PZ Myers. 2005 Oct 13. Idiot America. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/idiot_america/>. Accessed 2008 Nov 20.
Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Thursday, October 13, 2005
Idiot America
I love this article.
Ctenotrish sent along a copy of Greetings from Idiot America, by Charles P. Pierce (sorry, but it's behind a firewall, and you have to pay $2.95 to see it) from the latest Esquire. I don't think I've ever read this magazine before—it's one of those things with half-naked young ladies draped over the cover, which, strangely enough, isn't something that usually entices me to pick up a copy—but this one article has all the vigor and passion that most of our media have wrung out of their press, replacing it with tepid timidity and vacuous boosterism for whatever the polls say is most popular today. It begins with a description of a tour of Ken Ham's new creation science museum in Kentucky, with its dinosaurs wearing saddles and its bland Adam, which we learn is naked but sculpted without a penis, and the train of well-fed Middle American boobs lining up with great earnestness to parade through the patently bogus exhibits.
What is Idiot America?
The rise of Idiot America is essentially a war on expertise. It's not so much antimodernism or the distrust of intellectual elites that Richard Hofstadter deftly teased out of the national DNA forty years ago. Both of those things are part of it. However, the rise of Idiot America today represents—for profit mainly, but also, and more cynically, for political advantage in the pursuit of power—the breakdown of a consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good. It also represents the ascendancy of the notion that the people whom we should trust the least are teh people who know best what they are talking about. In the new media age, everybody is a historian, or a preacher, or a scientist, or a sage. And if everyone is an expert, then nobody is, and the worst thing you can be in a society where everybody is an expert is, well, an actual expert.
In the place of expertise, we have elevated the Gut, and the Gut is a moron, as anyone who has ever tossed a golf club, punched a wall, or kicked an errant lawn mower knows. We occasionally dress up the Gut by calling it "common sense." The president's former advisor on medical ethics regularly refers to the "yuck factor." The Gut is common. It is democratic. It is the roiling repository of dark and ancient fears. Worst of all, the Gut is faith-based.
It's a dishonest phrase for a dishonest time, "faith-based," a cheap huckster's phony term of art. It sounds like an additive, an artificial flavoring to make crude biases taste of bread and wine. It's a word for people without the courage to say they are religious, and it is beloved not only by politicians too cowardly to debate something as substantial as faith but also by Idiot America, which is too lazy to do it.
While I think faith is insubstantial, I'll grant the writer license—its proponents believe it is substantial, which makes their thin gruel of "faith-based" this and that particularly unpalatable. The main point is something that has long bothered me—we've replaced the esteem for real knowledge and skill with vague notions of "faith".
Intelligent Design creationism is such a good example of that phenomenon.
On August 21, a newspaper account of the "intelligent design" movement contained this remarkable sentence: "They have mounted a politically savvy challenge to evolution as the bedrock of modern biology, propelling a fringe academic movement onto the front pages and putting Darwin's defenders firmly on the defensive."
A "politically savvy challenge to evolution" is as self-evidently ridiculous as an agriculturally savvy challenge to euclidean geometry would be. It makes as much sense as conducting a Gallup poll on gravity or running someone for president on the Alchemy party ticket. It doesn't matter what percentage of people believe they ought to be able to flap their arms and fly, none of them can. It doesn't matter how many votes your candidate got, he's not going to turn lead into gold. This sentence is so arrantly foolish that the only real news is where it appeared.
On the front page.
Of the New York Times.
Within three days, there was a panel on the subject on Larry King Live, in which Larry asked the following question:
"All right, hold on. Dr. Forest, your concept of how can you out-and-out turn down creationism, since if evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?"
And why do so many of them host television programs, Larry?
The article in question is by the vacuous Jodi Wilgoren. Nobody at the New York Times seem to get it: they are one of the mothers of Idiot America, nursing the country on a strange ideal of balance, where every example of expertise is precisely neutralized with a dollop of inanity, which is treated as if it is as equally valuable as the actual facts. It's sad to see how far we've fallen.
The country was founded by people who were fundamentally curious; Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, to name only the most obvious examples, were inveterate tinkerers. (Before dispatching Lewis and Clark into the Louisiana Territory, Jefferson insisted that the pair categorize as many new plant and animal species as they found. Considering they were also mapping everything from Missouri to Oregon, this must have been a considerable pain in the canoe.) Further, they assumed that their posterity would feel much the same as they did; in 1815, appealing to Congress to fund the building of a national university, James Madison called for the development of "a nursery of enlightened preceptors."
It is a long way from that to the moment on February 18, 2004, when sixty two scientists, including a clutch of Nobel laureates, released a report accusing the incumbent administration of manipulating science for political ends. It is a long way from Jefferson's observatory and Franklin's kite to George W. Bush, in an interview in 2005, suggesting that intelligent design ought to be taught alongside the theory of evolution in the nation's science classes. "Both sides ought to be properly taught," said the president, "so people can understand what the debate is about."
The "debate," of course, is nothing of the sort, because two sides are required for a debate. Nevertheless, the very notion of it is a measure of how scientific discourse, and the way the country educates itself, has slipped through lassitude and inattention across the border into Idiot America—where fact is merely that which enough people believe, and truth is measured only by how fervently they believe it.
That's a contrast that hurts: we've gone from Enlightenment America, which strangely enough all the idiots still revere, to George W. Bush's Idiot America. Can we please bring it back?
Idiot America is a collaborative effort, the result of millions of decisions made and not made. It's the development of a collective Gut at the expense of a collective mind. It's what results when politicians make ridiculous statements and not merely do we abandon the right to punish them for it at the polls, but we also become too timid to punish them with ridicule on a daily basis, because the polls say they're too popular anyway. It's what happens when leaders are not held to account for mistakes that end up killing people.
