The Arrogance of Unstudied Certainty

I was talking someone yesterday that told me that World War II was what got us out of the Great Depression and that that could work today, although he hoped we didn't go down that road. This man is very intelligent. He holds a doctorate and has extensive experience. But he has absolutely no training in either economics or history. So it seems rather presumptuous to me that he could make that claim so matter-of-factly. How does he know? There are lots of real economic historians that would disagree with him. Many have stated that without FDR's New Deal, not only would we have never gotten out of the Great Depression, but we may very well have lost the war because we would have been ill-prepared to fight such a protracted and extensive war. Other historians agree that it was the war that did it. Others say it was a combination of factors, of which the war and FDR' New Deal played a part. The point here is that the professionals don't agree. So on what basis does someone that has never actually studied the problem presume to claim they know the right answer?

I see this sort of thing all the time. Probably the biggest example of this is with evolution. There are millions of people that tell biologists and paleontologists that have spent their lives studying life on earth that they don't know what they are talking about, the evolution couldn't possibly work. It does not seem to matter to these people that they have no idea what they are talking about, they are certain they are right, even though they have not studied the problem even briefly, much less spent decades looking at the evidence. No, because their preacher told them evolution is wrong, it must be so. I find this particularly sad that these same people often don't even understand the basic tenets of their own religion (see this Pew survey), which is the biggest reason they claim to disagree with evolution. My opinion? If atheists on average know more about your religion than you do, you have no business judging something else based on your supposed religious beliefs because you are too ignorant of your own basis of opinion to make any statement with any credence whatsoever.

Another example of this are the true nutcases that refuse to accept that people have actually visited the moon. They disregard the evidence of the pictures, the word of the people that actually went there, the samples brought back. Nothing convinces them. They instead continue to promote ideas they claim disprove the moon landing, ideas in which a passing familiarity with physics completely discredits and the rest of the ideas are destroyed with either a stronger knowledge of physics or common sense. No, they would rather believe their conspiracy ideas, which don't hold up to any serious examination. Fox television even ran a show supporting such nonsense (http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast23feb_2/). It doesn't see to matter that lots of physicists have demonstrated that it was indeed possible, but done and that the reasons given to "disprove" it are all fallacious. Nope, they know better, despite not having ever taken a science class in their lives.

And let's not forget the Flat Earth Society (actually, I am pretty sure, at least I hope, this particular site is a parody, but it pretty accurately displays the mindset and arguments used by many flat earthers). Despite overwhelming evidence, they still believe the earth is flat. To believe this, you have to throw out pretty much all of known physics. You have to disbelieve in cell phones or satellites. You have to disbelieve any chance at weather forecasting. You have to have no reasonable explanation for tides. You have to believe every pilot in the world is lying, not to mention just ignoring the evidence of your own eyes every day. In short, the universe has to be run by magic with a lot of really odd quirks that give the illusion of a spherical earth. Still, they know better than people who have actually flown around the earth and all the physicists and scientists over 2000 years that have said the earth is round. The Greek Eratosthenes figured this out more than 200 years before Christ. But hey, millions of people the world over for millennia are obviously wrong according to these people. They, who apparently have never opened a physics book, know better.

Does this sound insulting to other people's beliefs? There comes a point in which the sheer combined arrogance and ignorance of people drives me to frenzy. Sorry, but I can't be polite about the utter gall of these people. When you have to disregard the evidence of your own eyes to hold on to your beliefs, when the cognitive dissonance builds to the point that it is impossible to have rational conversation, sorry, but I can't give that opinion even polite forbearance. If you are going to disagree with an idea, that's fine, but make sure you have some idea of what you are talking about before you pretend certainty.