It's interesting to see how much of what we believe is received wisdom, and not the product of what we have worked out for ourselves. Of course we most of us agree that we cannot believe what we read in the papers, but our perception of reality is nevertheless dangerously close to what we hear through the media. A scare about bombs being created on planes is foremost in our minds throughout the silly season, despite the thing being physically impossible to achieve in an airplane toilet. However we know nothing about
the find of a huge cache of chemical components last week ("the largest haul of chemicals of its kind discovered in someone's home in the country") because, a. presumably we are not required to know, and b. because it wasn't Muslims. So it doesnt enter the public consciousness. Galileo was imprisoned for questioning the received wisdom, proposing the wacky idea that the earth revolved around the sun. Good grief, what a nut job! Again, 650,000 as the estimated dead in Iraq is rubbished by the president as "discredited". Look at what the professional pollsters are saying however. It seems on balance to be pretty accurate, based on a sample of 1800, which is more than standard, and this team have been quoted by our leaders when the findings have supported their point of view. Maybe we should reserve judgement about people's ideas until we have looked a bit more closely at them and discovered for ourselves that they don't make sense.