You would be surprised at how much email is sent to me telling me to stop being so derisive, that harsh language and ridicule turn people off and repel the very ones we're trying to persuade. My reply is like the one above; by refusing to ridicule the ridiculous, by watering down every criticism into a mannered circumlocution, we have created an environment where idiots thrive unchallenged. We have a twit for a president because so many people made apologies for his ludicrous lack of qualifications—we need more people unabashedly pointing out fools.
I'm doing my part to fight Idiot America. I hope more people join me.
Posted by PZ Myers on 10/13 at 06:50 PM
Creationism • Politics • 5 Trackbacks • Other weblogs • Permalink
Creationism • Politics • 5 Trackbacks • Other weblogs • Permalink
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The parts you post are great, but way too intellectual for Idiot America to appreciate.
Inelligent Design Is One Theory#: Posted by on 10/13 at 06:59 PM -
Really interesting -- it's like America's version of Tall Poppy Syndrome, but with an added contempt for intelligence.
#: Posted by on 10/13 at 07:01 PM
- Yes. Someone needs to get Pielke and Co. to read this over on TPM Cafe (the book club discussing Chris Mooney's book).
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In case anyone's looking for more Pierce, he writes for the Boston Globe, as I recall. He also (in his witty mode) occasionally appears on NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me.
#: Posted by Linkmeister on 10/13 at 07:26 PM
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To my great surprise, I actually find myself agreeing with W about something:
"Both sides ought to be properly taught," said the president, "so people can understand what the debate is about."
"Properly teaching" ID, of course, would consist of explaining exactly why it's vacuous BS, which should take maybe 15 minutes. The rest of the term can be spent on evolution. And the students should come out understanding exactly what the debate is about: religiously-driven politics.
Be careful what you wish for, Mr. President.#: Posted by on 10/13 at 07:39 PM -
You would be surprised at how much email is sent to me telling me to stop being so derisive, that harsh language and ridicule turn people off and repel the very ones we're trying to persuade.
No, I wouldn't. ;)#: Posted by on 10/13 at 07:40 PM -
*smacks head against $300 monitor*
Its surprising how much I hear that one.#: Posted by on 10/13 at 07:45 PM -
(sorry for the double post, the top one ate my quote.
"All right, hold on. Dr. Forest, your concept of how can you out-and-out turn down creationism, since if evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?"
*smacks head against $300 monitor*
Its surprising how much I hear that one.#: Posted by on 10/13 at 07:46 PM -
Interesting that many of those who attack the elite are now opposing Harriet Miers because she is not part of the judicial elite. Seems very strange to me.
#: Posted by Jim Norton on 10/13 at 07:56 PM
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PZ----"it's" vs. "its"
#: Posted by on 10/13 at 08:08 PM
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From Harpers/Notebook/Lewis H. Lapham
Umberto Eco finds a set of axioms on which all fascisms agree:
The truth is revealed once and only once.
Parliamentary democracy is by definition rotten because it doesn't represent the voice of the people, which is that of the sublime leader.
Doctrine outpoints reason, and science is always suspect.
Critical thought is the province of degenerate intellectuals, who betray the culture and subvert traditional values.
The national identity is provided by the nation's enemies.
Argument is tantamount to treason.
Perpetually at war, the state must govern with the instruments of fear.
Citizens do not act; they play the supporting role of "the people" in the grand opera that is the state.
And how far have we progressed towards this end?
"I don't say that over the last thirty years we haven't made brave strides forward. By matching Eco's list of fascist commandments against our record of achievement, we can see how well we've begun the new project for the next millennium
—the notion of absolute and eternal truth embraced by the evangelical Christians and embodied in the strict constructions of the Constitution; our national identity provided by anonymous Arabs; Darwin's theory of evolution rescinded by the fiat of "intelligent design"; a state of perpetual war and a government administering, in generous and daily doses, the drug of fear; two presidential elections stolen with little or no objection on the part of a complacent populace; the nation's congressional districts gerrymandered to defend the White House for the next fifty years against the intrusion of a liberal-minded president; the news media devoted to the arts of iconography, busily minting images of corporate executives like those of the emperor heroes on the coins of ancient Rome"
#: Posted by charlie wagner on 10/13 at 08:18 PM -
Signs of Idiot America: the most insightful interviews are often found on a spoof news program, the daily show.
Articles like this appear in porn mags.
How the mighty have fallen.#: Posted by on 10/13 at 08:19 PM -
Do True Believers have "faith" or do they have dogma? Truly they are faithless, for they trust not even their god, who must adhere to their tribal myths and fairy tales. They trust nothing, least of all themselves. As Alan Watts said "If you can't trust yourself you are totally lost because you can't trust not trusting yourself. Evangelicals have been gaining in numbers partly because they have a very exciting sales pitch to people who are frightened and adrift: "clap your hands" and live forever, you'll be with the winners in eternity. But like other Ponzi schemes such pixie dust loses its glimmer eventually. Kudos to Pierce for his inciteful article.
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As the yahoos at the "Discovery Institute" continue to wage war against "methodological naturalism" the alarm bells are starting to ring: U.S. may loose its global lead in science. "Idiot America" will soon wake up to discover that not only its manufacturing base but it scientific and technical expertise have been outsourced as well.
#: Posted by on 10/13 at 08:38 PM
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I might actually have to read that article...although I disagree with Esquire's choice for the "Sexiest Woman Alive."
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Are we a banana republic yet?
#: Posted by on 10/13 at 09:02 PM
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The country was founded by people who were fundamentally curious; Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, to name only the most obvious examples, were inveterate tinkerers.
Yeah, but that was back when there was some real confidence that science would defend their religious beliefs. Now science is telling people things they don't want to hear: that humans have common ancestors with apes (not specially created by God), that our fuel consumption (highest per-capita on earth) is harming the earth, etc. Since science started telling Americans things we don't want to hear, there has been an attack on real experts because they aren't saying what we want and a rising popularity of pseudoscientists willing to tell us what we want to hear. We should change the national symbol from the eagle to the ostich.
Reading the post, I was actually wondering if we should refer to "faith-based" as "lack-of-evidence-based".
