. They can learn skills to tolerate distress, regulate emotions, change behaviors. You can work with somebody to understand how it could be related to other areas of their life. There's good, safe therapies out there. You don't have to experiment. People don't have to be guinea pigs. But here's the thing, you don't know. You're just told. Sean (30:47.927) And that's my problem. My problem here is we speak falsehoods into truth. That's the vulnerability of human beings. Am I wrong to say if you're a healthcare professional or a medical professional that you should have a little bit of a higher standard in this regard? Sean (31:09.319) It's insanity. It's absolutely insanity out there that these elites are pushing onto the American people that they just need more treatment, the mental health problems and the struggles are lack of access to treatment. Are you insane? Sean (31:27.959) I mean, I honestly believe those who do not get into seeing a psychiatrist by the grace of God that there was a long waiting list might have saved their life. And most therapists are useless. Sean (31:46.803) Now I have to get into something that hits home a little bit here, Sean. More so than even what I'm saying. Yeah. Because it has to do with a, my child. I mentioned this on the last podcast. I think a lot of people accept that if you get a flu vaccine, it's going to work. I think a lot of people accept. that you can get hundreds of vaccines throughout your life and it'll have no effect at all. So we follow mandates. Healthcare professionals around the United States are mandated to get a flu vaccine. Now I learned for the first time, there might be some financial incentives around that for hospital networks. I'm talking to Dr. Kristin Ryman. Don't know for sure, I have to look into it. But whether it's federal funding or Medicare dollars, whatever that is, or when he was pushed into the Affordable Care Act, because it got pushed by the pharmaceutical industry lobbyists, that you need to get all your, you need to get all your professionals vaccinated against the flu, right? And then we're gonna use, remember this, for the safety of others. You need to protect others. And so people repeat that shit over and over and over again, not even understanding biology, not understanding the efficacy of the vaccine, randomized control trials. Y'all think the flu vaccine works? Well, you know what the media reports to you. You know that they'll say on some years we just didn't get it right. Yeah, we just we guessed and we guessed wrong, right? But in other years, you know, it's at least 30% effective. What does that mean 30% effective? There's a 30% reduction in your likelihood that you're going to get the flu. Sean (33:43.855) They just trust. You don't care. You don't know how to read medical research. You're not going to try and read medical research. But I'm warning you all. We're in a dangerous point in history and medical freedom is one of the defining moments of our time. Learn how to read medical research or find someone you trust who can. Here's from the Cochrane Library. Okay, Cochrane reviews are. Well established. Sean (34:21.528) used in the medical field if you decided to look. Here is the name of the paper. Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy adults, a review. So again, this is for healthy adults. And you know what they want to do with healthcare professionals and you and I as well is they want to give you a flu vaccine even though you're healthy. So here is the review. And it is from it's substantial. From 1968. Sean (35:07.723) 2009. Okay, pretty large. Yeah. Pretty, pretty large. 80,000 people. Okay. 52 trials. Healthy adults who received the influenza vaccine compared to no vaccine. Okay. That's what we care about, right? So if you're a Sean (35:38.015) that you'll get the flu? About a 2% chance that you'll get the flu. Okay. If you get the vaccine, let's forget about side effects. Forget about anything else. Sean (35:51.743) It's about a 1% chance. Maybe. Can't say that with any certainty. Okay, because of just problems with research. Well, here's the other lies that we're told. It reduces hospitalizations or it reduces severity. Well, not according to the Cochrane Library research reviews. The certainty of evidence for the small reductions in hospitalizations and time off for work is low. Well, maybe we should give it to pregnant mothers. And that's going to protect their newborns. So protection against flu in mothers and newborns was smaller than the effects seen in other populations, considered in his review. Vaccines do increase the risk of a number of adverse events. But rates are often uncertain. Now listen, I think we can probably reasonably say that the flu vaccine adverse reactions are, severe ones are rare, but do we really know what it does to our immune system by repeatedly providing these vaccinations or other things that are in the vaccination? It doesn't matter. Like I'm not here to tell you not to get a flu vaccine, but I'm saying that it really doesn't do much at all. And so if there's