Prescient

 

"The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark is a 1995 book by the astrophysicist Carl Sagan, in which the author aims to explain the scientific method to laypeople and to encourage people to learn critical and skeptical thinking." - (Wikipedia).  It is the book from which these quotes are gleaned.  It is this blogger's hope that folks (not just Americans, either) reading this post meditate upon Mr. Sagan's words.  Especially the "QCumbers" and Q Adjacents among us.

I worry about the lack of critical thinking I see nowadays.  Today, I saw a post that illustrates my point perfectly on Avian Flu Talk, AKA Pandemic Talk, a site on which I am an adviser.  This post came from my friend Maggie, who is a mod on that site:

Now I do agree that people have the right to believe whatever they would like to believe.  For instance, the anti-vax stance portrayed above.  It is certainly the individual's right to hesitate in getting a shot because they fear thimerosal, the form of mercury used as a preservative in vaccines.  But how many have truly looked up the the history of thimerosal in vaccines?  And how many have a mammoth-sized reticence of the tiny amount of mercury in a vaccine, shed quickly by the body, but no thought at all of the massive amount of mercury and other contaminants in their air and water, which they are exposed to every day?!  (Swallowing a camel while straining out a gnat? -- Melissa Pedersen).

For some, of course, the concern is not the thimerosal, but the belief that, for example, "the Covid vaccines will change your DNA!!!"  (People, calm down!  The Covid vaxxes on the market are not DNA-based, most of them are RNA-based.  RNA ≠ DNA!).  Here is an article explaining why that is significant, and why an RNA-based vax will not change your DNA.  And here is another.  Nor do vaccines cause autism.  Not that any of that will make a difference to those who seem determined to borrow trouble, for as Maggie states in her AFT signature:  Believers don't need proof, and skeptics won't accept proof.  And that is their prerogative.  But then they take other, sometimes innocent people along with them for the ride, down the rabbit hole, or wherever the hell they go...🙄.

Hopefully, there will be enough of us taking the vaccine that we will achieve herd immunity (which the skeptics will benefit from) without them.  The alternative is not a happy place to go...  But I do not dispute their right to choose, I only question if making a choice without using critical thinking skills and doing due diligence on a topic, is truly making a 

choice

NOUN

an act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities.

"the choice between good and evil"

synonyms:

option · alternative · possibility · possible course of action · solution · answer · way out

 Addendum, 3/20 -- And this is why I always saythat people have a Constitutional (and God-given) right to be stupid.  It's not the act of making a decision that someone else might disagree with that is stupid, or the decision itself.  It's the act of going thru life on auto-pilot, of doing things without thinking, and without stopping occasionally to make sure we still have all the facts, and have them straight.  To make sure the decisions we made 20 years ago still work for us.  Are we the same person we were 20 years ago, or even last week?  And who are we listening to when look for direction to make a decision?  People who have been studying something for 30 years, or some self appointed social media genius?  Why are we sure someone on YouTube or Twitter has our best interests at heart or is less likely to have an agenda we don't know about?  Because they seem to agree with us maybe?

It's also interesting that in America much more than in other countries unless it is threatening or sometimes hate inspired, most speech is protected by the Constitution, even if it's inaccurate, misleading, or downright erroneous.  It's as a result too often left unchallenged and uncorrected and then it's read and digested and maybe added to by others who don't fact-check and the errors build upon each other.  

When I was young, I admired Amelia Earhart.  I was always surprised though that people would rather believe that she was captured and killed by the Japanese or that she had gone underground to do spy work during WW II and after that, had had plastic surgery to alter her appearance and then went to some quiet little town in New England to live as a mystery woman.  More likely she and Fred Noonan just made a small miscalculation in plotting navigation and then unavoidably made more mistakes that built upon the first one, getting more and more off course, till they ran out of fuel, ditched their plane and drowned.  Almost 85 years later and we still believe silly stories rather than likely logic.  And we still make huge mistakes that really are a lot of small mistakes that build upon each other.  -- Melissa Pedersen