If you're not already too depressed, check out this link:
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/CNNNN.wmv#: Posted by on 10/13 at 09:02 PM -
a few links on changing minds:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1829910
http://www.cio.com/archive/040104/apples.html#: Posted by on 10/13 at 09:02 PM -
Yeah, but that was back when there was some real confidence that science would defend their religious beliefs.
Benjamin Franklin, arguably the greatest scientist of his time, ran into all kinds of problems and opposition from pulpits because of his experiments with lightning. he chose not to pursue it past some point.
i fear whatever residue of trust in science the Founding Fathers embraced was buried by the Protestant herd during the Great Awakening and revitalization of that during the early third of the 19th century.
You can listen to more about Franklin's experiences here. Schiffer's book is good, too.
i think a good sample of how media pander to Idiot America is ABC News recent exposition on university research reactors. -
Lest I receive undue credit, I must inform you all that the article was forwarded to me by a good friend and colleague who shall remain nameless unless he (okay, he will be gender-I.D.ed) prefers otherwise. I have it on good authority that he has recently discovered Pharyngula. Claim credit, then, old friend!
Cheers, ctenotrish.
I seem to have lost my ctenophore cleavage pic. at least on preview, but will look into later . . . .#: Posted by on 10/13 at 10:12 PM -
"If evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?"
Lamest argument ever. If English evolved from German, why do some people still speak German? Anyone who can figure that out is a long way to understanding why there are still monkeys.
BUT: why are there pygmies and dwarves?#: Posted by No More Mr. Nice Guy! on 10/13 at 11:10 PM -
There are people in America who think that Adam rode around on dinosaurs?!?!?! Really? Or were you being satirical?
#: Posted by Another Claire on 10/13 at 11:39 PM
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I'm doing my part to fight Idiot America. I hope more people join me.
Flash Myers! Saviour of the universe: "Expertise* is not your enemy; Minging idiot America is. Let's all team up and fight them!"
*You might prefer Science there or any other specific area.#: Posted by on 10/14 at 02:27 AM -
"if evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?"
If ID is true, why are there still monkeys?#: Posted by on 10/14 at 03:16 AM -
The rise of Idiot America is essentially a war on expertise. It's not so much antimodernism or the distrust of intellectual elites that Richard Hofstadter deftly teased out of the national DNA forty years ago. Both of those things are part of it. However, the rise of Idiot America today represents—for profit mainly, but also, and more cynically, for political advantage in the pursuit of power—the breakdown of a consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good. It also represents the ascendancy of the notion that the people whom we should trust the least are teh people who know best what they are talking about. In the new media age, everybody is a historian, or a preacher, or a scientist, or a sage. And if everyone is an expert, then nobody is, and the worst thing you can be in a society where everybody is an expert is, well, an actual expert.
I'm not sure how correct this is. Wingnuts usually have some source (i.e. an "expert") they regard as more-or-less unimpeachable – of course, they always choose a source that agrees with some preconceived notion or idealized concept of how the universe works (and which usually extends said notion in the direction of its own political and/or financial agenda). The reliance on plagiarism and pre-mined quotes that PZ has noted seems to be evidence of this.
Not so much a disdain for experts perhaps, as some kind of creeping malfunction in how experts are chosen. Recently, I've taken to calling the phenomenon a "war on inductive reason" (yeah, I know, way geeky...).
One strand of the history of science seems to be the increase in sophistication of theorising and decision making with regards to situations where evidence is not (and often cannot be) complete. I mean, face it, biologists and paleontologists are inventing a history of life on Earth by staring at rocks and bones, and fiddling with chemical assays and radiation detectors – they don't get to watch millions of years of nautiloid soap opera to see if some line really does turn into squid. (Although if there was a video archive of this, it would probably be running day and night chez Myers...) Furthermore, many of the methods they're using are inherently statistical, or in other words, fundamentally incapable of providing a definitive result.
And yet, we've figured out to make compelling theories out such diaphanous data-stuff – theories good enough that new data often fits into the theories right along side what we already had. We've figured out how and when to trust our indirect inferences and statistical analyses, how to constuct a compelling account of some pehnomenon by juggling a few numbers and watching some chemicals crawl about in an electromagentic field.
But now some yokel comes along and asks: "Were you there?" I suppose the question has one thing going for it, unlike all of the ramified theorising, it has a concrete answer. "No."
It doesn't matter that some theories are so robust that they're probably more reliable than most eyewitness accounts. They're still conjecture, percentages – like laying odds at the track. Just because your system tells you to back a certain horse doesn't mean that horse is going to win, does it? And you can't even run the race!
That seems to be the pattern. Evolution, loss of biodiversity, global warming – look for the question that shows the science is just conjecture, hand waving, guesswork. Never look at the real knowledge about why some guesses are better than others, at how we've learned when to trust statistics, at the results of centuries of effort at taming inductive reasoning.#: Posted by on 10/14 at 04:47 AM -
Another Claire said:
There are people in America who think that Adam rode around on dinosaurs?!?!?! Really? Or were you being satirical?
Oh, how I wish he was being satirical...
Here's a bit of a transcript from PBS:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/education/jan-june05/creation_3-28.html
KEN HAM: Clearly the purpose of the creation museum is to equip Christians to have answers to defend their faith in today's world. Because let's face it, what's taught through the public schools and much of the secular media, it's really an attack on the Bible's history. It's really saying the Bible is not true. And many Christians just don't know how to handle those sorts of questions.
JEFFREY BROWN: When the museum opens in 2007, visitors will walk through a world in which dinosaurs and men lived side by side, one dinosaur even has a saddle.
Adam and Eve, as the Bible says, will be presented as the first, fully formed, humans. Ham's view is that scientists are limited in their ability to look at the past, so they rely on assumptions that may or may not be correct.
KEVIN HAM: We can't scientifically prove dinosaurs and people lived at the same time because you can't scientifically prove anything in relation to the past. I mean that's the same for any aspect of dealing with origins.#: Posted by on 10/14 at 05:01 AM - I think you're on to something there, plover--seems like a lot of IDists object only to the "hypothetico-" part of "hypotheticodeductive".
