My grandfather always said “You should learn something new every day. Never stop learning. When you do, you’ll die.” He lived to be almost 94 and was clear-headed and independent right up to the end, so I think maybe he was onto something. In any case, he inspired me to commit to being a lifelong learner. I’m always reading and usually studying something. If I could get someone to pay me to go to school, I’d definitely do that for the rest of my life! The more I learn, the more fantastic and wonderful the universe is, even if I also learn how little I know.
I love the internet. It used to be that I’d have to go digging at the library to find information on something. Now I sit down to my computer, even if what I want to do is dig at the library (not that I don't still love libraries and read books a lot!). I often answer questions in moments that before I might never have bothered to answer in the first place. Now there’s never an excuse not to learn at least one new thing a day, just like Grandpa told me to do.
Of course, there’s something important that must be paired with access to so much information, and that is the ability to think critically and require real evidence. It’s too easy to publish complete crap and make it look good. The mere act of asserting something doesn’t make it true, even if you surround it with pretty graphics and lots of links. It’s important for every reader, every video watcher, every user of the internet to have a good foundational education and the ability to consider information skeptically. It would appear, however, that most people don’t.
I read recently that the percentage of Americans who believe in the veracity of complete rubbish – let’s take astrology as an example – has gone up since 1900, despite clear debunking evidence and easy access to same. The author suggested it has partially to do with a twisting of the premise of Free Speech. If it’s OK to say anything, then it must be that everything has equal chance of being valid. I have trouble believing people could possibly think this, until I run into it directly. When I talk to someone who “believes in” astrology about precession having moved where the sun comes up against the background of the stars and the more recently discovered planets the Babylonians didn’t know existed, they generally a)have no clue what I’m talking about and b)don’t really wish to know. And they continue to arrange their lives around the vague and often silly pronouncements of astrologers. This troubles me. Astrology was the best the Babylonians could come up with, and in fact for some centuries we didn’t have enough information to really argue with it, even though many people noticed it only “did the job” when it was so vague as to be useless for anything except after-the-fact reinterpretation. But now we do know better, and yet people still “believe” in something that clearly isn’t true. What does that say about us? And more important, how can we possibly expect to keep from being swindled or worse if we can't look at evidence and think critically and clearly about what it means?
I had two run-ins with people in the last few days that really made my eyes cross. One was with a stranger, a woman I met while on the Blue Line, who has (among other things) signed on to conspiracy theories about 9/11 and for some reason wanted to talk about it. From what I could tell, this is at least in part because she didn’t understand the physics of the buildings’ collapse. She thinks there had to be explosions in the basement. How she thinks explosions in the basement would have made the towers pancake from the top, I’m not sure.
The other was with a friend, an old high school chum with whom I recently reconnected on Facebook. He posted something that declared, in part: “poetry is to religion what analysis is to science”. I commented that I did not get the analogy. He replied that it fits exactly, that science is just a guessing game! I was appalled. I actually went for a walk to think about it. How can someone born near 1960 and college-educated think such a thing? I really, really wanted to retort that he ought to have a little more respect for science, that the paramedics who tended to him during a recent health crisis did not save his ass by consulting his horoscope. But it seemed pointless to do that. Instead, I tried to explain the scientific method and what analysis is (i.e., not just guessing). It turns out he’s a poster boy for the “equal point of view” frame of mind. He’s only interested in his truth and doesn't care about anyone else's point of view. He actually seemed to be using "truth" and "point of view" interchangeably. In fact, he says it’s clear I have “issues with science” that I’m trying to force on him. All I could say was, “Wow”. His profile talks about becoming enlightened. What irony.
I wonder if he therefore believes that David Duke’s (he’s black) and Jerry Falwell’s (he’s gay) “points of view” are equally valid? I won’t ask him; it’s pretty clear he isn’t interested in honest debate with me. But I would love to know.
The late Dr. Carl Sagan is one of my heroes, because in addition to all the excellent research and teaching he did, he worked much of his career to make science accessible to people like me. He wrote many books, and I have read them all. The one I love the most is called Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. In he explains, very carefully, how the scientific method works and why we should all think critically and skeptically. He also talks about how learning the truth doesn’t reduce a jot the wonder of it all. I wish I could give a copy of his book both to my Blue Line companion and to my friend. I wish I had any hope that either would consider reading it.
If you haven’t read it, please do, and tell me what you think. Or better, tell me what you've learned. I learn something new every time I read it.
No comments:
Post a Comment