Is Stupid a Choice?

I’m at a loss here. I know how to look stuff up on the Internet. I know how to do cogent searches. I can find lots of tidbits. I learned to do this for The Mad Professor back in 1999. He gave out some of the most esoteric searches. The next class he would say, “Oh, but wait, you have to do this to find that sort of information.” He did that to me two or maybe even three times, and then I learned to never really do the search until the second class – when I had sufficient information.

In the intervening years, searching online has gotten both easier and harder. There are more things out there and so you have a better chance of getting a hit – if you know how to enter the right words to search against. But there are more things out there and some sources are not exactly “kosher.”

But I do know how to look up stuff. I know the difference between a fact and an opinion. I know that quotes from a book are quotes, whereas opinions about those quotes are not fact. Hence, the world “opinion.”

Twice this past week someone has mentioned something, I’ve searched for the answer, entered the data, and passed it on. The response that was hoped for and my facts didn’t gel with a preconceived notion. I am at fault. I’m not wrong, its only a matter of me getting blasted because my fact-finding mission didn’t lead to the appropriate or desired result.

I’m going to stop going on these missions. I can’t find the facts that will enable mushy thinking to solidify. I’m not happy with being castigated for searching for the facts, presenting them, one without comment, one time with editorial comments that were labeled as opinion, and then getting smacked upside the head because the facts are facts and not what was apparently the “correct” answer.

If someone wishes to be stupid, I can’t help it. Pointing out facts seems to get in the way of far too many opinions and I’m not in the mood to take the heat from dopes who wish to stay that way. I will continue to do my research for my own projects. But any request for information will be met with no response from me. If you want to be stupid, ignore facts, let opinions based on unsubstantiated thought processes, I will no longer fight to educate. I am not a teacher. And I am not in charge of the stupid people.

That’s my reasons, anyway.