Despite an enormous gap between academic achievement and intellect, far too many of us mistake academic pedigree with intellect and far too often, in conversations with others throughout my life, I have witnessed those mistake their academic achievement for intellect when they get flustered during a debate and possess a lack of facts to support their argument. Inevitably, those that conflate academic achievement and intellect resort to stating their academic pedigree, if from a “top tier” school, as “proof” they are correct (my experiences with this logical fallacy have been with those mostly in the sub 30-year-old group). When I was a poor critical thinker and much younger, I too resorted to this invalid argument, stating my Ivy League pedigree as if it validated the stupidity of my argument, when I was in the process of losing an argument either due to (1) lack of supporting facts; or (2) simple ignorance of the topic of debate. Having been exposed throughout my academic and professional career to so many other Ivy Leaguers that love bragging about their alumnus status as if that automatically marks one as intelligent, there is a pandemic today of gross self-delusion and incorrect self-assessment of intellect. Ivy Leaguers, in my experience of encounters with literally hundreds of other Ivy Leaguers, because they are exposed throughout their academic careers to continuous positive reinforcement of compliance to authority, often are incapable of producing thoughts independent of the herd. We only need to look at some of the biggest frauds in finance that have held tenure at Ivy League universities like Ben Bernanke and Larry Summers, to understand this fact.
The mark of high intelligence is not a diploma from an institution of higher learning (and I use this term very lightly), but rather should be defined solely by the ability to:
(1) continuously exercise critical thought independent of strong pressure from the herd not to do so;
(2) critically analyze information and reach opposite conclusions from the herd when warranted even if the herd numbers in the millions; and
(3) exercise the courage and conviction of conclusions drawn from facts, and facts alone, even when one’s conclusion differs from that drawn by members of one’s community or political affiliation.
These are all the attributes I stress in the Academy I developed (soon to be launched), of which you can learn more by clicking here.
How the Lack of Intellect Among Medical Professionals Creates Worse, Not BETTER, Global Health
Because development of critical thinking has systemically been stripped out of academia, universities all over the world graduate young men and women that are book smart but incredibly incapable in regard to analytical thinking skills and being able to separate propaganda from truth. For example, equating academic pedigree with intellect is as silly as equating scientific fact with statements, just because the statements were issued by a doctor. To begin, as is the case with any profession, the ignorant outnumber the brilliant thinkers in the medical profession by large numbers, especially since the majority of medical schools teach doctors to always prescribe medication over more helpful sustainable solutions and cures to disease, such as developing better eating habits of high nutrition, developing regular exercise routines important not only to physical but mental health, and eating foods that improve one’s gut biome and thereby contribute to the fabrication of much stronger immune systems.. Because medical schools emphasize profits of big pharma over better solutions to disease, due to overprescription of penicillin by doctors, drug-resistant bacterias have developed throughout the world, like penicillin-resistant myobacterium tuberculosis (responsible for the disease of tuberculosis).
Furthermore, the ability to solve complex equations, whether in the sciences of mathematics, engineering, chemistry or physics, does not signify high levels of intellect either. Possession of this capacity only signifies an ability to solve complex equations but it is certainly possible for one to simultaneously possess very low critical thinking skills. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the NAIAD, is a perfect example of why an academic scientific pedigree does not guarantee a high level of intellect. Dr. Fauci, in response to others in the scientific community that levied heavy criticism against his unscientific mandates, incredulously stated that his critics were “really criticizing science because [he] represent[s] science.” Such a statement illustrates a profound ignorance of science, as criticism, questioning and debate are the very foundation of science necessary for disputed conclusions to evolve into facts.
