On 1/21/2011 12:24 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> We spent decades in the US, far more than any other
>> country in the world, being "nice" to the religious, [...]
>
> Yeah, there are whackos out there.  There are also non-religious whackos
> out there.
>
True. Though, as one person once stated it, "Do you refuse to treat a 
recognized, and maybe curable, cancer, because there are a lot of other 
sorts of cancers your cure won't fix?" One less source of wackos is 
still one less source.

>> Oh, right, and it also plays in to the hands of quack psychology, quack
>> pharmacology, quack gizmos, modern patent medicine gibberish, and all
>> the rest of the stuff, which preys in the same inability to tell the
>> difference between confirmation bias, placebo, and/or what their own
>> brain is doing, versus "quantum, spiritual, all natural, suplimental,
>> toothpaste", or what ever they have made up this week to sell the same
>> fools.
>
> That's a completely different topic.
>
> Jim
But related. Once willing to give up reason on one subject, its easy to 
fall prey to others. And, again, the majority of people playing with 
something like Tarot are *not* doing so honestly, or with themselves, 
they are doing it because it is simply a different sort of "power 
bracelet", which fits into the gibberish they already fell for.

In any case, you don't make progress against it by a) ignoring it (it 
won't go away), b) pretending its not a problem (they have no problem 
claiming you are a problem instead), or c) trying to refute it on a case 
by case basis (they will happily present you with 80 cases in five 
minutes, then demand that you address why all of them are wrong, or you 
lose, in the same time, even when you can't properly address the *first* 
one, in 10x as many minutes).

The only way to effectively address it is all at once, early, before 
people get overly hooked into it. And, we can't get people to teach what 
is needed to do that in bloody colleges here, never mind to 8 year olds, 
never mind that there is plenty of evidence that this *is* possible, of 
parents let us do it, instead of whining in abject horror at the idea 
that schools is about how to think, not just jamming facts in, and 
hoping they stay there long enough to test.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message