I learned even if someone is educated and trained in a respectable profession, they still can be dumb as fuck. Sometimes the garbage man is smarter than the heart surgeon.
Rubicon Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I learned even if someone is educated and trained > in a respectable profession, they still can be > dumb as fuck. Sometimes the garbage man is smarter > than the heart surgeon.
Many people suffer from white coat syndrome, i.e. they respect such people over the garbage man.
The garbage man is more likely to mean what he says, and say what he means.
Here's a C.S. Lewis quote you won't hear from General Conference... he puts it into the mouth of a villain in his novel "That Hideous Strength":
"Why you fool, it's the educated reader who CAN be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they're all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow weeklies, don't need reconditioning. They're all right already. They'll believe anything."
I would go one step further: those of middling intelligence and education are far more dangerous than those without. We have seen that in recent years. Less intelligent people often listen to their instincts while those of moderate abilities ignore them. The handful of people who are highly intelligent are another proposition entirely, but they are not incorruptible.
the mathematician was in the process of leaving the church.
I have a lot of respect for the mormon men I worked with--most of them. And they still believe and go. They were not your perfect mormons. My main boss would tell me the bad things he had done. I was surprised that many of them did things I didn't dare do.
But I know these guys are extremely brilliant--some are PhDs. They are the ones who developed the propellant for the space shuttle.
Who knows why they stay in the church. I left after I worked with them and they know I left and why. They don't try to get me to go back. They treated me with respect and still do. They were the only people in mormonism who treated me with respect.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/19/2024 10:24PM by cl2.
The propellant wasn't the problem. The temperature was. I used to type all kinds of things with O rings, etc. But I knew Al McDonald who was on TV quite a bit. He was the division manager over me.
I'm not sure why these guys are still mormon. I don't get it. But then my life experience is what got me out. I couldn't come to terms with how they handled gays and what that did to my life and the lives of my children.
This is something from the other thread about homosexuality in the scriptures:
"I don't believe a loving God would create someone to be a particular way and then condemn her/him."
If you need an O ring for a space shuttle, don't use the one your baby was teething with.
Richard Feynman was the perfect guy to sell the O ring story. Who knows, maybe it was true. The scenario would require defects in safety planning that I find hard to believe. Where was the "If the temperature is below X, do not launch" rule? Could such a rule be waived at launch time? With the government screw-ups I've seen, I suppose anything is possible. Rules? We don't need no stinking rules. Push the button.
Speaking of philosopher kings, the chairman of my school's physics department was a total Feynman groupie. He adopted the speech patterns and mannerisms of Richard Feynman. Which I bring up because those who toe the party line of physical materialism get to be kings. It's good to be king.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/22/2024 12:54AM by bradley.
I worked at Thiokol. It has changed names a few times. The last I knew it was ATK. I worked there from 1977 to 1985. I loved my job there. I quit when I had twins. Oh, in fact, I was on maternity leave and was feeding my twins their bottles and watching TV when they changed over to the sky with stuff falling. I knew immediately what it was.
One of the engineers committed suicide over this.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/22/2024 12:10AM by cl2.
I was mopping and waxing the floor of the fledgling SOCOM headquarters at the time. That's the Army version of cleaning the chapel. The building had a TV so my buddies and I took a break and turned it on to watch the launch. The falling pieces definitely did not look right.
I wonder how such a disaster would be taken today, with so many larger disasters to compete with. It might be a "so that happened" thing.
Soon after the Challenger disaster, I was watching late night TV and there was a replay of a congressional hearing on the disaster.
There was an engineering professor (believe he was from a Utah university) testifying about the connections and joints that united the booster rockets to the Saturn rocket.
In a half hour, he gave a post-doctoral lecture on the stress and strains that the joints needed to overcome. The big problem was that the booster rockets flexed when they ignited.
The flexing occulated so the booster bowed outward and then inward. This flexing minutely opened and closed the connections of the parts that made up the booster.
Because of the sub-freezing temperatures, the seals in those joints were outside the design limits and they failed, and the boosters exploded as a result.
My opinion is that everything worked at designed but the launch was ordered outside the weather boundaries, it was too cold.
I further believe that the White House, President Reagan, ordered the launch to proceed against the scientists and engineers recommendations that knew best. Reagan wanted to showboat the event as the first teacher in space.
the LDS experiences seem to hit 'believers' more than those with only slight connection(s) engagement with ChurchCo.
my perspective that the A list members who 'really want the church to be true' are OK until they look into the details, I think most of us here have noted this phenom.
I personally was always skeptical of the church and just viewed it as an annoying social/family tradition. I never truly believed in it. So I never went through the emotional trauma a true believer goes through.
You will become whatever you feed your head with. It’s why the church goes after the youth so hard but I saw it as brainwashing very early.