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"Without smart people, Rick Santorum would be trying and failing to start a fire in some cave"
What Santorum is saying is that regular folks of average intelligence are the backbone of this country, and their values are traditional American values that are essential to making America a special and worthwhile place. And I agree with Rick Santorum about all of that.
Where I differ is on the implications of that observation. The values of regular folks are solid, but their grasp of facts may not be. We need scientists and experts to help us make good decisions. We need them to educate us. We need leaders to listen to them. When our values turn out to conflict with science, or our beliefs turn out to lack expertise, we need to defer to smart people.
Think about the vehicle we just landed on Mars. Does Rick Santorum have any idea how to land a vehicle on Mars? Does he know how his cell phone works? Can he rewire his house without getting electrocuted? Does he have any idea how the Google search engine works? If you dropped Rick Santorum into a time machine and delivered him to 1865, would he be able to make a light bulb or an internal combustion engine or create an antibiotic or cure Polio?
The truth is, almost none of us could do any of those things because we don't know shit compared to our scientists and experts.
Whether we are relatively smart or not, we don't know shit. So, we rely on our values to see us through. And that's fine. Most of our values make sense and have worked in human societies for thousands of years. But when people tell us not to eat wild mushrooms because they might be poisonous, we listen to them, don't we? Because they know better than we do. That doesn't make them more virtuous, and it doesn't mean that they know better than we do on every subject.
But to align yourself against smart people as if they are the enemy? That's crazy. Without smart people, Rick Santorum would be trying and failing to start a fire in some cave in the Kentucky mountains. So would most of you. So would I.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/9/15/224658/749
Where I differ is on the implications of that observation. The values of regular folks are solid, but their grasp of facts may not be. We need scientists and experts to help us make good decisions. We need them to educate us. We need leaders to listen to them. When our values turn out to conflict with science, or our beliefs turn out to lack expertise, we need to defer to smart people.
Think about the vehicle we just landed on Mars. Does Rick Santorum have any idea how to land a vehicle on Mars? Does he know how his cell phone works? Can he rewire his house without getting electrocuted? Does he have any idea how the Google search engine works? If you dropped Rick Santorum into a time machine and delivered him to 1865, would he be able to make a light bulb or an internal combustion engine or create an antibiotic or cure Polio?
The truth is, almost none of us could do any of those things because we don't know shit compared to our scientists and experts.
Whether we are relatively smart or not, we don't know shit. So, we rely on our values to see us through. And that's fine. Most of our values make sense and have worked in human societies for thousands of years. But when people tell us not to eat wild mushrooms because they might be poisonous, we listen to them, don't we? Because they know better than we do. That doesn't make them more virtuous, and it doesn't mean that they know better than we do on every subject.
But to align yourself against smart people as if they are the enemy? That's crazy. Without smart people, Rick Santorum would be trying and failing to start a fire in some cave in the Kentucky mountains. So would most of you. So would I.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/9/15/224658/749
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