snake oil: the choice of a new generation

Why think critically and ask important questions when it is so much easier to guess blindly? Living with one's eyes closed keeps the truth out. And we all know that truth, in its rawest form, is frightening. Living life in fear of the truth is unhealthy at best, so why do so many Americans believe the guessers and not the thinkers. Maybe it's easier to ignore science and reason and act based on religious myth or cultural tradition...

Kurt Vonnegut on thinkers versus guessers:

Persuasive guessing has been at the core of leadership for so long—for all of human experience so far—that it is wholly unsurprising that most of the leaders of this planet, in spite of all the information that is suddenly ours, want the guessing to go on, because now it is their turn to guess and be listened to. Some of the loudest, most proudly ignorant guessing in the world is going on in Washington today. Our leaders are sick of all the solid information that has been dumped on humanity by research and scholarship and investigative reporting. They think that the whole country is sick of it, and they want standards, and it isn’t the gold standard. They want to put us back on the snake-oil standard.

I've really been digging Vonnegut lately--both his novels and his non-fiction essays. Check out the full piece, it's a good read.