Why are smart people so ignorant?
 

Please forgive this rambling post...it has been stewing inside me for a while and I need to get it out...

I am having a discussion on another forum about the effect one person (or indeed even EVERYONE) can have on the environment. Canada, for example, produces a mere 2% of the Greenhouse gases worldwide. And the largest portion of that (over 25%) is from our oil production and distribution. And the largest portion of the non-oil pollution is commercial trucks. And after that, if you can believe, is farm animal burps and farts. That's right, the pollution put into the air by our personal driving has less an effect on the environment than cows!! And our house environmental impact is practically non-existent.

So, my question is, why do people insist that what they do actually matters. If everyone in Canada suddenly didn't have a car, practically nothing would change because we still eat too much meat and ship our oil to the US.

And not only that, the decisions are so easy to make. Which is better for the environment, a ceramic coffee mug or a paper/plastic one? Easy right?
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008...disposable.php

Also, how come we are so easily fooled by authority. Watch this presentation: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/s..._carseats.html. The darn things don't do any good! Yet they are legally required (at least in Canada).

And why do we not allocation our fear (and indeed our money) where the numbers tell us to? What kills more children in the US every year, guns or swimming pools? But yet guns aren't allowed and swimming pools are? What kills more people every year in the US, cancer AND AIDS, or obesity/unhealthiness? Yet more money is spent on cancer research and AIDS research than is spent promoting healthy living.

Thanks for (not) listening.

Whew...

I will tell you why what we do actually matter. Because we are the winners of the Time's Person of the Year. I agree with you that if we could just get businesses to change, then the problem of global warming would be solved. But that doesn't mean we should just sit on our bottoms waiting for them to change. No, that would never happen. It requires a grassroot movement of enormous scale. And that's where we come in. It's not about the greenhouse gases we save by using more efficient lights (well, just a little bit) - it's about the change in mindset - the notion of sustainable development. What each little thing you do to help save the earth is just a small step into convincing the business world to take action. And the power of the people can never be underestimated.

So you can continue sitting back, bemoaning about the pointlessness of it all. Or you can change your attitude about our earth, and the deep synergy we have with nature, and realise that it's more about what's in your heart that counts.

One day, hopefully, you will look at a guzzling petrol hungry car and instead see the ongoing destruction of our precious earth, the loss of wildlife habitat, the 'what can only be considered murder' of animals, that this car brings about. Then, and only then, will you understand why we do what we do. But before that day, don't even bother trying.

You are manipulating statistics. Assuming swimming pools actually do kill more people than guns do (which I highly doubt, but I am not bothered to check the facts), they are two entirely different deaths.

One is a result of a parenting: it is the parent's responsibility to ensure that their child does not drown. On the other hand, death by gun is murder. cold blooded murder. Swimming pools are allowed because their main purpose is in recreation and sport - the mainstay of swimming pools does not lie in their murderous appeal. A gun, on the other hand, has only function –*to kill.

Anyway, would you rather be like America, where teenagers weilding firearms wreck havoc to innocent families?

When a kid drowns in a swimming pool, WHO BLAMES THE SWIMMING POOL?? tell me...you? Would you?

But when a teenager finds a gun lying around in his uncles house, and then goes on a rampage, the availability of the gun is to blame.

That is correct - in the US. But there are other countries in this world. The money spent on AIDS is mostly targeted at remedying the situation in the developing countries, of which, if successful, the lifes of millions upon millions could be saved.

You make a succint point here though. If medical research became Utilitarian, in that money was directed to the project that would result in the most number of lives saved, then we would see a large restructuring of research directions.

Plus, there is always the question is research towards long standing diseases such as cancer, that probably will not be fruitful in the short term, but hopefully in the long run will bring about extensive rewards - or research towards simple diseases (obesity?) that can save people now. The problem with obesity is that it's not "research" that is lacking - it's today's culture that is amiss, and that requires a makeover.

You can't really compare the two. You should be comparing lack of funding for obesity prevention to military spending. The trouble is, one can't always direct money to where is it most required. And plus, we all know that the life of a child in the Subsaharn desert is more media-powerful than that of a middle aged fat potato couch in America. It's true that the media controls where the money is spent.

There was an article in the Economist a while back about how, up until the day the media shone it's spotlight on this disaster zone somewhere in Africa, it has received a total donation of around $5,000. And then, a week after the media covered it, it had received over $200,000. So you are right that we live in a world where our donations are not used optimally.

On a lighter note though, I agree that we are fooled by the authorities and the media - 1984 is encroaching, like Orwell predicted.

