Troubled all week...

[AyGee]

So I've got a lot of disheartening ideas floating around all week, to the point that it's affecting my ability to concentrate or think clearly on other matters.

To get us started, a little viewing >HERE<

For those of you who don't want to follow the link, I'll try to summarize:  Person in safe space discusses abolishing all scientific progress and knowledge because it's too Western, and insists on rebuilding it from the ground up to make it more 'relevant' to Africans.  And there's just so many levels where I can point out the sheer wrongness of this line of thought, but first and foremost was my hypothetical rebuttal to the idea:

Quote

If you did abolish all Western-discovered science and rebuild from the ground up, in the absolute best case scenario you would spend the next 1000 to 2000 years rediscovering all the same shit white people did.  The properties of the universe were not designed by committee.  No one voted on the laws of physics.  They simply are, and always have been, and are not at all affected by what people think of them or who discovered them first.

Also of note was the point in this discussion where the person presenting this notion of abolishing science started talking about shamans casting lightning curses at people, to which a person listening calls out the superstition with "But that's not true!"  The moderator then stopped the discussion, and forced that person to apologize...

Apologize...

...for living in this century and not believing lightning mages exist.

And I guess the thing that's troubling me most about all this was how all this ties together into some kind of beautifully brick-headed way of thinking that will likely condemn many, many people to a much lower quality of life, or worse to death by completely preventable causes.  You see, when I argue something, I present evidence and facts to support my opinion.  I stick to the measurable and provable, and I've always felt the way it ought to be is that the viewpoint with the greater weight of empirical evidence on its side is typically more 'correct.'  But these people, and I'm not just talking about this group in South Africa.  I just mean... these people...

They genuinely don't listen to facts.  Either they don't like the color of the mouth that the words came from, or the dangly bits between the legs of the person who's mouth it came from, or any number of arbitrary and unrelated details, and just decide based on that alone that all facts uttered by that person are 'wrong' or 'crazy' or 'trolling,' because... what... The truth is just whatever feels comfortable, right?  Just ignore reality, or better yet, insist that we can somehow alter the immutable natural laws of the universe by thinking REALLY HARD about them being different in a way that 'seems better.'

And I had that harrowing, sinking feeling.  I could amass all the evidence in the world, I could conduct experiments and measure things before their eyes, I could grab them by the hair and point their head at the sky and say, "LOOK!  IT'S BLUE!"  But if I'm of some un-good enough type (read: white male), or the conclusion drawn is unpleasant, then it doesn't matter what reality says.  I'd just be shouting against the tide at that point.

I literally Google'd 'How to be more violent' after that realization fully, truly sunk in, because I was convinced that the only way to convey the well-grounded conclusion to these reality-deniers was to literally beat it into them - be stronger, hit harder, shout louder until the other side is too maimed and cowed to argue back, because I'm certain they would do the same to their opposition first, given the chance.  There would be no more evidence or debating, just 'this is right because my club is bigger.'

And honestly, the thought makes me feel sick.  I'm a pacifist at heart, and I feel that killing or maiming the other side to prove your point only proves that your point probably wasn't all that persuasive to begin with.  But what do you do when the other side condemns you from the word 'GO,' and anything short of denying your own point, your identity, and your principles won't even convince them to begin talking with you on civil terms?

It's sort of like really, truly realizing you're going to die one day.  Everyone knows there are people, a very large an influential number of them, that just don't listen to facts.  You go about your daily life knowing this but never contemplating it.  But then you sit down and fully grasp the gravity of that situation, and it's positively daunting.

HIV doesn't cause AIDS

Gender has absolutely nothing to do with biology

GMO's are wholly bad and unfit for human consumption

Windmills will cause weather to stop on Earth

If a woman REALLY didn't enjoy the rape, her body will just abort the baby on its own

Vaccines are a pharmaceutical conspiracy

2 + 2 = 5

There will always be crazy, stupid, and wrong ideas.  But there's always enough people holding them that people with these ideas will end up in power in some fashion, and make decisions that affect all of us, AND YOU CAN'T FUCKING STOP THEM.  And it's been eating me up since the beginning of this week.  It's the only thing I can think about when I wake up in the morning straight through to when I go to bed at night.

