I was talking with somebody at work pointing out a irrational thing that somebody did last week that increased how much time I had to spend counting supplies for the inventory. Her response was that she expects people to be rational. My response was to look at how irrational Americans are…
- 20% believe that Earth is the center of the universe (I heard this on The Skeptics Guide to the Universe but after about 10 minutes of searching I can’t find the source.
- 53% reject human evolution.
- House Republicans think that they can save money and cut down on how many abortions are performed by cutting funding to Planned Parenthood’s non-abortion services, which includes contraceptives for low income women. Instead what will happen is more women will get abortions and there will be a lot more children on welfare.
- I know people who refuse to get the flu shot because one year when they got it they had a bad cold or flu or they came down with symptoms the day after getting the shot (meaning that they had it before getting the shot).
- The Anti-vax movement.
- Chiropractic.
- Homeopathy.
- Alien abduction stories.
- I could probably go on all night.
Don’t worry, I only mentioned a few of these to her, with which she seemed to agree. With #3, I mentioned what they did and why they claim they did it and she immediately pointed out the impacts it will really have.
I really WISH we could expect people to be rational, unfortunately that’s not the world we live in.