I remind myself that madmen really exist. Sometimes they achieve the highest levels of political power in modern industrial nations. - Carl Sagan

I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance

XIX. yüzyılda buharlı gemi yapımına girişilince, denizlere hiç de hayırlı olmayan bir çevre kirliliği işareti ulaştı: gürültü. Ticari ve askeri gemilerin daha da çoğalmasıyla okyanuslara yayılan gürültü (özellikle yirmi Hertz frekansında) kulak ardı edilemez duruma geldi. Okyanuslararası haberleşme girişimini yürüten balinalar için anlaşmak giderek zorlaştı. Haberleşme giderek kısa mesafelere indi. İki yüzyıl önce Finback denen balina türünün anlaşması 10.000 km uzaktan mümkün olurken, şimdi bu mesafe birkaç yüz kilometreye inmiş olabilir. Balinalar birbirlerini isimleriyle mi çağırırlar? Yalnızca ses yoluyla birbirlerini tanıyabilirler mi? Balinaların haberleşme olanaklarını kestik. Milyonlarca yıl haberleşebilen yaratıkları şimdi susturduk.

I wish to propose a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true. I must, of course, admit that if such an opinion became common it would completely transform our social life and our political system; since both are at present faultless, this must weigh against it.