Asking intelligent questions gets no response on this site, is it any wonder?

Question

"intellectual morons," smart people who make themselves stupid by letting "ideology do their thinking"; stock or fanatical answers, bad logic and lies are all part of their putative arsenal.

Why do well-educated antiwar activists call the president of the United States “the new Hitler” and argue that the U.S. government orchestrated the September 11 attacks?

Why does Al Gore believe that cars pose “a mortal threat to the security of every nation”?

Why does the Princeton professor known as the father of the animal rights movement object to humans eating animals but not to humans having sex with them—and why does PETA defend that position?

In other words, why do smart people fall for stupid ideas

It is startling how many Americans—and particularly how many media, academic, and political elites—fall for bad ideas. The trouble is, their lies become institutionalized as truth, and we all suffer as a result.

•How the environmental movement, spawned by a “scientist” whose doomsday predictions are almost always wrong, has bred fanaticism, stupidity, and dishonesty

•How the hero of the animal rights crowd is a crank who promotes infanticide and euthanasia

•How a scientific fraud—and pervert—launched the sexual revolution

•How abortion rights activists ignore (or cover up) the fact that their matron saint advocated eugenics and concentration camps

•How our universities have become hothouses of leftist ideology

•How historians and journalists have airbrushed history to turn a racial separatist into a civil rights icon

Answer 1

please stay on Answers, the need for the well educated is great.
I appreciate knowledgeable people here, thanks.

Answer 2

The problem with smart people is that they like to be right and sometimes will defend ideas to the death rather than admit they’re wrong. This is bad. Worse, if they got away with it when they were young (say, because they were smarter than their parents, their friends, and their parent’s friends) they’ve probably built an ego around being right, and will therefore defend their perfect record of invented righteousness to the death. Smart people often fall into the trap of preferring to be right even if it’s based in delusion, or results in them, or their loved ones, becoming miserable. (Somewhere in your town there is a row of graves at the cemetery, called smartypants lane, filled with people who were buried at poorly attended funerals, whose headstones say “Well, at least I was right.”)

Until they come face to face with someone who is tenacious enough to dissect their logic, and resilient enough to endure the thinly veiled intellectual abuse they dish out during debate (e.g. “You don’t really think that do you?” or “Well if you knew the rule/law/corollary you wouldn’t say such things”), they’re never forced to question their ability to defend bad ideas. Opportunities for this are rare: a new boss, a new co-worker, a new spouse. But if their obsessiveness about being right is strong enough, they’ll reject those people out of hand before they question their own biases and self-manipulations. It can be easier for smart people who have a habit of defending bad ideas to change jobs, spouses, or cities rather than honestly examine what is at the core of their psyche (and often, their misery).

Short of obtaining a degree in logic, or studying the nuances of debate, remember this one simple rule for defusing those who are skilled at defending bad ideas: Simply because they cannot be proven wrong, does not make them right. Most of the tricks of logic and debate refute questions and attacks, but fail to establish any true justification for a given idea.

For example, just because you can’t prove that I’m not the king of France reincarnated doesn’t make it so. So when someone tells you “My plan A is the best because no one has explained how it will fail” know that there is a logical gap in this argument. Simply because no one has described how it will fail, doesn’t necessarily make it the best plan. It’s possible than plans B, C, D and E all have the same quality, or that the reason no one has described how A will fail is that no one has had more than 30 seconds to scrutinize the plan. As we’ll discuss later, diffusing bad thinking requires someone (probably you) to construct a healthier framework around the bad thinking that shows it for what it is.

Answer 3

One of the reasons that some call Bush the new Hitler is because of things like this:

A United Nations (UN) human rights body has told the US to close any "secret detention" centres for terrorism suspects, saying they are banned by international law.

Declaring it has "credible and uncontested" reports of such jails, the UN Human Rights Committee says the United States appears to have been detaining people "secretly and in secret places for months and years".

Answer 4

Intelligent answers require intelligent reading, and intelligent reading requires (1) scanning answers to determine whether they are serious, mature, and rational; (2) focusing on answers that see the subtleties of most issues and can articulate several points of view, seeking consensus rather than mindless controversy; (3) paying attention to answers that state opinions different from one's own--if for no other reason than to be able to speak persuasively to sensible persons who represent other perspectives; and (4) NOT immediately categorizing all responses as right/left, conservative/liberal, smart/stupid, right/wrong on the basis of whether or not they agree with one's preconceptions.

Oh, by the way, most intelligent questions (not all, but most) are punctuated correctly, use standard grammar, avoid stock language (like "intellectual morons," "smart people," "fanatical answers") as well as trite metaphors and bookish words (such as, "putative arsenal"). Intelligent answerers may sometimes be patient enough to respond to poorly written, obviously biased questions that reflect a closed mind, but not often. Calling oneself a "heroic liberal" doesn't convince intelligent readers that one is either heroic or liberal.

Sincerely yours,
an Eisenhower conservative

Answer 5

Smart people think they are always busy and say "I don't find time to do this & that" - that is the vanity and fashion of the day to express their mind set. If one wants to enter in an arena in which they have experience. Number of times times I too noticed in the answers utter stupid things are conveyed to the viewers. This is due to easy going nature of the people and they feel that they throw a surpise by certain unethical language. This is an excellent forum oof expression and one can ustilise this to a great extent and also others have great benifit out of it!

Answer 6

We need an Answers site for adults 21 and up with no report option. I've been reported so many times simply because someone disagrees with what I say and Yahoo makes it so easy to report anyone that I've stopped replying to the more sensitive questions.

Answer 7

Al Gore= mentally imbalanced ie. invented the internet.
PETA= People eating tasty animals
Anti War activist= People that actually believe that all people are good and if we wouldn't fight no one would ever bother us. Never read a history book

Answer 8

You raise a very good point. Unfortunately, all the people who can provide a cognitive answer to this question (besides you and me) are away pursuing activities of the more intellectual variety. So I'm afraid you probably won't get a very good answer.

Answer 9

People don't have all the facts are therefore should be careful what they "ASSUME". That goes for both sides of the fence, don't defend someone just because of propaganda and don't attack them for the same reason. Analyze the situation and form a hypothesis, test the hypothesis and modify it as needed.

Answer 10

Being "well-educated" only means the person sat thru a structured series of classes and possess documentation that he did same.
I have a piano (and the receipt). Doesn't make me a muscian.

Answer 11

I reviewed your questions. They are not as virulent as many questions on this site.

However, they do present a biased point of view and aren't really designed to seek information or provoke thought.

I'd hardly call most of your questions intelligent.