epistemology<\/a>, which means there’s an intellectual\u00a0common ground where debates can actually be resolved or final conclusions arrived at that can be recognized as sensible, even if disagreement based on value choices\u00a0remained.<\/p>\nMore and more, I run across people on the Left and Right\u00a0using magical, tribalistic, emotionally atavistic or other variations of irrational thinking to justify their positions. Worse,\u00a0this intellectual equivalent of grunting\u00a0tends to be coupled with a churlishly\u00a0defiant refusal to honestly consider\u00a0the costs (monetary or opportunity) involved or the logical, and still less, the unintended<\/em><\/strong>, consequences.\u00a0Am I just getting old, or is this social phenomena getting rapidly worse?<\/p>\nIgnorance is nothing to be ashamed of because we are all, in varying degrees, ignorant about many things. The important\u00a0choice as individuals and as a society\u00a0is adopting an epistemology of rational-scientific-empiricism that, if steadily\u00a0applied, allows us to chip away at our ignorance and become aware of our errors and solve problems.\u00a0 On the other hand, adopting a posture of belligerent, stubborn, defense of our own ignorance by evading facts, logic and the conclusions drawn from the evidence of experience is the road to certain disaster.<\/p>\n
Our epistemic worldview matters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I found this interesting. It is science and technology journalist Micheal Specter\u00a0at TED where he is\u00a0blasting “science denial”: I may be wrong, but I suspect that Specter’s political and perhaps, economic, views, are to the left of my own. That’s ok – he has a scientific-empirical-rational epistemology, which means there’s an intellectual\u00a0common ground where debates […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[360,361,46,110,24,215,132,332,34,111,525,78,336,47,418,462,562,128,218,187,436,200,32,558,381,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-21st-century","category-america","category-analytic","category-bias","category-cognition","category-culture","category-dystopia","category-economics","category-education","category-emotion","category-epistemology","category-ideas","category-intellectuals","category-intelligence","category-logic","category-metacognition","category-perception","category-personal","category-philosophy","category-politics","category-psychology","category-recommended-viewing","category-science","category-social-science","category-society","category-theory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3398\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}