Woo-Woo Fallacies

In the movie Contact, a committee member questioning Ellie Arroway (played by Jodie Foster) makes the silly statement that since 90% of the world’s people believe in some sort of God, then obviously that God must exist. Amazingly, Ellie lets him off the hook with a lame reply when she should have destroyed the argument perhaps with the example that only a few hundred years ago everybody thought the world was flat.

This kind of “majority must be right” fallacy is typical of the woo-woo culture that exists today; they either don’t know or just ignore the fact that history is littered with examples of majority-held beliefs subsequently proven wrong. Here is a short list of silly sayings with their (sometimes obvious) flaws.

• “If you’re so smart why aren’t you rich!”

This stupid quotation assumes that the goal of everyone is the pursuit of wealth, ignoring the fact that most clever people do not consider money to be of great importance. The wealthiest persons are almost never the smartest; indeed, some are remarkably dense!

• “So-and-so (insert name of well-known person here) said it so it must be right!”

Unless “so-and-so” is a famous intellectual, this is likely to be wrong. Arguments from authority figures and theologians are not to be trusted and statements made by persons famous for trivial reasons (movie stars, pop stars etc.) speaking out with their often-narrow fields of knowledge, are usually worthless.

• “I don’t care what you say, I believe in (insert whatever here)!”

People who talk like this are irrational non-thinkers not worth trying to convince of anything. Don’t bother with them; they will eventually die hopefully without polluting the human race with their useless genes.

• “What happens when an immovable object meets an irresistible force?”

Perhaps the best example of an absolutely silly meaningless question that I don’t even need to explain!

• “What’s your sign?”

The best reply is probably:

‘My sign is “fuck off”, what’s yours?’

Don’t say anymore, people who believe that a zodiacal sign determines your personal characteristics, are beyond help, just run away.

Unintelligent Design

It seems like everyone has something to say on this issue so I might as well add a comment.

If so-called “Intelligent Design” had any merit it would be right to give it equal footing with Evolution and allow it to be taught in schools. Unfortunately, it has no merit whatsoever; you might as well teach kids there’s an invisible man who lives in the sky! Forget all the nonsense about balanced views and such, these things only apply to sensible arguments, the balance here is about 99 to 1 in favour of Evolution! I give ID one percent purely on the grounds it may have a small entertainment value – bright kids may get a laugh out of it. That’s what those ID fools can’t seem to grasp, perhaps they would succeed in brainwashing one or two dimwits but intelligent pupils will see the garbage for what it is and in any case, ID vs Evolution only highlights the fact that ID is daft!

I don’t like to use the word “evil” because of its religious connotations, but it rightly describes the attempt to cheat students by presenting ID as a valid argument when it’s clearly just thinly disguised Creationist dogma. So, all you ID’ers out there, aren’t you a little embarrassed? You come up with a crappy tale that shows a sad lack of imagination and have the audacity to call it “intelligent”; you must be joking! Tell you what, I’ll let you use my headline – it’s a much better fit!

Presidents Past And Present

Recently, I have been studying quotations made by past and modern American presidents; it’s remarkable and more than a little worrying, that the likes of Lincoln, Jefferson and Adams, show far greater wisdom than the likes of Reagan and either of the Bush’s. Indeed, numerous examples of wise quotations from past office bearers can be found, Jefferson in particular, was an astute and knowledgeable man. In contrast, the only examples you can find from the modern breed are those that highlight their lack of wisdom or education and in some cases, their downright idiocy!

America seems to be going backwards; intellectually, morally and selfishly.

There’s a lot of “blog meat” here, but I’ll keep this post short so I can return to it later!

Judgmental: The Way To Be!

When I lived in the USA, I came across several followers of the anti-judgmental brigade.

“Don’t be so judgmental!” they’d say.

I never understood this, so I would say:

“Bullshit, being judgmental is something I do all the time, it keeps me from being stupid!”

So be judgmental, especially with anti-judgmental dumb-asses!

Techno Babble

The gap is getting wider. Today the rate of technological development far outstrips the ability of most people to keep up with it. This, I believe, is at least partly responsible for the increase in proliferation of highly expensive, totally useless gadgets designed to separate affluent but technically ignorant people from their money. Examples abound in every field, but especially where the claimed effect or improvement is highly subjective and appeals to those whose egos surpass their judgment skills.

The home audio systems market seems worse than most; you can buy speaker cables more suited as car jumper leads, wooden control knobs that improve the sound clarity, plastic labels that you stick on your CD’s to make them sound better, the list goes on and on. Even worse, the more stupid and technically worthless the devices are; the more expensive they get! Amazingly, there are people who buy them!

When challenged, the manufacturers of such garbage will never offer technical data proving the efficacy of their product; instead they say their customers are highly intelligent discerning audiophiles who know a good product when they hear it.

I say bollocks!!!

If blind tests were carried out, I’d bet your avid audiophile wouldn’t be able to hear the difference between a wooden knob and no knob at all, monster cable and a piece of lighting flex, sonic plastic and a postage stamp!

Technology is not magic, if people just thought a little and investigated, stuff like this would die out. I once had a science teacher who said to me:

“I’m not here to make you a chemist or an engineer, my job is to teach you how to think!”

Wise words, we need more teachers like this today.