> it should be if you include people who can’t discriminate between measurable repeatible data and propaganda

You severely underestimate the cost and effort involved in finding and processing "measurable repeatable data". In fact, for most politically important issues such don't exist, be it for reasons of impossible or insufficient repeatability or lack of access to the few places that may have it.

The vast majority of smart people cannot have access to, or process such data, in amount of time that doesn't risk their existence.

Besides, historical repeatability is kind of a moot point, history doesn't really repeat although farces are common.

> I know literally zero monks especially in the tibetan tradition that cannot clock propaganda immediately

That only shows that you don't quite have an idea how ubiquitous propaganda is, and you accept a lot of it as truth.

> you could make a strong argument that Buddhism itself is propaganda

OK, so they don't "clock propaganda immediately". Moreover, the whole of Buddhism isn't propaganda, the world is quite complicated compared to the abilities of the individual human mind, the long and arduous history of science should tell you that much.

'stevenwoo' below wrote something you might benefit from:

"the post hoc analysis in Jacques Ellul’s book Propaganda makes several compelling arguments that propaganda is omnipresent and difficult for the great part of public to counter and misplaced confidence in one’s own judgment is often the Achilles heel that allows propaganda to insinuate itself in one’s brain."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47663236