...evolutionary ecologist Eric Pianka told a Texas audience that 90 percent of the world's population should be eliminated by an airborne Ebola virus.
He received a standing ovation for his 'humane' remarks.
That is not true. What's it called when you repeat an untruth? A lie? Yes, that's it. A lie. It's a lie that Pianka advocates genocide by ebola, and it's a lie that his standing ovation was for any such suggestion.
People like Reid say they care about the future of humanity, but their ideas are usually at the expense of individual humans.
Well, of course! It's the mass of individual humans that is the source of the problem, so how could it be otherwise?
4 comments:
Isn't it funny that such people have no problem understanding the issue when they're talking about the federal budget? Excess expenditures at the federal level impoverish us all, hurt the country and increase unemployment. Right? Do we all agree on that? Well, you also have to admit that budget discipline is at the expense of individual humans. Some poor shnook gets laid off every time a federal contract is cancelled. Welfare reform means that a lot of poor people get less money from the government than they used to. It might be the right thing to do, but people suffer from such measures.
This is no different than our environmental budget, but no one bothers to check the bottom line. Anybody who raises the issue of population control gets hooted off the stage. Conservatives are willing to open their eyes regarding a finite national tax base and the need for national defense. They can sanely discuss the base motives of our adversaries, but any imposed discipline regarding the finite planetary capacity is regarded as alarmism.
As far as the lies go. These people are so ideologically committed that they might not even know they are telling lies. In fact, it's sort of a meme dispersal mechanism. Nobody does independent research. They just tell the story that they heard from someone they trust, who got it from someone else. Each iteration adds and trims crucial details that could be inadvertant or mildly dramatic. Maybe no one is actually telling a lie on purpose, but they commit a crime against truth by pruning their deferrence network too severely. They only listen to people that agree with them.
It's important to study the strongest arguments against your point of view, and very few people have sufficient intellectual strength to do so.
I like the way you think JJ. And welcome back, too. I've missed your comments and your blog posts. I hope all's well your way.
I wish I'd kept a link (or maybe I did and it's buried) to an article or post about a similar conceptual block involving creationists tending to favor free markets. Both produce near magical results, yet one of them is rejected. Something like that. I'll see if I can find it.
I guess I'm a little bipolar, and a little OCD. Subclinical. Right now I'm being intimidated by a collection of technical problems and chronic lack of sleep. I'll do better now that the weather has improved.
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There's really a lot of stuff out now about Conservapedia you might be interested in. MichaelYglesias? has some funny stuff on it. For me, the replacement of "wiki-" by "conserva-" shows a lack of imagination. I was trying to research the reputed comparison between the Reichstag Fire and 9/11 when I stumbled into it. Nothing on Pianka yet.
While surfing on the Net I found your blog, I stopped at it to have a rest and I explored it. There is interesting stuff displayed. Now I continue my surfing…
Make a stop at my blog, if you wish. Ciao.
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