I wish there was a way to ease my mind on this, but with the election coming up this issue is just going to fester more and more.  I compared Trump and Hillary to the Beast and the Smiler from Transmetropolitan, respectively, and I honestly wish that was less true.  Those of you who have read it will know exactly what I'm talking about.

I think I've gone on long enough.  At the very least, I needed to get all this off my chest.  Maybe I could get advice on a diversion so intense to make me forget about it?  Or, less likely tips, on becoming a one-man government  and society reforming machine?

[WileyWarWeasel]

Don't worry about it, our socioeconomic system will collapse because of diminishing returns and increasing costs/complexity not because of some morons in safe spaces.

 

As for diversion here's some better Youtube stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt_je0ouOEaWkvrwwI6t0YA

[PastryOfApathy]

One of the most valuable lessons I've learned in my 22 years of existence in the here mortal realm is that quite simply, stupid people exist exclusively to mocked. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Sadly, there are millions of people on this planet with objectively retarded beliefs about everything from social issues to straight-up science, but guess what?

There's literally nothing you can do about. Nothing.

However, the vast majority of these people have virtually zero power over anything remotely important. Although there's one major exception...

You.

Literally all these upper-class privaliged twats can do is fill you with fear or anxiety and cause you to write giant TL;DR text walls nobody will actually read.

So what I'm really saying is, stop being a faggot and laugh with the rest of us. This shit is boring to read.

[FlynnCoyote]

Just smile and nod, and remember that nothing any of these people are bitching about matters. It's something I've had to realize myself and I thank the internet for it.

Don't let frustration get to you, just roll your eyes and laugh at it like the joke that it is. Let them have their "safe" space, and there will be nowhere for them to run when the shit really hits the fan.

[Falaffel]

Who cares?

You mistakenly think that these people with insane opinions have power. 

[Snagged]

Those kind of people have already found their salvation and will dearly cling on to it. Why change something that, for them, is not broken? Let them live in their ignorant bliss and help the world by giving actually intelligent, knowledgeable and smart people some food for thought

That girl is not worth for a rational thought and attempting to influence her view would be futile. I'd have straight up left the class and loudly proclaimed "You just lost all your credibility and are not worth my time" laughing 

All of this reminds me of a following analogy

Normal person: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. 

Engineer: If it isn't broken, there aren't enough features in it

Which roughly translates to. 

Normal person: If my view isn't wrong, why change it? 

Engineer: If my view isn't wrong, there aren't enough of (conflicting) pieces of knowledge as part of it

Not everyone thinks like the engineer, you got to accept that. 

 

[Kinharia]

The sad part is these people exist and it annoys me that people who have an oppertunity to go to University and actually get a good educaiton and probably achieve something with their lives are wasting it. People like myself who aren't achademically good enough for University are sitting back in disbelief.

[ZorroValdez]

I just call them DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICKS

8=======D ~;%

[Glowing Glass]

If they cannot hear reason then they will eventually see it, then feel it.

What you stop believing in that does not exit your mind is reality.

Just remember that they're not worth talking to. They're worthless for a reason.

[#00Buck]

5 hours ago, PastryOfApathy said:

One of the most valuable lessons I've learned in my 22 years of existence in the here mortal realm is that quite simply, stupid people exist exclusively to mocked. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Sadly, there are millions of people on this planet with objectively retarded beliefs about everything from social issues to straight-up science, but guess what?

There's literally nothing you can do about. Nothing.

However, the vast majority of these people have virtually zero power over anything remotely important. Although there's one major exception...

You.

Literally all these upper-class privaliged twats can do is fill you with fear or anxiety and cause you to write giant TL;DR text walls nobody will actually read.

So what I'm really saying is, stop being a faggot and laugh with the rest of us. This shit is boring to read.

