Take a couple of hours out of your schedule this weekend or next and go see “An Inconvenient Truth,” the Al Gore starring documentary about global warming that is now in theaters. You’ll learn much about global warming and much about many other topics should you choose to pay attention and watch on multiple levels.
The reviews are uniformly positive (I confess I haven’t checked what Fox News thinks of it, but here is a link to the NY Times review). Besides its central message, it contains lessons on effective presentations and stroytelling and lessons on the contrasts between how science is done and how those who find the science “inconvenient” operate to undermine it. This has me thinking on multiple levels.
There’s an excellent website to accompany the movie, as well as a blog and an RSS feed.
Tags: InconvenientTruth GlobalWarming AlGore
Isn’t putting the words “think” and “Fox News” together in the same sentence a particularly extreme example of an oxymoron?
Most of those who try to undermine inconvenient facts do so by operating entirely on an emotional/ideological level, with no thought apparent at all. Regardless of the conclusion you reach on any particular topic, the tendency to substitute ideology and blind belief for careful, logical thought seems to me to pose a serious threat to any democracy. The first action of most dictators is to remove “intellectuals” who question the prevailing orthodoxy.
The business equivalent is blind adherance to “industry best practice” and conventional management “wisdom” — at least 90% of which is (a) already proven not to work, and (b) a lazy substitute for thinking through the issue for yourself.