Overthinking Clearly

People have always been afraid of change. Here and now is not perfect, but it is stable. It is reliable. It is dependable. The future may seem strange and unknown and scary and it might include things that make you uncomfortable, it might include things you personally do not like. But please try to see past that and try to have faith in humanity.

Whenever you see a post about something amazing science has done, or some big investment in science, there’s always somebody with a comment “that will end all wars”, or “yeah, looking at other galaxies is really useful”. Yes, many times these are nothing more than trolls, people desperate for some attention. But many times, people really, really think these things and will flame until the end of time because of it. Also, sometimes people will like in agreement while thinking only short-term and not realizing what investment in science actually means. In this day and age where we get bombarded with a hue amount of misinformation, it’s all too easy to quickly agree and continue scrolling.

There are two distinct schools of thought when it comes to crazy conspiracy theories. First school of thought basically says that they should not be even discussed because it gives crazy, deluded or simply hopelessly ignorant people a platform to stand on, brings them into the mainstream and validates them. In other words, this school of thought feels that the very act of talking about these theories, somehow hints that we should take them seriously.

19. 06. 2017, on Monday morning, around 12:20 AM a terrorist has driven a van into pedestrians in London. The man intentionally rammed into worshippers attending Ramadan night prayers at the mosque. All of the casualties were Muslims. This is truly a despicable attack as it was targeted at peaceful worshippers. Same as other terrorist attacks, victims turn out to be people who generally have nothing to do with current problems in the world – innocent bystanders.

if you think about it, it’s actually pretty sad that somebody is even motivated enough to open a Word processor and start writing about why should we trust science. Make no mistake, it’s important to think for yourself and not blindly follow what any authority says, but in this day and age, we all can agree that the problem of our World is NOT too much rational thinking and looking at the evidence, but rather the opposite. It is not that people are looking for evidence and then look at the evidence themselves, it’s that people are looking for opinions that confirm their already existing suspicions or preconceived notions. That is called Confirmation Bias.

The times we live in are difficult enough without people trying to sell so-called “fake news” as facts. Fake news is a term which was popularized by Trump in order to basically deceive his supporters that the media is dishonest. But just because in his case “fake news” cry has proven false, that does not mean that this phenomenon does not exist. We live in times where people spend huge amount of their day scrolling. Many times they scroll across some headline and believe it, without thinking or even clicking on it. Combine this tendency for instant gratification with the plainly simple truth that media these days does care a great deal about clicks, in order to get advertisements, so they form headlines like in a “you won’t believe” manner that are designed for people to click, just co confirm their bias or see something incredible.

Less than two weeks after terrorist attack in Manchester, there was another terrorist attack. This time the target is London.

The time has come for us as a civilization to examine the cause behind these attacks. Now, you might think that we have done so, but we actually haven’t. And why? Well, mostly it is because people do not want to be labeled Islamophobic.