Have you ever been in a debate where everyone else agrees that you’re wrong, where studies and statistics are thrown in your face by the other side to prove their point and yet you still can’t bring yourself to agree that up is down and that down has somehow – because it’s morally virtuous to believe so – become up?
Well I have the answer for you.
And yes I know that this could be taken wrongly. Leftists all across the globe will be jumping for joy now that they can find a way to keep believing their absurd ideas, even though hundreds of years of science and even more years of plain old common sense, is utterly clear on the absolute fact that men are men and women are … not.
But I mean this answer for those who have sensible, rational, reasonable opinions, yet find themselves under attack from a mob, who assure them that the opinions that they have uncritically accepted from the news, media and the professors who couldn’t make it into teaching a real college degree, are correct. And here are the studies and statistics that prove it, even though in all probability they haven’t read them, and in all greater probability they couldn’t understand them if they had. We’ve swallowed the whole nine yards, it’s only fair that you do too.
So how do you deal with these studies and statistics?
And the answer is to use your common sense.
But everyone’s common sense is different, I hear the less intelligent among you say.
Nope.
Not even close.
You see we all think it makes sense to look before you cross the street, to be polite to people who are bigger than you, not to lock the pilot in the toilet, and that just because they can rise from the ashes, it doesn’t mean you should set a phoenix on fire. It’s not nice and it sets a bad example for children.
No, common sense still exists. And it’s pretty much the same for everyone. It’s just that sometimes, when we really really like her, we don’t listen to the alarm bells ringing in our head and the knowledge of how she treated her last boyfriend that’s warning us to stay the hell away, and for some reason, we go ahead and ask her out.
Why do we do that?
Scientists are still working on an explanation. Or would be if they weren’t so busy tied up with the same problem themselves.
Yes common sense is the answer to all your problems. But surely, I hear you ask, aren’t experts, authority and statistics not more important than common sense? Well, maybe. Sometimes. But surely, I hear you ask with even more fervour, EXPERTS, AUTHORITY, STATISTICS!
Yes that’s all well and good but surely it’s common sense (ironically) that you should run everything that comes from those above three sources through a filter. A filter that thinks about the information it has received and wonders whether it makes any sense at all.
I don’t mean critically analyse it.
No.
We’re not there yet.
Sadly.
I mean a pre critical analysis stage, called the does-it-pass-a-simple-sanity-check stage.
Let me give you an example.
You go the doctor with a tummy ache. The doctor says you have a rare disease in your arms and legs which produces the symptoms that you’re experiencing – namely, the pain in your stomach. There is no cure and the only way to save your life is to cut off your arms and legs.
Do you:
A: Have your arms and legs cut off as soon as possible because they are the experts and are always right.
B: Go home, have a little cry and then have your arms and legs cut off as soon as possible because they are the experts and are always right.
C: Go get a second opinion.
If you needed some time to think about it, then there is something very wrong with you and you need to have your arms and legs cut off as soon as possible.
Now it may well be true that in this case you will need to take these extreme measures but it will also be true that the most intelligent of us will have run this through our common sense subroutines which will compel us to seek a second opinion along with a thorough explanation of why pains in the stomach are caused by a disease in your arms and legs.
Because the idea that pains in the stomach are caused by a disease in the arms and legs strikes all normal people as unusual, if not outright insane, and should immediately activate an alert in the common sense part of whatever’s left of your miniscule brain and be flagged as something that doesn’t make sense.
If thereafter an explanation is forthcoming we would then move on to the critical analysis stage that is supposed to facilitate a better understanding of whatever we’ve been told and assist us in determining whether it is indeed accurate or not. In our example, this may prove the doctor right after all, or it may not.
But I’m concerned with the first stage. The stage before any real analysis in terms of how the experiment was done, who was doing it and whether their conclusions actually follow from what was found.
I’m talking for the moment, about the common sense stage. The stage that asks one simple question. Does what I have been told fit in with my understanding of the world.
Yes. It’s as simple as that.
Even against statistics.
Let’s see some real life examples.
The gender pay gap
By now everyone knows why this is ridiculous. You can’t simply average the amount of money men make and the amount of money women make and say, see one is so much more than the other. Studies show that this is a consequence of various other factors like women making different life choices than men. If women want to work less, they will make less money on average. It’s basic mathematics.
But we could have come to this conclusion by ourselves using a little bit of common sense. Without knowing exactly how the pay gap was calculated and without having read with a fine tooth comb the multitudinous pages of numerous studies that found that it was other variables that caused this.
Here’s how.
I think I may have already mentioned it. You simply ask yourself, does this fit in with my understanding of the world.
When you hear that women earn less than men you should ask yourself how that could come about in the world as we know it.
Perhaps it’s not illegal to allow employers to pay women less.
I don’t know.
I’m not a lawyer.
But common sense would say that there are probably laws in place that don’t allow women to be paid less than men for working the same job. It fits in with all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about equality that we hear on a daily basis. Now maybe a lawyer will be able prove me wrong, but until then I think it’s safe to assume it’s against the law to pay women less than men.
And yet somehow, they’re getting less money.
Perhaps then, employers are not obeying the law and are paying women less anyway.
Though this is doubtful.
Surely we would have heard. At least a handful of examples. If not most of them.
