The Incredible Stupidity of Facts by guest blogger Danny Lemieux
One of the most prescient books that I ever remember reading as a teenager has to be Alvin Toffler’s 1970 classic Future Shock. To recap its theme, Toffler predicted that the pace of new information was increasing at such a rapid rate that it would overcome peoples’ capacities to absorb that information. The resulting effect on people would be like the proverbial overheated computer that begins to smoke, spark and finally explode! I think we are there.
I am a scientist. My specialty is biochemistry and nutrition. The most important thing about a (good) science education it that it teaches one to become skeptical. The scientific method is one that foregoes conclusions until they have been fully tested. Today, however, there are many, many bad scientists – people who begin with conclusions and then seek facts to fit their template. As Bookworm so aptly put it, these are Liberals that begin with conclusions and peddle them with facts.
I am on this topic because I recently had a conversation with a lovely Liberal lady who looked me straight in the eye and told me that NutraSweet (aspartame) was poison because it broke down into formaldehyde in the body. Nothing that I could say on the strength of my credentials in chemistry, foods and nutrition could dissuade this lady from her conclusions, including the fact that aspartame is simply two linked amino acids, aspartame and phenylalanine (the building blocks of proteins) that are essential to our diet and that are commonly found in all kinds of foods that we consume in large amounts. Without these two amino acids, we would die.
I eventually figured out what she meant…I think. For a small number of people who suffer from a condition called phenylketonuria, phenylalanine cannot be properly metabolized and does become poisonous. This is a metabolic anomaly, a bit like the relationship between Type I juvenile diabetes and sugar. The web, meanwhile, is full of scientifically jargoned albeit preposterous allegations about aspartame, wrapped in webs of paranoid conspiracies. Disregard the facts: for this lady, this template represented an intellectual safe zone and hate receptacle that helped her to better comprehend her too-complex world.
I believe that man-made Climate Change hysteria is another symptom of Future Shock. I have never believed in man-made climate change because its proponents never could clear my common-sense test. The test comprises a series of questions to the climate modelers, as for example:
- What is the leading greenhouse gas? Answer: water, 95% of total.
- What percentage of greenhouse gases is carbon dioxide? Answer: 2.5% of the total.
- What percentage of carbon dioxide is man-created? Answer: 2.5% of the total.
- How does water vapor affect climate change? Answer: nobody has a clue because it is way too complicated to understand, much less model on a computer.
- So how can mankind affect the climate if total man-made carbon dioxide represents only (2.5% x 2.5% = 0.0625% of total greenhouse gases)? Answer: the debate is over.
- What role does the sun play in climate change? Answer: this is way too complicated to model, therefore let’s keep it a constant value and ignore it.
- Occam’s Razor principle would say that we should consider the most obvious factors behind climate change first…isn’t that the sun? Answer: you are Nazi vermin and a traitor to Mother Gaia.
The sad thing is that we are about to find out that these pseudo-scientific hysterias have profound real-life, real-world costs. They are being very cleverly manipulated by demagogues that enrich themselves by cleverly manipulating a future shock population with just enough kernels of truth to satisfy their wildest fears and conspiracy fantasies, the facts be d***ed.
I fear that the general entertainment-obsessed culture isn’t interested in math, science, logic or critical thinking. There’s just too much information out there to absorb and, besides, it’s a lot easier to create abstract conspiracy templates upon which to unload our fears, frustrations and doubts. We as a society seem to prefer letting Hollywood do our critical thinking for us with wildly ridiculous disaster and conspiracy movies. Jaywalking finalists rule, sad to say!
As the Book of Ecclesiastes proclaims, there really isn’t anything new under the sun. We’ve been here before. During periods in the Middle Ages marked by famines, pestilence and war, people looked for convenient explanations for all their troubles. So, they found “witches” to blame and to burn as sacrifices to their fears. For all of our veneer of modern science, technology and communications, we really haven’t changed our fundamental nature. Only today, the witches are conservatives, Christians, carbon industries, capitalists and Sarah Palin.
Are any of you other Bookworm salonistas as pessimistic as I am about what things wicked this way come?
