From Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
Sagan's book came out mid-1990, before the movie version of The Idiocracy, before Jon Stewart even thought about retiring from The Daily Show. Now that Sagan is gone, and Stewart is hanging up the word processor, who will remind us that we should embrace rather than fear intellectual pursuits, skepticism, and continuous improvement?
As we approach this next round of presidential nominations and elections, can we please agree that the whole "best one to have a beer with" requirement was never a good idea? Don't we want a president who is smarter than the rest of us? It's no guarantee that he or she will solve all of our problems, but it's a good hedge against his or her doing something irrational and really stupid.
TLDR: If you're only happy being the smartest guy in the room, you should just kick everyone else out and lock the door.
Luth
Out
