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**I'm from Missouri¡ Show me!**

There are several levels on which things need to change. People are ignoring major factors in favor of arguing for bandaids.

1) Golden Rule — it’s something that almost all societies have figured out, but improperly acculturated people ignore to gain personal advanrages.

2) Social Contract — it’s something  the Chinese figured out explicitly around 200 BC. But even Obama didn’t explain it properly while campaigning. It implies responsibilities as well as “the government will take care of you.”

3) Refusing to invest in the development of all children throws away a valuable resource to society. Some societies throw away all the females. Some throw away all the blacks. I saw this too much as a teacher in disciplinary school. I had a 15 year old kid with IQ 140 who read at 4th grade level and had never learned his multiplication tables. I brought his reading level up to 8th grade level over the summer.

4) Failing to teach kids never to take anything  said on trust. If it’s important enough to matter, it’s important enough to check for evidence. Even if your parents said it, if it’s wrong it’s wrong, and you may pay for it. If you pass an untruth on, you damage others who trust you.

For instance, I heard a news story about a boy who took a pet garter snake to school for a show-and-tell. The snake bit him and would not let go of the first joint of his finger. He became very uncomfortable and soon died. My father told me that garter snakes generally don’t bite, and aren’t venomous. I’m guessing that the parents, the school, and the kid all believed that. If only they had checked! It turns out that garter snakes have venom they deliver through grooves in hook-shaped rear teeth. None of the people involved checked on the validity of “what everybody knows.”

Any population that learns this lesson will be protected against lying politicians. Illegal immigrants eating the dogs and cats of people whose community they have moved in on? Let's see your data, Mr. Politician. I just called the local newspaper there and they laughed at me. The police don't know anything about it either.

Anyone who learns this lesson will not casually pass on as factual something that is actually unsubstantiated. Even if the Dalai Lama told you, it still might be factually incorrect.

Anyone who is given such an affirmation by an authority figure will not automatically give it credence. If it is important enough to worry about, it is important enough to check it out. If your MD tells you one thing that leaves you in doubt, you can always ask for a second opinion and/or do your own research.

If, say, the African American community in West Philadelphia around 1970 knew how to vet information proactively, the politicions who make excuses for why their junior high students were given old English textbooks centered on a Dick and Jane world in the 1950s would have to come up with some real answers.

To forestall objections based on the fact that garter snakes generally give only defensive bite, that most bites do not put human extremities deep into the mouths of these snakes so there could not be any envenomation, and the fact that when envenomations have been observed they have not bothered the victim much, let me point out some things I have learned about other instances of venoms. The effectiveness of venoms can often if not always be dependent on the ratio between the quantity of venom received and the body mass of the victim.A full envenomation by a black widow spider that would not cause serious damage to a 250 pound man might easily kill a 90 pound child. It must be rare for a human to be bitten in such a way that the rear teeth of the garter snake stat engaged for any length of time. The child in this story weighed less than an adult and the envenomation continued until the child died. A third thing to keep in mind is that some individuals may be extraordinarily vulnerable to a particular venom.

Back to the central idea, everybody generally has an idea of what things don't matter enough to take special care. What difference does it make whether you drink Coke or Pepsi. And we also have people we have learned rarely give us a bum steer. I trust my neighbors to tell me which auto shop does good work. But for the big issues, even if it's your best teacher, it's better to "trust and verify" than to make a decision that backfires on you. For instance, it is scary how much misinformation veterinarians and even MDs sometimes give out on rabies. A friend of mine told me that carpenter bees do not have venom. If he told his mistaken idea to somebody wno believed him and confidently grabbed a female carpenter bee, that person would have received a massive dose of powerful venom. (It turns out this friend had only played with male carpenter bees. Male bees do not have stingers.The females do have stingers.)


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