Study: 38 Percent Of People Not Actually Entitled To Their Opinion

[theweaselking]

In a surprising refutation of the conventional wisdom on opinion entitlement, a study conducted by the University of Chicago's School for Behavioral Science concluded that more than one-third of the U.S. population is neither entitled nor qualified to have opinions.

"On topics from evolution to the environment to gay marriage to immigration reform, we found that many of the opinions expressed were so off-base and ill-informed that they actually hurt society by being voiced," said chief researcher Professor Mark Fultz, who based the findings on hundreds of telephone, office, and dinner-party conversations compiled over a three-year period. "While people have long asserted that it takes all kinds, our resarch shows that American society currently has a drastic oversupply of the kinds who don't have any good or worthwhile thoughts whatsoever. We could actually do just fine without them."

Comments

[skola.livejournal.com]

Damn, I was hoping that was real.

[takhisis.livejournal.com]

Just because it's from a parody site doesn't mean it's not inadvertently accurate. ;)

Case in point: way back in the day, they did a "guest column by Stephen King" titled "I don't even remember writing 'The Tommyknockers'" about how many books he's put out. Several years later, King actually published "On Writing", in which he revealed he was so addled on coke that he actually DOESN'T remember most of writing that particular novel.

[opaqueplanet.livejournal.com]

I hope this inspires actual social scientists to do the studies. You know the findings would be pretty damn close, if the numbers aren't found to be greater than the Onion predicts.

[wyatt1048.livejournal.com]

ART. Life is supposed to imitate ART, not parody.

[itlandm.livejournal.com]

Oh man. I had hoped this was something like the recent article in Scientific American showing that most grown-ups without college education were incapable of elementary logical thinking, and also unaware that they were incapable of said thinking even after having demonstrated it.