Intelligence doesn't necessarily have anything to do with ignorance (as you have discovered)!

PGR

Politicians are ignorant, not smart people. Whenever they remove individual choice and replace it with their judgment "for the public good," car seats is what you get.

In my view, most research put forth by government is flawed, irrelevant or applies only in limited circumstances. That doesn't keep them from passing laws that apply to everybody, though.

You often read about small scientific breakthroughs only to see them reported again in mainstream media completely distorted or out of context.

There's also marketing. Take the 'Mozart Effect' for example. Some study showed a slight, short-term benefit in listening to Mozart, next thing you know people are making bucket loads of money from parents selling them an assortment of Mozart crap promising to boost their kids IQs.

I'm with fazstp on this one.

It's about the relationship between truth and power; some powerful people make money from some things that are at best marginally true.

In New Zealand, the proportion of greenhouse gas emissions from ruminants is 50%, but all of the major political parties are finding excuses to keep agriculture out of our greenhouse gas trading system, because antagonising the farmers is a losing political move. My (minor) party wants to put them in immediately, but for a small proportion of their actual costs, so that they survive financially, but begin thinking about what to do better.

Parenting is subject to more fads than dieting! These fads come and go, and never turn out to be the miracle "cure" that they were purported to be. The problem is that people are trying to find a "cure" for a parent's involvement. All the Baby Mozart videos do is allow parents to plop their infant down in front of the TV and delude themselves into believing that they are doing something good for their child.

One scientific result has rung true across numerous studies over many decades - there is no replacement for the parent-child attachment! Nothing helps your children develop more than interacting with them and playing with them.

IQ Enhancement Strategies are covered in the tech manual that comes with each child, page 117 in the boys addition and page 122 for the girls.

You don't supply a source for your data, so I will supply my own - from Environment Canada:

http://www.ec.gc.ca/pdb/ghg/inventor...06/tab_eng.cfm

Although this data is from 2006, it is still very relevant. It also contradicts your assertion that not practically no change would result from environmental changes on an individual level. A large portion of the heating and electricity carbon footprint (117 megatonnes) is due to individual homes. Changes in energy usage in and around the home would have a significant impact on this number!

In my experience, the people who complain the loudest that their small contribution to environmental change will have no impact are also the ones who feel most inconvenienced by the requirements of an environmental conscience. If you don't want to do your part for the environment because it costs you a little bit more or it requires a little bit more effort, then at least be honest about it. Don't kid yourself into believing that one person's contribution can't make a difference. Every great idea and great movement throughout history has started out as just a seed in the brain of a single individual - and yet look at what we have accomplished as a species. Every little bit counts!

I don't have time to watch the video right now (it's quite long), so I'll get back to this point later!

By your reasoning, we should ban cars - since they kill more children than guns and pools combined! Your logic is flawed and your premise is wrong. Guns are allowed in Canada - requiring registration is hardly the same thing as an outright ban. A gun is designed to kill - that is its purpose. A swimming pool is designed for enjoyment - it kills through misuse and accident. The legislation regarding both guns and swimming pools must be proportionate to both their inherent danger AND their purpose!

I agree in part - our governments can and should do more to promote healthy living. However, no one would stand for them legislating lifestyle. Thus, there is a limit to how much they can do to promote healthy living.

NovaScotian, as a former professor, I expected a little more precision in your language! ;) Science is not "fuzzy", it is very precise. Scientists, however, are not always precise and don't always do science justice!

In the context of this discussion, science is extremely fuzzy to a population with almost no appreciation of what science is. Science proceeds piecemeal and serendipitously through a process of reasoned discovery and review, but the public then gets an ambiguous "big picture" because the science, though incomplete, is presented as if it was fait accompli by media who know nothing about it except to summarize briefly what they think it is.

I'm not talking about individual scientific projects, I'm talking about general understanding on the part of "civilians" and governments, and I'm doing so as the son of a PhD organic chemist who held 32 patents and who wrote a book, and as the father of a microbiologist who has published his work in Cell, Science, and Nature. I know what science is, but I know what it isn't too.

I'm not sure I see where you are getting that number from. I see Residential as 40megatonnes and Electricity and Heat Generation as 117MT. I don't believe that that 117 is a sub-total. And while individual change would have a significant impact on that number, that number itself isn't a large portion of the total in Canada, nor the world.

My point was that why are spending money on something (tax payer money) that has very little effect? It would be cheaper to put a guard at each pool then spend $3 Billion on a gun registry!!