We’re not short of Leftist journalists and this would be exactly the type of thing they would love to report on. It would prove the rampant inequality that they knew to exist all along (even though the evidence would have emerged post the knowing – an interesting order – i.e. the wrong order – in other words in case I haven’t made myself sufficiently clear, the order used by immoral people who instead of looking for the truth are more interested in highlighting anything that supports their pre-existing beliefs), while at the same time destroying someone’s life – a hobby the Left indulges in.
There would also have been numerous, highly publicised court cases where female employees would have successfully sued their employers for obscenely large amounts of money for paying them less than men.
But this does not appear to be the case.
It seems, it’s against the law and that in the main, employers are keeping this law.
So how are we to explain the gender pay gap when the only possibilities – that the Left would love to be correct, don’t fit with our current understanding of the world. When they don’t pass the common sense test.
And when there is another, simpler way to explain why one group of people earns less than another. Namely: That they work less and at the type of jobs that pay less.
And these ideas do pass the common sense test. It makes sense that women, who are still the ones who bear the children, work less than men. And that this will have a knock on effect as to the type of job they will be able to get and how much it will pay.
There will be plenty of other factors as well, but I’m just looking at some of those that we can work out via our common sense.
Common sense will therefore say that the gender pay gap is not caused by the nefarious discrimination of women, but by the rather less problematic result of decisions women make about their own lives.
Sure, if my questions could be explained another way then we would move to the next stage of further analysis, but if you can’t tell me how employers get away with breaking the law, then how am I supposed to believe that there is wage gap as a result of the discrimination of women, without taking leave of my senses. Ah, happily we’ve explained in passing, how the Left does believe in the wage gap.
I’m not of course suggesting one need not do further research. It is a very good idea to read the studies, especially those that claim that the gender pay gap exists even when all the various external factors are taken into account. Read them, pass them through your common sense filter and then critically analyse them.
I’m simply saying that using common sense thinking is a good starting position. And one should always start by thinking. Even about studies and statistics that find something that supports your position.
Don’t you want a functioning brain?
One more example.
Rape culture
Some argue that there is a rape culture on college campuses in America and cite studies that say that one in four women have been raped.
Really?
Does anyone buy that?
Well obviously many do otherwise it wouldn’t be such a widespread belief, but I meant any normal people.
I mean if you’re at college, take a casual look around. Do you get the impression that one in four of the women that share your campus have been raped?
Well how can you tell?
Good point.
But wouldn’t you be able to sense if a quarter of the women in your class had been raped?
Would things just carry on as usual?
Wouldn’t there be a sense of misery coming from a quarter of all the women on campus? Something devastating has happened to so many of them and they’re all carrying on as normal.
And if things are so bad, why aren’t women afraid to go college?
Well, they are.
But I don’t mean the superficial fear they inculcate themselves with by believing the garbage they’ve been fed. “I’m so afraid of going to college. One quarter of the women there have been raped”. Please read with the appropriate high pitched moany voice.
I’m talking about real fear. The kind of fear that says, “one in four women are raped on campus, I am not going anywhere near there.”
After all, if there was a drink in front of you that had a one in four chance of being poisoned would you:
A: Ignore the statistics. They don’t mean anything anyway.
B: Worry about the statistics but drink it anyway.
C: Not drink it but give it to someone you don’t like to drink.
D: Ensure no one drinks it.
If you needed some time to think about it, then there is something very wrong with you and you need to have your arms and legs cut off as soon as possible.
Would you go somewhere where you had a one in four chance of being killed?
I don’t think so.
What kind of idiot sets foot, or lets their daughter set foot in a place where you have a one in four chance of being raped?
They believe in the myth of rape culture on campus, yet they still attend college in droves!
How does that make any sense?
No.
Not only is it unlikely to be true, it looks like the people who claim it is don’t even believe it either.
And I have a rule. If you want me to take on a belief, you could at least have the common courtesy to believe it yourself.
It’s all about common sense thinking. It’s simply a matter of dusting off the old cogs and letting them turn ever so slightly. It will be slow going and sluggish at first, but with some effort, over time, it will become easier. It may take a few attempts to get the hang of actually thinking about the ideas you’re being fed, but like any muscle that hasn’t been used in a while, once you get it going, you’ll find that it becomes easier and easier until that wonderful day when you realise it has become second nature.
Yes, it will hurt – the embarrassment you’ll feel when you remember the absurd nonsense you used to believe, will be excruciatingly painful. Yes, there will be side effects – you’ll lose all your friends and be excommunicated from society in the process – but you were supposed to lose those types of friends when you reached puberty.
So I plead and implore the last remaining humans who posses semi-functioning brains. When you find yourselves in the vicinity of ideas and opinions, studies and statistics, try running them through your common sense filter and see how they hold up.
And by the way, those studies and statistics you’re so afraid of, how do you think that all works? How do researchers decide what to investigate? How do they design an experiment to test any of their hypotheses? How do they analyse their results and arrive at their conclusions?
Do they get magic knowledge once they become ordained as experts? No, a lot of it is just them using their brains and a little common sense.
Of course the place to start is with this very article. Don’t take my word for anything. Run the ideas contained herein through your common sense filter and … if they make sense … you’ll erm … have absolute proof that your brain is working.
And if you didn’t get my last point you’ll have absolute proof that it isn’t.