Secondly, if one is aware of the history of those that have funded medical schools (especially the Rockefeller family’s relationship with influencing medical school curricula in the United States), then one would understand that doctors are taught in many nations to always medicate patients first to produce profits for Big Pharma, even when better natural and safer holistic solutions exist. If you don’t believe that anyone could be so bad hearted as to train thousands of doctors to deliberately violate their Hippocratic oaths, using academia to misinform doctors to do so, then you must understand that the Rockefellers’ meddling in many areas of life has always been ethically repugnant. For example, just view this clip of courageous teenager Matías Rojas confront David Rockefeller at a Chilean airport and demand that Rockefeller leave Chile immediately due to Rockefeller’s large role in organizing a coup to overthrow then Chilean leader Salvadore Allende in the 1970s, installing dictator Augusto Pinochet in Allende’s stead, under whom one of the darkest periods of Chilean history occurred. Rockefeller played a massive role in enabling Pinochet to rise to power in Chile, during which an estimated 30,000 Chileans were tortured, murdered and “disappeared.” In light of Pfizer’s $54B estimated 2022 revenue projections from Covid drug sales, it should be crystal clear why many doctors, especially those that rise to the head of political organization are the least honorable of all their peers, as such doctors completely reject their Hippocratic oath for pledged loyalty to big pharma profits in which they push pills, even pills not yet proven to be safe over long periods of time, over health. Such doctors from an ethical standpoint, are no better than your neighborhood drug pusher that slings illegal drugs on your inner-city street corner.
Due to the wide disparity between academic achievement and intelligence, I developed skwealthacademy for fifteen years to return critical thinking and real education to academia (to learn of the exact future launch date, just subscribe, for free, to my substack newsletter). Furthermore, the massive gap between intelligence and academic pedigree unfortunately creates other massive gaps between reality and belief in multiple other arenas in life. For the sake of brevity, let’s simply discuss how the massive gap between intellect and academic pedigree plays out in two other worlds in which I am very familiar – finance and martial arts/sports.
The Massive Gap Between Intellectual Reality and Propaganda in the Global Finance World
Because high academic achievement is conflated with intellect, Harvard, Stanford and Wharton MBAs and post-graduates dominate the landscape in finance not only among portfolio managers, economists and data scientists, but also in mass financial media appearances. For this reason, most of the financial predictions to which we are exposed in the mass financial media are poor. And as poor as is the business information dispensed inside the brick and mortar business academic classrooms, to find valid financial information online requires even greater digging through garbage information and patience. The amount of demagogues that parade as experts online is simply too many to count. And this is not an opinion but a statement of fact.
As a corollary to the arguments I have made in this article, most of the information one can find online is of extremely low utility or simply is wrong. For example, most of the “advice” dispensed online about stocks, commodities, cryptos and more, is terribly wrong and one would likely do well in one’s investing decisions simply by executing the exact opposite of the advice dispensed by so-called online “experts” consumed and ingested by the herd. Time and time again, I have read a plethora of articles about many different types of assets in which the herd consensus about whether to buy or sell an asset has been not just wrong, but massively wrong. I cannot count the amount of times I had a discussion when I was working in corporate finance with Wharton and Harvard MBAs about the mechanisms which truly influence asset prices, and these “experts” had no understanding of the real mechanisms, and instead chose to cling to the theories of low utility they were taught in school that have near zero applicability in the real world.
Allow me to provide just a few examples of awful asset price predictions that originated from a gross misunderstanding of the real factors that influence asset price behavior. In the world of commodities, Barclays wealth management predicted in 2010 that gold prices would plummet to $800 by 2012. As the lowest price gold reached in 2010 was $1,540 and it ended 2012 at $1,657 per ounce, if someone merely bought more gold at the low price of $1,157 in the same month that Barclays issued their disastrous gold price prediction, he or she would have made a profit of more than 43%. Harry Dent, another economist that was (and still is to some extent) wildly popular with American financial media, and someone that narcissistically describes himself as a “futurist”, issued wildly incorrect predictions for at least five consecutive years about gold price crashes to $800 or less per ounce. Every time his prediction was wrong, he merely just repeated it stating that it would come true the following year, but it never did, and his predictions were often grossly incorrect by more than 50% by gold’s year end price.
I can likewise illustrate horribly BTC price predictions issued by crypto experts year after year after year seemingly in perpetuity. The more the mass media financial press lauds someone as an expert, the more likely that person is to issue terribly and comically wrong predictions. Again, to earn money, merely execute the exact opposite strategy of those lauded by the most prominent “experts” in the field. To illustrate this point, let’s examine Bitcoin “expert” Tom Lee’s (Fundstrat) past predictions. To start 2018, Lee predicted that bitcoin would rise to $25,000 at some point that year. Later in 2018, as his $25,000 prediction went south rapidly, Mr. Lee predicted that bitcoin would reach $11,500 by mid-year. Soon after this prediction, BTC plummeted to $7,500 and closed the year at about $3,750, producing an error of merely 466.67% for his original prediction. Having failed with two miserable bitcoin price predictions in 2018, Mr. Lee predicted in mid-2019 that bitcoin would finally find its mojo and soar to $40,000 in a few months. Instead, bitcoin traded within a range between about $7,000 to $11,000 during the timeline of his stated prediction.
So as to not pick on Tom Lee, Mr. Lee has good company in his wildly awful Bitcoin price predictions. John McAfee, of McAfee Security fame, predicted BTC would reach a cool $1,000,000 by 2020 while cryptocurrency expert Plan B predicted BTC would end 2021 at $300,000, predictions that were both grossly incorrect. And while the entire mass financial press predicted new BTC ETFs would drive prices much higher as institutional money flooded into BTC, I was one of just a handful of voices, or perhaps maybe the only voice in the sea of bullish BTC price predictions that predicted the introduction of more BTC ETFs would create lower future BTC prices and much more volatility to the downside. Finally, US billionaire Tim Draper, since 2018, has repeatedly confirmed his $250,000 BTC price prediction by some point this year. On the other hand, for reasons I will discuss in an article I will drop on my substack platform next week (subscribe here for free), I believe that BTC will experience massive price volatility to the downside at some point this year.
As proof of the zero utility of all these predictions issued by the most widely followed “experts” in the BTC community, on my aforementioned patreon platform (to my Benefactor level members), I issued only two buy and two sell guidances between November 2020 and today: Buy BTC at $20k in November 2020, Sell BTC at $58k in March/April 2021, Buy BTC at sub-$30k in July 2021, and Sell BTC at $66k in November 2021. And this guidance was provided by someone, yours truly, that definitively refers to himself as a non- BTC expert.
The Massive Gap Between Reality and Delusion in Online Martial Arts/Sports Discussions
Finally, as a martial artist, the amount of terrible information online about techniques to defend oneself against weapons attacks is voluminous, many of which have garnered millions of views and tens of thousands of “likes”. For example, more than ninety-five percent of the videos I’ve seen about how to defend oneself against knife attacks will likely result in death or serious stabbing if attempted under real life circumstances. Even in the videos I’ve watched in which someone acknowledges that most of online instruction regarding knife attacks is of extremely low efficacy in real life and will never work, an instructor then proceeds to demonstrate comical open hand v. knife techniques that have less than a one percent chance of ever working. Perhaps in the future, on my Rokfin platform, I’ll post a video of some of the techniques that supposedly work in real life situations but are comically bad. I’ll break down why such techniques will likely result in severe injury or even death if attempted under real life or death situations.
Furthermore, in the ever delusional world of sports in which every fan base conflates delusion with reality in dispensing opinions about the probabilities of their favorite team winning during playoff time, sports commentators constantly serve as obedient mouthpieces for immoral oligarch narratives about experimental Covid drugs falsely presented as vaccinations. These sports commentators serve as the prisoners running the gulag if you will, as their commentary clearly exposes them as failing to understand a single factual scientific fact about vaccines. For example, vaccines for our entire lifetime up until the pandemic, have been defined as a shot or series of shots that grant immunity from a disease for an extended period of time (ten years to a lifetime) and that prevent one from contracting the disease and passing it on to others. None of the most popular experimental Covid drugs administered in the United States – including the ones developed by Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson, or AstraZeneca – fit this definition, and thus, from a scientific perspective, can NOT be vaccines.
