Sugar, Cigarettes, Autism, and the Search for Logic

It is useful to remember that people aren't always logical. None of us is always logical. Part of the problem is that most of us don't know when we're not being logical. We may be fixated on the short term. We may be too angry or afraid. Logic may have gone in the opposite direction from our experience and/or interests. We may not want to know where logic leads. The other part of the problem, is a good number of us don't take kindly to being told that we are behaving illogically.

I could walk across the street and tell the three young people (one almost out of high school and the other too not out too long) who take turns smoking on their front porch, even in the midst of the snowiest winter on record, that taking up smoking now makes very little sense from almost every perspective. They probably wouldn't be receptive. They probably aren't interested in hearing about how the confluence of the growing understanding of how dangerous cigarettes are with the growing stigmatization that accompanies cigarette smoking and the fact that a carton now costs more than a nice dinner for two makes taking up cigarettes seem pretty stupid. None of the three of them would seem to be thinking very logically, and none is likely to do so any time soon.

I could stop pouring spoonfuls of sugar on my cereal every morning. I could stop eating onions and hot sauce, and giving mys self nasty acid reflux. I could remember to take the two or three steps my dentist wants me to take to make sure I keep healthy teeth. It would be logical to do these things. I know that my health suffers when I don't. I still don't. It might be laziness or inertia. It might be a lack of self control. It might be that my mother scooped sugar on everything. Whatever it is, it is and I'm not behaving logically.

Parents could believe the almost universal scientific consensus that there is no link between vaccines and autism. They could, but parents have a lot of fear and anger connected to the health of their children. Autism is a very real, very scary, and not very well understood thing, which most of us have some experience with. Polio or the measles are largely outside our realm of experience, and about as scary as the Black Plague. Many of us don't really know how vaccines are developed or readied for use. Many of us don't know about the mountain of scientific evidence disproving the one study that was faked by a doctor with a serious conflict of interest. We have a lot of very powerful reasons for denying the truth.

I could continued listing examples for some time. The truth is pretty clear. Humans don't always behave logically. Spreading awareness of this fact is the first step towards compensating for this truth ... the first step towards helping logic to triumph in spite of us.