Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

23
Maxwell and The Nerds
Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?
Ronald Reagan,
campaign speech, 1980
There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage
than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is
in every country the surest basis of public happiness.
George Washington,
address to Congress, 8 January 1790
Stereotypes abound. Ethnic groups are stereotyped, the citizens
of other nations and religions are stereotyped, the genders and
sexual preferences are stereotyped, people born in various times
of the year are stereotyped (Sun-sign astrology), and occupations
are stereotyped. The most generous interpretation ascribes it to a
kind of intellectual laziness: instead of judging people on their
individual merits and deficits, we concentrate on one or two bits of
information about them, and then place them in a small number of
previously constructed pigeonholes.
This saves the trouble of thinking, at the price in many cases of
committing a profound injustice. It also shields the stereotyper
from contact with the enormous variety of people, the multiplicity
of ways of being human. Even if stereotyping were valid on
average, it is bound to fail in many individual cases: human
355