On 10/23/2011 7:04 PM, John B. wrote:
> On Sun, 23 Oct 2011 13:45:08 -0700, Hawke
> <
davesm...@digitalpath.net> wrote:
>
>> On 10/22/2011 8:10 PM,
dca...@krl.org wrote:
>>> On Oct 22, 10:48 pm, Hawke<
davesmith...@digitalpath.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> . Yet he's got millions believing everything he says is true
>>>> even to the point where, as you said, they disbelieve people with
>>>> doctorates and instead believe the word of a man with no education at
>>>> all. If someone told you that you wouldn't believe it.
>>>>
>>>> Hawke
>>>
>>> You should always believe what makes sense regardless of a person's
>>> credentials. I am willing to believe someone with no education if
>>> what they say makes sense. I am not willing to believe highly
>>> educated people when it is obvious that what they say does not make
>>> sense.
>>>
>>> Do you believe everything that William Shockley said?
>>>
>>> Dan
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Bad analogy, Dan. I'm saying if a nuclear scientist tells you something
>> about nuclear energy and a housewife with a high school education tells
>> you that he's wrong which one of them are you going to believe? That is
>> the situation we have with Limbaugh most of the time. He's got no
>> training in any field and is an uneducated man. He espouses views that
>> are consistently opposed to those of highly learned people, and he
>> argues with these people about what is in their field of expertise.
>>
>> No person with a lick of sense would take the word of a layman over an
>> expert. So what about you? Side with the layman, Limbaugh when he tells
>> scientists they are mistaken about the climate?
>>
>> Hawke
>
>
> Your hypothesis sounds quite reasonable until one considers that:
>
> Until the 19th century, it was widely believed that trains could not
> travel faster than about 50 miles per hour because of the immense
> tornado-like winds that would be created along their paths. Some
> British scientists predicted air would be evacuated from railway cars
> at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour, and all the passengers
> would be asphyxiated.
>
> Radio waves constructed as low-frequency light travel faster than
> light. Ironically, physicists discovered this property of waves in an
> ionized gas in the early part of this century, at the same time (1905)
> that Albert Einstein was asserting that "velocities exceeding that of
> light have no possibility of existence"
>
> Some of the most enlighten philosophers of their times believed that
> the earth was flat:
> According to Aristotle, pre-Socratic philosophers, including Leucippus
> (c. 440 BC) and Democritus (370 BC) believed in a flat Earth.
> Anaximander (c. 550 BC) believed the Earth to be a short cylinder with
> a flat, circular top that remained stable because it is the same
> distance from all things. Anaximenes of Miletus believed that "the
> earth is flat and rides on air; Xenophanes of Colophon (c. 500 BC)
> thought that the Earth was flat. Belief in a flat Earth continued into
> the 5th-century BC. Anaxagoras (c. 450 BC) agreed that the Earth was
> flat, and his pupil Archelaus believed that the flat Earth was
> depressed in the middle like a saucer, to allow for the fact that the
> Sun does not rise and set at the same time for everyone.
>
> One could go on but it is apparent that the fact that an individual
> has received an education is not necessarily a factor in their amount
> of knowledge.
That's not what I'm saying either. History is littered with the mistaken
statements from "experts". I'm reminded of the famous one from a general
in either the revolutionary war or the civil war, I can't remember
which, where he told his men that nobody could hit them at this range.
And then he was promptly shot. So not just being an expert or scientist
guarantees you are always right about anything. Sometimes the expert is
wrong and the amateur is right.
But as a general rule I'll go with the recommendations of the expert
over the amateur. I'll listen to a professional golf caddie when he says
what club to use and not you. I'll take the word or the army ordnance
expert when he tells me I'm not our of the range of a blast and not some
bystander. I think you get my drift, and that when it comes to getting
the facts I'm not going with Limbaugh. I will take the expert's advice
over his any day of the week. I'd recommend that to everyone but I
realize no right winger will ever take that advice.
Hawke