{"id":26124,"date":"2017-09-26T13:20:35","date_gmt":"2017-09-26T18:20:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=26124"},"modified":"2017-09-26T13:20:35","modified_gmt":"2017-09-26T18:20:35","slug":"why-political-correctness-fails-why-what-we-know-for-sure-is-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=26124","title":{"rendered":"Why political correctness fails \u2013 Why what we know \u2018for sure\u2019 is\u00a0wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/ourfiniteworld.com\/2017\/09\/26\/why-political-correctness-fails-why-what-we-know-for-sure-is-wrong\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Why political correctness fails \u2013 Why what we know \u2018for sure\u2019 is\u00a0wrong<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>Most of us are familiar with the Politically Correct (PC) World View.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/theamericanscholar.org\/on-political-correctness\/#\">William Deresiewicz<\/a>\u00a0describes the view, which he calls the \u201c<em>religion of success<\/em>,\u201d as follows:<\/p>\n<p><em>There is a right way to think and a right way to talk, and also a right set of things to think and talk about. Secularism is taken for granted. Environmentalism is a sacred cause. Issues of identity\u2014principally the holy trinity of race, gender, and sexuality\u2014occupy the center of concern.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>There are other beliefs that go with this religion of success:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Wind and solar will save us.<\/li>\n<li>Electric cars will make transportation possible indefinitely.<\/li>\n<li>Our world leaders are all powerful.<\/li>\n<li>Science has all of the answers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>To me, this story is pretty much equivalent to the article, \u201c<strong>Earth Is Flat and Infinite, According to Paid Experts<\/strong>,\u201d by Chris Hume in <a href=\"https:\/\/funnytimes.com\/funny-times-october-2017-issue\/\">Funny Times<\/a>. While the story is popular, it is just plain silly.<\/p>\n<p>In this post, I explain why many popular understandings are <em><strong>just plain wrong<\/strong><\/em>. I cover many controversial topics, including environmentalism, peer-reviewed literature, climate change models, and religion. I expect that the analysis will surprise almost everyone.<span id=\"more-42222\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Myth 1: If there is a problem with the lack of any resource, including oil, it will manifest itself with high prices.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As we reach limits of oil or any finite resource, the problem we encounter is <strong><em>an allocation problem.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_3952\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" data-shortcode=\"caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/06\/two-views-of-future-growth.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-3952\" style=\"background-color: transparent; border: none; margin: 5px 5px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 622px; height: auto; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;\" src=\"https:\/\/gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/06\/two-views-of-future-growth.png?w=640&amp;h=429\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/06\/two-views-of-future-growth.png?w=640&amp;h=429 640w, https:\/\/gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/06\/two-views-of-future-growth.png?w=150&amp;h=101 150w, https:\/\/gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/06\/two-views-of-future-growth.png?w=300&amp;h=201 300w, https:\/\/gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/06\/two-views-of-future-growth.png?w=768&amp;h=515 768w, https:\/\/gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/06\/two-views-of-future-growth.png 909w\" alt=\"What happens if economy stops growing\" width=\"640\" height=\"429\" data-attachment-id=\"3952\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/ourfiniteworld.com\/2011\/06\/29\/how-can-a-government-fix-its-debt-problem\/two-views-of-future-growth\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/06\/two-views-of-future-growth.png\" data-orig-size=\"909,610\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Two views of future economic growth\" data-image-description=\"&lt;p&gt;Scenario 1, underlying financial system; Scenario 2, more likely actual growth pattern. Blue discs used to show pattern.&lt;\/p&gt;\n\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/06\/two-views-of-future-growth.png?w=300\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/06\/two-views-of-future-growth.png?w=640&amp;h=429\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 1. Two views of future economic growth. Created by author.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why political correctness fails \u2013 Why what we know \u2018for sure\u2019 is\u00a0wrong Most of us are familiar with the Politically Correct (PC) World View.\u00a0William Deresiewicz\u00a0describes the view, which he calls the \u201creligion of success,\u201d as follows: There is a right way to think and a right way to talk, and also a right set of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1233,1232,10216,1310,8130],"class_list":["post-26124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-gail-tverberg","tag-our-finite-world","tag-political-correctness","tag-religion","tag-world-view"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26124"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26125,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26124\/revisions\/26125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}