Seth Godin posted a great 5 minute interview video today that starts with this:
A fundamentalist is someone who considers whether a fact is acceptable to their faith before they explore it… A curious person explores first and then considers whether or not they want to accept the ramifications.
One point he makes is that fundamentalism is not necessarily a religious thing. Often times we maintain beliefs about politics, economics, and how the world works that wouldn’t stand up to basic factual inquiry. Bryan Caplan talks about this in his book The Myth of the Rational Voter and in an EconTalk podcast.
Lazy human nature is one thing, but it’s plain evil when science gets subverted by self serving politicians. Last night 60 Minutes ran a story on how climate change studies get censored or edited by ass-covering NASA bureaucrats and the White House (I’ll post a link when it becomes available).
So, what to do about this? Take it as a danger sign when you’re emotionally invested in any of your beliefs. Always be willing to be wrong. Once you get your ego out of the way being wrong doesn’t hurt at all, and being more enlightened than you were yesterday feels pretty good.
