<story><title>The Fireplace Delusion</title><url>http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-fireplace-delusion</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hzay</author><text>Firstly, none of my wood-burning-loving-friends would refuse to accept the truthiness of the wood-burning-is-bad theory after they look into the sources. They&apos;d do the same of any other argument that interests them. I guess I&apos;m luckier than the author is with respect to the openness of our friends.&lt;p&gt;Secondly, when he says that the resistance you feel to new ideas is itself bad, I detect a suggestion that you ought to be less questioning than usual when someone claims something as &quot;science&quot;, especially if it goes against your taste/interests. This is a dangerous suggestion because being an unquestioning science-fanboy is no better than being unquestioningly religious or being an unquestioning brand-fanboy or brand-hateboy.&lt;p&gt;Among a lot of my facebook-friends, it is sacrilegious to suggest that global warming is perhaps not happening. I&apos;m not drawing your attention to the truthiness of that idea but the fact that it is considered unacceptable to be ignorant or misinformed about that topic - you are instantly understood to be &quot;unscientific&quot; if you question it. OTOH, it is completely okay to be ignorant or misinformed about say, the runtime complexity of dijkstra&apos;s - you just &quot;didn&apos;t know&quot; and it can be explained to you.&lt;p&gt;Thirdly, I didn&apos;t get the wood-burning thing at all because we don&apos;t have fireplaces in south india. At least I&apos;ve never seen one here. Obviously I don&apos;t mean that you shouldn&apos;t talk about fireplaces but I wish more people and magazines realized that their readership is no longer purely american. I distinctly remember a statement by NASA a few years ago that said that nobody needs to worry about this upcoming meteor because there won&apos;t be any harm caused to anyone, everything is fine, there&apos;s an insignificantly tiny chance that it would hit north america. I know NASA is funded by the US govt. and all that but by now a lot of people in a lot of countries look to them as the forerunner in space research and I wish they&apos;d realize that.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gnufied</author><text>State governments in North India &lt;i&gt;distribute&lt;/i&gt; wood during winter. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://urbanemissions.blogspot.com/2012/11/pollution-in-delhi-winter-time-highs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://urbanemissions.blogspot.com/2012/11/pollution-in-delh...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62;I guess I&apos;m luckier than the author is with respect to the openness of our friends.&lt;p&gt;I am sure many running state governments up North(India) are aware of wood smoke being a bad thing. But I think the argument author is going for is - people are willing to set aside their scientific training/knowledge when confronted with something they have been traditionally considered okay. My Dad for example has Bachelors in physics and almsot finished masters - But I can see his argument going on the lines of, &quot;Our body can tolerate some amount of these chemicals, it has been doing that since 10 thousand years and so it is okay&quot;.&lt;p&gt;Let me give you another example. Ayurveda . There are government run colleges in India, training people to practice Ayurveda as alternative medicine. Winter may not be same in India everywhere, but Ayurveda is. Now it has been scientifically proven that, many Ayurvedic medicines contain arsenic, lead in dangerous proportions. Beyond Yoga, their usefulness as medicine is also questionable. Try having argument with someone who believes in this (I used to be one).  So, I think I understand authors POV of traditional beliefs sometimes overriding our scientific training.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Fireplace Delusion</title><url>http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-fireplace-delusion</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hzay</author><text>Firstly, none of my wood-burning-loving-friends would refuse to accept the truthiness of the wood-burning-is-bad theory after they look into the sources. They&apos;d do the same of any other argument that interests them. I guess I&apos;m luckier than the author is with respect to the openness of our friends.&lt;p&gt;Secondly, when he says that the resistance you feel to new ideas is itself bad, I detect a suggestion that you ought to be less questioning than usual when someone claims something as &quot;science&quot;, especially if it goes against your taste/interests. This is a dangerous suggestion because being an unquestioning science-fanboy is no better than being unquestioningly religious or being an unquestioning brand-fanboy or brand-hateboy.&lt;p&gt;Among a lot of my facebook-friends, it is sacrilegious to suggest that global warming is perhaps not happening. I&apos;m not drawing your attention to the truthiness of that idea but the fact that it is considered unacceptable to be ignorant or misinformed about that topic - you are instantly understood to be &quot;unscientific&quot; if you question it. OTOH, it is completely okay to be ignorant or misinformed about say, the runtime complexity of dijkstra&apos;s - you just &quot;didn&apos;t know&quot; and it can be explained to you.&lt;p&gt;Thirdly, I didn&apos;t get the wood-burning thing at all because we don&apos;t have fireplaces in south india. At least I&apos;ve never seen one here. Obviously I don&apos;t mean that you shouldn&apos;t talk about fireplaces but I wish more people and magazines realized that their readership is no longer purely american. I distinctly remember a statement by NASA a few years ago that said that nobody needs to worry about this upcoming meteor because there won&apos;t be any harm caused to anyone, everything is fine, there&apos;s an insignificantly tiny chance that it would hit north america. I know NASA is funded by the US govt. and all that but by now a lot of people in a lot of countries look to them as the forerunner in space research and I wish they&apos;d realize that.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sharan</author><text>I agree with you on the first two points.&lt;p&gt;With regards to the third, I&apos;ve seen this gripe before, but I feel its misplaced.&lt;p&gt;This author has personally noticed a parallel between the reaction of his friends to wood-burning and religion. Something he though was interesting and decided to write about. Expecting him to fit that realization in to an analogy that would cater to the entire world, will water down the effectiveness of his point.&lt;p&gt;Additionally, he may not have any inkling about what will cater to the world audience. When I write something, I write from my own experiences, I have no idea if a reader in the U.K. will relate to my problem or my thoughts.&lt;p&gt;I am from South India too.</text></comment>