Over the past few years, probably longer, I’ve encountered in the tech industry many too many people who are technologists in name only who believe ideas that even 12-year-old me, wide-eyed at Erich von Daniken‘s wondrous mania (which fancifully inspires my music), would have been embarrassed to admit. These are generally older individuals, sadly my age, and not any of the new kids coming into tech. That’s cause for hope. But old white men are still force majeure and so quirky flaws are amplified.
I’ve probably/definitely written about this before, friends are frequently horrified by new “ideas” that I relay to them from my supposedly rational industry, but this is the start of a comprehensive enumeration of those offenses of those apostate engineers.
- Many, many climate change deniers. Maybe the least surprising offense, these people have popped up for at least a decade in my daytime affiliation (you know what I mean) timeline. Tech is not immune to the low-information, incurious, or willfully ignorant who are absolutely surprised that 99+% of scientists agree on the issue (one person was genuinely shocked at the fact, having heard it the first time from me).
- A Young Earth Creationist. Lost cause. Still… shocking.
- At the time, I marveled at the childlike wonder of the scientist who were responsible for the New Horizons probe when they first received the images of Pluto. Their giddiness was infectious. My praise was met with dismissive contempt at the arrogance of scientists who “know nothing.” Nine years with a calculated gravity assist by Jupiter to get within several thousand miles of Pluto and these scientists know nothing, yet my industry has to monthly patch software. Just. No.
- The Clintons are part of a cabal that drinks the blood of children to stay young (and yet it causes them to look pale and older). Yes, this is a QAnon thing and so a newer symptom, but when you have an industry of supposed logical thinkers susceptible to batshittery, they will naturally adapt to the times.
- Vaccines are harmful. ibid.
- An all meat diet is healthy. This I blame on Jordan Peterson, but that just explains the source without clarifying the anti-science. Any rigid diet begins with a presupposition that all metabolisms are the same and that there is a Great Solution to illness and cancer and what-have-you (and that we are carnivores not omnivores, and that a “cave man” diet is “correct” or that … whatever). All-meat people (generally) coindicate with anti-vaxxers. (The catch-all whenever I encounter a conspiracy theorist is Blaine Faulkner in The X-Files plaintively declaring “You can’t suppress the truth! Roswell!!” Satire is a balm.)
- Airborne or high doses of vitamin C will prevent/stop a cold. Fuck you. Please just read anything. This is a lazy ignorance and you should at least be more creative.
- Amalgam fillings are harmful. I was in an unrelated conversation about why your children should study subjects that are un-useful to their daily lives. The classic “why do I need to learn algebra?!” I have no children, and these people do, but the clearest example I could give was: so they don’t get taken in by hucksters. “Amalgam fillings bad” is a perfect example. Holocaust denying or Civil War revisionism are more consequential ones.
- Bonus new one: the sun is heating and so changing from yellow to blue. I-kid-you-not. I’m sure this is somehow linked to climate change deniers, but haven’t found a good source of whateverthefuck it means. If climate changed related it is part of the progression from “not happening” to “happening but temporary and/or not serious” to “happening but part of a natural cycle” to “happening but not anthropogenic” to “yes science is right but it’s too costly to fix.” This is the evolutionary rationalization of god of the gaps dissembling. Hilariously feeble until you realize that we all need to live with the consequences.
Unfortunately, more will be eventually added below: