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The deeper sin against the human mind ...

#sin
snytiger6 9 Feb 11
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5

It was his grandfather Thomas Henry Huxley who composed this quote
Aldus Huxley spent most of his time arguing with George Orwell about which of them hated HG Wells more, since the "rather horrid, vulgar little man," outsold both of them put together until 1948 when Orwell published 1984 and Wells had been dead for 2 years.

3

"That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."
-- Christopher Hitchens

3

Try saying that to all the dimwits who assert that the Bible is evidence of God.

They would only say that a) you can only sin against god B) blind faith is a virtue and C) that in the good old days they would have burned you in the town square for blasphemy.

6

Memes spread through social media are responsible for much of the disinformation that people believe freely without evidence, rarely actually fact checking before sharing it to other gullible folks. The meme becomes the evidence.

I do remember something similar to this Aldous Huxley quote in my collection, years ago, when it was just a given. Who knew that it would be doubly important in this time with so much information at our fingertips, yet we just can't tell what is true and what is nonsense planted to divide and conquer us.

In science, as in law, the evidence must be independently verifiable. So we can tell fact from fiction, but it may take time. Therefore, we must be willing to withhold judgement until all the facts are in, or at least be flexible enough to recognize when we have been duped, and make adjustments accordingly.

4

Or to not believe things with evidence. One & the same perhaps. The current state of our politics. You are always spot on.

At least be aware that there is so-called "evidence," and then there is EVIDENCE.

@Flyingsaucesir Are you implying that there are two definitions of the word, evidence? Would that be similar to Trump's declaration of alternative facts?

@Betty Not at all, my dear! The quotation marks are there to signify that the so-called "evidence" is not really what it is purported to be.

(I will add the words "so-called" above to make my meaning clearer.)

@Flyingsaucesir Would that not mean, "so-called evidence" is supposition and not evidence?

@Betty It could mean that, or it could mean it's disinformation, or propaganda, or unverified, or unverifiable...

@Flyingsaucesir Glad I read through all the responses. From your first post, I thought you were referring to "willful ignorance", where the facts are known, but just nto acknowledged or ignored in order to maintain one's established beliefs.

Now, I think I see you were talking about "bad data", that is either made up or comes out of outlier studies that don't pass muster or peer review. That is a growing problem as the internet has allowed persons to compile the outlier studies that appear to confirm each other, can claim that the compilation of studies, which are all outliers are actually peer reviewed because they have come to similar conclusions, even if they are two standards deviations out of the bulk of scientific studies.

@snytiger6 I think that compilation of bad science can rightly be called propaganda or disinformation, because the people who are doing the compiling know that they are simply cherry picking studies to fit their own agenda or preconceived notions. But thank you for articulating that aspect of the problem so clearly and succinctly.

3

I think that ground hog is a lying mfer, just sayin…..πŸ™„

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