I have come to believe that the mental habits acquired from thinking along the lines of Theology and the Critical Dialectic are among the major barriers that presently exist to thinking well about subjects for which our intuition is not a reliable guide.

I refer, of course, to statistical methods, quantitative analysis, and the scientific method generally. In particular, the interaction between these and public policy.

We are not doing a very good job of this.

There are so many laws and policies that just don't add up quantitatively, and so many arguments put about in defence of them that show those making them have absolutely no respect for reason or evidence.

Drug laws are an excellent example. In Australia, I am reliably informed, close to 10,000 people die each year because of adverse reactions to legal pharmaceuticals, either alone or in combination with each other. This is viewed as quite normal. In contrast, deaths directly attributable to Cannabis are extremely few, and, in spite of lots of assertions to the contrary, the prevalence of schizophrenia has remained steady through the decades, even as cannabis users' numbers have climbed from nearly zero to about eight million Australians presently. If cannabis caused it to any detectable extent, there should be more of it now than 1955. But we don't see that.

Genes, and influenza infection during gestation do seem to play a part. Low IQ, and being the child of an older father all seem to increase the risk somewhat. But let's not confuse the issue with facts and science and rubbish. Lets make a "dialectic", not a "mechanistic" argument.

Legalizing cannabis would send a bad message to our children.

I have to restrain myself from profane incivility when I hear arguments like this.

The Criminal Justice System is not there to send messages to children. It is society's last line of defence against criminal behaviour. One does not put a seven year old into an iron cage with a violent offender to teach him about his parents' preferences for recreational drugs (Nicotine and Ethanol good, Cannabis and Peyote bad).

 One does it when a person poses such a risk to the community that we cannot let him walk the streets and need to protect society from him. Thats fucking it, people. That's what it is, thats what it's for.

Similarly statistics and crime, immigration and culture, gay rights and Jesus, end up in the most absurd arguments. Its because we do not often call the unreasonable, the deceptive, and the ideologically hallucinating to account for their frequent departures from evidence based reasoning.

I am bloody tired of it. Especially I am sick of cowardly, precious little groups who pile into their stinking  foxholes, and reassure one another that they are the keepers of a noble truth, invulnerable to understanding by the evil, linear, rationalizing, newtonian science bigots.

They 'debunk' true things that they never do disprove, and one suspects often do not even really understand, because they explain the world through untestable assumptions, that they defend instead of examining.

This goes for the religious right and the illiberal left in equal measure. It is the same bad conduct, with different mythologies and prejudices.

We need statistical measures in order to know what the fuck is going on with large populations. We need genetics to understand disease. We need Evolutionary psychology to understand human behaviour, including crime. We need history and accurate reporting to understand geopolitics. And we need science to inform policy at the highest levels.

 And now would be a good time.