I Have A Dream

This phrase is famously attached to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech delivered on August 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial (link). I can't think of a more powerful speech of unity and love. However, in reality, the USA is very far from achieving the speech's ideals. This link points to the extreme fragmentation of political opinion in the USA preventing significant agreement regarding how to achieve societal well-being.

MY "dream" of unity and love involves achieving a consensus agreement on what is "Truth" and how to best understand it and apply it to the benefit of society as a whole. The vast majority of USA society is religious, uses alternatives to medicine, believes in conspiracy theories, and otherwise believes in various pseudosciences (false knowledge). All of these beliefs/practices are harmful (peruse this blog for support for this fact). The ONLY alternative to this false knowledge problem is agreeing to only accept claims based on good objective evidence. Ideally, this would negate the role of traditional political parties (many Founding Fathers were leery of political parties due to factionalization of voters (link)). If one requires a name for the political movement I am presenting, how about the Sci Party?

Epistemic Responsibility

With so much harmful magical thinking (ya, I know, that is redundant) in so many areas in our culture, the link below in an excellent presentation of intellectual or epistemic responsibility to oneself and to others. In other words, no, you cannot just believe anything you want.

Click on the link below:

The Responsibility We Have Regarding Our Beliefs