This is why I love Pastry. 

The two things liars hate are truth and laughter. So mix them together and have a good laugh at them.

[Saxon]

7 hours ago, Falaffel said:

Who cares?

You mistakenly think that these people with insane opinions have power. 

In African countries they definitely do hold a lot of power. African leaders have routinely denounced the link between HIV and AIDS, which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths because sick people were not provided with retroviral medicines. 
Thabo Mbeki, the former South African president, is an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thabo_Mbeki#AIDS

Psuedoscientific views even hold sway in some western nations; the USA might be about to elect a candidate who thinks that climate change is a communist conspiracy designed to damage his country's industrial prowess.
So the question is, what can scientists do to best redress this problem?

 

@Sylver I think the earlier laughing was self-agrandising laughter. If you continue to watch her speech she suggests that black magic can be used to assassinate people with lightning- no laughter. When somebody says 'that's not true' people stand and point, laughing at the skeptic, as if he just said he believes the earth to be flat.

[Socketosis]

1 minute ago, Saxon said:

In African countries they definitely do hold a lot of power. African leaders have routinely denounced the link between HIV and AIDS, which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths because sick people were not provided with retroviral medicines. 
Thabo Mbeki, the former South African president, is an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thabo_Mbeki#AIDS

Psuedoscientific views even hold sway in some western nations; the USA might be about to elect a candidate who thinks that climate change is a communist conspiracy designed to damage his country's industrial prowess.
So the question is, what can scientists do to best redress this problem?

Yeah it's still an issue. It was even worse throughout history with stuff like the Inquisition combating the proposal of scientific discoveries that went against the Church.

[DrGravitas]

57 minutes ago, Saxon said:

 

Psuedoscientific views even hold sway in some western nations; the USA might be about to elect a candidate who thinks that climate change is a communist conspiracy designed to damage his country's industrial prowess.
So the question is, what can scientists do to best redress this problem?

 

@Sylver

Scientists need to be trained in basic communication and public relations skills as part of their curriculum, organizations need to dedicate resources to public outreach programs and facilitate the involvement of the public, and all of these things need to be applied persistently in an informative, open, and transparent manner. There is no quick-fix, silver bullet, or final solution to this sort of problem. It will always trouble humanity, but it can be addressed and sufficiently mitigated.

Our best bet at helping this situation is not in individually calling them out and arguing with them over the Internet (when there is nobody listening, anyhow) but in contributing to and assisting organizations that take part in those things listed above.

[Hux]

I would like to apologize on behalf of idiots everywhere.

but I wont cuz im a dum. fukk yall h8rs

real hux 4 lyfe

[Jtrekkie]

Our past scientific populizers have arguably done more harm than good. Anyway, Africa is a special place. It's on many fences and belongs to no side. But- there are a great deal of perfectly reasonable people from the central countries who are already influencing their corners of the world.

Sure, they're all wrong, full of biases and contradictions, but then so are you. That's what you get for being human. So don't sweat it, it's not the end of the world, or the beginning of the end of the world. Just take care of that you can and endeavor to do no harm to anyone

[Saxon]

3 minutes ago, Jtrekkie said:

Our past scientific populizers have arguably done more harm than good. Anyway, Africa is a special place. It's on many fences and belongs to no side. But- there are a great deal of perfectly reasonable people from the central countries who are already influencing their corners of the world.

Sure, they're all wrong, full of biases and contradictions, but then so are you. That's what you get for being human. So don't sweat it, it's not the end of the world, or the beginning of the end of the world. Just take care of that you can and endeavor to do no harm to anyone

With some very 'special' people living in, apparently.

I'm not sure what you really mean to say in this comment Jtrekkie. Most members of this forum would probably be able to draft more successful policy for African nations than their own domestic leaders, because we don't think that...

bananas cure aids and all gay people should be beheaded  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahya_Jammeh#Claims_of_medical_treatments_and_cures

or that witches can conjure diesel from enchanted rocks http://www.africareview.com/news/Magician-jailed-for-false-oil-find-claim-to-Mugabe/979180-1021060-ye8vs7/index.html

 

The normal kinds of biases and contradictions that highly educated westerners typically carry are not comparable to the weirdness that is African politics.

