Guess he was a member of Al-gebra?

[dreamville-bg.livejournal.com]

Dear America, contrary to what your (possible; but hope not) future president is telling you, the enemy is not a mysterious man speaking an exotic language on a commercial plane or the immigrant who cuts the grass in your garden. Ignorance is your real nemesis.

Professor suspected of being a terrorist because of a math equation

The professor in question:



Kinda looks like Yasser Arafat, right?

Funniest part: lots of people actually believe the lady who "turned him in" did the right thing. The "better safe than sorry" attitude seems to permeate a large chunk of the reactions to this incident. The argument in that camp is that the way to stop terrorists is for the average citizen to be vigilant and alert when using commercial aviation in particular. And while it's sad that the extra alertness requires a touch of paranoia, the world is much more dangerous now, it is what it is, so people should react accordingly.

Which is one of the problems here. The world has been consistently ainted as a bad and dangerous place to live in (contrary to actual fact, perhaps more dangerous than ever), so people are expected to adapt, accordingly. And become more paranoid... erm, I mean, "vigilant", than ever.

The other problem is the level of literacy people like this woman have, which is close or probably even equal to zero. And I'm not even talking about scientific literacy. Mistaking a math problem for "some strange-looking sort of language" is just hysterically lame, it's grade-two or three level of stupid. And it's not just this woman, I'm afraid.

Combine this with the third problem, namely racial profiling, and you've got the perfect toxic mix. You see a slightly tanned guy with curly hair, and something clicks in your mind: bam! Terrorist!

Math, Al-gebra (cough), Stats and Calculus. Those must be the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, amirite?

I don't know how anyone is going to make America great again while this sort of ignorance continues to plague it.

Comments

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

But, but, ignorance is a bliss, right?

No!

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

Ignorance is strength!

RE: No!

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Thankfully, when Mrs Clinton gets elected, she's gonna fix all of this.

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

Duh, wearing a Palestinian scarf on a US flight is not the brightest idea.
/sarcasm

[garote]

Pretty sure there will never, ever come a day when "this sort" of ignorance is eliminated from America. And I don't think that's pessimism - just realism.

I think what is changing, though, is our ability - and willingness - to mind our own business ;)

[dreamville-bg.livejournal.com]

Changing to the better or to the worse?

[garote]

I guess that depends on your priorities. I think it's for the worse in the sense that the line between minding the business of friends/family, and minding the business of compete strangers, has become very irregularly drawn.

Remember back in the 90's when "reality tv" shows got big, and the backlash against them - the contempt for them and their audience - got even bigger? "Ugh, who wants to spend an hour watching stupid people argue?" "These shows are only popular because they give the audience a feeling of superiority." Etc.

Now that kind of media, and that kind of backlash, is built into the fabric of social life, almost down to the roots. It's gone from alien and distasteful, to normal, to natural, in about 25 years. Not because of some new failure of humanity, but because of the change in the form of our communication networks. Turns out search engines and social networks are - among other things - a gigantic engine of confirmation bias and drama.

I think that what makes this particular era worse, is the way people assumed - for years - that the internet was a source of ground truth; that it presented the same face to everyone and therefore anything you saw was part of a universal experience. Nowadays that is absolutely, completely not the case, but people still instinctively believe it is so, because the mechanisms used for filtering usually only show subtle differences between the members of their social group. That's why you can browse Facebook and see the same meme about dancing cats drift up your feed from six different sources in one week, then vanish. It's not because the whole internet is suddenly obsessed with it. It's just been presented to your friends by the algorithm at about the same time - which is what Facebook is designed to do, to reinforce your feeling of participation. (i.e "Look, your friends are all on the same page thanks to this site. If you don't spend time here, you are not participating, and that means your friendship is at risk.")

Anyway, the shape of all this filtering is still being negotiated. Turns out it's inevitable, and pretty essential for getting things done, but also subject to massive exploitation. This argument will continue for quite a while, and I do have plenty of optimism for the future. In the meantime, that line between our business and other people's business is going to dance like a puppet string, and our harbor communities of everyday life will be under constant assault from frivolous stinking crap washing in with the tide.

[oportet.livejournal.com]

He said he was treated respectfully - and outside of the hassle of a delayed flight - a story of annoyance is still better than a story of death.

'Better safe than sorry' carries some ridicule, maybe even deserved ridicule - but 'Better sorry than presumed intolerant and prejudice' usually carries a higher body count - even if we somehow deem it the morally superior mistake.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

In cases like this one, isn't it rather the intellectually superior mistake? ;)

Um, I might've insulted the very essence of the term 'intellect' by using it in the context of this sort of moronic ignorance.