Do you teach your physics students to be so dogmatic?
March 17th, 2003 | by Brian |Uriel Nauenberg, Professor of Physics at the University of Colorado, is a bigot. This evening I had the opportunity to sit at a table with him for the Graduate Student Government Round Table Dinner. Somehow, the conversation became political. But I was on my good behavior. I proposed the theory of rational irrationality to show that despite a (state) “educated” public, there is still no incentive to be right about politics. The others kept stressing the importance of education, so I reiterated: “Hey, I’m not being critical of education, but democracy.” Sacred cow. People don’t get the democracy is a means, not an end in itself. I challenged the guy next to me to show a correlation between education and knowledge of political issues. It is plausible. Anyway, this Nauenberg guys says something to me to the effect of, “I know you, you’re a character.” I reply: “I haven’t gotten to you yet.” He thought I was joking.
Nauenberg represents the Boulder Faculty Assembly, and was quoted in the Colorado Daily about allowing people to carry concealed carry firearms on campus. He said something like “could you imagine what that would be like…it would be awful.” So after dinner, as he gets up to leave, I ask him why he thinks that. “Those gun people are nuts,” he said, and mentioned that a conceal carry permit holder was arrested when NRA President Charleton Heston spoke at CU a few years ago. “I know that guy,” I replied, “he was assaulted by a gun control advocate. Then I asked him if he knew how often conceal-carry permits get revoked (~0.1%, which is less often than police officers getting arrested.) Then he started talking about England, so I asked him if, as a physicist, he knew the difference between correlation and causation, or if it’s important to change only one variable at a time, or if perhaps the effect of gun laws depent on culture, or what the effect of gun laws has been in England. No answer. Then I ask him if anything would change his mind. “Nothing, I just don’t like guns.” Then I let him have it. Did I called him a bigot? Maybe. I said his position was dogmatic, and spoke of the separation of church and state. What a thrill, but I do wonder if that kind of stress is good for my physical health. Probably not.
And I illustrated my point about educated people and their politcal beliefs. No incentive to be right.
I link two articles I wrote about this issue:
Freecolorado.com
Colorado Daily, March 10
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