On Sun, Mar 17, 2002 at 03:11:06PM -0500, mdanish@andrew.cmu.edu wrote: > Note: I don't necessarily approve of self-imposed ignorance, but I'm not > about to stop people from screwing themselves over so long as it doesn't > wind up affecting others who do not think the same way. The trouble is, that threshhold is very easy to cross. Selectively ignorant groups tend to agglomerate, like any set of like-minded individuals, and thus accrete wealth and develop power structures. They can't help but affect those outside their group, because they refuse to practice cognition upon the very factors they've decided to ignore. You know, sort of like modern-day mercantile capitalists. You literally cannot logically convince them of any flaws in their economic model because it's an article of faith that the model is flawless. All contrary evidence is studiously ignored. Also see, e.g., Enron and Arthur Andersen. The writing was on the wall but everybody refused to believe the empirical evidence, in the hope that believing in the absence of its existence would make it not exist. Hey, the practice worked for years before it all came tumbling down. -- G. Branden Robinson | When dogma enters the brain, all Debian GNU/Linux | intellectual activity ceases. branden@debian.org | -- Robert Anton Wilson http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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