Friday, October 16, 2009

Why I just can't believe the hype

Martin Masse writes:

Nowadays, it's just one big scare after another filling up our daily lives. Who could forget the AIDS crisis, the Y2K bug, global warming, terrorism, SARS, avian flu, the collapse of the banking system, and so on. The end of the world is announced every six months, unless something is done, something generally costing billions of dollars and requiring at times draconian restrictions of our way of life. All of these announced catastrophes come and go, however, and the Earth keeps turning.

(...)

The pattern is always the same. Those who express skepticism or who challenge the reasoning behind the big scare are called reckless, irresponsible, or "deniers." Every time, governments take advantage of the situation to reduce our traditional rights and freedoms a little bit more. And when a big scare passes, we forget everything, fail to carry out a critical post-mortem, and just move on to the next one.

(...)

As with global warming, the more we realize that the "experts" don't even agree amongst themselves and that the supposed "consensus" on the question is just a myth meant to delegitimize and silence opponents, the less the population will swallow everything it's told without question.