Because if we wait for all the facts to come in and all the analysis to be done we will be completely paralyzed by indecision.
Plus the fact that the people who spend all of their time talking about these topics - as in the OP’s stimulus example - clearly can’t agree on even the minor points of the topic so what makes their collective positions any better than mine, poorly-thought-out though mine may be?
That’s kind of silly. All the ideas above fly in the face of the vast majority of the world’s experts. Truth isn’t figured by consensus, but if every scientist on Earth agrees that something is strongly supported by the available evidence, then thinking the opposite for no reason is simply stupid.
In the case of Obama’s birth certificate. It’s on the internet. The state has a version that they don’t release to the public, but they’ve verified that it’s the same. He has birth announcements. Only a moron would still question it. But as it happens, plenty of morons *want *Obama to be an illegitimate president. And because they want it to be true they are willing to avoid or invalidate any information to the contrary.
No one expects everyone to do their own vaccination trials in their garage. But siding with less than 1% of doctors simply because it resonates with your distrust of authority is an inherently stupid act.
I was on the freeper site yesterday reading a thread about the O’Keefe thing with the reporter and the dildoes. Everyone posting in that thread was still convinced that O’Keefe had done a great thing bringing down ACORN. None of them were aware that in fact ACORN wasn’t actually guilty of anything and didn’t know that O’Keefe had essentially framed them via editing. I presume every-time someone tried to tell them that they hand-wave it away as MSM disinformation.
Believing what you want to believe no matter how sketchy the source is the problem. Not an omnipresent flaw in humanity that everyone no matter how rational falls victim to.
I think this is a pretty good reflection of many people’s understanding of major economic issues. And really, it takes time, attention, intelligence, and background knowledge to go much beyond a superficial understanding.
Seven and a half years ago, I believed that Saddam Hussein did not possess any weapons of mass destruction. This contradicted what was perceived as reality by a great many people, and many, including some on this board, told me that I must be crazy. The reputable sources, the basic research, and all the rest clearly showed that Saddam did possess weapons of mass destruction.
I was right. The perceived reality, the reputable sources, and the basic research were wrong.
(By which, of course, I mean that the version of reality presented by our government and mass media were wrong. The reputable sources cited by our government and mass media were wrong. The basic research cited by our government and mass media were wrong. There were real sources and real research that were correct about this issue, but most of the public was denied access to them.)
So, in answer to your question, reputable sources and basic research are often wrong. In previous generations, reputable sources and basic research have endorsed everything from black people being proven mentally inferior to lobotomy being a good treatment for homosexuality to margarine being healthier than butter. That’s the first and foremost explanation for why many people don’t trust reputable sources and basic research. It is, of course, true that none of these previous failures by reputable sources have any connection to the truthers or the birthers or whatever ‘-ers’ are on the march this week. But people learn from the past. They see that expert opinion has often been wrong in the past and conclude that it may be wrong now.
i would suggest that people tend to be misinformed on the various sorts of topics mentioned here because these are things that aren’t terribly important to people in their day-to-day lives. they form their opinions in whatever way, and don’t think critically about them because they have better things to do.
my parents, for example, may not be able to provide the greatest insight on the abortion debate, but they sure know where the cheapest gas in town is, and they hold correct, well-thought-out beliefs about the price of steak at the various nearby markets.
My own take on it is I do believe in subjective reality and to an extent we define our own reality, therefore people citing ‘experts’ are allowing others to define their reality for them and giving up the ability to define theirs, creating a ‘group think’ reality, which is a great loss to humanity IMHO.
I think this answers the OP.
This is a good post, but agrarian subsidies? I guess I’m starting another thread.
But it’s not simply a question of suspecting that the so-called so-called experts–in their mysterious ways–might not be correct given that they’re fallible humans.
No, it’s that increasingly people believe that massive conspiracies are behind all the evidence that refutes their positions.
Kanicbird, let me ask you, do you think that OJ Simpson is guilty of mudering his ex-wife? Or do you think:
Perfect example of the phenomenon.
ACORN was guilty of a number of poor practices, but the O’Keefe video greatly exaggerated those flaws and invented others by implication out of whole cloth.
That’s the admission from ACORN’s own internally-comissioned report. The rational person, the one supposedly weighing the evidence, will acknowledge that although reasonable people can differ widely on how MUCH misconduct ACORN was responsible for, no reasonable person would believe either:
Because they just don’t care.
First off let me commend you on your pathetic attempt at nitpicking. You are guilty of non-zero misconducts. Only a fool would take that as the standard. ACORN was not guilty of anything that warranted losing their funding. I would have thought that much was obvious, I’m sorry you were confused.
