CDZ Why?

[FA_Q2]

I'm saying the other questions generally gather more reliable, specific, and verifiable information.

You are asking the wrong person then.

The person that you should be asking why the most often is yourself.

 

[320 Years of History]

I'm saying the other questions generally gather more reliable, specific, and verifiable information.

You are asking the wrong person then.

The person that you should be asking why the most often is yourself.

Absolutely! Earlier in the thread, someone offered "why do you live where you live?' It's important to ask oneself that question. The answer(s) to it that one might receive from another is merely interesting and trivial information.

If you don't ask the right question, the answer you get doesn't matter.
-- 320 Years of History​

 

[JoeMoma]

All of which could be lied about as well. What is your point?

Not at all.

How did you go about drawing that conclusion?
Where did you hear that?
Who told you that?
When did you make that decision?
What information did you see to believe that?

All of those questions lead to more or less concrete points in time or sources. "Why" lacks the specificity that leads people to just make shit up.

The who, what, where, when and how questions are often needed to be answered in order to answer the why question.

 

[AnCap'n_Murica]

The who, what, where, when and how questions are often needed to be answered in order to answer the why question.

Absolutely. Which is why I say that why is way down the list, if not dead last, of questions you need to be asking.

 

[AnCap'n_Murica]

You are asking the wrong person then.

The person that you should be asking why the most often is yourself.

That's when you're really going to get the rationalizations and excuse making.

 

[320 Years of History]

The who, what, where, when and how questions are often needed to be answered in order to answer the why question.

Absolutely. Which is why I say that why is way down the list, if not dead last, of questions you need to be asking.

LOL. "Way down the list" isn't all that far when the answers to the preceding five questions have objectively factual answers that, for one in the position to know, take all of 30 seconds each to answer accurately and completely. Not five minutes into questioning and answering and then it's time for the "why" question. LOL That ain't my idea of "way down the list."

 

[oldsoul]

Seems like a pretty basic and simple question, right? So, when did we, as a society, stop asking such a basic question? Think this isn't a problem? Answer this: "when was the last time you asked "why" when considering your position on a given topic?"
More to the point, why did we stop asking why? I suddenly have an tongue-in-check answer... When Bud Dry pulled the ad campaign, "Why ask why? Drink Bud Dry." I know that's not the real answer, but thought is was funny, so I had to add it.
But, seriously, when and why did we stoop asking ourselves and each other "Why?"

So beer commercials constitute your life's philosophy?

I guess Moosehead U. is more popular than I thought.

You really don't get it do you? My beer reference was a joke. I understand that some people lack a sense of humor so I'll give you that one.
Now, how about actually addressing the topic of the thread instead of spewing talking points?

 

[oldsoul]

You tell me. What response do you get most often when you ask folks "why?" Maybe the folks you know and of whom you ask that question are very different from the ones I know, but the most common response to the "why" inquiry is, "I don't know," followed by some sort of speculation.

Now what does that tell me? It tells me that a lot of folks do stuff and have no idea of why they did it; sometimes they have no clue of how they did it. "I don't know how I did it, but I just did." From that, I infer that that there are a lot of folks who are "lemmings," folks just kinda on "autopilot." Folks for whom so long as the ground doesn't rise up to greet their "plane," they're gonna just "go with the flow."

MInd you, these are often the very same folks who are griping about "the death of the middle class," and "exported" jobs, and all sorts of other "stuff" that wouldn't be their reality were they to have taken control of their lives and put some deliberacy and sagacity into their major choices and courses of action. But that's not what they did 10 or 20 years ago, but it's "everyone else's" fault -- liberals, socialists, "the elite," etc., anyone but themselves -- now that they aren't "living the life of Riley." Puh-lease!!! Cry me a river!

Reagan killed the middle class with his tax cuts for the rich.

GHW then hiked the payroll taxes on them. It was all to save Social Security of course. But the Feds are spending our Social Security as fast as they can collect it.

W then gave even more tax cuts to the rich.

That's "why" the middle class in the USA is now dead. Or mostly dead. Mostly relegated to working poor status.

I don't really understand how this relates to the topic. Maybe you would care to explain.

