I'll have more to say on this in the not-too-distant future, but this is the real danger of allowing a cult of ignorance, anti-science and anti-expertise to flourish. If you start saying that facts aren't worth a damn in one area, then they quickly aren't worth a damn at all. Yes, Creationism may be fine by itself, and denying the existence of dark matter doesn't make you an evil person. But if you allow bullshit to replace reality in once instance, there's nothing holding back the bullshit everywhere else.
At every single turn, I found that the Leave campaign’s arguments were founded on lies. Sorry, it’s as simple as that. I wish it wasn’t. They lie about how much money we spend on the EU. I’d love to say “they’re misinformed”, or “they exaggerate”, but they don’t. They lie. Outright.
They lie about the business case for Leave. I still have found absolutely no support whatsoever for the figures that are confidently quoted here. They lie about the state of democracy in the EU. The more I investigate the EU, the more I find out it’s fairer and better set up than the UK’s government. Just today I discovered that the European Commission’s role in legislation is actually far more balanced than I thought.
Remain’s campaign has been criticised for being dull, being negative, and being led by people who are thoroughly disliked. All of those claims are entirely reasonable. Personally I intensely dislike both Cameron and Osborne. I’m about as much of a fan of the current UK government as I am of bowel cancer. But every claim of theirs I’ve checked — even the ones that had pro-Remain friends shouting about how over the top and ridiculous they were has turned out to be more or less sound.
https://medium.com/im-trying-to-fact-check-brexit/fact-checking-brexit-the-conclusion-c1f56ba4cb70#.uw6uhe3s2
Yes, there is little that infuriates me more than this cult of ignorance, the anti-intellectualism. Not just because I'm very pro-science and this attacks the basis of science itself.
ReplyDeleteBut more to the point, anti-intellectualism happens when mobs and thugs are upset about inconvenient facts, so they want to change them or erase them. Which becomes a real problem if you personally are one of those facts they want to obliterate.
Isaac Asimov mentioned this:
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism
As did the Fourth Doctor :
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Rhys Taylor thanks! I tried to Google where the original quote came from but my Google-fu was not up to the task.
ReplyDeleteAnd even in politics, there are some facts. Not everything is subjective opinion. Every credible economist and scientist under the sun was telling us that Brexit would be a bad idea, but "the public have had enough of experts". The public's opinion must and should be respected, but this anti-expert vibe undermines any sense of a truly fair and democratic process. How can democracy possibly succeed if evidence counts for nothing and ideology is all ?
ReplyDeleteLike Asimov said
ReplyDeleteOdd.. I'm normally the first one that comes up.. I guess we're not a ghost town anymore..
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