Knowing Nothing, and Admitting It

"WE DON'T KNOW one milionth of one percent of anything", said Einstein, who was a very humble man, and who rolled his eyes whenever someone suggested that he was a "genious". His "one millionth of one percent" comment he made after someone accused him of being "the man who knows everything". With regard to his genius, he said: "I have no special talents, I am merely extremely curious." He was telling the truth. The difference between genius and stupidity, he said, is that genius is somewhat limited. I saw someone wearing a T shirt with that message on it. Everyone should have one. The word "genius" is thrown around a bit too liberally these days. Nobody is pure genius; everybody possesses elements of genius, if only small ones. Just as in nature, as Einstein said, in which either everything is a miracle, or nothing is. Let's go with the former, and call it even. Psychological studies repeatedly indicate that people in general and Americans in particular almost always tend to think that they know much more, about everything, than they actually know. We simply don't know how to say "I don't know". As if to do so is beyone our capabilities, as if by doing so we would shatter our fragile, inflated self esteem. We need a good healthy dose of "I don't know" humility. I have known people who consistently grace their associates with alternate versions of reality, versions in which intelligent extraterrestrail being infiltrate human civilization, influencing and controlling it behind the scenes. Versions of alternate reality in which multiple dimensional universes interact with each other, entities coming and going between them. These inexplicably well informed people. who somehow always seem to have knowledge nobody else has, appear regularly on radio talk shows in the middle of the night, enchanting the gullible with their make believe. Whole libraires can be filled with their books, which almost alway sell well, sell well to a gullible audience hungry for alternative visions and versions of reality from gurus they hope will comfort them, and alleviate their dissatisfaction with the fictional fantasies they offer and promote. The late Sylvia Brown sat with Montel Williams on his daily talk show and told the television audience, with a straight face, that the studio audience contained several extraterrestrial beings, disguised as humans. Nobody laughed. Radio talk show George Noory each night has a seemingly limitless parade of such purveyors of extraordinary fantasy-realities, who present their alternative cosmic paradigms without a trace of evidence supporting them. Nobody seems to mmind, the million member radio audience apparently soaks it all up, without question, longing for ever more. Whitley Strieber is a well known writer and radio talk show guest, who sells many books with his enticing topics and strong writing ability, and claims that there is a computer chip implanted into body, put there by extraterrestrials when he had been abducted. He can't remove it, because whenever he tries, the damned thing jsut keeps moving. In a sane environment hew would be laughed off the satge, but American mainstream culture is far from sane, and Streiber enjoys a wide audience, of folks eager for what he sells, which is, of course, ultimately, himself. The purveyors of false realities know not only where the money is, but are smart enough to stay close to home, among their gullible sycophants. Alex Jones should be in prison for suggesting on his radio talk show "Infowars" that the Sandy Hook massacre was a staged fake. He was in fact recently convicted by a jury for this, and is now awaiting sentencing. May he linger long behind bars, reconsidering his place in the world. For truly intelligent, curious people, reality, the reality revealed to us by boring old regular mainstream modern science, is quite enough. We know, through proven science, that we live in a universe of marvels and wonders, that the real universe as revealed to us by physics, astronomy and the biological sciences is more incredible than we ever could have imagined. This, for intelligent well educated people, is more than enough intellectual inspiration and stimulation. One suspects that the purveyors of false fantastic realities, and the gullible people who pay attention to them, are simply too lazy, intellectually, to study true science and to appreciate it. Its their loss. The late great Carl Sagan, a true man of science and intellectual integrity, famously said: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". The simple, profund truth of this is beyond question. The peddlers of false fantasitc realities almost always claim to have the evidence to suport their nonsense. They never do.