Go ahead and count me among those who are dumbfounded by this statistic (via Sullivan):
Among college-educated poll respondents, 19 percent of Republicans believe that human activities are causing global warming, compared to 75 percent of Democrats. But take that college education away and Republican believers rise to 31 percent while Democrats drop to 52 percent.
My first reaction, which was shared by my wife, was to credit this to the tendency of a college education – by exposing one, e.g., to the way that scientific theories are falsified and paradigms superseded – to inculcate a certain degree of skepticism, and an unwillingness to take the claims of would-be authorities at face value. After a bit more thought, though, I was inclined simply to blame it on the fact that college very often seems to make us stupid: consider, in a similar vein, ISI’s startling [UPDATE: or maybe not so startling - see FLG] findings on the impact that the college experience has on students’ civic literacy. Then again, it’s hard to imagine how going to college could make someone dumber than this:
”I hope that he will understand, if he is the nominee, the degree of disillusionment that will happen if he doesn’t become a greater man than he will ever be,” Penn said.
(Penn skipped out on college, by the way.)
So color me baffled, then. Just know that it’s not, so far as I can tell, the fault of the philosophers.
[UPDATE: Okay, so I misread the statistic, and somehow came away thinking that college made everyone less likely to believe in global warming. This answer is surely the right one. Stupid partisanship.]
Filed under: environment, science/tech
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