Truth and the Devil

I just found a wonderful article on the common phenomenon, in our culture and especially on the internet, of the Galileo Fallacy. That people who have unpopular ideas must be right because people who have been attacked due to their unpopular ideas in the past turned out to be right.

There’s a form of very bad thinking that I see a lot in some very smart, thoughtful people.

The thinking goes like this:

“Great thinkers throughout history have had unpopular ideas that everyone disagreed with.

“I have an unpopular idea that everyone disagrees with.

There’s a nice short article in AlterNet about AIDS and vaccine denialism. One contributing factor they find in how denialism continues is short collective and individual memories.

No. She doesn’t remember.

And that’s the problem.

I consider myself an open-minded person. I try not to pre-judge things and I am willing to change my mind about my own opinions if I find new and compelling evidence. I am skeptical of the claims of all major religions, not based upon anything I might wish to be true about them, but rather what seems to be the case based on an objective analysis of the facts. However, some people might accuse me of not being as open-minded as I profess based upon my collection of books. Of the books that I have read, very few are from an explicitly Christian perspective, which might prompt some to claim that I am biased or only willing to read things that already reinforce my pre-concieved views.

Naomi Wolf, author of End of America: Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot has a new post at The Huffington Post talking about her concerns over the rise of fascist policies of the U.S. government.

We need to get PZ Myers to write more book reviews.

Whoa. Bryan Appleyard has reservations about the book. That tells you how bad it has got to be. If you show your new baby to your sister, and she doesn’t scrunch up her face and say “OOOH, she’s cute widdle one!” but instead starts talking about the miracles plastic surgery can do, you know you’ve got a really ugly baby. This book is one ugly baby. It’s the baby that would inspire your sister to get her tubes tied to prevent the possibility of repeating your mistake.

Hopefully this isn’t reflective of the music industry as a whole, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is.
A lawyer for Sony BMG, Jennifer Pariser has views that I believe are endemic of movements within the larger entertainment industry:

Pariser has a very broad definition of “stealing.” When questioned by Richard Gabriel, lead counsel for the record labels, Pariser suggested that what millions of music fans do is actually theft. The dirty deed? Ripping your own CDs or downloading songs you already own.