The Ruse of Change

Waiting impatiently for Canadian air - the drier, fresher air periodically predicted to replace the Gulf air that hijacks Minnesota in the summer - has become a bit of a red string for me.

But I don't believe in fate. I'm from the dumb luck school. I listen to weather reports. I hope for the best, then I bet my happiness on the false promises that pass for credible forecasts.

Breaking a sweat while walking to the Grandview to see the movie The Help, I griped to my spouse

So much for the Canadian air. I'll believe it when I see it...I mean, FEEL it.

The Canadian air, if it arrives at all, arrives 24-48 hours after its predicted arrival. This time, the much anticipated Canadian air finally arrived while we were cooling ourselves inside the Grandview watching The Help.

Empiricism is inadequate because scientific theories explain the seen in terms of the unseen and the unseen, you have to admit, doesn’t come to us through the senses.
~ David Deutsch

The Help was a flick that made me blubber, not because of the prospect of returning to the sweat box outside, but for all the injustice and the hate-laced ignorance humans are accustomed to enduring and dishing out.

Change happens. Change is inevitable. But it's also fickle and slow. It's one thing to believe it when you see it. It's another thing to rest assured change will arrive in due time.

The ruse of Canadian air was contrived to keep the Minnesota's knowledge workers from picking up stakes, moving their tents, and working remotely from the Canadian Rockies.

The ruse of cultural change is that it just arrives like fresh air without putting in the endless work to change people's minds.

Nincompoop Nation

I can't recall a time when I thought beauty pageants were normal.

Gary Collins asked one Miss America finalist:
"What's your favorite part of the pageant?"
"Lunch," she replied.

At least this contestant was honest, rather than a bold-faced, audience-appeasing liar.

This video documents the repulsive Kool-Aid of appalling ignorance and ambition.

We're to blame. The US has devolved to a society so detached from the truth, so divorced from critical thinking, so mired in inane religiosity, and so fearful of loud-mouthed, violence-prone right wing ninnies that our beauty pageants ask the wrong fucking question.

The question is NOT

Should evolution be taught in schools?

rather it's

Should creationism be taught in schools?

We are a society that is being destroyed by decades of popular anti-intellectualism.

Intelligence & Uncertainty

The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias that supports a rather disappointing observation:

People who don't know much tend not to recognize their ignorance, so they fail to seek better information.

Ignorance & Confidence

Perhaps the Dunning-Kruger effect explains the correlation between ignorance and confidence.

Would-be Qur'an-burner Pastor Terry Jones is a confident public speaker. Yet this man can't possibly comprehend his seemingly unbounded ignorance.

It never occurred to the cock-sure George W. Bush to doubt the veracity of US intelligence reports on Iraq's WMDs, or to welcome conflicting viewpoints during his Presidency, or to make informed decisions, or to seek better information.

Fact gathering and critical thinking are like a curse to truly ignorant people.

Stupid is as stupid does
~Forrest Gump

Intelligence & Uncertainty

On the flip-side, there seems to be a positive correlation between intelligence and uncertainty.

I was demoted to the slow reading group in 3^rd grade for disruptive behavior. This branded my prepubescent psyche with the awkward self-consciousness of the characterization below-average.

By college, a few latent talents emerged. I grew into my native intelligence. A theme in my adult life is reversing the limiting self-image of below-average-ness.

A windfall of moderated self-esteem, and the recognition of ubiquitous uncertainty, is that it drives one toward knowledge. Moderated self-esteem and uncertainty has driven me to doggedly seek better information whether voting for school board members, or making consumer purchases.

Is it possible, in one's lifetime, to truly plumb the depths of one's ignorance?

Uncertainty, or an an appetite for certainty, is one driving force behind many of human-kind's most significant discoveries. This is true in science.

An appetite for certainty is human nature. The weak-minded have the same appetite for certainty as the much-celebrated physicist Albert Einstein or contemporary cosmologist Stephen Hawking.

Unfortunately for civilization, the weak-minded's appetite for certainty is often sated by the pseudo certainty derived from dogmatic religious beliefs. Deity worship, and other superstitions, atrophies critical thinking and renders one intellectually lazy.

Further Reading

The Comfort of Ignorant Bliss by Lane Wallace.