There are times when I think people, in general, intuitively know how to determine truth from falsity. Then reality comes crashing in on me:
An acupuncturist in Vietnam who claims she can detect a man’s virginity based on a small red dot on the ear is credited with helping to free three convicted rapists from prison, the Associated Press reports from Hanoi.
…
“They all had small red spots on the back of their ears,” said Hong, 54. “The
spots should have disappeared if they had had sex. My many years of experience
told me that these men did not have sex before.”Investigators who revisited the case found other flaws, leading to the
release of the prisoners.Hong says she was first taught how to determine if a man has ever had sex by
feeling his pulse. She later developed the ear-spot method on her own, the AP
says.She says the red spot only disappears after heterosexual intercourse and is
not affected by gay sex or masturbation.
Update: Now if she had said the red spots were an indication of not being a virgin in their ears I could see the possibility of some truth in her conclusions.
I wonder what the success rate of her technique for proving guilt is when compared to something more conventional, like trial by combat or a dunking stool?
I’m not sure she would understand the concepts of “success and failure rates”.
Surely it indicates whether or not they are virgins to aural sex.
Most people believe in magic.
How does a car work, or where does electricity come from? All people hear is technical jargon bird entrails invoke a spirit blah blah blah.
If FDA announced tomorrow approval of a drug that would give you muscles and melt fat and cure baldness, no one would doubt FDA or the drug company (least of all the prescribing doctors). If the government banned triethanolamine from lotions, shampoos, and cosmetics because blah blah blah, the only public reaction would be to look for a class action lawsuit to join.
It is easy to make fun of somebody who is clearly ignorant and superstitious. People who buy “organic” are equally stupid (short answer: plants make natural pesticides when stressed by bugs or competitor plants, and those pesticides tend to be broad spectrum, in contrast to man-made designer pesticides that were chosen specifically because they don’t hurt mammals). Ditto people who tan, or smoke.
I once got into a discussion with a woman who rattled on about something being natural, hence it was “good”. I asked how she defined “natural”. She said if it was man-made it wasn’t natural. I asked about the lemonade she was drinking, “Then lemonade isn’t natural because it is made-made, right?” Her eyes narrowed and she said, “Then you must be stupid.”
I just smiled and changed the subject. I knew there was a whole lot of stupid in the room and I knew it wasn’t sitting in my chair.
Like I said in my post, reality crashes in on me when I sometimes think people know how to determine truth from falsity.
dusty; next time you find yourself gazing over a big city, think, “Isn’t nature grand?”
milquetoast; Aural sex? You mean phone sex, right? Or when someone whispers sweet nothings in your ear– that’s aural sex?
I’ve even heard radio commercials touting the naturalness of the snake oil being sold, as “it’s natural so it can’t hurt you.”
I remind them that the hemlock that Socrates drank was organic and therefore harmless.
As I have said in other places, I’m a mole amongst the idiots.
“Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.” Schiller
Not quite on point, but something of a reminder that stupidity will never be in short supply.