{"id":134335,"date":"2022-01-19T09:52:11","date_gmt":"2022-01-19T17:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/?p=134335"},"modified":"2022-01-19T10:52:56","modified_gmt":"2022-01-19T18:52:56","slug":"on-rumors-of-impending-doom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/01\/on-rumors-of-impending-doom","title":{"rendered":"On rumors of impending doom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><figcaption>\u201cYour scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn\u2019t stop to think if they should.\u201d \u2014 Dr Ian Malcolm in <em>Jurassic Park<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Throughout most of human history, the goal was to establish a better life for people. Whether proponents of change admit to it or not, they hope to make everything perfect. However, this very impulse to improve security against everything bad and eliminate all physical ills could precipitate just another kind of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lordre.net\/2022\/01\/can-perfect-society-lead-to-doom.html\">doom<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To borrow the words of a Jeff Goldblum character, those of us who did the most to uplift humanity may have been \u201cso preoccupied with whether they could, they didn\u2019t stop to think if they should.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Carl Sagan\u2019s <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Demon-haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark\/dp\/1439505284\">The Demon-Haunted World<\/a><\/em>, he pointed out that the modern world is complicated. Everything we don\u2019t understand is something to fear (unless you are a specialist in it), and it is a thing that can be ignorantly speculated about in a vacuum, as vaccines are by many on social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rather than give up on humanity\u2019s ability to come to correct judgments, Sagan offers the tools of critical thinking, taking the form of the famous <a href=\"https:\/\/www.openculture.com\/2016\/04\/carl-sagan-presents-his-baloney-detection-kit-8-tools-for-skeptical-thinking.html\">Baloney Detection Kit<\/a>. The rules are things you can always try to offer someone if they believe nonsensical conspiracy theories.<\/p><div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/01\/on-rumors-of-impending-doom\">Continue reading \u201cOn rumors of impending doom\u201d | &gt;<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Throughout most of human history, the goal was to establish a better life for people. Whether proponents of change admit to it or not, they hope to make everything perfect. However, this very impulse to improve security against everything bad and eliminate all physical ills could precipitate just another kind of doom. To borrow the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":305,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1759,1490,37,418,27,225,224],"tags":[3824,3819,681,3821,3822,3820,3825,3823,2472],"class_list":["post-134335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-governance","category-government","category-human-trajectories","category-internet","category-journalism","category-philosophy","category-science","tag-5g","tag-baloney-detection-kit","tag-carl-sagan","tag-conspiracy-theories","tag-disinformation","tag-occams-razor","tag-skepticism","tag-steven-pinker","tag-vaccines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/305"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134335"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134339,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134335\/revisions\/134339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}