Is anyone else annoyed by the 2012 crap? Not the movie. I'm talking about the guys who believe that the world will end December 21st or whatever of 2012, I was just channel surfing and I see a "astrophysicist" explaining on CNN (God I hate that channel) that NO the world WILL NOT end in 2012 .
Why do people spread "the world will end in 2012" meme?
Seriously Y2K at least had some experts saying there might be a chance some bad things might happen if we don't prepare. The end of the millenium at least built up bull**** one could supposedly get from the holy book of the worlds largest religion.
And not just these dumb memes, but things like resurgence of occultism, mysticism, new age bull, homeopaty, greentards, bioenergetical healers and fake Jogi bears from India and dired up village spinsters supposedly communing with the faire world... I seem to encounter more and more of this madness when I'm not dealing with people with a background in hard sciences, math or compsci.
Is science literacy really this poor? Is critical thinking really becoming a rarer skill or are my personal experiences and impressions not representative?
The world is getting ever more complex and while the mean global IQ may be rising due to the Flynn effect, many developed societies are already seeing stagnation of IQ scores or as in the case of Britain and Nordic countries drops in mean IQ's. If we combine this with the fact that people seem to be less well informed, or are at least more willing to flaunt their ignorance and that we must all pay at least lip service to the contrived notion that the village idiot's voice is as important as the voice of someone who can actually understand simple statistics (not to mention a voice of someone like Maxwell) is... what?
I just hope China will preserve civilization when this all comes crashing down.
Why do people spread "the world will end in 2012" meme?
Seriously Y2K at least had some experts saying there might be a chance some bad things might happen if we don't prepare. The end of the millenium at least built up bull**** one could supposedly get from the holy book of the worlds largest religion.
And not just these dumb memes, but things like resurgence of occultism, mysticism, new age bull, homeopaty, greentards, bioenergetical healers and fake Jogi bears from India and dired up village spinsters supposedly communing with the faire world... I seem to encounter more and more of this madness when I'm not dealing with people with a background in hard sciences, math or compsci.
Is science literacy really this poor? Is critical thinking really becoming a rarer skill or are my personal experiences and impressions not representative?
The world is getting ever more complex and while the mean global IQ may be rising due to the Flynn effect, many developed societies are already seeing stagnation of IQ scores or as in the case of Britain and Nordic countries drops in mean IQ's. If we combine this with the fact that people seem to be less well informed, or are at least more willing to flaunt their ignorance and that we must all pay at least lip service to the contrived notion that the village idiot's voice is as important as the voice of someone who can actually understand simple statistics (not to mention a voice of someone like Maxwell) is... what?
I just hope China will preserve civilization when this all comes crashing down.
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