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plover:"The reliance on plagiarism and pre-mined quotes that PZ has noted seems to be evidence of this."
Interestingly, at the faculty retreat the other day, the question of plagiarism (how to detect it, etc.) inevitably popped up. Apparently, it is quite rare at our school EXCEPT in religion classes where it is rampant. The religion prof says that his students just copy and paste whole passages from the Bible and whole pages from the Web and somehow do not think it is plagiarism - God's word and all. -
Great post. One thing on our side - eventually, the truth will out - because it is the truth.
#: Posted by on 10/14 at 06:22 AM
- Here's the creation 'science' museum's walkthrough. It's basically a bunch of bible stories with dinosaurs.
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msf, that can be mighty cold comfort when you consider how long "eventually" could be. For example, one possible instantiation of "eventually" might be, "after the US econmy collapses"...
#: Posted by on 10/14 at 06:40 AM
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From the Charlie Pierce article:
"Even in the developing world, where I spend lots of time doing my work," Hodges says, "if you tell them that you're from MIT and you tell them that you do science, it's a big deal. If I go to India and tell them I'm from MIT, it's a big deal. In Thailand, it's a big deal. If I go to Iowa, they could give a rat's ass. And that's a weird thing, that we're moving in that direction as a nation."
It's like the old sci-fi movies where the barbarians are afraid of the "Tesh" clan because of the powerful magic they possess. Later, you come to find out that "Tesh" is a bungled translation of "Tech" short for technician. The "Tesh" are the scientist and engineers that have been forced to seclude themselves from society over the eons while the rest of society has fallen back into the Dark Ages.#: Posted by on 10/14 at 06:59 AM -
"I,ve goy my cave picked out...do you!!
#: Posted by on 10/14 at 07:16 AM
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We are now reaping what we have sown. Nearly 40 years ago, educational theorists hijacked the system, and in their zeal not to ever ruffle the tiniest feathers, sought to prove that "It's OK to color outside the lines." With that celebration of mediocrity the long slide began. My parents were both teachers, as were my grandparents; I toyed fitfully with idea of entering the profession myself, until I saw the what the light at the front of this engine of foolishness was ultimately illuminating. Cricital thought was given over to games and rote and regurgitation. Learning was relegated to the lowest possible level in the class. Theory replaced thought. And so we came to the point where one of the most popular films of the last 10 or 15 years was appropriately (if frighteningly) titled "Dumb and Dumber." We slept soundly while the theives took our birthright.
#: Posted by on 10/14 at 07:23 AM
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Wait until people touring that "museum" get the to room that shows the dinosaur-human interbreeding results.
Sleestacks. -
Pardon me while I indulge in some primate nit-picking...
plover writes:"Furthermore, many of the methods they're using are inherently statistical, or in other words, fundamentally incapable of providing a definitive result."
You know, the neutron multiplication chain reaction in an atomic bomb is "inherently statistical", yet the result is just about as fucking "definitive" as one can get.
As for some later comments, it's certainly true that there is more respect for science outside the US than in the US, but that isn't something that started 40 years ago with some "educational establishment". It's roots go *way* back to the rebellious beginnings of the US, but has continued to mutate and be twisted as various political groups make use of it,well mixed with a strong strain of "ignorant and proud of it" nativism. I'm not sure that it's curable in less than a century, or if the cure is ultimately better than the disease.#: Posted by on 10/14 at 07:53 AM -
' In the new media age, everybody is a historian, or a preacher, or a scientist, or a sage.'
I think elevating preachers to anything other than the cultural equivalent of witch doctors is a mistake. They certainly are different from historians and scientists.
And the simple truth is no preacher can truly ever be an 'expert' as no two preacher's ever agree on anything. It's the nature of the business.#: Posted by on 10/14 at 08:10 AM -
That's a contrast that hurts: we've gone from Enlightenment America, which strangely enough all the idiots still revere,
That's because they don't even know what the Enlightenment was. Nowadays, the fundies believe that the Founding Fathers (and you can just hear them pronounce those capital letters) were all Bible-b'lievin' fundamentalist Christians, just like them. They had to have been! After all, they mentioned God a few times in some'a that stuff they wrote!
They haven't the slightest idea of what deism is, or about the unorthodox or even outright atheistic views of many of the founders like Jefferson, Paine, etc. About how deeply they believed in the ascendant virtues of reason and free thought, whether or not those faculties were granted by a Creator.
That version of history (the accurate one) is passe'. Now, we are simply a nation "founded on Judeo-Christian values", which means "believe the Bible or burn." Retch.#: Posted by on 10/14 at 08:16 AM -
'Judeo-Christian values'
That one always strikes me funny. 2 very different religions so often trumpeted as 1 by so many.#: Posted by on 10/14 at 08:22 AM -
"You would be surprised at how much email is sent to me telling me to stop being so derisive, that harsh language and ridicule turn people off and repel the very ones we're trying to persuade."
I have no problem with calling an idiot an idiot, but once you do this, you might as well forget about persuading the person you've insulted (rightly or not). In practice, you have to decide who you want to persuade and who you want to fight. If you make this decision poorly, you'll be outnumbered and lose (or at the other extreme will waste time trying to persuade sworn enemies).
The leaders of the ID movement deserve ridicule and aren't going to be persuaded anyway. So in that case, fighting makes more sense. In fact, trying to be polite has the opposite effect of seeming to legitimize their views.
On the other hand, I don't see the gain in calling most Americans idiots (I thought the article was funny and appropriate, just not a useful message politically.) Most people, historically, have been wrong about a lot of things, and Americans are no different. In fact, there's no reason to expect people to be right about anything that doesn't affect their self interest. You can complain about that, but I don't see an easy solution.
