Posted on 08/21/2013 11:16:18 AM PDT by 1rudeboy
Henry I. Miller, a physician and fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, was the founding director of the Office of Biotechnology at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“Exercising society’s right to ignore the ignorant”
What if “society” itself is ignorant? Apart from that, who gets to judge and deem others ignorant? Implicitly, the author puts himself in the “other than ignorant” category. How ignorant. Perhaps I should just ignore him.
If you want to remain ignorant, knock yourself out.
“Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”
-—Robert A. Heinlein
Problem solved.
The elites like to elect themselves as gods on earth and dictate how you should live your lives according to their own desires. A set of rules and regulations ensures you come into compliance with their code. If not you get penalized and fined and have to pay money to them. Got it?.../s
Don’t see the sarcasm, sorry.
They know so much that just isn’t so.
It’s hard to ignore the ignorant when they hold the highest offices in the land.
Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.
--Ronald Reagan
One problem is that Leftists define “not buying the Leftist dogma” as “ignorance”
“Who is wise? One who learns from every person…”
If the author (or you?), chooses to ignore people whom he magisterially deems ignorant, that’s his loss.
And you feel the need to parachute in here and claim he is some sort of an elitist? Very ignorant of you . . . and probably an example of the very issue he discusses in this piece.
One doesn’t have to know the science to know the odds are that introducing new bugs or new plants into an area to solve some current problem causes new and unpredicted problems.
One could say the same thing about the internal combustion engine.
I love the smell of ad hominem in the morning. What I object to is the implicit categorizing of people into “ignorant” and enlightened. The latter, it seems, have the exclusive right to “drive policy”. The former apparently can go crawl in a hole. Who gets to decide who’s who?
If the little buggers would have been any where near an oil rig, they’d want to save ‘em.
Hypocrites!
Is that why you attacked the author, right off the bat? Or even me (although obliquely) in your comment #12?
As I stated, this author gives about as clear-cut of an example of why some should conduct public policy over others as can be . . . and you come to discuss semantics. Not understanding that the implication of your argument is that the woman is as qualified to eradicate dengue fever as anyone else. So yeah, that's ignorant.
My point was rhetorical; I thought the context made it abundantly clear. My point was that the author (or anyone) can be judged “ignorant” by some standard. He should remember that he’s living in a glass house.
Really, unless he’s building castles in the sky, I’m sure what his point is. That people should make a point of learning about a subject before they express an opinion about it? That seems hardly novel, and even that idea calls for qualification. That we should try to pick knowledgeable people as our “experts”? That borders on tautology. That only the “informed” should be making public policy? He suggests that at the end, rather explicitly. That seems insidious.
That only the “informed” should be making public policy? He suggests that at the end, rather explicitly. That seems insidious.
Not insidious at all, unless you truly feel better being governed by the uninformed.
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