Reply #8: Mush minds [View All]

In all polling, your own social experience bears this out, there is a mush headed factor susceptible to any rumor or opinion creation that tickles the fancy or speaks with some mask of authority. Gullibility, stupidity, vulnerable ignorance, call it what you will, large numbers are prey to the soft clay syndrome.

That is why you can never have too much skepticism about the real capacity for humans to hold to critical truths. The famous lincoln dictum can be reformulated a bit to describe it. All of us can be gulled in certain ways and too many are always vulnerable, their adhesion to the truth accidental to its influence socially at the moment. When you walk into a room of educated people which is more likely to be heard with intellectual respect: that there are flying saucers or global warming? At first, considering the paradigm shift away from fantastic anti-scientific propaganda in the face of mounting evidence, one smiles and thinks, surely... but then comes a doubt.