C.J.O'Brien
Posts: 395
Joined: Aug. 2005
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"But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
--Carl Sagan
We need to overcome the impulse to give creedence to ideas simply because their proponents speak with conviction against prevailing consensus. There is a broad streak of anti-intellectualism, most prevalent in the US I believe, that leads many to accept denialist claims not in spite of the fact that they fly in the face of hard-won consensus, but precisely because they do. Conspiracy theories, systematically invulnerable to contradictory evidence (evidence against a conspiracy is actually evidence for it --that's how powerful and devious the conspiracy is!), are attractive to those who see scientists and "intellectual elites" as arrogant and uncaring about "the common man." You've a leg up on convincing people who think this way, just for espousing a controversial point of view, because they'd rather see "the experts" with egg on their face than actually hold justified, true beliefs.
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The is the beauty of being me- anything that any man does I can understand.
--Joe G
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