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• Thursday, February 28, 2008 10:59 PM

  A Function of the Internet

  There's a site called Speak Your Branes that collects the more moronic things people say on news sites. One entry this week was a guy who posted *three times* that he didn't care about the Oscars. And such a man is a fool ... but not for apathy towards the Oscars. Most people are apathetic about the Oscars. It's perfectly sensible to be apathetic about the Oscars.

  And that's the problem here - the reliance on news channels and sites on the letters column. Politicians love the idea of an 'engaged' electorate, by which they mean they love the idea millions of people agree with them. Editors love whipping up a bit of controversy, it gets the readers and viewers in. Of *course* the people who write in have an opinion. Of *course* it's often partial and arrogantly asserted and simplistic and polarized. And, yes, gosh I appreciate the irony that I'm saying this as one of those letter writers. I'm not fooling myself I'm 'representative', though. I'm weird. You're weird reading this.

  The trick is never to mistake the internet for reality or democracy. Snakes on a Plane wasn't the biggest film of last year; Ron Paul is not going to win by a landslide; Matt Drudge and Harry Knowles are not 'powerful'.

  As for the broader point:

  There are limits to knowledge. But that doesn't mean we can't say we 'know' things. It doesn't mean we should lump science in with faith. Scientists are, by definition, people who question the limits of their knowledge. It's the old Dawkins line - a tribesman can hold as one of his most sacred beliefs that the Moon is a the gourd of the gods, but scientists *know* it's a large spherical rock about a quarter of a million miles away, because they built a big rocket and went there. And by doing that, some things they learned changed their mind, others confirmed theories.

  There *is* a difference between the tribesman and the scientist, and it *can* be fairly characterized as 'the tribesman believes this because his religion demands him to; the scientist believes it because of the evidence'. It can be fairly characterized as 'the tribesman doesn't question and has no way of testing this belief; the scientist understands that his position is to the best of his knowledge'. And it's fair to characterize it as 'the tribesman is wrong; the scientist is right'.

  —palindromebeta Read palindromebeta's other letters
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