Assertions v. Scientific Facts
You’ve heard it many times: We are a nation of laws. That sounds rather ominous, especially if we break one of them. We could spend a long time in jail or prison if caught. Unless we are the president. Then we could do almost no wrong. That’s because we could just forgive himself.
Life outside the White House, the halls of Congress, and the legal system is difficult. Finding answers to difficult issues takes time, effort, and the use of our powers of discernment. Among the skills in finding best answers to issues are an open mind, our five senses, tentative hypotheses, research of facts, logic, analyses, syntheses, and evaluation; modeling, tests and measurements, mathematics, pilot studies, and submission of your data to error analyses, and to the probabilities of reaching a false conclusion before reaching limited conclusions about them that are accurate, reliable, and useful. The same studies, tests, and conclusions are offered to others to replicate and/or are open to peer review.
One need not be a scientist with a lot of academic degrees in order to follow many of the steps in the preceding paragraph. Logic, alone, is a big step to finding good answers to issues. Common sense also goes a long way. They do not provide best answers, but the answers they provide are far better than guesses, hunches, surmise; reliance on religious beliefs, old wives’ tales, Ouija boards, tarot cards, seances, or assertions.
Assertions are the worst of all paths to enlightenment. Examples: “The moon is made of green cheese. Donald Trump is the best of all presidents. Driving 80 mph through town is safe. Spraying your lungs with bleach might cure you from the effects of a virus. Tax cuts to the ultra wealthy will help the economy. Social security and Medicare add to our federal budget deficits. The six conservative justices on the Supreme Court are not biased. The same six justices and the Congress know more about almost everything than do all the scientists combined. They know more about women’s bodies than do women, their physicians, their families, and their personal counselors. The moon landing of 1969 was fake. Loyalty is more important than trust. The Earth is 8,000 years old. Climate change is a lie.” Those who track and analyze the data know that the crime rate among immigrants is about ½ that of US citizens, but the lies against immigrants continues. Moreover, the lies continue under the most unreliable of all information sources: the assertion.
It would at least be interesting to list 2,000 or so assertions that underscore our laws we all are bound honor. It would likely show that—in the main--we are a nation led by liars, cheats, and misfits who are filling the airwaves and printed matter with more false assertions than even the most lackadaisical student could dream up.
And so, I will end this essay on an uplifting note: Long ago I took to heart my fourth grade teacher’s advice when she said: “Believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see.” Thank you, Mrs, Wilson. You still rate an A+ in logic, teaching skills, and wisdom.
I have to think about Hitler, Napoleon, Henry VIII, and Putin when I see him pulling the wool over the eyes of all of these people in the United States that have axes to grind that are really of their own making. I think they are also just like he is. Thinking only of themselves and their families and blaming others when they do wrong. It's a disease that was written about a long time ago when Americans went to foreign countries and still do… The Ugly American. The ones who feel they are superior to everyone else on the planet. Arrogant and unthinking. But genetically they come from a long line of colonialists, who naturally subjugated people for their own uses… Mostly their version of free enterprise making themselves well off at the expense of others–slaves… And now, wage slaves, while they claim that everybody can become rich without connections like they have.
Ron