any potentially adverse reaction, is it worth the risk? And I said on the last podcast that we had a client here who after getting a flu vaccine has been in a wheelchair, Gillian-Barr syndrome. So if you're a healthy individual facing a 2% risk of a flu, that you'll be able to recover from. Are you willing to take those risks to go from a 2% reduction to a 1% reduction? You know, when you talk about evaluating these studies, one of the simple mind hacks that I've done is when somebody talks about percentages, ask for the numbers. When somebody talks about the numbers, ask for the percentages. Sean (38:07.707) And the simple takeaway from that study was that 71 healthy adults need to be vaccinated to prevent one of them experiencing influenza. Like that to me from an effectiveness standpoint just seems like a waste. But our health care professionals are drones. They're drones. They have no idea. All right, now here is the argument against mandating it. Here's the argument about getting it every year. Sean (38:40.459) Published paper, Infectious Disease Society of America. Not really. not my field, but published literature that is available. And I've seen, I actually seen other studies from other countries. This is about the decline in seasonal influenza vaccine effectiveness with vaccination program maturation, a review and meta-analysis. Basically what that means, that they see a decline in the effectiveness, the more you get it. Okay? So conclusion. is the evidence suggests that influenza vaccination declines with repeated vaccination. So the idea that you need to get it every year, you should get it every year, and then that protects people is not founded in any science. There are adverse effects. And my daughter had an adverse reaction to the flu vaccine and has a medical exemption. has a medical exemption. But because people who are working in the medical field will just blindly get a flu vaccine, regardless of whether it works or not, whether it protects anybody, well then it becomes mandated. But if you stood up for medical freedom, if you question the medical authority, if you did some research on why it's mandated, Sean (40:19.455) Well, maybe we wouldn't have enough health care workers then. Maybe you have some power. You're not free. Sean (40:30.043) unless you get to choose what's placed into your body. If you're forced to put something into your body that's unknown, then you're not free. Sean (40:43.027) We do things not because we have good understanding of it. We do things because it's just been repeated over and over again, and the pharmaceutical companies know this. The medical establishment knows this. But hey, I'm just asking questions. I'm not telling you what to do. They're reasonable questions based on evidence. And that's what we no longer do. And guess what happens? It start taking more and more and more away. It's a slippery slope. And the less that you're willing to think, ask more questions, the more we're gonna lose our freedoms. And I'm not losing my freedoms. And I'm not gonna do something just because somebody told me to and I'm not gonna approach my clients that way. I'm going to give you the best available evidence and respect your right to choose. If you wanna do it, If you have a reasonable argument that you have a family member who has a compromised immune system and you believe getting a vaccination with a compromised immune system improves your ability to fight off that infection, you have good data and science to do it, then you should have every right to do it. I mean, we had a physician here last week, Dr. Ryman, who said, listen, I don't vaccination when I have a dysregulated immune system. She had Lyme's disease or others did. I was doing fine until I got that injected, which makes sense because you'd have to somehow say that you don't believe the body in the manner in which it's evolved has its ability as an immune system to be strong enough to fight off reactions. And this is some of the dumb things that I'm worried about post-COVID. We have more people saying like, People still believe they get sick because someone around them is sick. Sean (42:42.791) You say it. My whole house was just sick with a cold. You repeat it. Everyone repeats it. Yeah, I do. I find that hard to believe that, like a cold virus when it passes through my house when all three of us are sick at the same time. Yeah, because if you have a compromised immune system. You get sick because there is something wrong. You get sick all the time. That's a problem. You get sick like two times a year. Usually right around now. Yeah, I'm gonna have to. I'm gonna have to mark that in, right? I'm gonna mark it when you get sick too. Do you know the last time I missed a day of work? Probably within the last two years. No. Because I remember bringing you soup one day. Yeah, I got, I did get COVID when I was on Christmas break. And I didn't know I had it. That was before I was here. No, you were here. That was 2019. You got it early first. No, that was before you were here. Yeah, that's the only time I ever