The Emperor's New Clothes

2007-11-24 13:03:00

Larry's analogy of the Emperor's New Clothes is a good one to illustrate the fallacy behind global warming and gives the principle behind the reason illusion is perpetuated.

When average people hear that "all scientists agree" and only the stupid would doubt them they mindlessly go along without questioning.

I had a funny incident in my life that illustrates this principle. It was way back in the eighth grade. The teacher had the students take turns reading out loud from our textbook. I can't remember what it was about except that I was somewhat bored. Finally, it was my turn and I rose up and started reading. As I read along the thought occurred to me that it would really break the monotony if I were to just burst out laughing. As this thought fomented in my mind the thought became funnier and funnier to me until I reached a point where I realized I was about to break out with laughter. I tried to hold it back but the more I tried the harder it was to hold back until I burst forth with perhaps the greatest round of laughter I have ever given out. For the first few seconds everyone just looked at each other and wondered what was so funny, but then a few other students started laughing and after a few more seconds the whole class including the teacher roared with laughter. The whole room reverberated with loud continuous laughter for quite a period of time; a full minute I would guess. Finally things settled down and there was a short period of silence. During the silence I sensed that everyone though that I must have said something extremely funny but they didn't get it and didn't want to admit they didn't get it. I'm sure even the teacher wanted to ask what was so funny, but because he was laughing along with everyone else he would have felt stupid to admit he was laughing at something he didn't understand.

After the short silence the teacher merely ordered me to sit down and had the next person in line continue the reading.

The funny thing was that after the class was over I had students come up to me privately, looking somewhat embarrassed asking in a whisper something like this:

"Could you please tell me what was so funny? Everyone else seemed to get the joke but me and I felt kind of stupid that I didn't get it."

I told them that there was no joke. I just felt like laughing and everyone else followed suit. After I said that they felt dumber still.

We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves.
-- Eric Hoffer (1902 - 1983)