re: #60 Romantic Heretic

In my opinion tech has replaced religion as the major repository of faith in many people. They don’t really understand it but they ‘know it’s true’.

This has become a problem in many areas. People incorrectly question expertise. Because they just “know”.

Happened to me the other day.
Discussing a sort of complicated financial decision someone told me I was wrong because he had a spreadsheet at home that “proved” it.

The particular question was one I am asked a lot. I know how to do the analysis and I know how he got his answer.

He ignored 8 variables and only focused on the 2 easy obvious ones. Well then of course it works.

If I tried to explain you have to account for these other 6 I’d have got “oh they don’t matter” or something else equally hand waving.

he had already decided he was right and so no matter what I would explain, he still had to be.

Accepting reality is too much of an adjustment for people who are certain they already “know”.