They already legislate lifestyle. They tax cigarettes, they make marijuana illegal. They make seatbelts mandatory. Why not make healthly living mandatory. Take some of the money used for Cancer or AIDs research and visit each home to make sure everyone is eating well and excercising? Why not make gyms free?

There are lots of ways the gov't control the way we live...

p.s. I love the discussion this brought about...this is what I wanted to see...counterpoints to my arguments. And just so everyone doesn't think I am just a whinger, we only have one car, we rarely drive it, we both work from home, we don't eat that much meat. We try to buy local produce.

Another point to add in...what's with organic produce. If everyone ate organically, we would need 4x as much land to grow it all? Can that be a good thing?

http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2005/1...-land-and.html
http://www.yaleherald.com/article.php?Article=6607

A death is a death. Both preventable. Which should get our money?

Canada's gun registration program, which has done nothing for gun injuries or deaths in the country cost around $3 billion. There are 30 million people in Canada. Let's say a tenth of us have pools. That's $1000/per pool we have to spend to make our pools safe. Say gate that prevents access to the pool. Or an alarm that indicates when someone is in it. Or a camera that watches it. All of those could be done for less than $1000. We don't even have to make it mandatory..just optional.

Yes, the availability of the gun is blamed. But incorrectly. You are saying it is the government's responsibility to make sure that kids don't get guns? But kids with guns kill very few (relatively speaking) people each year. You don't think the money could be better spent on education? Or parenting classes?

Business are motivated by money. Not if I change a light bulb. You want to change businesses? Stop dealing with ones that don't conform to your ideals!!

As I understand the publication, the residential emissions are a measure of what is produced directly from the home. The emissions due to electricity generation (of which homes are a major customer) is tallied up separately. Thus a significant portion of the 117 megatonnes that is attributed to electricity and heat generation is due to residential electricity usage.

Most drownings happen in home pools and lakes, rivers, etc - so I don't see your point. You're going to require that every home owner who has a pool also hire a 24-hour lifeguard service? Or do you want to see a manned lifeguard station every 100m along the shore of ever major body of water in Canada? Legislation is already in place to require home owners to cover their pools with a secure cover when it is not in use. If the legislation doesn't have enough teeth, then that can be addressed. But none of that justifies canceling the gun registry! I'm not saying that I'm pro gun registry - I think there are better solutions. I'm just saying that I don't agree with your reasoning.

Taxing cigarettes is not legislating lifestyle - that's just a money grab that should be directed entirely into the health care system. Fast food should be taxed and that money should be directed into the health care system too in my opinion. Making seatbelts mandatory is also not legislating lifestyle - I hardly think that wearing a seatbelt is a lifestyle issue. As much as I am against legalizing marijuana, I will accede that it is a lifestyle issue. In that sense, I agree that the government does legislate lifestyle up to a point. I will amend my previous statement to say that I don't think people would tolerate too much government legislation of lifestyle.

Those laws are already in effect (and they are mandatory). They include requirements on the minimum height of the fence (and gate) surrounding the pool or the presence of a secure cover on the pool if there is no fence.

Making something like that optional is a joke. Then you've done nothing - because the majority of people have ignored the "optional" advice on swimming pools for decades. That's why this legislation was enacted - to increase compliance.

Yes, so educate the public then. Science is a method of discovery - nothing more, nothing less. The scientific method is sound in principle. The problem is that you have to question everything that passes through human hands. Scientists are fallible, just like anyone else. The fact that the public never questions the media (which only exists to further its own existence) winds up giving science an ugly black eye. It bothers me when people try to blame science for things that are problems with our society!

You're right, it's not a lifestyle issue, but it is dictating behaviour to try to limit costs. i.e. stopping people from getting injured or killed in a car accident saves lives and money (hospital bills, etc).

But at what point do you draw the line for which behaviour should be limited because of deaths or cost? If candies and cookies and all bad food were illegal, would that save lives and money? There are lots of thing the gov't could do but aren't and lots of things the gov't is doing, that don't help much.

I just wanted to point out who little most (myself included) understand about the true cost and consequences of our (in)actions.

I couldn't agree more!!!

Thanks for the good discussion...I have enjoyed it immensely!

p.s. we should try to do a MacOSXHints Vancouver get together.

I spent 40 years educating a subset of the public and I wasn't arguing for a moment that the scientific method was flawed; scientists as individuals and some findings might be, but science itself is not.

