Now Junior, Behave Yourself
There was an episode of Penn and Teller's "Bullshit!" (which is a kind of quasi-political "Mythbusters" hosted by two libertarians) where people were sent with clipboards into a big outdoor event filled with environmentalists. They carried with them a petition to ban "dihydrogen monoxide" from our nation's lakes, reservoirs, and water supply. Dihydrogen monoxide being, of course, just ordinary water. (H2O)
They didn't lie about where dihydrogen monoxide could be found. They just told people it was a chemical compound that was everywhere, that people drank, bathed in, and that farmers put on crops. Penn and Teller's agents wielding these petitions got hundreds of people to sign the petition.
The point? According to Penn, he said it was to demonstrate that maybe environmentalists are not so much environmentalists so much as they are "joiners...of anything."
This was a cute stunt, and it does make a good case that a lot of environmental organizations might be full of people who are just being herded around. But here's my question: is this a problem that strikes you as being specific to people in environmental groups?
The problem here is not that the hundreds of environmentalist signed the petition; the problem is that the majority of them didn't question it! To be fair, Penn and Teller point this out in the middle of that episode, stating flat out that if you don't question what you get involved in, then you run the risk of letting someone use you and your support for their own selfish ends.
It's difficult to teach curiosity, and it's difficult to voice concern in a large group of people all moving the same direction. But again: scarcity creates value. Doing what no one else is doing often has its merits.
They didn't lie about where dihydrogen monoxide could be found. They just told people it was a chemical compound that was everywhere, that people drank, bathed in, and that farmers put on crops. Penn and Teller's agents wielding these petitions got hundreds of people to sign the petition.
The point? According to Penn, he said it was to demonstrate that maybe environmentalists are not so much environmentalists so much as they are "joiners...of anything."
This was a cute stunt, and it does make a good case that a lot of environmental organizations might be full of people who are just being herded around. But here's my question: is this a problem that strikes you as being specific to people in environmental groups?
The problem here is not that the hundreds of environmentalist signed the petition; the problem is that the majority of them didn't question it! To be fair, Penn and Teller point this out in the middle of that episode, stating flat out that if you don't question what you get involved in, then you run the risk of letting someone use you and your support for their own selfish ends.
It's difficult to teach curiosity, and it's difficult to voice concern in a large group of people all moving the same direction. But again: scarcity creates value. Doing what no one else is doing often has its merits.