Auchtoon!What Do You Believe? Usually What I Want to Believe…
Originally published in the Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
March 31, 2013
This one is mostly making fun of …me. Recently there has been a series of public forums on fracking in Michigan. I found myself with some very strong opinions (It’s awful — it ruins the environment! It’s wonderful — it provides cheap, clean energy!), but without any real context. I don’t have the time — or I guess more correctly, I haven’t taken the time — to educate myself by researching the science, the evidence, the studies about it. But that didn’t stop me from wanting to believe my opinions. So instead of actually doing the hard work, I weaseled out by illustrating how to avoid the hard work….
invalidname said,
April 4, 2013 @ 9:51 am
And this is why I don’t post on FB anymore. My friends are annoyed by my politics, and I by theirs. Would rather keep my friends than be “right”. Besides, the internet is nothing if not an endless wellspring of confirmation bias — no matter what stupid thing you believe, you can easily find a plausible-looking link and paste that to all your friends and family. It’s pointless.
John Auchter said,
April 5, 2013 @ 12:33 pm
Very well put! (And I will resist the obvious temptation to repost and retweet this to all my friends.)