I chatted with Kyle Platt of Liberty.me about the consequences of superstition and pseudoscience that I outlined in my article “What’s the Harm?”. We talked liberal science denial, bad bureaucracy, and the dreaminess of Matthew McConaughey. Video and brief excerpts below. KP: You say the cost of [scientific] misinformation is too large to ignore, and that it’s “a … Continued
$664 billion is spent on public education, and only 1 in 5 public high school seniors are proficient in science.
A Holocaust of Ignorance I’m often confronted by people who are outraged by skeptical criticism other people’s ideas about medicine, biotech, and science: “You ought to respect their beliefs!” Other people simply shrug off popular pseudoscience and say, “Why bother? What’s the harm?” The answer is that the cost of this kind of misinformation is too large to … Continued
It’s quite common to hear people say that they don’t trust vaccines because “Big Pharma only cares about profits” or other appeals to fear of greed. Never mind that vaccines are just about 3% of US pharmaceutical sales — and so are relatively unimportant to drug companies — let’s see where this logic takes us. If making billions … Continued
Non-belief isn’t a sound basis for a community.
I recently got an email from a student from Norway with five questions about libertarianism that I thought were worth a response. They cover a broad range of subjects, so I’ll try to be brief. My answers are not intended be definitive of “the” libertarian position, but they represent my current thinking on a number … Continued
Is religion on the decline? That’s what several recent polls seem to indicate. Today, a record 1 in 5 Americans say they do not belong to any religion; among those under 30, it’s more like 1 in 3. But Rodney Stark, co-director of the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion, disagrees. In an op-ed in … Continued
Almost certainly not.
