How gullible are we?

[Aemilius Paulus]

I was waiting for this thread for quite some time, yes. I am authoritarian, mostly on the grounds that people are incredibly imbecilic most of the time. They know nothing of economics, politics, and science to make almost any decisions on what measures should be passed. I may know some more than an average person on science, economics, and politics, but woefully little to make even the smallest government decisions. Who are the people to argue how large the stimulus has to be? Only .4 percent have a solid grasp of economics.

This study reminded me of another similar one. People went around with a petition to end women's suffrage. Among other arguments, they stated "stop the women's suffering!". And the vast majority signed it. Not surprising at all. The general population is not very educated, especially given the gargantuan English vocabulary. In comparison to other languages, English has at least 30 synonyms for every word. You can speak English yet have the audience not understand a single word, and your speech does not even need to be technical.

92% is actually quite plausible. From all the adults I know, no one knows a bit of science, even the intelligent ones, except my science teachers of course. I would not sign the petition, as science is among one of my numerous interests and because of course di(2) mono(1) means H2O1, or simply H20. I, however, do not blame the people for not knowing it, as people usually know even less science then they know of history, geography and economics. Which is why I am authoritarian. And which is why I loathe abortion debates, for instance, as both sides never seem to get their biology straight.




Or the politicians exploit dihydrogen monoxide as a political tool "GLOBAL DIHYDROGEN MONOXIDE WARMING"
Actually, laugh if you want, but water vapour is the most potent greenhouse gas. It is incredibly common, as Hydrogen and Oxygen are so abundant on our planet, and it is very dense and heavy compared to other gases. Take water vapour away from our atmosphere, and we would have a global cooling effect. Remember, CO2 makes up a seemingly measly 0.038% of our atmosphere.

That said, save for the instability/loss of species/habitat it would cause, the long term effects of no more than 3-4 degrees (enormous increase, mind that) would be most positive. Remember how splendid our planet was before the Ice Ages, in the Mesozoic Era (just not counting the arid Triassic). Too bad the land area was smaller, although the seas were shallow as well, which contributed to the significantly smaller land area.





EDIT: Oh, and did I mention that the best way to get a petition signed is to put an attractive woman as the spokesman and the petition handler? Attractive people get so many benefits compared to average persons, that to cut their legs off would still put them farther ahead than an average bloke.