CHICAGO—In a surprising refutation of the conventional wisdom on opinion entitlement, a study conducted by the University of Chicago's School for Behavioral Science concluded that more than one-third of the U.S. population is neither entitled nor qualified to have opinions.
"On topics from evolution to the environment to gay marriage to immigration reform, we found that many of the opinions expressed were so off-base and ill-informed that they actually hurt society by being voiced," said chief researcher Professor Mark Fultz, who based the findings on hundreds of telephone, office, and dinner-party conversations compiled over a three-year period. "While people have long asserted that it takes all kinds, our research shows that American society currently has a drastic oversupply of the kinds who don't have any good or worthwhile thoughts whatsoever. We could actually do just fine without them."
In 2002, Fultz's team shook the academic world by conclusively proving the existence of both bad ideas during brainstorming and dumb questions during question-and-answer sessions.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Study: 38 Percent Of People Not Actually Entitled To Their Opinion
I found an interesting study:
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One might wonder whether or not Professor Fultz and his team are among the people not entitled to their opinions. However, that might lead to apparent paradoxes, as if they are not entitled to the opinion that people are not entitled to their opinion, does that mean that they would actually be entitled to their opinion? My guess is that this paradox would have to be resolved similarly to the grandfather paradox by invoking a Novikov self-consistency principle of opinions, namely that if you have the opinion that you are not entitled to your own opinion then the quantum probability of your actually having an opinion goes to zero. Either that or They're all a bunch of crazies. (We seem to be seeing a lot of those lately.)
ReplyDeleteI am surprised that you folks got sucked into this one. This is entirely made up. There is no professor Mark Fultz and especially not at the non-existent School of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago.
ReplyDeleteSee http://thefutureplace.typepad.com/the_future_place/2007/05/index.html
James Tanner
"This is entirely made up."
ReplyDeleteYour right, it is a spoof. It is one of the typical pieces from the Onion. Every once and a while I post something from the Onion.