So if the point is to keep repackaged creationism out of science classes, it seems more effective to build a coalition with most Americans and convince them that we don't really want a few extremist idiots with an agenda to trash our secondary education. The effective strategy, as usual, is divide and conquer. Calling most Americans idiots has the opposite effect of uniting a coalition against yourself.#: Posted by on 10/14 at 08:30 AM -
Tangent:
it's one of those things with half-naked young ladies draped over the cover, which, strangely enough, isn't something that usually entices me to pick up a copy
To each his own. That's why I recommend to you the movie The Calamari Wrestler. Cephalopods and professional wrestling; what more could you ask for?#: Posted by on 10/14 at 08:33 AM -
At the risk of stating the obvious, my observation is that the American goal of becoming "intellectually enlightnened"
has been socially frowned on for quite some time.
We are now reaping the results in Idiot America.
In our society, smart students are not held in esteam, as in other countries. They are "nerds and dweebs", to be
punished and shuned. Instead, sports stars and rap singers are lionized as paragons for our young emulate.
Predictable results indeed...........#: Posted by on 10/14 at 08:54 AM -
While I usually personally tend to be left of center myself, I have to point out that the loss of rationality is a biparisan problem. It's also a problem that goes beyond liberals vs. conservatives, or even religious vs. non-religious.
I recall an episode of Penn and Teller's show "Bull***t" when they got a bunch of protestors at an environmental protest to sign a petition banning "dihydrogen monoxide." The point was the most of the people at the protest had *no idea* what they were actually protesting. They were, as the article PZ cited might say, following their "gut."
The last time I went to the store, I saw organic salt. Sorry for those of you who might have just snorted pepsi all over their keyboard, but I am not joking. Organic salt. You see, it's all natural and has not been "processed," unlike that evil corporate salt.
This is not just a problem of right-wingers or evangelicals. They are indeed a big, big part of it, but it goes way beyond them. It's a culture-wide phenomenon. People are rejecting reason, knowledge, expertise, and science in droves and are embracing every manner of twinky superstition. They are also, more and more, trusting their "gut" on issues where they should be trusting their head.
I believe we are witnessing the degeneration of a culture. I only hope we can save ourselves.#: Posted by Adam Ierymenko on 10/14 at 10:11 AM -
Idiot America
How true this entire article really is.
I have thought for years that this is the road we are headed down in America. This type of mind set pervades many aspects of our lives but I believe its roots are based in our family life.
Don't tell your child he or she is wrong let them figure that out for themselves.
Let little Johnny decide what to eat.
Let Little Mary choose the appropriate cloths.
Don't say the word no to your child.
Give them alternatives.
Don't punish them for their mistakes.
Let Reagan be Reagan (oops sorry for that one)
Let them do what they want and they will learn.
And many many more I am sure. But look where we are now that we have a country half full of children that have been raised that way. Hell it looks like most of the press was raised that way. bush was raised that way and so were most so-called- conservatives.
This whole fraggen mess we are in is being run by a bunch of "Let them do what they want" & "Don't say no to them" children and the rest of us are basically screwed.
I'm with you, time to get out the stick and whoop some butt and straighten this mess up.#: Posted by on 10/14 at 10:12 AM -
"If evolution is true why are there still monkeys?"
Ha! Almost worth hoping the poor creatures will go through their designed obsolescence process sooner rather than later. Then you'll be able to reply "Well, actually ....."
Does chimp taste like chicken? Don't take anyone's word for it. Try one before they're all gone, or you will never know.#: Posted by on 10/14 at 10:15 AM -
Adam
I recall an episode of Penn and Teller's show "Bull***t" when they got a bunch of protestors at an environmental protest to sign a petition banning "dihydrogen monoxide." The point was the most of the people at the protest had *no idea* what they were actually protesting.
No one doubts that most Americans are shallow-thinking rubes. That's the world we live in.
That is relevant to the discussion only insofar as it explains why someone with a lot of money and big microphone and a good scary story can convince vast numbers of people to believe in a Big Lie.
The difference between the right wing machine that spreads anti-science pro-"intelligent design" propaganda and alleged "materialist leaders" like Richard Dawkins is enormous.
Never forget to highlight this difference!!!! It is an essential fact in your list of facts showing that "intelligent design" is bullshit sleaze that exists as a "controversy" only because of money and media complicity.
Evangelicals love to pretend that their arguments spring from "reason" ... never mind the fact that there are ZERO credible scientists who can explain what an "intelligent design" research program is supposed to look like.
Instead, we have the usual suspects: preachers like Pat Roberston, Jerry Falwell, and Jim Dobson, and sub-preachers like Phil Johnson, Bill Dembski, Michael Behe, Casey Luskin and other self-identifying Christians who are easily shown to be hucksters of the lowest order.
Hucksters. Sleazy preachers. Charlatans. Peddlers of falsehoods. Professional liars.
If you discuss any of the people in the above paragraph without using one of these terms, YOU are misleading the public.
Don't mislead the public.#: Posted by on 10/14 at 10:34 AM -
Ah, Esquire! My father loved the nifty comics (as did I) and photos; I am sure he enjoyed the women as well...
plover,
I can agree with the trends you (and BC) discuss, but not the description of some of the details. As we learn more sciences will naturally be able to use less obvious facts and methods.
But earth history is observed, not invented, and as you say the methods and theories are validated by modern observations. So 'we were there', or at least our observations of historical facts were.
I also think you, or your yokel, overstress probability. For example, there is a (very, very, very, ..., very miniscule) nonzero probability that the netto of momenta of air molecules kick a dropped object up in the air an observable amount. So the 'immutable' law that objects always fall to ground is inherently statistical too. It is only fair that we in turn ask that yokel: "Were you there?"
Unfortunately your conclusion stands; it will still be hard to convince IA that modern science is not part guesswork but all together trustworthy.#: Posted by on 10/14 at 10:37 AM -
quoth Ham:
you can't scientifically prove anything in relation to the past
Wow. Did anyone else notice this little bon mot?
Rather Orwellian, when you get right down to it. They're trying very hard to set up a society where reality is nothing more or less than what a bunch of Southern Baptist clergy <i>tell<i> you it is.
