Tolerance of ignorance

When should ignorance be tolerated and when should it be a capital offence?

Expressing adamant, contrary opinions based only on hearsay while remaining wantonly ignorant of well-established knowledge shouldn't be tolerated.

We need to get specific here. "Evolution. Pah. How can something as complex as the eye have evolved? Explain that to me." There is no excuse for saying this, because if you bothered to make the miniscule effort required you could find out the answer. "Climate change isn't real. It was hotter a long time ago." We shall ignore for now the wooliness of the phrasing, and assume that my putative speaker is trying to claim that anthropogenic forcing is not causing global warming. This isn't acceptable. If you are saying this you have expressed a silly opinion without informing yourself. If you are an insignificant prat with a miniscule sphere of influence this might not be too worrying and perhaps you need not be shot at dawn, but rather sentenced to some hard education. If you are A Person of Influence, please step outside and stand aginst the wall.

"We handed over countries with good infrastructures at independence and look how they fucked it up." Well yes. And no. Check up on state of the indigenous population at independence and re-assess your comment. What were education levels? Why were the borders of the country defined in the positions that they were? And so on. And so forth.

I would venture to suggest that, unless you know what you are on about, a little reading before opening your mouth might be A Good Thing.

In my next post I shall consider when intolerance should be a capital offence, assuming I have not been taken outside and shot before that.

If you wish to find out more about the topics mentioned above I have a reading list for you.