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Derpish stupidity 

 •  • by Paul Ingraham
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Weekly nuggets of pain science news and insight, usually 100-300 words, with the occasional longer post. The blog is the “director’s commentary” on the core content of PainScience.com: a library of major articles and books about common painful problems and popular treatments. See the blog archives or updates for the whole site.

“Derp” defined as a Bayesian probability concept: the persistent refusal to update beliefs about what is likely to be true based on new evidence.

The word “derp” originally comes from pop culture, but has come to be used most earnestly in political punditry, referring to the extreme mental ruts characteristic of American right-wing extremists. But derpish stupidity is also rampant in health care, and this more technical definition of what derp has come to mean in politics is a pitch perfect description of how quacks defend their beliefs — namely, with self-serving assumptions that are impervious to contrary data, and are literally decades or even centuries behind biology and medicine.

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