More Objective Knowledge, Less Counterfeit Knowledge

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” —Isaac Asimov, Column in Newsweek (21 January 1980); quote from Wikipedia

Sad but too true.  True and sad before 1980, true and sad even today. We need to change that. Finally.

Education needs to produce less willful, gleeful ignorance, and more scientifically-minded people.

But it will not until it rejects the current counterfeit view of science as high-level abstractions taught to elementary school kids, as stuff divorced from life and the real world, and as stuff you do only in a book, and  turns to the proper view of science as organized knowledge of cause-effect relationships, based on the evidence of the senses, hierarchically organized, and which we can use to make our lives better and get things done.