Age of Endarkenment

David Colquhoun addresses the problem of intellectual dishonesty and fuzzy illogic in a Guardian Unlimited article entitled the age of endarkenment.

The past 30 years or so have been an age of endarkenment. It has been a period in which truth ceased to matter very much, and dogma and irrationality became once more respectable.

Colquhoun is author of the Improbable Science blog in which he expands upon his exposition of the reasons that we should be concerned about the "New Credulity.":

This matters when people delude themselves into believing that we could be endangered at 45 minutes' notice by non-existent weapons of mass destruction. . .
It matters when people are deluded into thinking that they will be rewarded in paradise for killing themselves and others. It matters when bishops attribute floods to a deity whose evident vengefulness and malevolence leave one reeling. And it matters when science teachers start to believe that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago.

In nations that value education and intellectuals, politicians who live down to the "average guy" image are not elected to the most powerful executive positions. As the world has recognized with disdain, Giorgio, purchased Ivy League degree or not, would not have appealed to voters in nations that respect merit. More particularly, Giorgio would not have appealed a second time to voters who were able to detect executive deceptions.

LAME thinking

"In this Misinformation Explosion Age, people are increasingly unaware that lay opinion, particularly biased opinion, carries no real authority about the natural world whenever lay opinion runs counter to established scientific knowledge. Let's designate such people, Laypersons of the Misinformation Explosion, or LAMEs.

Not only do LAMEs form illogical opinions on the basis of too little information, they form mistaken opinions on the basis of deliberate or ignorant misinformation pasted across the Internet. LAMEs are particularly credulous in the face of emotionally appealing rhetoric, and this is particularly apparent in relation to the ridiculous creation vs evolution debate, which really ought not to be a debate at all since only the scientific explanation is empirically supported."

This concept, of course, is connected to Denialism.


St. Elsewhere: The Problem with Polemics .

Infectious Repetitis

Philosopher Dan Dennett tossed this phrase out during a TED talk on dangerous memes. (I enjoy puns, so I liked the term.)

The term, judging from googling, is used mostly in connection with graphic design and architecture.

Unlike, memes, which are capable of mutation while being transmitted, infectious repetitions are passed on and on and on unmodified. (This phenomenon is akin to the substitution of regurgiquotes for original, critical thinking.)

Infectious repetitis would be all well and good if the original idea or design had great merit, but this is too often not the case. Take, for example – you guessed it! – religion. The content of J-C-I religious dogma is passed on and on, unexamined except at the mutation points. The sole claim to veracity for scriptural dogma comprises its having been believed previously. Ultimately, in the most circular of all claims, dogma is claimed to be true because it was initially "revealed".

The consequences of doubting dogma have historically ranged from dire to not so dire – burning at the stake, execution, excommunication (only a punishment if you believe the myths), exile, social ostracism, verbal insults in print.