‘Have More Kids. It’s Good For the Planet’
What can we do? Well, Rieder says, “Here’s a provocative thought: Maybe we should protect our kids by not having them.”
The idea that we should have fewer children to save the planet hasn’t been provocative in about 50 years. It would take these students five minutes of Googling to understand that doomsayers have been ignoring human nature and ingenuity since the 18th century, at least.
They might read about Paul Ehrlich and our “science czar” John Holdren, who co-authored a 1977 book suggesting mass sterilizations and forced abortions to save the world. (We’re decades past the expiration date.); or about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who not long said that she always assumed Roe v. Wade was “about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.” Did she mean poor people? Did she mean people who recklessly use air conditioners? It’s still a mystery.…
Why experts get it wrong: being knowledgeable about a subject implants false memories
Experts are more likely to make mistakes about their specialist subject because knowing a lot about something doubles the risk of false memories, scientists have found.
Researchers at University College Dublin asked 489 people to rank seven topics, including football, politics and science from most to least interesting.
They then asked if they remembered events described in four news items about the topic they selected as most interesting and four items about the topic they selected as least interesting.
In each case, three of the events depicted had really happened and one was fictional.
The results showed that if someone was interested in a topic, this increased the frequency of accurate memories relating to that topic. But it also increased the number of false memories too – 25 per cent of people experienced a false memory in relation to an interesting topic, compared with 10 per cent in relation to a less interesting topic.