ARE WE TOO STUPID TO SURVIVE?

As an adult I’ve had a couple of “best friends”, and one of them died a couple of years ago. I estimate that he and I shared about 1,200 cups of coffee over the years (we took turns buying to make our barista’s life easier), and the conversations were ALWAYS fun and enlightening. When our conversations became serious and we talked about the fact that so many people go through life questioning nothing and believing just about anything their pastors, teachers, parents, political leaders, and others tell them, Larry would say:

“The human race is too stupid to survive”

Of course we would then discuss ways humans could solve the environmental, social, political, and intellectual problems with which we are faced, and he would eventually agree that civilization CAN survive if we have the will to make it so. But neither of us were certain humans possess such will. You know what I’m talking about.

• The Earth is warming. Science proves it. We ignore it.

• Children die in school shootings and many go hungry. We know it. We ignore it.

• People decide that voting is unimportant then complain about the poor quality of our elected officials.

• During Adolph Hitler’s regime people knew that Hitler had “predicted” the elimination of all Jews. They ignored it.

• We know that although the number has been reduced, more than 12,000 nuclear warheads remain. We also know that nuclear war could be triggered fairly easily We all would die. We ignore it.

• The growing economic inequity between the ultra rich and very poor is growing. We know it. We ignore it.

• Our national debt will cripple future generations. We know it. We ignore it.

• We know that a large percentage of politicians either lie or prevaricate. We ignore it and vote for them anyway.

People can be also be willfully ignorant.

• In good news, only 16% of Americans believe the Earth is flat. The bad news is that 34% of Americans between 18-24 are not certain the Earth is round.

• In a poll following the pandemic, about 25% of Americans said they believed the coronavirus was likely spread intentionally.

• In a poll a couple of years back, more than half of Americans believed Adolph Hitler came to power in a coup. Nope! He was elected by the German voters. And 11% had never heard of the holocaust.

• In another poll, 37% of Americans could not name a single right protected by the Bill of Rights and 33% could not name one branch of government. These people are voting!

• In another poll from a few years back, about 25% of Americans believed the Sun orbited the Earth.

• About half of all Americans either believe the entire planet is being secretly controlled by single group of powerful individuals, or that that could be the case.

• More than 30% believe former President Obama was not born in the United States.

• Almost 30% believe top Democrats are involved in a child sex-trafficking ring, and about 25% believe the same about Republicans.

• About 23% believe school shootings and other mass killings have been staged to promote gun control.

• Almost 20% believe the moon landing was faked and 20% believe the United States government was behind the 9/11 attacks.

• And Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) believes the government (or Jews, or someone referred to as “they”) can control the weather and is responsible for the damage caused by hurricane Helene.

Similar examples are endless, but our tendency to bury our heads in the sand or to be willfully ignorant is much more than this. I’ve written previously about “confirmation bias”, our tendency to only seek out facts that affirm what we already believe and ignore facts or truths that contradict our preconceived ideas. At no time is that more apparent than during political campaigns when voters ONLY consider evidence supporting their decision to back a particular candidate and ignore what might be overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Aldous Huxley once said: “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” But lots of folks seem to believe otherwise. And we are ALL guilty, some more than others.

A study conducted a few years ago even found that people with strong math skills do not necessarily reach the correct conclusion to a mathematical problem, for example, and instead reach conclusions supporting their preconceived political beliefs. In other words, liberal mathematicians would only accept mathematical data supporting their belief that gun control saves lives but conservative mathematicians only accept data supporting the opposite conclusion. And this study concluded that people with higher IQ’s are really much better at formulating arguments supporting a conclusion, but only if it is a conclusion with which they agree. So even smart and/or educated folks often do not necessarily accept facts.

When facts don’t matter and people refuse to reconsider their views when faced with contradicting evidence, we are doomed as a society. Excellence requires knowledge and an acceptance of objective truth.

Are we too stupid to know that?

Thanks for following along.

David

PS: Lots of personal stuff is going on in old Dave’s life, much of it keeping me from writing. And my wife and I will be camping all next week, so I doubt I’ll write anything then. Please hang on because I’ll be blogging more consistently in a couple of weeks.