LP--
One has to concede, whether LNT'er or CT'er, there are highly intelligent people on both sides of the issue.
From my original post: "As we see with the JFKA, occupancy of the LF bears absolutely no relation to an occupant’s intelligence, education or knowledge of the subject."
"Smart people" really has nothing to do with whether one is in the lunatic fringe. If Niederwacky graduated from Harvard Medical School, I assume he has functioning brain cells. David Ray Griffin was beyond brilliant. If we can believe his self-puffery, MTG actually has academic credentials. And yet, they all believe absolutely crazy things.
Intelligence and education, alas, are not a guarantee of the ability to think rationally or analytically. Indeed, in his book
Why People Believe Weird Things, Michael Shermer argues that "the number one reason why people believe weird things is because they're smart – they have a high IQ or they have an exceptionally creative intellect. Because he can rationalize away evidence, an intelligent person is better able to defend weird ideas to himself." From another source: "Highly intelligent people fall for ridiculous things primarily because their high intellect gives them the mental horsepower to rationalize beliefs they arrived at for emotional or social reasons. Instead of protecting against irrationality, high intelligence can act as a tool for sophisticated self-delusion."
How many raving CTers - or Young Earthers or Flat Earthers or Fake Moon Landing proponents - strike you as
really dumb? I can answer that because I've dealt with all of these folks. The answer: pretty much NONE. They are uniformly intelligent, articulate and persuasvive. It's among their followers and cultists that you will find the 15W bulbs.
And, of course, the conspiracy-prone mindset, like it or not, plays a huge role. Add a conspiracy-prone mindset to a high intellect and you have a recipe for lunacy.
I don't exactly know why - I wish I could tell people - but I was blessed to be able to step out of this trap. Partly it was my legal training, but mostly I think it was my long exposure to religion. To fit into a religious community, you
must pretend to believe some wildly unlikely things or somehow convince yourself they are true. I listen to Christian talk radio several times a week where truly highly intelligent, highly educated people assert that the earth is 6,500 years old. No, sorry, it's not; that's a crazy belief, no matter how many "scientists" provide "scientific" reasons that the Grand Canyon was formed in a couple of hundred years.
In any event, at some point I was blessed with some sort of epiphany to be able to recognize the utter craziness coming from the mouths of "smart people" across all the many areas of weirdness in which I was involved. Where I used to say "Wow, tell me more!" I now say "Bullshit, prove it." Even in my OWN experiences that I have LIVED, as described in Duncan's new weirdness subforum, my initial reaction is one of intense skepticism. That's just how it has to be in the world where rationality and analytical thinking drive the bus.
Lest we forget: propinquity, it's all about propinquity.