Also notice that 'scientifically prove' qualification. I guess that means that the only 'proof' of anything that happened more than, say, a day or two ago is biblical. And since the Bible plainly says that Adam and Eve co-existed with dinosaurs and rode them on saddles, that settles that.#: Posted by on 10/14 at 10:48 AM -
"The last time I went to the store, I saw organic salt. Sorry for those of you who might have just snorted pepsi all over their keyboard, but I am not joking. Organic salt. You see, it's all natural and has not been "processed," unlike that evil corporate salt."
Are Americans really more gullible than they were a century ago, though? Back then, quack medicines were all the rage, and there was a popular belief that Halley's comet was going to doom the earth in a cloud of cyanogen gas. I think we're no better or worse now, and I think even Jefferson and Franklin represented the elite of their day. For that matter, take Henry David Thoreau, a representative American thinker from only slightly later in history. He had a lot of things to say, but his trancendentalist views would not find a home on this blog. And likewise there's no reason to cast the farmers, merchants, and artisans of the day as great skeptics. They were probably too busy with their trades.
"Organic" salt is pretty silly, since it's an inorganic compound, but sea salt isn't exactly pure NaCl and people might like some of the additional flavors, or believe that there are micronutrients in some of the additional components. That belief might be unscientific, but it's harmless and not totally crazy.
I think there's almost a prudishness to expecting rationality outside of the limited sphere in which it is necessary. E.g., some people would buy a car if it's red, but would not buy the same car in blue. They're entitled to that preference. They're entitled to buy salt because it says "organic." And, absent some (arguably appropriate) labeling standards, entrepreneurs are entitled to sell it to them.#: Posted by on 10/14 at 10:54 AM -
PZ, please please please never stop ridiculing the ridiculous, deriding the despicable and using harsh language to describe idiotic things. It's not the only thing we need to do obviously -- but it's an important part. And you do it so well!
#: Posted by Stephen Frug on 10/14 at 11:18 AM
- PaulC, I have the evil habit of eating salt neat, and yes, there is a big difference in taste between salt that is unprocessed, and the other kind. In fact, if the only salt available is the processed kind then I don't eat salt. At one time in India, salt production was a cottage industry, and one would buy large raw crystals and different purchases would taste different. The cottage industry probably still remains, but now most of the salt one can buy is produced by large corporations and is pretty standardized.
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I'm with Stephen Frug there. There is more than enough wishy-washy politeness about science in the media already. I breathe a little harder whenever someone is confident and ready to defend their evidence, especially when the conclusions offend somebody.
Umberto Eco finds a set of axioms on which all fascisms agree:
"Critical thought is the province of degenerate intellectuals, who betray the culture and subvert traditional values."
How is the culture going to get better if nobody betrays and subverts the bad parts? Cheers to your betrayin' and subvertin', PZ. -
I always found it ironic the people who buy some of these "natural" foods are buying them because of their impurities. After all, why is your "natural" salt yellow? Because it is more than just NaCl (and iodide, which is often added deliberately). Similarly, the Hope diamond is regarded as interesting because is blue; why? Because it contains boron. And the lesson is, if you're flawless, you're ugly? Something like that ... ()
#: Posted by Keith Douglas on 10/14 at 11:50 AM
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So I'm driving home last night (yes, I hate to aadmit it, but at least I've downsized from my minivan to a lighter and leaner vehicle), listening to a dash of NPR, despite this being the middle of their fund drive, and I hear this bit on Bush's "address to the troops" event.
Of course, this event was phony from start to finish: NPR played an out-take of a woman who was the assistant secretary of something-or-other "prepping" the troops--she first discussed the "themes" that the president would be talking about, then they got it figured out which troop was gonna be responding to which type of question, and then they played a dry run of one of the questions.
Of course, this media-savvy woman was easily able to reel off the questions because they were all, big duh, scripted in advance. Even granting that, she did a pretty fair job, nice voice modulation, pacing, y'know, the obvious signs of someone who occasionally needs to read from a script or a teleprompter or an outline or a batch of notes, as part of their job.
And the troops weren't too shabby either--they also knew in advance what they were supposed to say, but they were clearly excited and honored to be talking to their president, and you could hear it in their young and authentic voices.
Then Doofus comes on for the real thing. NPR cleverly featured him asking the very same question as the "prep" question they had previously played.
"Um. Uh. [Long Pause.] Uh. Heh! Well, heh, uh, one of the things... Uh. Um. [Long pause.] Y'know, one of the areas, uh, that, uh, most interests me is, uh, y'know..." Etc. Beeevis or Butthead could have done a better job of public speaking than this idjit who's supposedly been learning this particular skill at our expense for the last too many years.
I'd just laugh, if I wasn't crying so hard.#: Posted by on 10/14 at 12:09 PM -
"Similarly, the Hope diamond is regarded as interesting because is blue; why? Because it contains boron. And the lesson is, if you're flawless, you're ugly?"
I think of it as an application of Rudy Rucker's dictum "Seek ye the gnarl." A pure salt crystal isn't ugly, it's just boring. Nature doesn't favor smooth surfaces and periodicity. It favors turbulence and fractal intricacy. This is why most people (I would bet anyway) prefer natural forms to minimalist art. It's just richer. It's also less tractable, which is why science has tended to focus on the continuous, the uniform, and the linear. Pure NaCl is as exciting as a pure 60 Hz sine wave. The human brain is accustomed to the cacophony of nature and prefers some nuance.#: Posted by on 10/14 at 12:12 PM -
PZ-
Thanks for pointing out Mr. Pierce's article. I recieved Esquire as a Xmas present from a yonger brother, apparently he felt that I neeed to become more hip or something. Will look it up. Also would like to take part of your writing and pass around to my family. OK?
RF#: Posted by on 10/14 at 12:37 PM -
Samuel Marchbanks, that sage creations of Robertson Davies, refereed to this as The Apotheosis of the Yahoo.
