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This is a good point. Though that as a kid, I was educated as to what happens when you drink unclean water or food made at the road side. There were a lot of

This is a good point. Though that as a kid, I was educated as to what happens when you drink unclean water or food made at the road side. There were a lot of educational shows that aired on a channel named Doordarshan. That channel was free and you were able to watch it even without having a cable connection. The educational/scientific shows aired around 10 AM to 12 PM the time after which most kids started school. So it would happen that I was getting ready for school and learning about all this shit; pun intended. I never drank water from a shitty source ever again. Never left water in a bucket outside as it leads to creation of mosquitoes etc. I must admit though, it is not enough. I also remember government officials coming to my grandfather's village where they educated about how mosquitoes are born in stationary water. I think one of the best thing to do is, give some sort of a portable microscope to these officials, that can let people take the water they drink and observe the microscopic bacteria - or lack thereof - in their water. Even someone who is uneducated or does not know of scientific method will reason with what they see themselves. Edit: Remove colloquial/useless words and grammar changes.

staticassertion 9y ago
> Even someone who is uneducated or does not know of scientific method will reason with what they see themselves. This is really the subject of the entire book - it's not this simple. There are many factors that are involved in someone accepting a truth that goes against what they already know.
- tripzilch 9y ago
  Maybe it's easier for people (here) to understand to consider that it goes the other way just as well. Being educated on ways that food/drink can be contaminated also results in certain people getting truly physically nauseous if they consume food or drink that they believe could have been potentially contaminated. You probably know some people like this. "mmm these pineapple chunks for the fridge taste tingly and slightly alcoholic, did you marinate them in sparkling booze or such?" "probably just fermented a bit, they're five days old" "hurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrk" There's much more situations like this, food that fell on the ground, or un(der)cooked meat. People that have a firm basic understanding of how germs work, have some pretty irrational beliefs their ability to teleport to the insides of uncut raw-but-seared-on-the-outside muscle tissue. And many will remain queesy about it, even if you teach them. My point is, you can lead a horse to water but you can't teach it to fish if it wants to keep warm for the rest of its life.

staticassertion 9y ago

> Even someone who is uneducated or does not know of scientific method will reason with what they see themselves. This is really the subject of the entire book - it's not this simple. There are many factors that are involved in someone accepting a truth that goes against what they already know.

tripzilch 9y ago
Maybe it's easier for people (here) to understand to consider that it goes the other way just as well. Being educated on ways that food/drink can be contaminated also results in certain people getting truly physically nauseous if they consume food or drink that they believe could have been potentially contaminated. You probably know some people like this. "mmm these pineapple chunks for the fridge taste tingly and slightly alcoholic, did you marinate them in sparkling booze or such?" "probably just fermented a bit, they're five days old" "hurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrk" There's much more situations like this, food that fell on the ground, or un(der)cooked meat. People that have a firm basic understanding of how germs work, have some pretty irrational beliefs their ability to teleport to the insides of uncut raw-but-seared-on-the-outside muscle tissue. And many will remain queesy about it, even if you teach them. My point is, you can lead a horse to water but you can't teach it to fish if it wants to keep warm for the rest of its life.