got sick. Nah, liar. You definitely got sick after that. Nope, haven't. I haven't missed a day of work for illness since 2015. I'm calling BS on that. Fine. Yeah. 2015, and you know what it was? Your beliefs? The flu. On the one year I got a flu shot. Oh, well. Correlation, causation, it's for you to decide. Yeah. Now, and it was the real flu and it was hell. Like I sat in bed for like a week, but I have not missed. I have not missed work. Um, now that doesn't mean I don't say I'm like a little off or I'm fighting something off, but nothing that has ever stopped me from being able to work. Right. And I rarely get a cold. I might get a little minor cold for a couple of days, but I get a sinus infection almost every year around this time. There's gotta be a reason why I just don't know what it is. And it could be my immune system. It could be allergy related. It's not it's not it's not a could be. It is your immune system. Yeah, but I just don't know what the causes of it is like the immune system is something that needs to be strengthened and repaired and grow. But I mean, all it has to take is a couple nights without sleep and a little bit of stress. That happens a lot, right? And then you have a compromised immune system. I mean, there's lots of other things. Maybe you go into your home and there's toxic mold. Right. And you have to go look at that. I mean, don't put that out there. It's always possible. Sean (45:05.139) But I just drove here again and Sean and there are people walking outside with a mask on. Yeah, I saw that. We know the power of beliefs. Someone gets, someone around you gets sick and then you start believing you're gonna get sick. At this point from everything I know about the literature, you're gonna get sick. You called me one day and you said, you're sick again. I go, no, I'm not. I am not sick. Yeah, but inside you believed it. Probably, yeah, cause I felt miserable. Yeah, I don't wanna digress too much because obviously you can catch something from somebody else if you're, you know, if you can't fight it out. But why aren't we talking about restoring health? Like, why aren't we talking about people? How do you boost your immune system? How do you live a life? I mean, we live in such an unhealthy world. But I don't want to be in that. I want to. I'm just tired in our in our field of not asking the questions and accepting things of truth and then people being harmed. And that's what this podcast is. I mean, I'm so fed up. I cannot believe a therapist would tell a family to get on Prozac. A therapist, right? I can't believe anyone would look at the literature, any reasonable human being and come to the conclusion that that's the path towards health. That's the direction we go in this treatment. Well, you have to go back to what we started off this conversation with. It's that illusion of truth. And even though that there's multiple examples of like wrongdoing, especially from big companies out in the world, when it's repeated, you become almost like desensitized to it over time. So you stop looking at it with a critical lens and like even your moral and ethical analysis of it becomes impaired over time. No, it pisses me off. I know I'm going off today. Sean (46:52.127) Obviously I do this work. And then I'll say it, things that are true or never been proven. And someone will say, can you send me the citation on that? Yeah. Do the research yourself. Like you assume the propaganda is true and now I have to make a case for you personally by doing a literature review for you. Well, it's called the Just World Hypothesis. You familiar with that? I'm definitely familiar with that, right? Yeah, we're all guilty of it. And... Definitely. I have I don't think I'm guilty of it. No, you're probably skewing to the other side skewing to the other side. But basically, people try to preserve their belief in a just world. And especially when it comes to medical, there's all these gates that have to go through you've got FDA, you've got, you know, doctors, you got your authority bias in there, people critically evaluating, you got research studies where statistical analysis and they presented in a way that's very compelling. So basically as people review these things and if it goes against those things that they're repeatedly here over and over again, they Try and rationalize to keep That idea of a threatening world at bay Because you view that everything out there can be rationalized even though it may seem plausible it reduces your negative emotional state and you're a lot more lenient on those moral judgments because people want to believe that behavior is coming from a just point of view. Little sidebar here. It, the belief in a just world is actually a vulnerability factor for PTSD. Explain. So those who believe bad things happen to bad people, you know, the world is ultimately good. Yeah. And if something happened to me, it's because I must have done something wrong. Yeah. are increase the self blame and impairs recovery from exposure to a traumatic event. Right? Because now you have to become