That the public never questions the media is not the media's fault, it's the abysmal state of Science and Mathematics education in our schools. To ask an intelligent question you have to have paid attention to and understood what you've been told. In this day of special interests, who routinely distort science to their own ends by picking and choosing whatever makes their point and ignoring all counter-arguments, the loudest voice wins, not the most informed voice.

Ig Nobel Prize

:D

These kinds of questions always remind me of calculus. Specifically, Reiman sums. The basic idea is that you get the area under a curve by adding up all of the infinitesimally small rectangles (height of the curve X an infinitesimal width). Each rectangle has an area approaching zero, but the total area can be huge.

Think of each individual person's individual actions as one of those rectangles. The question then becomes: how do we get all of those rectangles to add to the curve instead of detracting from it?

This is the fallacy that has brought the world to the economic crisis we're in now. The market is great for producing and distributing, but not for solving problems. In fact, it causes some problems because it can make a profit off of them: it's called designed obsolescence. Even today, we still see products being advertised as "disposable," as if that were a good thing!

In business terms, you do a cost/benefit analysis.

Not sure I quite agree with this. You are correct that businesses don't tend to solve problems. But if people purchased with forethought about solving a problem (i.e. NOT buying "disposable" items), then businesses would try to maximize their profits by providing services/products that consumer wants.

You think companies are "going green" because they want to? I think they are doing that because there is money to be made from doing it.

No, I don't. I think they're going green because of millions of people who've decided to make their infinitesimal rectangles add up to something that is pushing economies and governments in that direction. The 'market' isn't some unstoppable, uncontrollable, external force. It is us, and what we do actually does matter. Of course, pushing the market isn't enough, but if we push our governments too, we can have a huge effect.

psych research has a lot to say about this:

• people are very bad at estimating things that have high immediate costs and small probabilites. people smoke cigarettes because the immediate cost is low, but they are afraid of lightning because the immediate cost of getting struck is high (even though the probability of getting struck by lightning is far, far smaller than the prob of dying of smoking)
• people in groups tend to defray responsibility. the larger the group involved, the less likely any individual in that group is to take action.
• group decisions tend towards risky. on average, a decision made by a group of people will be riskier and more aggressive than any individual in the group would have done on his/her own.

and so it goes...

I make no defense of sword swallowing, fazstp, but in general terms, it is truly impossible to judge what might be learned by studying any science. A Nobel Prize was awarded to a chemist who figured out how some species of deep water jellyfish could glow in the dark. Turns out that the protein they use to do it is extremely valuable to biochemists trying to track proteins in their experiments. Another similar discovery of the enzymes that made it possible for some species of aquatic worms to live in water whose temperature approached 100C has produced a set of enzymes that make the manufacture of medical proteins much more productive. At the same time, it's easy to see why scoffers would say "We should be looking for a cure for <insert disease here> instead of screwing around with jellyfish no one ever sees.

I don't think we are in terrible disagreement here. However, I do disagree on some of the finer points. The media is hopelessly entangled in our society and thus our society's priorities and social compass is often a reflection of what is portrayed in the media (and vice versa). I don't think you can say it isn't the media's fault any more than you can say it isn't society's fault. The fact that we don't place more emphasis on education (science, mathematics or otherwise) is a cultural failing.

Quoted for truth.

Complaining about the media is perilously close to the whining we've heard from the extreme right here in the US. Sure, the media's not perfect: eliminating Fox News for example, would be a dramatic improvement. That's doesn't mean that the media as a whole deserves the blame for our mistakes. The media is a product of society. If we choose to allow extremists who fear science and education to control it, we can't blame anyone but ourselves for the results.

You love to say stuff like this, CWT.

1. Why do you think we have a choice over who controls the media? Your only choice is to vote with your clicker.
2. How would you propose that media be controlled? Don't you believe in free press?
3. Extremists (as you put it) have damaged funding for basic research and it shows. They also exert an inordinate control over what is taught in schools.

We have a choice over the size of the organization that controls any given media. It's just plain stupid to let a corporation grow beyond the size of governments and then expect that it's going to report the news without slanting it heavily towards its own goals.

I propose that the media not be controlled — by any large organization. We have Anti Trust laws, and it's time we used them.

I agree that extremists have too much control. I think people like Rupert M. would be far less dangerous if their corporations were broken up.

edit: broken, not 'broke' :eek:

I agree that in many industries consolidation has gone too far; there's almost no competition left in some industries and the media is one of them.

I thought "Effects of Backward Speech and Speaker Variability in Language Discrimination by Rats" was an interesting area for research, or maybe "Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity".

Oh, I do the latter. Will it make me go blind? :eek: