Analysis and Opinion

By Joe America

Have you noticed that civilization has gone uncivilized? The reason for it is fairly simple. Social media have taught us that we can feel good if someone likes our opinion.

There are scientific concepts and words that can be used to explain how the brain generates chemicals as effective as cocaine or beer at giving us an enjoyable buzz. We want more of the stuff. We get hooked on it. And become addicted to spouting off and getting high on the results.

But for our purposes, we only need understand that opinions are not knowledge, they are guesses. And when we guess, we are placing a bet that we are right every time we defend our guess rather than verify it.

  • De-worming medicine can protect against covid.
  • Face shields can stop the spread of covid.
  • Vaccines are dangerous.

These are guesses because there is no science supporting those conclusions. In fact, de-worming medicine can harm our health and face shield temperature and air flow dynamics can suck the virus to our face. Vaccines save lives, not put them at risk.

Joe Biden botched the Afghanistan exit we are told, without anyone coming up with an "unbotched" scenario that is realistic. And never mind that over 117,000 souls have been given a fresh and safer start.

Opinions are guesses. We should properly assign them the tag "irrelevant", or some degree of probability from 0.1% to 99.9%. Because they are not knowledge until they are certain.

If we take decisions based on bets, we are gamblers, not rational people.

Rational people can find a path to civility.

Irrational people can only luck out now and then.

If we watch the US, we can see lack of knowledge - conspiracy theories, for instance - forming as hard opinions that are defended with fists and guns. Uncivilized at best. Insane at worst.

Science is the way. Knowledge not guesswork. Low risk, not high risk.

  • We should learn to get high on certainty rather than guesses.
  • We should re-learn the arts of listening and respecting.
  • We should re-learn humility, a quality of character that we used to prize before we learned that being a jerk is fun.

I've found a new way to argue myself, as I clearly have a problem in this arena. Rather than debating a challenge, I've taken to posting source articles from reputable outlets. That takes my opinion out of the confrontation and either ends the debate or moves it toward specific events that are nearer to knowledge than my opinion.

Come to think about it, we would do well to get high on building something, rather than argument.

That would be different, eh?