I have a
theory about people who take to the streets to hold up placards. My theory is, it's
not quite an ineluctable law of human behaviour, but if you're the sort of
person who would write a statement on a placard and take to the streets with it
to join a mass demonstration, there is a very high probability that you're left wing, not very intelligent, authoritarian,
feminine in temperament, parochial, myopic and not very good at seeing
situations with a very balanced or broad perspective. I'm not 100% sure the theory is right - but it
looks to be highly probable - like the chances of throwing six dice and it being highly probable that you'll throw a number between 10 and 30.
If you're
the sort of person who can intelligently think things through, you've probably already thought up something better than holding up a placard, you're probably
intelligent enough to realise that standing in the street holding up a placard
is not going to do much good, and you've probably already gathered that you are almost certainly going to be
surrounded by a mob of incompetence. Hence, the sort of person who would hold
up a placard expressing outrage is likely to be someone who has been
presumptuous in arriving at a limited and short-sighted conclusion, and sees
the world through a very limited perspective.
Given that
most decisions, outcomes and ideas have many broad and complex tenets to their
execution - this, I think, helps us draw a more generalised probability
estimate that if you're the sort of person who would stand on the streets
exhibiting *any* placard, you are likely to be the sort of person who is
afflicted with the Dunning-Kruger effect: that is, you are so inept that your
ineptness means you can't see just how inept you are. Occasionally though, someone comes along and bucks the trend.
Lastly, I have another observation too that's worth
adding to this. A general rule of thumb I've noticed is that when ideological
groups get together, a good way to predict whether they are wrong is by
observing their method of operation. Groups that politicise their agenda, and
get their arguments woefully wrong - young earth creationists, socialists,
communists and climate change alarmists, to give four prime examples - don't
really have any ideas of their own; they exist only like parasites that feed
off the facts of things to which they are opposed.
Young earth creationists don't have a single factual claim of why anyone should believe the earth is only 6,000 years old - all they try to do is construct bogus arguments against established science in a way that sounds convincing to the pliable individuals too unapprised to see through the nonsense, but that everyone else knows to be ludicrous. Climate change alarmists spend their lives declaring war on everything linked to progress, but they have not the faintest suggestion of an alternative. Socialists walk around condemning capitalism, while enjoying everything that capitalism has enabled them to enjoy. They lament the rich while not realising that they are among the richest people who have ever lived. These people are the court jesters of our age.
So, whenever you encounter any group who are standing up for a cause that involves interpreting facts about the world - try to determine whether they claim to have any facts of their own - because if their whole agenda is based on a leech-like mentality that only sucks blood from their opponents, and has no factual blood of its own, then you can be pretty sure that they are wrong, and to be given a wide berth.