more vigilant, more on guard. There's negative beliefs that you have about yourself and you know that needs to be resolved. Yes, that's actually in one of these reports that I read good things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people and this can provide a sense of order and predictability in the world. Yeah. And that's a big part of it is Sean (49:18.655) That it's too threatening for people to assume all this information that's been put out there by the authorities could potentially be harmful to us. And, uh, it just threatens their way of viewing their world and into a manner in which would create too much dissonance. And without finding a way to resolve that, um, they're, they're going to create, you know, beliefs that support their kind of original view of the world, which is why scientists or psychologists. that are critically evaluating things come across as angry and frustrated and surly, which actually makes people less receptive to hearing their message because I don't like that guy. Therefore, I'm not going to listen to him, which is a problem. That's an interesting point. And that's like one of the things about this work that we're starting to do here with the radically genuine podcast is Sean (50:17.615) how that message is delivered is a skill. Yes. And there's training around it and there's research around it. Gavin Newsom. Yeah. Bring it back around, politicians are savvy. They are so savvy. But to me, they come across as so phony. Likeability. That's what politicians are, it's likeability. I like that guy, I wanna have a beer with that guy. That's why they get elected. It's not because they're good leaders or they have the ability to run complex organizations. There's like a there's like a trifecta of danger with someone who is really smart, really intelligent with high emotional intelligence, who's narcissistic and anti social. Now those that three try that trifecta there is so dangerous, which is most politicians. Most politicians are really smart. but like narcissistic, it's about power and it's about power and influence. And then that anti-social kind of component, right? Is, you know, your ability to lie deeply into somebody's eyes because you don't really care. You only care about your own power and your own influence. We did that, an older podcast on the sociopath next door. Which is an interesting book because it speaks to the everyday individual. you know, the everyday doctor or the you know, just a person down the street to meet some of those profile characteristics and how dangerous they can be in different realms. And I think Gavin Newsom is really dangerous because I personally believe our politicians are nothing more than puppets for that, you know, people who have the most influence and most control over the world and you need your puppet to be charismatic, regardless of party, regardless of party. Um, charismatic and influential. I mean, I don't think anyone says that would believe that Donald Trump's most intelligent man in the world, right? Like, like he's not that articulate. Uh, his grasp of ideas are not really, really strong, but there's a charisma about him that somehow leaves a group of people believing he is acting in their best interest, although there is nothing in the history of his business career, his life up to that point that would suggest he gives a damn. Sean (52:43.095) about those people. So that's something that was always curious to me. But he's been a great spokesperson for a group of people who believe the world should be run a certain way, or believe a country should be run a certain way, and you have to get votes from those people. Listen, I don't wanna be a political person. I'm neither left, I'm neither right. I'm pretty open about my libertarian beliefs, anything that impacts freedom. And whenever there's information that's kept for people to make informed decisions. Obviously, that triggers me and riles me up. So I tend to look at politics or politicians to be please stay out of our private lives. I think government should be a lot smaller. And I think the original aspect of our founding fathers beliefs about a limited government and government being local is probably the best system that we can identify. Right now, I just don't think we live in that anymore. I think we live in large federal governments with lack of real democratic principles anymore. And when it comes to our healthcare, I just, this is just another reminder that informed consent is the law. And we know that people are not getting informed consent. Push these medical professionals to have to do some work. before you accept what they tell you, have them produce credible evidence and then ask them to produce the other side alternatives because that's what informed consent is. It's a risk benefit analysis. And I'm sorry, your eight to 15 minute session might get pushed to 2025 or you might have to get a followup where you discuss risks and benefits. But if the takeaway from today's podcast episode is we're all repeating things that are not true and they know it.