a motto for debunkers

Cairenn

Senior Member.
“Ignorance is a virus. Once it starts spreading, it can only be cured by reason. For the sake of humanity, we must be that cure.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson
 
It's calling people ignorant, and it seems elitist. While it's a good ideal, it's not the type of thing I'd want to label myself with.
 
Ignorance is our natural state, we acquire knowledge through rational effort and time.
We're not born knowing things, so identifying ignorance isn't elitist.

Perhaps he means ignorance that is then susceptible to manipulation by poor ideas; when there's a blank spot in your knowledge anyone can come along and shove anything in there and you have no reason to assume it's not true.

Ignorance of basic critical thinking and how to discern reasonable explanations from unreasonable ones, and ignorance of our own perception biases seems to be the fundamental problem.
 
I don't really have a problem with what he's saying. I just don't think it's a good motto for debunkers. "Fighting bunk" is one thing, but "fighting ignorance" is dangerously close to "you are all morons" in perception.
 
It is sort of like the problem my mom had when she told the young child to stop trying to crawl up our ladder like columns "Boy, come down from there, before you fall and hurt yourself.' That was the same thing she has said to kids for years. But when it as a black boy, he had a very different reaction.

I guess I have the same problem with ignorance. I am ignorant about the rules of hockey. I am ignorant about who won Dancing with Stars or Survivor. I know enough about baseball that I can follow a discussion by a couple of fans, but that is about it, I am ignorant about a lot of the fine points of it. I see ignorance as a condition that can be changed.
 
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