 

 

[Jtrekkie]

@Saxon

 

You're right, they are a mess. However, we in the rest of the world, I have at times at least, tend to think of Africa as a monolith. It simply isn't, and while distaste for foreign influence is pretty common the continent over (not always without reason), distaste for foreign thought is not, especially among the younger generations.

Some contries, Kenya and Nigeria for example, are starting to get their own educational systems in order, and others are following suit. Efforts by the UN and ngos to increase education isn't going to stop, of course, but those African countries will have greater influence over the policy of their neighbors than we can. 

[Falaffel]

6 hours ago, Saxon said:

In African countries they definitely do hold a lot of power. African leaders have routinely denounced the link between HIV and AIDS, which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths because sick people were not provided with retroviral medicines. 
Thabo Mbeki, the former South African president, is an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thabo_Mbeki#AIDS

i thought the point was power over anything that affects AyGee. 

if we're broadening this to the whole world, you're fucked.

if you want to stress yourself out with what dumbfucks in africa think, be my guest. 

[WileyWarWeasel]

3 hours ago, Sylver said:

In regards to the question "what can scientists do to best redress this problem?" I think the saying 'You can bring a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.' applies here. It has to appeal to their interests and desires. Personally, I'd try to reframe science as magic, because in a way science is 'magic'. You can rub a balloon on some material and use it to bend water. We can 'control' lighting with metal sticks. Potions can cure diseases, almost like magic. You can package things to look like natural herbs and remedies. No idea if that would actually work or if people would be more accepting of it, but we can produce results... black magic can't. So we've got that going for us.

The Omnissiah approves of this.

[Rassah]

Unfortunately, "brain drain" will only make that shit worse as people who don't want to deal with these types of idiots will continue to GTFO somewhere more sane. You may want to plan a move so you can join them.

[Jtrekkie]

4 hours ago, Sylver said:

It's a shame that black magic didn't work against slavers.

It was claimed that queens and shamans had the ability to kill white men with their voice, with the result that those with such a gift were gagged or muted by other means.

[Saxon]

9 hours ago, Falaffel said:

i thought the point was power over anything that affects AyGee. 

if we're broadening this to the whole world, you're fucked.

if you want to stress yourself out with what dumbfucks in africa think, be my guest. 

Well, we should care about the rest of our world to at least some extent. Especially when diseases like Ebola or Zika don't respect national borders.

[Falaffel]

12 hours ago, Saxon said:

Well, we should care about the rest of our world to at least some extent. Especially when diseases like Ebola or Zika don't respect national borders.

Ebola and Zika aren't the same as stupidity.

[Saxon]

3 minutes ago, Falaffel said:

Ebola and Zika aren't the same as stupidity.

Stupidity helps spread them. The outbreak in West Africa was exacerbated by poor standards of hygiene, especially traditional rites involving contact with dead bodies. To make matters worse a conspiracy theory erupted that doctors taking blood samples were injecting people with Ebola. :\

[Falaffel]

Just now, Saxon said:

Stupidity helps spread them. The outbreak in West Africa was exacerbated by poor standards of hygiene, especially traditional rites involving contact with dead bodies. To make matters worse a conspiracy theory erupted that doctors taking blood samples were injecting people with Ebola. :\

Ok, see, my point there was that I felt talking about viruses was running off topic. 

The conversation was about stupidity and bad opinions in general. I didn't realize we'd be grasping at straws with "BUT THE EBOLAS" in an attempt to justify you worrying about the stupidity of man.

Yes, obviously we should care about not letting virus spread. Yes, we should make attempts to teach people how not to spread it. 

But fucking no, you should not lose sleep because you're worried about some dipshit wanting to abolish science.