Though marketed as vaccines, in reality, they are nothing more than experimental Covid drugs with very low efficacy in serving the purpose Big Pharma executives claim they serve, and they do not guarantee full immunity even to patients that have received three or more doses of these experimental drugs. Since none of these drugs accomplish anything that a traditional vaccine does, it is completely unethical and immoral of sports commentators to constantly demonize athletes like American professional football player Aaron Rogers and American professional basketball players Kyrie Irving and Jonathon Isaac among others, as being selfish and being “unvaxxed”, when these very people have countered this talking point propaganda of the oligarchs by repeatedly stating that their refusals are based upon the high incidences (when compared to traditional vaccines) of adverse reported reactions, some that have resulted in debilitating circumstances, or even worse yet, death, and an utter lack of the typical long-term safety trials that are completed before such drugs are widely administered.
Consequently, for the most prominent sportscasters to constantly refer to such athletes in the national media as selfish and “unvaxxed” when Covid vaccinations still do not exist is as idiotic as calling a new drug designed to lower high blood pressure that fails repeatedly to lower blood pressure in a majority of its patients for more than just a few days as a “groundbreaking high blood pressure drug”. The vast majority of people incapable of producing an original thought seem to forget the many accurate scientific claims a few months into the pandemic that Big Pharma claims that a new effective Covid vaccine could be developed in a year’s time was complete and utter nonsense, simply based on the standard timelines of vaccine development, Phase I, II and III clinical trials, and the necessity for double-blind long-term clinical safety trials to be completed before the first dose was every administered to a patient.
Furthermore, having studied molecular biology and virology in university, and having a foundational level of knowledge to understand such issues at a much higher level than the average person (though admittedly at a much lower level than a career epidemiologist), I still understand that the manner in which some mandatory experimental Covid drug campaigns were administered throughout the world was highly irresponsible. Per indisputable science, administration of experimental subunit, conjugate and even inactivated or attenuated drugs into highly infected communities, is more likely to create wild variants of the virus that will pose more danger to the community than does the currently existing virus. In fact, I would bet the bank that all the sportscasters that have consistently demonized professional athletes for the athletes’ much higher level of understanding of the risks of experimental Covid drugs, could not explain the pathology behind vaccine-derived outbreaks of diseases (as happened in India and Africa with improper administration campaigns of the inactivated polio vaccine), or even something as basic as the differences between inactivated, toxoid, subunit conjugate, and live attenuated vaccines. Many sports commentators represent the perfect example of people in our community that spout nonsense as fact because they are far too ignorant and dumb to know what they don’t know. Athletes cannot be “unvaxxed” if a proper Covid vaccine does not even exist.
And the above is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to massive harm caused by Covid mandates based upon a complete lack of science. Regarding the mandatory masking of young children that face nearly zero risk of death even were they to contract Covid, because facial expressions and non-verbal cues are paramount to children’s development of communication skills, and many children have been prevented for over two years in tuning their communication skills by unnecessary masking mandates, some child developmental experts believe that masking may have caused irreparable harm to young children. Think of the public disaster that may manifest in the future it young children never develop proper communication skills due to incessant unnecessary masking, and from here, then pass into the stage of smartphone social media adoption during which even less face to face communication occurs. Oh joy.
Conclusion
Due to our pandemic of little to no critical thinking development that presently takes place inside traditional academic classrooms, we have a pandemic of demagogues parading as experts online and in media that actually know very little of the topics about which they speak. My skwealthacademy patrons to whom I dispense financial analysis every week from angles and perspectives rarely to never covered in the mainstream financial press, know that I regularly stated “I don’t know” in response to subjects about which I do not know the answers or about which I cannot provide an educated opinion. Sadly, voracious consumers of news and media, due to the proliferation of ignorant commentators parading as experts about topics they know nothing about, are more likely to be misinformed and delusional, than those that consume no news or media at all.
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