Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Is This Guy Really This Stupid?

Follow along with this boys and girls:


Proponents of human-caused global warming claim that "cognitive" brain function prevents conservatives from accepting the science that says "climate change" is an imminent threat to planet Earth and its inhabitants.

George Lakoff, a professor of cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California-Berkeley and author of the book "The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist's Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics," says his scientific research shows that how one perceives the world depends on one’s bodily experience and how one functions in the everyday world. Reason is shaped by the body, he says.

Lakoff told CNSNews.com that “metaphors” shape a person's understanding of the world, along with one’s values and political beliefs -- including what they think about global warming.

"It relates directly (to global warming) because conservatives tend to feel that the free market should be unregulated and (that) environmental regulations are immoral and wrong," Lakoff said....

On the other hand, he added, liberals' cognitive process allows them to be "open-minded."

Really, any institution that granted a PhD to this fellow ought to immediately demand it back. His inability to follow the basic dictates of logic is shocking. The logical thing to assume is that if on one side you have conservatives who tend to favor the free market over regulatory schemes, then the opposite side (i.e. liberals) wouldn't be someone with an "open mind" but instead someone who favors regulatory schemes over free markets.

Duh.

Unfortunately, it is this kind of mind numbing stupidity which has come to define modern liberal academia. A lot of the "research" being produced really is this illogical and pitiful. Why is such shoddy and second-rate thinking accepted by people who are supposed to have intellectual standards? Well, largely because academia is a narrowly defined ideological echo-chamber where alternative perspectives are neither sought out nor tolerated. As a result the ideas that "progressives" trot out are never exposed to critical thought. Any college sophomore who has taken a basic formal logic class could have pointed out the elementary errors in logic the good professor had made, but in the land of the feverishly committed it never comes up. The "research" says what they want to hear so, by definition, it must be right.

So, in answer to my question: Is Prof. George Lakoff really as stupid as he sounds? Yes, he is. He is also most likely a proto-fascist (though not a Nazi,) or at least his ideas are proto-fascistic in nature in that they justify the use of political power by one group over another based upon their supposed native superiority.

Berkeley must be proud.

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