Fifty Billion Shades of Grey

There is an argument I hear a lot from delusional idiots like Ray Comfort and his ilk.  They make the point that even a kindergartener can plainly see that evolution is false and "God" is real.  I often get puzzled by why they use this argument...  are they really suggesting that we should base all of scientific fact on the cognitive capacity of a 6-year-old?  The thing is it's not even rare or confined to denial of evolution.  The insipid food blogger, Vani Hari, AKA "Food Babe" -- someone who ranks among the most dangerously stupid people in the country (which is quite an achievement in a world in which Louie Gohmert exists) -- once put out a little sound bite that "if a 3rd grader can't pronounce it, don't eat it."  Her adversary, Yvette d'Entremont, who uses the tongue-in-cheek name of "Science Babe", was quite quick to respond with her own sound bite: "don't base your diet on the pronunciation skills of an 8-year-old."

To those of us who have functioning brain cells, it would seem more than a little bit silly to ever think that decisions about something as complex and nuanced as personal health should be so cut and dry as "all chemicals are dangerous"...  or that quantum mechanics "proves" the existence of the afterlife, when life itself is so ill-defined...  or that climate change is clearly false because there's snow in your driveway.  It's so obvious that god is real because evolution isn't obvious!  Isn't that obvious?

It's obvious to me that your search for the obvious only obviates obliviousness.

Friends Don't Let Friends Drive Californian

I'm going to go a bit off the rails here for once.  Normally, when I take on creationists, alt-med hipsters, general stupidity, there is a smoldering grumpiness that is both fueled and tempered by the dogmatic adherence to reason.  This time, however, while reason exists, there will be an overflowing rage with which I write this.  As such, I will preface this posting with a note that what I say here will be dripping with disdain and anger and should be taken with more grains of salt than the usual fare.

That said, it bears being uttered with all the road rage I have at my disposal.

I can't say that I've lived everywhere in this country, and whatever I have to say about the drivers here in the U.S. is in an entirely different league to the abject lawlessness of India.  But currently, I live in California, and I find a rather egregious incompetence to the drivers here.  I mean, I've seen people in Texas go the wrong way on an exit and actually U-turn onto a highway (feeling as well that they have the freedom to do so because they're in a Hummer), and yet somehow, this state does it worse.

The Value of Uncommon Sense

Einstein once said that "common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."  I don't know that I'd put that fine a point on it, but the general idea is pretty accurate.  Let's first think about that term -- "common sense."  Specifically, the "common" part.  Common, as in everyday...  as in experiences we run across regularly and very often... things we might have dealt with so many times that it just seems like second nature...  things we know forwards and backwards and can just deal with again without having to put much thought into it.  How useful is that in day-to-day life?  I think most people would agree that it is pretty useful...  to say nothing of wishing they had more of it.  How useful is it in science?  A lot of people would still think it's useful...  a lot of people are dead wrong.  It's about as useless as things get in a scientific context.

A very common avenue of objection to a lot of scientific principles lies in an appeal to common sense.

Apparently, common sense is so rare in science, it's considered a super-power

Oh yes, we see it all.  The Intelligent Design argument consists entirely of arguing that "common sense" tells us that complexity is impossible by way of nature alone.  The global warming deniers tell us that "common sense" shows the Earth can't be warming if I see snow in my backyard in March.  Geocentrists say that "common sense" tells us that if the planet was moving, we'd all fall off (yes, I've had my tussles with geocentrists).  Anti-vaccine activists all say that it's just "common sense" that mercury is dangerous, so vaccines must cause autism.

All fine examples of how, when it comes to science, one should never ever defer to common sense.