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Venal,
Ignorant or Just-Plain-Stupid?
Why do people say things that are clearly false or hypocritical? Is it
because they simply don't know the objective truth of the matter; that
they just have incomplete knowledge of the subject at hand due to a
lack of study or familiarity? Is it because they lack knowledge of
logic or the reasoning skills to arrive at a conclusion that is
supported by the evidence? Is it because they don't care about
objective truth but are only interested in saying those things that
will further enrich themselves? Is it because objective truth is less
important to them than maintaining dogma they believe or supporting the
"team" or "tribe" to which they assign themselves? All interesting
questions, but whatever the reason, when people who hold political or
economic power behave in this fashion, the rest of our society suffers.
Why has the Republican
Party turned into the anti-science party?
See if you can count the logical errors: Here is Mike Pence (when he
was a Congressman) showing that the he has
no clue as to what the word "theory" means in a scientific context or
has any concept of the scientific method: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikax0Y0NJsY
Mr.
Pence has also declared that smoking doesn't cause cancer because the
majority of smokers do not die from lung cancer or smoking-related
illnesses. Can you spot the logical fallacies in that line of
reasoning? (It would only be fair to include the fact that Mr. Pence
has also been the recipient of tobacco industry lobbying money, so it's
quite possible that he is not ignorant or just-plain-stupid, but
instead, the other thing.)
Here is Senator Inhofe's (Oklahoma) famous statement
on why he believes man-made climate change is a hoax. Shorter version:
There isn't man-made climate change because we still have snow. How's
that for logic? I'm sure the senator has no problem believing the
engineers when they talk about new weapons systems, or the doctors at
the NIH when they talk about cancer research, but for some reason, he
has a hard time believing the scientists and researchers who
specialize in atmospheric physics when they talk about the earth's
climate. Why would that be?
Remember, very few of our
representatives at the local, state and federal level have degrees in
the physical sciences. This is not a problem of government, per se, but
rather, a problem with the current make up of the membership. That, and
the Dunning-Kruger
Effect.
Hypocrisy, 2016 Style
"Here's what I
know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His
promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He's
playing the American public for suckers: He gets a free ride to the
White House and all we get is a lousy hat. His domestic policies would
lead to recession. His foreign policies would make America and the
world less safe. He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be
president." - Mitt Romney during the 2016 presidential
campaign.
“What I’ve seen ...
give(s) me increasing hope that President-elect
Trump is the very man who can lead us to that better future”,
Mitt
Romney just a few months later, after the election and his meeting with
Donald Trump.
Department of "The
Stupid: It Burns!"
An
objective observer might understand the self-serving reasoning of a
venal politician or radio/TV pundit who exploits the
ignorance, prejudices and superstitions of their "base". Even though
the politician/pundit knows the truth of the matter, this is less
important to them than making sure that they themselves are "taken care
of" in terms of personal fame and fortune. Yes, it's sociopathic and
short-sighted but given those constraints, an objective observer can at
least understand
(although not agree with) their actions. What is downright depressing
is stuff like this:
An article in Lousiville
Magazine
writes about the Ark Encounter "theme park" in Kentucky which offers a
supposedly life-size model of Noah's ark. The more interesting part of
this is that the park's operators swear to a literal interpretation of
Genesis in the Bible. That is, they are Young Earth Creationists (YECs)
who claim that the planet (indeed, the entire universe) is a mere 6000
years old. In other words, for them, there really was a guy named Noah
and he really did build a big wooden boat, loaded up pairs of every
animal on the planet and floated around as the rain caused flooding
which eventually covered the highest points of land. For a moment,
let's forget about the problems inherent in this story (for example,
lack of genetic variability; that in order to cover all of the land in
40 days, the rain had to be falling at a rate of 30 feet per hour,
which would destroy any wooden boat and strip all soil from
the
bedrock; and once the world was covered with water, where could this
water recede to in order to create dry land again?). Instead, let's
turn to some commentary from the visitors to this theme park. At one
point the author overhears a conversation between an older man and a
young boy of perhaps 10 years age, as they look at a display discussing
gravity. The man says "Gravity
has never been proven, because gravity is a large object attracted to a
smaller object, and it’s never been seen. If gravity existed, a BB and
a bowling ball should bump into each other. So you see how guys like
Newton get caught in their own lies".
Gravity. GRAVITY. GRAVITY!
These folks deny the existence of GRAVITY. How can a civilized society
deal with people who hold such ideas and who are likely voters?
Clearly, this man has no clue about even the most basic physics or the
scientific method, and further, he's apparently proud of that because
that lack of knowledge somehow reinforces his previously held
superstitions. Let's repeat what he said: "Gravity has never been proven".
And why? Because he's
never witnessed a BB bump into a bowling ball.
Yeow, that hurts and it's gonna leave a mark. Let's just ignore all of
the experimental and practical evidence garnered since Newton (and
refined by Einstein) and notice that it never occurs to him that in
order for the BB to get "stuck" to the bowling ball, the BB's
gravitational attraction to the bowling ball would have to be
considerably greater than it's attraction to the Earth. The last time I
checked, the Earth is somewhat
more massive than a bowling ball.
A decent argument could made that this guy is guilty of a form of
intellectual child abuse, and the theme park is guilty of aiding and
abetting the crime. We can only hope that this 10 year old soon
encounters people who understand the scientific method,
explain it
to him, and he can use his brain to figure out the reality of the
situtation.
We can also wonder if they include a
scale model of the Earth presented as a large, flat disk supported on
the back of an even larger turtle. The stupid: it burns!
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© 2017 Jim Fiore