Saturday, January 15, 2011

Penn And Teller with a video about a petition to ban water

I think this video makes a good point that people often take action without really thinking about what they are doing. (Be warned there is one swear word.)



I wonder if we could get a petition to stop people from voting who don't understand petitions?

(Hat tip: Watts Up With That?)

4 comments:

Joshua said...

Henry,

It reminds me of a video I saw years ago that followed a kid collecting signatures to end women's suffrage. He did it on a women's campus no less. Good stuff!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uPcthZL2RE

Jean said...

That was fun. But I do wonder--surely someone there must have caught on before having it explained. Did they just not show those folks?

Luke Holzmann said...

I've heard about these kinds of things. And, yes, perhaps it's a "joiner" mentality. Perhaps it's just a desire to help. Perhaps it's an "authority" thing where we assume people "in the know" aren't pulling the wool over our eyes.

But, for all that, this does prove to be a great reminder: Learning a bit more would help. How/why are "evil" companies using 2H0? What about 2H0 causes vomiting?

...but flipping back again: How much do we need to know before we accept the "official statement" about how bad something is?

Reminds me, for instance, about the full body scanners employed by the TSA right now. I'm all for getting rid of them, but how much do I really know about them? How much does anybody really know about them? And can I trust those who officially know? Can I trust those who say the officials are misleading us? And until someone admits to pulling my leg, how could I know?

This is, I contend, a complex issue.

~Luke

Robert M. Lindsey said...

I use dhmo.org in the college classes I teach. It's a web site about banning water. The bottom of the site says "Content veracity not implied." So I ask them, "What is 'veracity'"? Very very few of them know, and only a few even hazard a guess.