You may now return to your weak-ass hair-splitting. :rolleyes:
If you will, let me start with flight 800. In this many reported seeing some sort of ‘fire’ or ‘light’ such as explainable by a missile approach the plane before flight 800 broke up. To them some sort of illuminated object struck the plane. yet the official explanation of a center fuel tank explosion: 1 makes no sense (ever try to get kerosene (in a tank no less) to explode) or 2 what about all the people reporting seeing something heading towards the plane, do we disregard their sight, though they were there and saw it, this would mean that ALL eye witnesses of any crime are irrelevant.
The 2nd one I posed on flight 800 clearly shows the human mind is called into question, and if so ALL science and authority and all human activity MUST also be called into that same judgment. Which means that you are free to define you own reality as the human mind can’t be trusted, so there is no reason to trust the state, authority or experts.
Going on to OJ, which I had and still have very little interest in and didn’t watch 99% of it. OJ to me is a person that is state authority, much like Rush Limbaugh (with the prescription drug issue) and therefore is ‘spiritually’ immune to state punishment. The crime, if committed or not is irrelevant, much like a cop speeding in his personal car, he is not going to be cited, the law does not apply to him. But God will judge all in the end and will issue final judgment far beyond what the state can do.
To answer more directly if OJ ever said the likes of I will kill you and meant it he committed murder at that point. The physical act is irrelevant.
Should read
Going on to OJ, which I had and still have very little interest in and didn’t watch 99% of it. OJ to me is a person that is above state authority, much like Rush Limbaugh (with the prescription drug issue) and therefore is ‘spiritually’ immune to state punishment. .
What hath Og wrought?
ACORN’s own report said that it found:
It goes on to say that ACORN must implement a:
That’s not simply “non-zero.”
You may assert that this was not enough for them to lose their funding, but that’s not an objective fact. That’s your opinion. A neutral person could well conclude that ANY organization with “longstanding management weaknesses, including a lack of training, a lack of procedures, and a lack of on-site supervision” should not get federal funding.
Again, you actually agree with me, but since I’m on the other side, you need to find some ridiculously stupid hair to split.
I’m sure you looked at that post and thought, Hmm… Lobohan is a lefty loon, so he’s wrong. I wonder how… and then you came up with that magnificently awesome, utterly meaningless critique. 
Being able to strengthen your policies after taking a hard look at them isn’t a bad thing. Pretending that people willingly broke the law to destroy an organization that gets minorities to vote is. The only reason O’Keefe did that story is that poor people vote Democrat. Therefore anyone helping poor people vote must be up to no good.
ACORN needed to tighten policies to regain the public trust because conservatives lied about voter fraud. They created a cloud of misinformation that damaged the organization. O’Keefe just turned up the noise.
Here is a Dilbert cartoon that, in my opinion, explains everything.
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1996-08-18/
Our society has become so complex, that everybody, even the smartest people have been rendered ‘functionally stupid’. A few, very smart people, are not stupid on a few specific topics. These people account for all progress we are currently experiencing. Outside those topics, those smart people are just as clueless as the rest of us.
As near as I can tell none of these smart people is actually in Congress and even if there was a smart person in Congress and that member drafted legislation about a topic the member was expert on, they would get outvoted by 534 morons. This aggravates the problem, since intelligence isn’t additive, but stupidity is. This produces legislation where the results aren’t right or wrong, but simply irrelevant to whatever problem they are trying to solve.
Actually, stupidity might be multiplicative, which means even a little bit of stupid all put together gives you utter imbicility.
The problem with Congress is that Congresspeople have to focus on so many issues simultaneously that they can’t possibly be well informed on all the issues they vote upon, and so they are dependent upon their staff of advisers (“flappers” in Swiftian parlance) to tell them what opinions to hold, and the words they need to mouth in order to justify those positions. Ditto, frankly, for the Supreme Court, where the clerks largely control what issues get put in front of the judges, and what information and legal guidance is reviewed in support of a decision.
Stranger
I think that, on top of the various factors invoked in the thread so far (groupthink and group identification, cognitive dissonance, subjective reality, impossibility to be up to speed on all topics and so forth), an important element is that in modern society, it is somehow shameful to admit ignorance.
From high school to the grave, openly saying you don’t know shit about topic X will be met with derision, scorn, pity, mockery or plain dismissal of you, as an individual. Holding a fucking stupid opinion is fine - you’ll still be engaged in the debate, even bitterly and steadfastly engaged by the other side. Saying you don’t know or don’t care about the issue, however, means you’re not a part of the social process anymore. You’re out.
In that sense, it’s clearly better to hold a strong and categorical bullshit opinion (on any topic, no matter how flimsy or cursory your knowledge of it is) than it is to waffle or avow complete ignorance.