Angus McIntyreRemember: we live in a world where the people buying $400 gold sneakers from a known con-man probably consider themselves smarter than the people who just reconfigured a malfunctioning spacecraft twenty-two light hours away over a 40 bps communication channel.
Poligofsky@angusm Doesn't it come down to objectives?
The former would scoff at the value of expanding the frontiers of knowledge. They see success in narrow terms of being on the "winning" team.
They see the latter as part of the opposition. Anything they (scientists, researchers) do is in support of the wrong (loser) team, and thus inherently not smart.
Logic based on incomplete premises about how society functions, leading to bad conclusions, but not completely bad reasoning.
BlueintheSouth