Uncertainty isn't a free pass

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It depends on what you call a serious, general intellectual disability. Having a form of mental retardation is arguably a general intellectual disability. People with mental retardation are stupid.(they're certainly not smart, but the opposite) So..... I don't see your point, M_P.

Scarcely begun? How terrible! The presses will have to be alerted!! In any case, if I have "barely begun to be educated", I would have to imagine that the masses would have to be called illiterate ignoramuses.

mental retardation =/= stupid. Stupid is an insult, not a diagnostic term, and it gets used when someone has been intellectually lazy (working below the intellectual capacity they were born with) and not done the mental work they are capable of in order to come to a good result.

What MasterPedant was getting irate about in the OP was just exactly that: people who would never allow such broad uncertainty into their everyday beliefs (such as whether or not a coworker went to the moon on lunch break) but allowed it into their abstract beliefs.

A mentally ret*d person who throws all their mental abilities into accomplishing a particular cognitive task and then does it- although slower than other people-has behaved smartly, not stupidly.

Stupid is just a mental bad habit that takes work and attention to break.

I guess you're pretty consistent, but the sense I get (generally) from people who use the epithlet "stupid" is that they're really using it in a very normative/prescriptive sense. i.e. "You're stupid" seems to more often then not mean that you're course of action or opinions should've been more well-thought out or that you should know more. For instance, Orwell's called Palin and Bachman "stupid" quite often over making mistakes when it comes to history and I think he even called John Kerry dumb for getting poor grades in an "easy" subject. Again, this definition of stupid seems somewhat different than "has intellect below the median of the human species".

Okay, last night - amidst a discussion of how screwed the earth would be if the moon started hurling towards it - I commented on how a planet crashing into earth led to the moon (as some of the debris gathered in space to form the moon). Well, this person, some sort of wishy-washy, "everyone has an equal access to the truth", spiritualist from what I gather said, rather sternly "How do They Know That?!" Then followed with some rather disconnected assertion about how "NOBODY CAN PROVE THAT AND NOBODY CAN PROVE THAT THE UNIVERSE WASN'T CREATED!"

My main thoughts? WTF??! !!

Where the hell do people get this perverted idea that because there's some uncertainty or doubt regarding some issue that automatically means anything goes? I mean, I'm sure it's impossible to prove absolutely that O. J. Simpson killed Nicole, but if because of this lingering possibility of error, the defence attorney argued that Aliens, in fact, conducted the murder and framed O. J., they'd be laughed off the stage (yes, it’s possible to have an even more ridiculous defence then the one the actually got away with).

This particularly unreflective, anti-Impact Hypothesis person almost certainly uses inductive and abductive inferential reasoning in day to day life. If a co-worker told her that he'd walked on the moon half an hour ago and ate its (supposed) cheese exterior, this person wouldn't buy the explanation at all. Even if you can't absolutely disprove that scenario!

So why do so many people infatuated with the prospect of some uncertainty or gap in knowledge go to such moronic lengths as treating it as a free pass? Since nobody knows exactly what happens, anything suddenly goes? Where do unreflective, intellectually lazy, or flat out wilful ignoramuses get such nonsense from?!

Okay, last night - amidst a discussion of how screwed the earth would be if the moon started hurling towards it - I commented on how a planet crashing into earth led to the moon (as some of the debris gathered in space to form the moon).

Worry not. The moon is moving away from earth at about an inch and a half a year. This is caused by the slowing of the earth's rotation by the tides and the recession occurs because angular velocity is conserved.

The moon used to be much closer, very near Rouche's limit about 4 billion years ago.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roche_limit

ruveyn

Jesus Christ, is there anything more irrelevant you could comment on? The whole issue of the counterfactual speculation on the moon "moving towards earth" wasn't the main point of this post, it was something someone else brought up in a conversation, and it was solely useful as a means of bringing up the more pertinent point - the Impact Hypothesis.

I knew ruveyn was Jewish, I didn't know he was Jesus Christ though.

I'm using "Jesus Christ" as an expletive.

As you should be.

This is getting stupid

Scarcely begun? How terrible! The presses will have to be alerted!! In any case, if I have "barely begun to be educated", I would have to imagine that the masses would have to be called illiterate ignoramuses.

No, AG, I am aware despite your almost youthful verve that you [though ennea-5 enough] are past the young punk stage. Well into the next step that Number 1 Son is entering.