I'll admit -- I'm just as gullible as the next kid. Someone tells me, "Hey, you know gullible isn't in the dictionary?" You best believe I'm going to look. But often people are sure of their inability to be so duped. There are tests for this, just like there are for dyslexia or IQs; http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/test2.html
To most, gullibility is an aspect of comedy that the jokster relies upon with little serious intention. And yet it may be just plain gullibility, after all, that so often is relied upon when swaying public opinion on very important topics. And depending on your sense of humor, it can be anywhere between deeply disturbing to gut busting funny. One of the links Robin sent us is a simple sum of American gullibility. A kid in his high school science fair project renamed water as: dihydrogen monoxide. Duh, peeps, 2 hydrogens and 1 oxygen is water! yet this kid, without much persuading, pushed the majority of his pollsters into total elimination of this "chemical". All he had to do was list the side-effects or reasons, which include:
1. it can cause excessive sweating and vomiting
2. it is a major component in acid rain
3. it can cause severe burns in its gaseous state
4. accidental inhalation can kill you
5. it contributes to erosion
6. it decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes
7. it has been found in tumors of terminal cancer patients
This just goes to show how easy it is to pull the veil over anyone's head. You call into question something's danger, when in fact it is life in general that is simply dangerous. It also shows how easy it is to instill fear into what is really so natural. By surmising the implications of the most common compound on Earth and the ability of one to create a rally against it is iconic of the way most public rhetoric works. The human propensity to accept ideas at face value--no matter how illogical--is the fertile soil in which pseudoscience grows.
As we teeter the line between jumping off the paranoid scale and acting like prototypical blondes (I'm allowed to make this one, please), we must have faith in our own education and ability at discerning what is BS and what is not. It is the 'grain of salt' argument, and it can be applied directly to the topic of global warming. We must take everything Michael Crichton says with a grain of salt. While his experiment with the topic isn't as simple or funny as the kid's in the science fair, they both exemplify to varying degree's how the obvious can so easily be distorted into its opposite.
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Amy, I totally agree with you that it is relatively easy to present certain facts that make a case either for or against something. In fact, I recall back in my childhood years in elementary school the simple question of why is the sky blue. As far a I recall, up until 11th grade physics, I thought the sky was blue because of the reflection of the ocean which I was told in elementary school. What's funny about this is that there was no evidence backing up the ocean theory yet I believed it was that way for 1/2 of my life...Yikes! That is truly a gullible age!
ReplyDeleteI think gullibility has two main components: trust and effort. When someone tells you something about the world, especially if it is someone you know, respect, etc... , it is human nature to believe them and shows that either in the past that they have demonstrated the ability to correctly distinguish and interpret aspects of reality that your experience has verified or that since others trust them you will be OK if you do as well. It takes time and energy to verify every bit of information one is given. With unlimited time and energy a person can check assertions by experimentation and research the proposed fact until they are satisfied that it doesn't contradict other evidence. It would be wasteful to re-invent the wheel for every little fact. This is why people look to authority for certain information, and why I find it so disdainful for non-scientists to present fact by emulating science in order to gain that authority. It undermines the validity and hard work of scientists who are trying to come up with non-contradictory theories. It is helpful however in one aspect, that is to keep scientists honest. However with increasing complexity as science progresses it becomes more and more difficult to fact-check the science, leaving more and more room for 'bad science' or increasing the effort required to double-check. One mediating factor is the growing trend of interdisciplinary research that gives insight from differing perspectives. One good thing about discovering one's gullibility is that once you know who is giving you bad or dishonest information, you become weary of that source. Just like if I ever read any more Crichton, I'll ask you pass the salt.
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