*(Tolerance: (noun) The tender love extended to a toothache prior to a visit to the dentist, or a relative prior to a visit to the mortuary.)
Of course, there are people who do seriously believe that and all belief systems are equally valid and everything is allowed and there is absolutely no way to be wrong and falsifiability is a Liberal fantasy that objectively supports terrorism.
I think maybe it’s a different comic strip in your link now (wi-fi router radiation/ spoof of terrorism fears). Either that or I have no idea what you’re talking about.
No, I linked to precisely the comic I intended to link to. I know how to work this here Honeywell-ARPANET pretty well.
I get really angry when people attempt to treat science as a game like religion is a game: That is, everyone is fundamentally just as right as everyone else. Which means everyone is fundamentally just as wrong as everyone else, but it’s considered gauche to mention the entire concept of being wrong: If you do, people think they can score points off you by saying things like “Well, that’s just what you believe.” and “You can’t explain everything.” Or else they dredge up some piece of nonsense debunked 200 years ago and then refuse to listen to further evidence.
Denialism (the practice of creating the illusion of debate) cuts pretty close to the heart, but at root denialism is a symptom. The underlying problem is that some people have beliefs they refuse to challenge and have gotten really nervous that someone, somewhere is going to change their mind on the subject. Therefore, they create a dissonant mental model of the world where everyone is just as faith-driven and irrational as they are. Therefore, all debates are meaningless and science is a popularity contest. Therefore, there is no way to be wrong. This is dissonant because if they applied it consistently they might walk into an oncoming bus or become a true practicing Breathatarian and starve to death. Denialism is what they create to rally the troops and create a tribal “us-versus-them” mentality, a fake war so they can be ‘besieged’ by people who are just plain wrong and, because of the fundamental disorder, can never have evidence or even good arguments.
I have more to say on the subject but time grows short. I should make a whole thread in GD.
Wait…so there IS evidence that wireless routers will eat my baby? I’m so confused as to why this comic triggered you. The idea was to take a baseless, silly “danger” and make a ridiculously overblown “newsstory” out of it. Did this bother you because he wasn’t off target enough because you think there may be some harm caused by wireless routers? Like if the strip was about how your dinner plate is going to become a ninja throwing star and kill your children, it would have been okay? Or does it bother you because it’s cultivating a mindset of skepticism that you think will led to people disregarding real, not overblown warnings like not using a gas grill inside the house?
If you’re going to blame anyone, don’t blame the reporters of fluff pieces. Blame Nielsen Media Research and the concept of quarterly sweeps weeks. It is during these periods that needless fear mongering reaches its fever pitch because the networks are all trying to get the ignorant masses to watch their program, and thus record it in their viewing diaries so they can all vie for those coveted “#1” and “most watched” tags.
Now, if Nielsen could design set-top boxes that could automatically monitor in perpetuity instead of requiring Nielsen families to fill out diaries four times a year, the entire concept of sweeps week would disappear.
No shit. You cannot convince me that my cable box CAN’T keep track of what I’m watching and when. Doesn’t, perhaps, but it’s just not a practical impossibility.
He’s not pissed at the comic, he’s pissed at the people the comic is making fun of: idiots who freak out over imaginary dangers, and the newsmedia for feeding those fears because it sells better than explaining why baseless fears are, indeed, baseless.
And yes, there really are people out there who are convinced that radiation from their wireless router will give them cancer.