Knowledge and Focus

At Edge.com, Researcher David Dalrymple discusses the effect of the Internet on knowledge and focus:

Before the Internet, most professional occupations required a large body of knowledge, accumulated over years or even decades of experience. But now, anyone with good critical thinking skills and the ability to focus on the important information can retrieve it on demand from the Internet, rather than her own memory. On the other hand, those with wandering minds, who might once have been able to focus by isolating themselves with their work, now often cannot work without the Internet, which simultaneously furnishes a panoply of unrelated information — whether about their friends' doings, celebrity news, limericks, or millions of other sources of distraction. The bottom line is that how well an employee can focus might now be more important than how knowledgeable he is. Knowledge was once an internal property of a person, and focus on the task at hand could be imposed externally, but with the Internet, knowledge can be supplied externally, but focus must be forced internally.

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Agnotology: The politics of ignorance

In the January, 2009 issue of Discover Magazine, Robert Proctor discusses "agnotology," defined as the "politics of ignorance."

It’s the study of the politics of ignorance. I’m looking at how ignorance is actively created through things like military secrecy in science or through deliberate policies like the tobacco industry’s effort to manufacture doubt through their “doubt is our product” strategy [spelled out in a 1969 tobacco company memo]. So it’s not that science inherently always grows. It can actually be destroyed in certain ways, or ignorance can actually be created. . . . It’s pretty common. I mean, in terms of sowing doubt, certainly global warming is a famous one. You know, the global warming denialists who for years have managed to say, “Well, the case is not proven. We need more research.” And what’s interesting is that a lot of the people working on that were also the people working for Big Tobacco. The techniques of manufacturing doubt were created largely within the tobacco industry, and then they were franchised out to other industries.

In this Wikipedia article, the root causes of agnotology are deemed to be "media neglect, corporate or governmental secrecy and suppression, document destruction, and myriad forms of inherent or avoidable culturopolitical selectivity, inattention, and forgetfulness." To this list, I would add, fatigue, the bright-shiny distractions and gadgets offered by society, the "Dunning-Kruger Effect," limited attentional capacities and the banality of evil. I do like the trend that so many writers and scientists are beginning to focus in on these topics and the related topics of undue certitude and "tortucanism."

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Saving Africa’s Witch Children

I am often asked, "Why do you fight against religion?" Today my answer would be best expressed by this article from the New York Times. A new documentary called "Saving Africa's Witch Children" will be airing Wednesday May 26th on HBO2. The documentary follows Gary Foxcroft...

...founder of the charity Stepping Stones Nigeria, as he travels the rural state of Akwa Ibom, rescuing children abused during horrific “exorcisms” — splashed with acid, buried alive, dipped in fire — or abandoned roadside, cast out of their villages because some itinerant preacher called them possessed.
One of the main subjects of the documentary is Helen Ukpabio.
At home in Nigeria, the Pentecostal preacher Helen Ukpabio draws thousands to her revival meetings. Last August, when she had herself consecrated Christendom’s first “lady apostle,” Nigerian politicians and Nollywood actors attended the ceremony. Her books and DVDs, which explain how Satan possesses children, are widely known. So well-known, in fact, that Ms. Ukpabio’s critics say her teachings have contributed to the torture or abandonment of thousands of Nigerian children — including infants and toddlers — suspected of being witches and warlocks.
If ever there was a reason to continue to strive to undermine the authority of religion, this is it.

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It’s The Women, Stupid…redux

I have from time to time made the point that the entire debate over abortion and birth control and almost the whole edifice of what we call Fundamentalism in the world, in whatever religion, is all essentially over controlling women. Here is an article which has one of the most bizarre takes on the entire issue I've ever seen. The central premise is early on stated in 0ne sentence that defines all of this nonsense, in whatever creed you care to name. "Sexual relationships, while enacted privately, are public property." The twists in logic, never mind rationality, are among the most byzantine I've ever encountered. What is more, the writer doesn't seem to understand that this "philosophy" reduces children to little more than marks on a scorecard. The exhibition of marital health and fidelity is all that is important. The attempt to limit family size and indulge private acts privately for private purposes is reduced to an attempt to deceive the community, pure and simple. But ultimately, as in all other instances of this kind of obscene interference with the personal, it is the women who bear the costs, the burdens, and the responsibility. I suppose the next step would be to devise a kind of tracking bracelet for the penis and vagina so someone somewhere can determine when either is being used and where. I have no answer for this kind of inanity (or insanity). The fact that this makes sense to some people disturbs me no end, because it means that some people cannot see past the end of their own prurience. Yes, I said prurience, because to come up with this kind of thing, rather than demonstrating a balanced healthy appreciation for sex, shows an obsession with it that can only be described as prurient.

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A Graphical History of the Vaccine Brouhaha

I got this Stumble from our own Hank over on FaceBook. A concise and accurate look at the origins of the currently imagined link between autism and vaccines. The Facts In The Case Of Dr. Andrew Wakefield

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