Learn more and compare subscriptions content expands above. Full Terms and Conditions apply to all Subscriptions. Or, if you are already a subscriber Sign in. Other options. Close drawer menu Financial Times International Edition. Search the FT Search. Opinion Read the Latest. By Lance Morrow.
To Read the Full Story. Subscribe Sign In. Continue reading your article with a WSJ membership. Of course, everyone is stupid sometime or other.
We have all fallen headlong for some product because it looks cool or because some celebrity we like but who has zero expertise tells us he has one, despite there being no reason whatsoever for buying the item and maybe even good reasons not to buy it. We often make choices on the basis of emotions like hope, fear, love, envy, pride and anger — instead of reason.
However, while other nations seem to be tackling the local and global problems we face head on, relying not so much on passion but on science and common sense, we seem as a nation to be acting stupidly. And in this regard we fail to live up to, and even betray, just those values that have informed our republic from its founding and to which we now so often merely pay lip service.
In many respects, America is, for better and for worse, heir to the intellectual revolution of seventeenth-century Europe. What characterized philosophy and science in the early modern period and represented a break from much of what went before is the concern to tailor theories to evidence, not to authority or tradition.
Galileo, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Newton and others came up with explanations of the cosmos, of the world around them and of human nature and society not by appealing to what earlier thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle had said. Nor were they guided primarily by religious dogma.
Rather, they took their lead from reason and experience. Whether they proceeded according to the logic of deduction or through the critical collection and analysis of data, what the modern scientific method they developed consists in is the testing of theories according to what reason allows and what empirical evidence supports.
A rational person only believes what the evidence warrants him in believing; he does not merely accept things on faith; and when the evidence falsifies his beliefs, he abandons them. Remember that lady who sued McDonalds after spilling a cup of coffee on her legs while driving?
For instance, in Chicago, there was an attempted robbery of a store. A young man stormed into the store with a gun and demanded for money. The robber, in return, gave his number to the clerk and told the clerk to call him when the manager was in and left. Obviously the clerk called the police and the robber was arrested.
To make matters worse, our society is succumbing to fit the needs of stupid people, especially on packaging. Do I really need to explain the common sense of these statements? So how do you know if you classify as a stupid person? These statements are from the Geocities website.
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