Sheese -- wodda dose of passive aggression.

There is no question that the ranks of the Simonologists are just as prone to the madness of mass belief as the right-wing extemists in your own cult, or the Al Queda's, or any other. It just supports my half-baked notion that when the number of dialogues on a given belief system exceeds a certain threshold, the system takes on the characteristics of mass, undiscriminating, dramatizing subscription. Hell you could predict as much just looking at the bell-curve distribution of IQ in the world. Mass stupidity will latch on to anything, but systems of belief thattend toward the authoritarian or the arbitrary seem especially appetizing to it, IMHO.

There is a really fine examination of these principles in a book called The True Believer by Eric Hoffer, in which he examines the common traits of undiscriminating belief, whether in the Boy Scouts or the Moonies.

Scinentific method is of course supposed to be one remedy, but even it gets corrupted into cult-like parroting sometimes -- the "Galen syndrome" -- and hard engineering experience, where one has to use practical approaches to make things work or trouble shoot them -- is even better, being grounded in use. Good solid logic training, propositional logic (not abstract academic logic) also serves to sharpen the wits in discernment, in my experience.

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