Are people gullible?

Or are they just not thinking?

One of the wonderful things about the internet is that it has brought all kinds of ideas to people. Authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and Asia are having a jolly hard time cracking down on that because if you've got an internet cafe, you've got people getting all kinds of information.

Unfortunately, if people can't think, they have a hard time processing all that information.

So you get the phenomenon of people gullibly sending money and bank account numbers to Nigerian conmen. You get people opening up e-mails with attachments that they're not expecting. You get whole websites devoted to debunking urban myths which are being wildly circulated by foolish people armed with a mouse.

My favourite phenomenon is the bizarre member of an e-mail list. Sooner or later, every list gets one. I've seen them appear on the most innocuous lists. All of a sudden, in the middle of a reasonable conversation, they pop out with some outrageous thing.

Like "I collect dandruff. If anybody has any, pls let me know and I'll send you my postal address".

Um. Right. Oh god, please don't anyone ask why, please don't ask why, please don't ask.. Someone asked. And we're off. The conversation will now detour to pseudo-science, witchcraft, faith-healing, along with some stops to argue definitions of words and whether saying pshaw! or phooey! is flaming or not.

On one of the lists I read, the topic of Canadian tax law came up recently. A link was submitted to a site which I will not make clickable because I wouldn't want to be responsible for driving traffic to drivel. Cut & paste it yourself if you're keen: www.naturalperson.com The argument this site tries to make (in absolutely tortured language) is that it is unconstitutional for the Canadian government to impose income tax because we are natural people who own strawmen. It goes on & on & on but it never gets much clearer, I'm afraid.

I've posted to the list the Canadian Revenue Agency's mythbuster page, which says

There is a myth that the Income Tax Act applies only to corporate entities and not to "natural" persons or human beings. This myth says that Common Law rights dating back to the Magna Carta make all taxes on individuals voluntary.

The Facts
These myths have been rejected by Canada's courts. For example, on August 31, 2000, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice issued a ruling rejecting arguments that the Income Tax Act applies only to corporate entities and that all taxes are voluntary.

(and it continues with the explanation; click on it to read more)

But I know that wouldn't be the end of it. So to speed things up, I've decided to have the debate myself:

A: This is from the federal government so of course it's all LIES because they want you to believe in the STRAWMAN!!!! They're not likely to tell you 'oh dear, sorry, you don't actually have to pay income tax.....but please continue doing it', are they?

B: So really, we should all believe someone who keeps talking about STRAWMEN ad nauseam, and who quotes The Matrix to support his arguments?

A: Just because you don't like how he phrases things doesn't mean they're not true, you narrowminded cow.

B: Mooo. Apart from the fact that this is all gibberish, the main reason I discard it is that I know many small C, fiscally conservative lawyers make it a hobby to decrease the amount of tax they pay. I'm thinking that if there really was a loophole, they'd have found it. The guy who wrote this stuff says he used to be in construction; what gives him the authority to lecture us on Canadian tax laws?

A: You just don't get it. Never mind, I wasn't trying to convince you, just inform you. And I might remind you that the founder of a great faith was a carpenter so stop being so high & mighty about real degrees and education and credentials.
(sigh) Some people don't want their eyes opened. That's ok. I was like that too until I realized that I could cure halitosis by using magnetic hair pins.

B:(thinking) OMG, please, nobody ask about that. I can't stand the thought of reading a debate about halitosis & magnetic hair pins.....(/thinking)
Right. Well. It's a free country, which means that not only are you free to think whatever you like, but you are also free to not think at all. Cheers.



About a year after we started homeschooling, I read Dorothy Sayers' essay The Lost Tools of Learning. Finally, I thought, someone who understood the problem and outlined a possible solution! I was bumbling along trying to implement the ideas and I was thrilled when the Well Trained Mind came out and provided that blueprint for us.

Here's an apropos quote:

Has it ever struck you as odd, or unfortunate, that today, when the proportion of literacy throughout Western Europe is higher than it has ever been, people should have become susceptible to the influence of advertisement and mass propaganda to an extent hitherto unheard of and unimagined? Do you put this down to the mere mechanical fact that the press and the radio and so on have made propaganda much easier to distribute over a wide area? Or do you sometimes have an uneasy suspicion that the product of modern educational methods is less good than he or she might be at disentangling fact from opinion and the proven from the plausible?

Why yes, indeed.