#academic study

Giuseppe Bezzuoli (1784 -1855)

01.01.2026/Thursday

After a busy first semester of my MSc, I’m excited to return with a brand new workspace and a fresh perspective for the new year.

To wit:

"Actual intelligence and functioning intelligence can be viewed as broadly analogous to potential and kinetic energy; although the transferral is neither as clean nor efficient where intelligence is concerned. Potential energy exists to become kinetic energy whereas in many cases actual intelligence is restrained and resists being applied to functioning intelligence. Actual intelligence does in fact understand individual responsibility and personal agency but too often functional intelligence deliberately denies or refuses the truth of the role of free will.

Multiple studies have shown a clear correlation between poor education and inadequate parenting and the decline of individual's ability to apply logic and critical thought. Standards that are reduced until they no longer serve a valid purpose and which are then combined with an inflated and false sense of self worth result in an individual whose identity is fragile and reliant on continuous reinforcement of the fallacy of exceptionalism for them to function.

Populism replaces the errant and inadequate parents with a broader platform of unassailable authority. It is demanding; obedience, belief, and the subsummation of independent thought are mandatory, but it is non-threatening. If the individual submits and conforms they are promises rewards and exalted status. The populist leader eliminates the threat to self posed by actual experts and those who have spent thousands of hours in study of their field. Intellectuals and experts undermine the narrative repeated ad nauseum by parents. That notion that the individual, despite lacking the information and ability to process that information, is 'as good as anyone else'. Anyone who can understand things that the individual has made no effort to research and investigate, anyone who can offer more insight than the populist leader, is not to be trusted.

The populist leader's appeal comes from unfounded claims of expertise that are never expounded upon. The leader displays authority but not intelligence. 'Common sense' is more important. The follower is not expected to think. They need only obey. A population that has been groomed through systemic dilution of responsibility and which has negated the role of effort in accomplishments; where intelligence is mocked rather than respected and celebrated, such a population exists in a state destined for exploitation and collapse.

Populism is a formula that inevitably creates mediocrity and conformity. As it entrenches itself it actively and persistently discourages thought. Conspiracy theories supersede science and the efforts of legitimate experts. Learning becomes the act of absorbing and parroting the messages given out by the populist leader. Contradictions are ignored. Blatant lies are acceptable because the populist leader can redefine truth.

The threat is most dire to history. The populist leader can rewrite, erase, or fabricate a history that supports whatever current claim is being proposed. An entire region could sink beneath the sea and vanish as though it never existed if this serves the purpose of the populist autocrat.

As the demand to think grows ever less the act of thinking becomes transgressive. Intelligence is a detriment. It complicates the acts of obedience and conformity and threatens to remove the individual from the safety of 'the group'. If you do not 'belong' you must then operate in that space outside where you are not handed simple and convenient answers. You thusly face the constant requirement to make decisions. Each of those decisions is perilous: the risk of being wrong, which does not exist within obedience, waits for the individual with every choice.

[PT: A study's transparency]

Okay, I've just had an issue of someone in my own comment section correcting me about something showing me a study.

A study that had the worst formatting, and methodology/source transparency I've ever seen in a study about a demography from a, what it looks like, a source with good intentions. And I'm saying this as someone who's not an expert on seeing this kind of shit, I'm just passionate, so I will miss stuff.

SO TRANSPARENCY 101:

[PT: So transparency 101:]

The methodology has to be explained. If they're going through the news to take the information what makes a news oultet count/be included is important. What outlets were used is important and should be referenced. Even the ones that had no information that was used, if they were used for the pool of information it should be there. Knowing what outlets were taken out shows you why they didn't (which in had studies shows the bases and what they didn't want to count).

Everything, every bit of information that comes from somewhere (a social media post, a Newspaper, another study, etc) should have the source linked in the bibliography.

If theres more than one source of information —different kinds like more right wing or left wing, different types like social media posts/news outlets/people reaching out to them and reporting it/etc— the statistics of what parts of the demographic coincide with each outlet is important. And the amount of effort to used each source is also very rellevant. As if group A is very reported but they're mostly from news outlets, and group B is almost insignificant of how low they are and they were mostly from people reaching out, and for the news there was and algorithm but for the reporting it wasn't very advertised/known, data on group B wont be showing what they're actually living through.

Any ambiguos wording about how something is done is a part of information they're actively not giving you for a reason. Again, things have to have a source.

If most of the sources they give are linked to themselves? Bad. If you have to go through the links to themselves to then inside there find the original source most of the time? Bad. Or they're hiding something and want you to take too much to do It so you don't look deep, or they're very badly administrized and formatted which if added to it there's a lack of sources and methodology transparency means it's very probable it's the same for how they did the study itself, which is not a good luck for a study to be badly administrized if it's about data/statistics. What if they accidently changed things? What if they accidently deleted information? What if they didn't organinize the methodology right and didn't actually fet a good sample because of a bad algorithm (like not talking into account other wordings or types of news outlet)?

Every demographic intersection should be added from the pool of data. And if demographic 1 is shown to be intersected in a specific way with demographic A, demographic 2/3/... should also be shown in relation to A. Even if to shown there's no significant importance with one intersection but there is with another.

Do not believe a study if one or more of these things is not done right.

A big red flag is also not having a version of the report in an academic study format.