Why We Believe Obvious Untruths

[kentuck]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/opinion/sunday/why-we-believe-obvious-untruths.html?smid=fb-nytopinion&smtyp=cur&_r=1

<snip>
Knowledge isn’t in my head or in your head. It’s shared.

This is especially true of divisive political issues. Your mind cannot master and retain sufficiently detailed knowledge about many of them. You must rely on your community. But if you are not aware that you are piggybacking on the knowledge of others, it can lead to hubris.

Recently, for example, there was a vociferous outcry when President Trump and Congress rolled back regulations on the dumping of mining waste in waterways. This may be bad policy, but most people don’t have sufficient expertise to draw that conclusion because evaluating the policy is complicated. Environmental policy is about balancing costs and benefits. In this case, you need to know something about what mining waste does to waterways and in what quantities these effects occur, how much economic activity depends on being able to dump freely, how a decrease in mining activity would be made up for from other energy sources and how environmentally damaging those are, and on and on.

We suspect that most of those people expressing outrage lacked the detailed knowledge necessary to assess the policy. We also suspect that many in Congress who voted for the rollback were equally in the dark. But people seemed pretty confident.

<snip>

That individual ignorance is our natural state is a bitter pill to swallow. But if we take this medicine, it can be empowering. It can help us differentiate the questions that merit real investigation from those that invite a reactive and superficial analysis. It also can prompt us to demand expertise and nuanced analysis from our leaders, which is the only tried and true way to make effective policy. A better understanding of how little is actually inside our own heads would serve us well.

[Submariner]

1. For 40 years as an environmental compliance manager

conducting wetland surveys, oceanography surveys, Superfund cleanups, fish ladder operations, spill control and cleanups, moose collaring, mine runoff water quality surveys, migratory bird surveys at strike points like cooling towers and Coast Guard antennas, etc. I am SICKENED by what I have observed this past couple of weeks as a POS so-called president has taken action to cripple the EPA and NOAA.

I feel like I'm watching my life's work go down the shitter.

I do not know if I will be around DU much longer. Since 2001, I have had only 2 juries threaten me with possible disciplinary action, both this week, because I am snapping back hard at obvious trolls still screwing with DU. They are still here after their ahole candidate has already won. I am losing it with these low post count trolls which may not bode well for me, but I can't let them slide. It's hardball time.

So I feel I already have the requisite knowledge of the complicated environmental issues, and it hurts to be so close to the pending destruction of our natural environment. I used to like catch and release fishing with barbless hooks, and I can't even do that anymore since acknowledging about half the released trout/salmon die upon release anyway. I can't bring myself to cause any damage to the critters. We're chewing up our environment much faster than it can replenish itself.

[lapfog_1]

3. Please stick around.

It is the evil republicans that have overplayed their hand, revealing their "contract on America" as envisioned by the alt-right racist fascists.

I predict it will all fall apart for them soon.

[Submariner]

4. I want to stay

but my bashing of trolls may get me banned if I understand the jury explanations accurately. I am doing the same name calling i have for 16 years here, but the mods nowadays are calling me on it...like I said twice in one week after a decade and a half of a clean record.

[kentuck]

5. There may be a conspiracy?

I got two warnings also.

And I have been here for 16 years this month.

[TexasProgresive]

6. Change your tack-alerting their post

And try not to use inflammatory names. I don't know that you do but that's a sure way to get a post taken down. I know from experience.