 

[oldsoul]

The who, what, where, when and how questions are often needed to be answered in order to answer the why question.

Absolutely. Which is why I say that why is way down the list, if not dead last, of questions you need to be asking.

Why do you say that? Oh, crap, just blew a huge hole in your argument.

When asking yourself, "Why do I believe..." such and such, one needs only to reflect on "why". Inherently certain aspects of the "who, what, where, when and how questions," will be needed, however, one need not answer them fully to discern the "why".

Here, I'll give you an example:
My chosen profession is driving a large truck. Why? Because I find it rewarding, and enjoyable.

See, no "how, where, what, or who" needed to answer the question.
Feel free to explain how I am incorrect.

 

[Holos]

That question only stoops, as you put yourself, when it is answered, with another one in the same category already in queue to also be answered in its due time.

Once each of them is answered they remain in the collection of experiences commonly known as individual knowledge, potentially to be shared socially through civil regulations and utilitarian ethics.

 

[FA_Q2]

You are asking the wrong person then.

The person that you should be asking why the most often is yourself.

That's when you're really going to get the rationalizations and excuse making.

If you cannot trust yourself then I really do not know what to tell you. I do not have that problem.

Try being honest with yourself - you will find it enlightening.

 

[oldsoul]

This thread seems to have diverted off the original intent of the topic. Therefore, I repost this:
I was referring to a broader scope of discussion. Such as:

• Why are guns good or bad?
• Why are public schools better than private, or the reverse?
• Why do people believe what they believe?
• Why are some people liberal, and some conservative?
• Why do you do the work you do?
• Why do you live where you live?

Etc.., etc.
This is the "why" I am referring to when I ask, why we have stopped asking "why". As asserted before, things may not have ever been such that we do ask "why". If that is, indeed, the case, then I ask "why not?".

 

[Kristian]

Why are guns good or bad?

Maybe fun for every how like even it is crime shoots in citizen. The offers to family are bad.

Why are public schools better than private, or the reverse?

I don't care about those.

Why do people believe what they believe?

They started to be better Christians.

Why do you live where you live?

My mother and my fathers brother same school then he came to Sweden in the 80's and finally I was born in the 86's. I was three when I spell Finnish first time my mother tell mine.

I do not remember my first three.

 

[Dekster]

Seems like a pretty basic and simple question, right? So, when did we, as a society, stop asking such a basic question? Think this isn't a problem? Answer this: "when was the last time you asked "why" when considering your position on a given topic?"
More to the point, why did we stop asking why? I suddenly have an tongue-in-check answer... When Bud Dry pulled the ad campaign, "Why ask why? Drink Bud Dry." I know that's not the real answer, but thought is was funny, so I had to add it.
But, seriously, when and why did we stoop asking ourselves and each other "Why?"

I don't think we as a society have stopped asking why. Nor do I not ask why on issues. I simply do not share your cynical world view. Sorry.

 

[Hiryuu]

Seems like a pretty basic and simple question, right? So, when did we, as a society, stop asking such a basic question? Think this isn't a problem? Answer this: "when was the last time you asked "why" when considering your position on a given topic?"
More to the point, why did we stop asking why? I suddenly have an tongue-in-check answer... When Bud Dry pulled the ad campaign, "Why ask why? Drink Bud Dry." I know that's not the real answer, but thought is was funny, so I had to add it.
But, seriously, when and why did we stoop asking ourselves and each other "Why?"

I don't know if it stands to reason, but it may have something to do with people searching more for validation than answers. Then you can add the bonus of being attacked by someone who may disagree with your reasoning, having already decided they are have a better understanding. "Why" kind of gave way to superficial judgment calls that are associated with whomever you may be asking, and if you desire a more in depth answer, it will probably require you ask yourself and qualified resources/references rather than asking anyone you meet on the street.

 

[320 Years of History]

This thread seems to have diverted off the original intent of the topic. Therefore, I repost this:
I was referring to a broader scope of discussion. Such as:

• Why are guns good or bad?
• Why are public schools better than private, or the reverse?
• Why do people believe what they believe?
• Why are some people liberal, and some conservative?
• Why do you do the work you do?
• Why do you live where you live?

