"An education doesn't make you smarter. It only makes you educated."Welcome back to "Doggerel," where I ramble on about words and phrases that are misused, abused, or just plain meaningless. This edition brought to you courtesy of a 130 dB, 18,000 Hz troll (or at least that's how the text reads to me) who stopped by Ryan's first post.
Education is probably the greatest feature of the human species. We can communicate ideas to younger generations, who in turn build on those ideas, refining the ones that work, and getting rid of (or at least marginalizing) those that don't. Unfortunately, the latter part of the process is quite difficult: Humankind has become successful enough that we can survive the burden of silly notions. This burden, however, inhibits our "higher" forms of successes.
Many people seem to exist under the assumption that having magical letters after your name means that your arguments and opinions are inherently superior to anyone else's. Just because Dr. Bob has a PhD from CGNU doesn't mean that he isn't a fool. Doctors, scientists, engineers, etc. are still monkeys: They can make mistakes. They can be dishonest. They can even be idiots when it comes to a certain field, or even their own field.
One example that comes to mind involves some scientists testing out a "psychic" who could apparently lift a book of matches off the back of his hand with his mind. They had exposed the matches to all sorts of "scientific" tests, including infrared scanning lasers, yadda, yadda. They couldn't figure out how he did it. They called Randi, expressing concern for the prize money of his. Randi sent them a children's magic book: The guy was pinching a bit of the skin on the back of his hand into one of the folds of the match box. When he clenched his hand, it moved the match box.
The scientists thought that they would be able to see any deception. Randi is a magician. His expertise is in deception and trickery. Thankfully, he uses his knowledge of the trade to teach us to see through deception, the flaws in our perceptive abilities, and other such things that can be used to fool us (not to mention entertain us).
Often, woos like to use the authority of "educated" people in place of real arguments, often to said authority's dismay.
For example, one commonly cited authority is Sir Isaac Newton. "Newton believed in God." "Newton believed in alchemy." This, however, is unimportant: What matters is the argument. Why did Newton believe in God? Why did he believe in alchemy? Tossing a big name around is meaningless unless that person had good arguments to support the conclusion. Of course, the necessity of good arguments eliminates the need for name dropping. In a sense, scientists are irrelevant to the science they do.
Talking about the people presenting an argument is little more than ego-stroking. Either an argument is sound, or it isn't. An honest person discusses the strengths and weaknesses of an argument being made. A dishonest person distracts people from that argument, like the previously mentioned troll did. Thank you, Mr./Mrs. Anonymous for the demonstration of the world's worst arguer to date.