https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/12/us/politics/alex-jones-denounces-verdict.html?smid=url-share

Alex Jones is… the word escapes me. Outrageous. Indecent. Shameless. But also: venal, avaricious, mercenary, and crass (I really wish that word came from Crassus, the wealthy Roman general who wound up getting molten gold poured down his throat, but it comes from the Latin “crassus,” meaning “fat, coarse, insensitive”).

BUT: the people who listen to and believe him are just as bad. They don’t get a pass for being poor dupes, benighted fools.

BUT ALSO: this sort of thing isn’t helping:

«The laypeople were not as accurate in their predictions as the scientists in the Nature study, but the fact they were still able to predict many failed replications suggests that many of them have flaws that even a layperson can notice.»

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21504366/science-replication-crisis-peer-review-statistics

Are we entering a post-Enlightenment age, where the intelligent inquiry into the nature of things just doesn’t count for as much as it used to? Hopefully not, but c’mon, Science.