This doesn't have anything to do with politics, but when people ask me whether or not they should consult a lawyer to fight a lawsuit, I always tell them never to ask a barber if you need a haircut.
Yes, and never ask a Scientologist if your personality needs adjusting. I think we can expand this whole class of admonishments to:
Never let someone abuse their expertise in order to dupe you.
Unfortunately, this is very hard to follow, unless one learns about everything. Dentists, auto mechanics, doctors, lawyers, tax advisors, financial consultants, religious leaders,politicians, the list of people who are in a position to bamboozle you is very long. I think we just have to realize that sometimes we're going to be taken due to our ignorance. The alternatives are omniscience and complete paranoia, neither of which are very workable.
We do have pretty good subconscious radar for when we're being cheated I think, but I've heard of many emppirical tests that show most of us are lousy lie detectors.
2:56 AM, May 05, 2006
Nice Quote:
"It's impossible to make a man understand something when his livelihood depends on him not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair
Rather Marxist: Our way of making a living, (i.e. our economic reality) colors, even controls, how we think. While I'm not so completely deterministic, I do think that self-serving bias is an almost impossibly powerful force to overcome. We had to invent something as enormously difficult and ponderous as the scientific method to help overcome it (Alleluiah!).
Do ya think this quote has something to do with the Bush family business and our country's ridiculously short-sighted and petroleum-dependent energy policy? Nah...
posted by Zachary Drake at 11:28 AM on May 4, 2006
Untitled
2 Comments -
This doesn't have anything to do with politics, but when people ask me whether or not they should consult a lawyer to fight a lawsuit, I always tell them never to ask a barber if you need a haircut.
12:35 AM, May 05, 2006
Yes, and never ask a Scientologist if your personality needs adjusting. I think we can expand this whole class of admonishments to:
Never let someone abuse their expertise in order to dupe you.
Unfortunately, this is very hard to follow, unless one learns about everything. Dentists, auto mechanics, doctors, lawyers, tax advisors, financial consultants, religious leaders,politicians, the list of people who are in a position to bamboozle you is very long. I think we just have to realize that sometimes we're going to be taken due to our ignorance. The alternatives are omniscience and complete paranoia, neither of which are very workable.
We do have pretty good subconscious radar for when we're being cheated I think, but I've heard of many emppirical tests that show most of us are lousy lie detectors.
2:56 AM, May 05, 2006