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Journal perfessor multigeek's Journal: FUD Among Us:Tell Us Your Anecdotes 17

Journal by perfessor multigeek
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Fear

Uncertainty

Doubt

Sara and I were just talking about FUD; not just Microsoft but IBM, General Motors, Thomas Edison about Westinghouse, and so on.
Seems to us that maybe the most important point that needs to be made when one is fighting FUD is that this has become standard procedure in much of the corporate world. It's not a contextless individual action. It's not an isolated decision by one entity. It is an inherent part of modern corporate culture, from liquified natural gas to frozen yogurt.

People keep fighting the particular examples. We need to, as Sara said, stop just cutting off the hydra's heads and start fighting the hydra. And to do that we need facts. Particulars. Buckets of 'em.

I want to put together a set of examples of FUD that aren't by the folks mentioned above.
Any suggestions?

-Rustin
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FUD Among Us:Tell Us Your Anecdotes More

FUD Among Us:Tell Us Your Anecdotes

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  • I'm likely to end up sounding like a left-wing nut here. Which is funny, since I generally lean to the right. However...

    Two examples of FUD that would cite are second-hand smoke, and marijuana. I'd be in favor of eliminating the laws against both.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Yes, I realise. The funny thing is, I don't smoke. Anything. Nor have I ever, nor ever used any illegal drug. I don't even drink. But the triumph of FUD over sense bugs the hell outta me, and the travesty that is our overrun penal system makes me cringe.
      • One little factoid I love about this one is that a significant opponent of the criminalization of cannibis was the bird seed industry. Hemp seeds are tasty, cheap to grow, store well, are high in oil, etc. So they were a key part of bird seed.

        Back to the solemn stuff, let's not forget that a key factor in pot criminalization was politicians who saw it as an effective way to play the race card. "Them nigger musicians is corruptin' our fine women with that demon weed!" Played to the cheap seats very effective

    • Are you sure second hand smoke isn't dangerous? And even though I haven't really looked at any research one way or the other, I can say that sitting next to someone who is smoking makes me sick to my stomach (literally). Granted people can do plenty of other things legally that make me sick, but this one is pretty bad. And if I had asthma I suspect it could literally kill me.
      • No. But I'm also not sure it is dangerous. As far as I know, there is a single study, that showed that second-hand smoke could increase the your risk for cancer, and it had both poor controls, and poor statistics. Scientifically, the jury is still out. Still, the FUD is piled high and deep.
  • I hate to rain on your parade, but I doubt that facts alone are a sufficient counterweight to FUD these days.

    Look at the MMR debate. In properly carried-out trials, nobody seems to have been able to come up with a statistically significant connexion between MMR and autism, yet that doesn't seem to disturb the MMR-Autism lobby one bit.

    Or the 'climate change debate' where scientists querying, in particular, the scale of antropological influence on global warming are either ignored or ridiculed and sometimes,
    • a while ago, MFM had to deal with a very upset co-discusser (?) who screamed at him: How dare you support your argument with facts?

      Did your hubby yell back "how dare you not support your argument with facts?" It would be nice to read that he did.

      I got disinvited from somebody's parties, I suspect permanently, for saying, when a chowderhead tried to dismiss a statement of mine with "Oh, I'm sure that there are plenty of good examples" by saying that in my experience, when somebody says "oh, I'm sure that

      • Did your hubby yell back ...

        I'm not quite sure why, but I hate the word 'hubby' and I would be really happy if it could be struck forever from the vocabularly of humanity. I didn't hear that wonderful 'discussion' first hand, but knowing my husband, I'd say he didn't yell. Yelling is not his style; he favoures arrogant sneering. That's what I call it anyway. Interestingly, most Anglo people call him polite. Which, for me, is a constant source of amazement. I think it's a cultural thing. But it's good to see
        • A.) "hubby" bad. Taken note of, though I still want to know what MFM stands for. "My Fine Man? Mostly Finite Mathematician? Majorly Fiendish Mastermind?

          B.) Yeah, I've been accused (okay, with considerable grounds) of my share of arrogant sneering in my day. Understand the tendency well.

          C.) Um, not to be persnickity, but technically speaking the U.S. has invaded at least six or seven Muslim countries. We've just never stayed before, except for Mindanao. "Halls of Tripoli" and all that. Also Indonesia, Mind

          • A. Sorry, I totally forgot: MFM stands for My Favourite Mathematician. But I'm sure he would be very pleased to accept Majorly Fiendish Mastermind as well. Or, even better, Machiavellian Fiendish Mastermind. Don't know about Mostly Finite Mathematician, though ... think he deals mostly with infinities - they are, apparently, easier to handle.

            C. Really? Which ones? And no, I wouldn't call Mindanao a country, that would be an 'area'. And I am not sure that I think the WWII Oceanic island hopping counts as the
            • Sorry, a bit slow to respond here.

              As for invasion of Muslim countries, again, the Barbary Wars would be the obvious one, that's the "Halls of Tripoli" ref[1], though by modern standards an invasion done by a force of eight Marines and four hundred arabs looks a bit off. However we certainly did plenty of run-burn-shoot each other-run away attacks in the years leading up to the taking of Derna.
              Basically, the Barbary Wars was a succession of conflicts with Tunis, Algiers, Morocco, and Tripoli growing out of

        • Get it while it's hot!

          That's the thing, though. Facts aren't boring; people who are interested in making other people think that facts are boring have invested a lot of time and energy into promulgating that viewpoint -- much better if people don't operate on facts, because they're "boring," much better if they just float from feeling to feeling. It's much easier to convince someone of something (or to buy something they don't need, and what's most of modern marketing for?) if they don't think too deepl
          • ... and we've just booked [markturner.org] another title for our collection! Thanks for the pointer; sounds like an interesting read.
          • From some sort of objective point of view, of course, facts aren't necessarily boring. And people have some sort of taste for them. If we take, for instance, history, I think we have all heard how boring it all used to be - 'only years and dead white men'; yet, give someone like Simon Schama a bit of money and some BBC time [bbc.co.uk] and hey, presto, you got a hit on your hands. Despite the fact that the series consist mostly of Schama wandering around in various milieus talking about historical facts and the odd pic
            • Of course, what we're talking about in all of this JE and comments is the role (or absence) of reasoning skills in public behavior. I always turn back to a column by NYT writer Russell Baker, who, right before retiring did a brilliant precis on how it used to be an American pride that we were "savvy", that "we're no fools", that few insults were as withering as telling somebody to "get wise" but that WWII "loose lips sink ships" followed by McCarthyism and the Man in the Grey Flannel Suit followed by "Ameri

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