Screaming Penguin

It has been a while since I have gotten on the soap box, but the way Americans seem to think everything is a "debate" just chaps my hide, so here goes.

Everything is NOT a debate. At least not in the sense that most people that question scientific evidence mean it. Here I am talking about global warming, evolution, vaccines, and every other such fact ignorant people choose not to "believe." It's not about belief jackass, it's about evidence, and science, and frankly, reality.

Here is an excellent video that does a much better job than I can, of explaining what I mean:

If you feel we should "question conventional wisdom," and by that you mean, just make shit up and search for stuff on the interwebs that agrees with you, and from there buy in to conspiracies and theories that are based on no evidence at all (but happen to make you feel better by validating a current behavior or belief you already have), then you are profoundly ignorant at best.

Science matters, it is our only real view of truth. It's not a perfect view, no, but that is by design, there is no perfect. Even so, there is overwhelming and incontrovertible evidence that, just for a few examples: global warming is real and is caused by man, evolution is a fact and humans have a common ancestor with apes and monkeys and shrews and worms, and childhood vaccines save lives and protect entire populations and there is no evidence whatsoever that they "cause" autism.

Yet people not only feel free to "question" these things without bothering to even attempt to understand the science. They also feel so confident about it that they espouse these views openly. And not just everyday joes (for whom there is still no excuse, by the time you are about 10 years old you should understand how to process information, most of it in the world being bullshit, and form an informed point of view), but congresspersons, "journalists," pundits, and so on. It's ludicrous. It's one thing to question something and say "I am not sure about that, I would like to find out more about it," and another to take the opposite stance of the overwhelming majority of science, and call something into question in public from a point of influence or power.

The recent Wired Magazine article on vaccines, and the responses they got, are what set me off on this rant (this time). One responder put it much more eloquently than I can:

“It’s about what Tom Friedman calls the modern American ‘dumb as we wanna be’ attitude, which combines stunning intellectual laziness, the erroneous concept that all information is equal, and the Internet to create a witches brew we’re using to commit national suicide. Vaccines are just the tip of the iceberg. The same mentality has led to catastrophic stasis—or at best tepid action—on the key issues of our time: climate change and health care reform.”

Nail, meet head. "Stunning intellectual laziness" - that is what I mean by people don't bother to try to check in with reality. Combined with "the erroneous concept that all information is equal" - exactly, it's not, and at an early age people should be able to tell that.

I think part of it is cognitive dissonance. Part of it is wanton ignorance, Part of it may also just be stupid, but lazy is more comfortable for me. People aren't really that dumb, they are just that lazy. Either way though, it's very dangerous.

Why is it dangerous? Well, if you don't believe in vaccines you endanger the rest of the herd (people even responded incredulously to the Wired article saying "I don't see how I am endangering you" - exactly, you don't see). If you don't "believe" in evolution and you want to change school curriculums to put in equal time for bullshit like "Intelligent Design" you are at best wasting everyone's time, and at worst dragging learning within society backwards. If you don't "believe" in global warming you probably contribute to more of it and you aren't willing to help put forth the political will to do something about it and that puts others at risk as well.

Keep in mind, these are just three examples off the top of my head, the bigger issue is the entire culture of intellectual laziness - there are many more issues just like these where people are choosing to ignore evidence.