Just for the record, Snakes on a Plane is the best motherfucking movie I’ve seen all motherfucking year.
[Edit 8/20/06]: It was even better the second time.
[Edit 8/25/06]: The third time, however, was by far the best.
Just for the record, Snakes on a Plane is the best motherfucking movie I’ve seen all motherfucking year.
[Edit 8/20/06]: It was even better the second time.
[Edit 8/25/06]: The third time, however, was by far the best.
There’s been a lot of buzz recently in the popular news media over this article (which was just published in Science) on the public acceptance of evolution throughout the world. On a list of 34 countries, the United States, somewhat unsurprisingly, comes in second to last (thank God for Turkey) in terms of the percentage of the population (40%) that believes “human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals.” In Iceland, which was first on the list, more than 80% of the population accepts Darwinism. As you grab your pitchforks and torches and start making tracks for Georgia, please note on your way out the door that the Icelandic government mandates religious instruction based on Christian ethics in public schools.
To me, the lamentable influence The Christian Right® has had on the popular conception of the origin of man is profoundly uninteresting. Fundamentalist Christian lobbyist groups in the US are predominately three trick ponies (abortion, homosexuality, and evolution), and it’s not much of a shock that their considerable financial might has made an impact. That the rest of the world doesn’t suffer from our peculiar shortsightedness in matters of faith is likewise largely unsurprising. No, the most interesting aspect of the aforementioned survey is secular.
By many accounts, the United States has one of the most educated populations on the planet. The literacy rate is 99.9% (ranking first in the world along with about 20 other nations), more than 85% of the population has a high school diploma, and 27% of people hold a bachelor’s degree or higher. However, in a recent poll commissioned by Zogby International, only 11% of Americans were able to name the most recently appointed Supreme Court Justice. Less than 21% were able to list even one of the ancient Greek poet Homer’s epic poems. A mere 37% of the 1,213 people surveyed could give the name of the planet in our solar system that’s closest to the sun. These statistics may seem pitiable at first, but fear not! Questions on a different Homer fared much better: more than 60% of respondents correctly identified Bart as Homer Simpson’s son. Likewise, a whopping 75% of Americans were able to name two of the seven dwarves.
This poll seems to underlie a fact we all already know but are reticent to acknowledge: we may have fancy intellectual credentials, but most of us don’t do much with our noggins.
Of course, not knowing something isn’t the end of the world. There’s a lot of stuff to learn out there, and society doesn’t place much value on dilettantes. I, for example, managed to graduate from a magnet high school, get a bachelor’s and master’s degree from a highly-ranked university, and start my doctoral studies at one of the premiere institutions of higher learning in the world without ever once even hearing about Darwin’s Finches. What do I know about evolution? I know precisely as much as I do about the Poincaré Conjecture: that a bunch of people who are a lot smarter than me have spent a lot of time studying it and believe it to be true. Could I explain why? Not really. Does that count as having an informed opinion? No way! Sure, the concept of evolution seems to make sense to me on a fundamental level, but then again so does communism. I have been indoctrinated into the religion of science in the same way that all the Bible-Belt Bobs out there have been indoctrinated into Christianity. The fact that my religion will eventually converge to the correct belief system and theirs won’t is largely irrelevant if I don’t take an active interest in understanding why.
To me, the most interesting aspect of the Science survey is the fact that so few people picked the “I don’t know” option (in the US, only 21%, up from 7% in 1985). Note also that, roughly speaking, as the percentage of the population accepting evolution increases in a country, the percentage of that population willing to admit to being unsure about the issue dwindles away to almost nothing. Is this pervasive and overwhelming certainty the result of widespread understanding of modern evolutionary synthesis and informed popular debate? Of course not. Opinions really are like assholes: everbody’s got one, and most of them are shitty.
Try the following experiment on your friends and colleagues: make up a completely nonsensical yes-or-no question that sounds vaguely plausible, and start polling. Invariably, most people will take a position. At institutions of higher learning, people will not only take a position, they will do so almost immediately, and then proceed to defend it tooth and nail against all opposition. A very few people will listen carefully to your query, sit quietly for some time in contemplation, and finally admit that they haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about. These people have their shit together, and when you have real questions that need answers, they’re the ones you should go to for help.
I don’t know when admitting ignorance became a mortal sin, but if you ask me this is a far more serious threat to the intellectual well-being of our society than Christian Fundamentalism will ever be. The most effective students are always the ones who’re willing to raise their hands in class and ask “I didn’t understand that: could you go over it again?”; the best researchers are those who say “I don’t understand why everyone thinks X: why couldn’t it be Y?” In Plato’s Apology, Socrates claims that he is wiser than other men in only one fundamental way: “that whereas I know but little of the world below, I do not suppose that I know.”
Conceit of knowledge is the most disgraceful form of ignorance: think about that the next time someone asks you a question.