When everyone is an expert, no one is. After the Revolution we won't all be in First Class: there won't be one. -
While in the library yesterday waiting for a computer, I noticed the new Esquire mag. Picked it up and read straight through the "Idiot America" article, finishing just as a computer was available.
Strangely enough--we don't believe in supernatural phenomena around here, do we?--my very first Web destination was Pharyngula, and there was your freshly posted "Idiot America" entry! Unfortunately, the library was about to close so after a hasty reading I dashed off an ineloquent, brief and possibly typo-ridden comment of appreciation.
Today, I returned to see just how embarrassing that hurried note was, and curiously enough it's not there. Was it purged for some reason, PZ? Just wondering. I have little of substance to add to these scientific discussions, but nonetheless appreciate your efforts as well as those of your more knowledgeable commenters (commentators?).
If an occasional appreciative but inconsequential remark from this quarter is out of order, I'll knock it off. Not to be snippy or petulant about the lousy comment-- I'm really just curious what's happened. Since an excerpt from the comment appeared in a Google search for "Idiot America," it must have been around for a while, anyway.
And for the record, you're not NEARLY derisive, dismissive, or sardonic enough for those paleocognitive nincompoops. Thanks!#: Posted by on 10/14 at 05:38 PM - Oh, no, I deleted nothing. I kill spam, and if someone were to be truly obnoxious, I might disemvowel them or something, but otherwise I leave comments alone.
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Well, that's pretty much what I thought. It is curious that for a while Google referenced the comment... now that I think about it, your site was acting buggy at the time: the right side of my typed text was disappearing "out of the box," so that I couldn't see the entirety of what was being typed. Writing blind! Heard about that little glitch before?
Also, I've been readng Esquire since about age 10, since it was always around the house-- my parents were longtime subscribers. It's not exactly like reading Playboy "For the articles!" Esky has always had good stuff along with some pretentious garbage, and what's a little half-nakedness these days? By the way, the illustration for the hard-copy article was just great: a bizarre, Photoshopped portrait of Fred Flintstone. Check it out!#: Posted by on 10/14 at 06:00 PM -
... the truth will out - because it is the truth.
i agree with Steve LaBonne: there might be so much damage done by the time the truth is recognized that its attainment be pyrrhic. -
Grumpy Physicist grumped:
You know, the neutron multiplication chain reaction in an atomic bomb is "inherently statistical", yet the result is just about as fucking "definitive" as one can get.
I have trouble seeing this as disagreeing with anything I said. I did not mean to imply that processes that are modeled by statistical methods don't have definitive concrete effects. My point was that statistical methods, as a rule, don't give definitive answers to questions. Also, some questions, like whether the neutron multiplication chain reaction really will cause an explosion, are (relatively) easy to model and (relatively) easy to test, others, like the overall contribution of human activity to global climate change, are much less so.
In any case, the real problem is that level of sophistication of statistical argument in public discourse is moving in the direction of: "Scientists can make statistics say anything they want, so I might as well listen to the ones that tell me what I want to hear."
Torbjörn Larsson mused:
But earth history is observed, not invented, and as you say the methods and theories are validated by modern observations. So 'we were there', or at least our observations of historical facts were.
Well, I suppose to be technical it would be necessary to say that earth's history is inferred. The bones and rocks are real and can be observed, and we invent a story to explain them. The people worth listening to just have strict rules about making sure the stories are consistent with the observations (rather than, say, strict rules that the stories must be consistent with some millenia old book or other...).
Unfortunately, what you or I might treat as being equivalent to "being there" isn't the issue – the problem is the way the concept is perceived by those literal minded folks who are capable of taking Ken Ham and his ilk seriously. My impression is that, for them, unless you personally watched for a few* generations while archeopteryx evolved into a duck, then you weren't there.
I also think you, or your yokel, overstress probability. For example, there is a (very, very, very, ..., very miniscule) nonzero probability that the netto of momenta of air molecules kick a dropped object up in the air an observable amount. So the 'immutable' law that objects always fall to ground is inherently statistical too.
I'm not quite sure what your point is here. Most people don't know how to evaluate theories that are based on various kinds of statistical and inferential reasoning, and will accept any excuse for dismissing them if they don't like the conclusion – in general, this has always been true. My point was that the extent to which it has become less true is actively undermined by theories like ID, and that the type of discourse that actively undermines that kind of knowledge has become a more organised and more prevalent response to many types of science in recent years.
Though I have not read it, my impression is that Chris Mooney's book describes this phenomenon to the degree it explicitly involves the Republican party. Creationism has been a perennial weed, but AFAIK it's been quite a while since it has had anything like the traction it currently has. I would guess that the reason this is true has to do with the fact that attacking scientific theories using intellectually bankrupt tactics has become an epidemic. I expect that at least half, if not a good deal more, of the responsibility for this phenomenon (in the U.S. anyway) can probably be layed at the feet of ideologues among the Republicans who put their political (and financial) fortunes ahead of scientific truth.
I've called it a "war on inductive reason" as that struck me as a fairly good summary of the various attempts to undermine so much scientific methodology and sophisticated reasoning.
It is only fair that we in turn ask that yokel: "Were you there?"
That's what I always thought the appropriate answer was too...
* for large values of "few"...#: Posted by on 10/14 at 08:39 PM -
An interesting side note on the New York Times...
I'm working on a paper dealing indirectly with the US Red scare that took place in 1919 after the war and the Russian revolution. I've been digging into the NY Times archives for data, and their reporting sucked as much then as it does now. I've found an article from the spring of 1919 claiming that Germany was living in fear of the Russian Navy invading them.
As a bit of a history buff, this article earned a pretty good chuckle. I can't recall anyone ever being particularly scared of the Russian Navy - as a matter of fact, their Navy is pretty much best known for being sent by Nicholas II to circumnavigate the globe during the Russo-Japanese war. They arrived at Japan just in time to be completely destroyed by the Japanese and lose the war for the tsar.
The funny thing is how reminiscent all the Times coverage of Russia during the red scare is to their Judith Miller-inspired coverage of Saddam Hussein's Iraq and their "weapons of mass destruction"[sic]. I'm trying to figure out at this point whether the Times is really a newspaper, or more of a jingo-machine.
And the saddest part is that they're probably our best paper for coverage of foreign affairs.#: Posted by on 10/15 at 11:09 AM -
From no-more-mr.niceguy: "Lamest argument ever. If English evolved from German, why do some people still speak German?" Lamest example ever. Today's German and English have a common root. The "German" from which English and German developed is not spoken anymore. (This is not a defense of King's idiot point.)
BTW: It's the rhetoric against all faith, as if it necessarily is unreasonable, that really radicalizes could-be-wingnuts into wingnuts. So maybe a bit more subtlety about religious faith would help. There are religious traditions that don't do the things you're attacking, so why exaggerate? When you use a shotgun you hit people your weren't aiming at, and they're likely to turn against you, too.#: Posted by on 10/15 at 11:52 AM -
You are certianly right about the need for ridicule, regardless of what some may think. Their "victories" come from merely getting equal time with real experts, which is why Richard Dawkins has always refused to "debate" these idiots. As a long time member of CSICOP, I have already joined you. I urge all who have read this post and agree with it to join that organization and receive it's excellent magazine, Skeptical Inquirer. It's a voice of sanity.
#: Posted by on 10/15 at 12:32 PM
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it's one of those things with half-naked young ladies draped over the cover, which, strangely enough, isn't something that usually entices me to pick up a copy
Just for the record, Esquire is not a lad mag. It's been around since the '20s and is kind of a how-to for the aspiring swell, with stuff about how to choose wine and recognize good tailoring. Kind of the granddaddy of Details.
I just happened to be watching a Fred & Ginger movie, and it starts out on Fred's wedding day, and one of his buddies plays a trick on him by opening up a copy of Esquire and penciling in some cuffs on the illustration of this season's tux. Fred flips out and sends his sidekick to the tailor to fix his uncuffed trousers, lest he suffer the shame of not being le dernier cri. He's so late to his wedding that his outraged fianceé calls it off, but at least he's avoided unfashionable-ness. Plus it's convenient, because she wasn't Ginger.
Which is a long-winded way of saying Esquire's a good mag.#: Posted by on 10/15 at 06:59 PM -
From no-more-mr.niceguy: "Lamest argument ever. If English evolved from German, why do some people still speak German?" Lamest example ever. Today's German and English have a common root. The "German" from which English and German developed is not spoken anymore.
so what you're saying is that today's German and English have a common ancestor? Doesn't that make it a pretty good example for human/monkey evolution?#: Posted by on 10/18 at 02:02 PM -
plover uttered:
"Well, I suppose to be technical it would be necessary to say that earth's history is inferred. The bones and rocks are real and can be observed, and we invent a story to explain them."
Inference isn't used much in science. And we don't invent a (hi)story but a set of geological and paleantological theories, which are tested against observations. There is a huge difference between description by theory and description by history. The theory can be observed to work *now* too, so it was there *then* based on our observations of that era.
"I'm not quite sure what your point is here. Most people don't know how to evaluate theories that are based on various kinds of statistical and inferential reasoning,"
You seem to come from a school were statistics and inference is seen as what science do. From my own experience (ahem!) I can't see that it works that way. The description of science as observation, theory, validation/falsification and so on is apt - statistics and inference is perhaps minor tools but may not be necessary at all.
So there is no gap between a statistical description and an inferred "definitive result"; both are pretty weak and vague compared to the scientific method itself. That was the point I was trying to illustrate.#: Posted by on 10/27 at 02:12 PM -
Torbjörn Larsson opined:
You seem to come from a school were statistics and inference is seen as what science do. From my own experience (ahem!) I can't see that it works that way. The description of science as observation, theory, validation/falsification and so on is apt - statistics and inference is perhaps minor tools but may not be necessary at all.
(sorry about the poor formatting but the server, at least seen from here, is ignoring HTML tags)
that's interesting. there are also schools of science, dominated by statistics, who argue that statistics has supplanted any need for a philosophy of science. i'll leave the proponents unnamed, but will hint they're located somewhat south of Boston. -
You may find the article for free at:
http://www.fraughtwithperil.com/blogs/ryuei/archives/000690.html
I may be wasting my breath here, in fact I probably am, but keep the phrases ad hoc and authority fallacy in mind.#: Posted by on 10/30 at 04:41 PM -
Here we have the blogger blaming america for denigrating expertise by being "political and then stating this:
"We have a twit for a president because so many people made apologies for his ludicrous lack of qualifications—we need more people unabashedly pointing out fools."
Yea, that's not political! Wanna see "idiot America" try looking in a mirror boob.#: Posted by on 10/30 at 04:55 PM -
Re: idiots:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051031/ap_on_re_us/pastor_electrocuted;_ylt=AhWtew9f18QhFj2TGDcw1aKs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3ODdxdHBhBHNlYwM5NjQ-
You can't make this stuff up!#: Posted by on 10/31 at 02:17 AM -
This whole discussion touches on something I erad online recently.
http://www.phule.net/mirrors/unskilled-and-unaware.html
Basically, the dumber someone is, the less aware of how dumb they are. Depressing, but very interesting research.#: Posted by on 10/31 at 03:54 PM -
The barge with the November Esquire finally got to the rock. Man, was I disappointed.
Not only has eklektos got Pierce nailed, but if you're going to write a piece in a national magazine about how the idiots are turning away from the experts, you'd be well advised not to offhandedly subscribe to the global warming hoaxers as experts to be blindly followed.
Just this morning, I read from another GW expert that instead of our coastal cities under 300 feet of water, we can look forward to more ice in Antarctica.
Following the GW hysteria is EXACTLY like Winston Smith trying to keep up with whether the war is with East Asia or Eurasia this week.
Americans may be idiots, but their distrust of experts was well and truly earned.#: Posted by on 11/24 at 10:58 PM