Etc.., etc.
This is the "why" I am referring to when I ask, why we have stopped asking "why". As asserted before, things may not have ever been such that we do ask "why". If that is, indeed, the case, then I ask "why not?".

• Why are guns good or bad?
  • Guns, in and of themselves, are neither. That they are neither is why nobody asks this question with the hope of being taken seriously.
• Why are public schools better than private, or the reverse?
  • One class of school is not inherently better or worse than the other. Here again, that that one is not, as a class of learning institution, better or worse than the other is why nobody asks this question with the hope of being taken seriously.
• Why do people believe what they believe?
  • This question has no context; therefore nobody with any sense is going ask or answer it with an expectation of or aim to provide a lucid and accurate answer. "Why do people believe 'such and such' about XYZ?", is a question folks will answer.
• Why are some people liberal, and some conservative?
  • This question one can credibly, coherently and cogently answer.

A large body of political scientists and political psychologists now concur that liberals and conservatives disagree about politics in part because they are different people at the level of personality, psychology, and even traits like physiology and genetics.

There is by now evidence from a variety of laboratories around the world using a variety of methodological techniques leading to the virtually inescapable conclusion that the cognitive-motivational styles of leftists and rightists are quite different. This research consistently finds that conservatism is positively associated with heightened epistemic concerns for order, structure, closure, certainty, consistency, simplicity, and familiarity, as well as existential concerns such as perceptions of danger, sensitivity to threat, and death anxiety.​

The occasion of this revelation is a paper by John Hibbing of the University of Nebraska and his colleagues, arguing that political conservatives have a "negativity bias," meaning that they are physiologically more attuned to negative (threatening, disgusting) stimuli in their environments. In the process, Hibbing et al marshal a large body of evidence, including their own experiments using eye trackers and other devices to measure the involuntary responses of political partisans to different types of images.

One finding? That conservatives respond much more rapidly to threatening and aversive stimuli (for instance, images of "a very large spider on the face of a frightened person, a dazed individual with a bloody face, and an open wound with maggots in it," as one of their papers put it). In other words, the conservative ideology, and especially one of its major facets—centered on a strong military, tough law enforcement, resistance to immigration, widespread availability of guns—would seem well tailored for an underlying, threat-oriented biology.
The authors go on to speculate that this ultimately reflects an evolutionary imperative. "One possibility," they write, "is that a strong negativity bias was extremely useful in the Pleistocene," when it would have been super-helpful in preventing you from getting killed. (The Pleistocene epoch lasted from roughly 2.5 million years ago until 12,000 years ago.) John Hibbing appeared on the Inquiring Minds podcast earlier this year, and he discussed these ideas in depth.

Granted, there are still many issues yet to be worked out in the science of ideology. Most of the commentaries on the new Hibbing paper are focused on important but not-paradigm-shifting side issues, such as the question of how conservatives can have a higher negativity bias, and yet not have neurotic personalities. (Actually, if anything, the research suggests that liberals may be the more neurotic bunch.) Indeed, conservatives tend to have a high degree of happiness and life satisfaction. But Hibbing and colleagues find no contradiction here. Instead, they paraphrase two other scholarly commentators (Matt Motyl of the University of Virginia and Ravi Iyer of the University of Southern California), who note that "successfully monitoring and attending negative features of the environment, as conservatives tend to do, may be just the sort of tractable task…that is more likely to lead to a fulfilling and happy life than is a constant search for new experience after new experience."

All of this matters, of course, because we still operate in politics and in media as if minds can be changed by the best honed arguments, the most compelling facts. And yet if our political opponents are simply perceiving the world differently, that idea starts to crumble. Out of the rubble just might arise a better way of acting in politics that leads to less dysfunction and less gridlock…thanks to science.​

• Why do you do the work you do?
  • This question isn't asked because it lacks enough context to get anything meaningful from the answer. It's not answered much because it lacks the context a potential responder needs in order to know how to answer it. Where where? The firm, the town, the field, the country, indoors, outdoors, something else?
• Why do you live where you live?
  • Here again, both the merit of the question, as well as any potential answers, is, as with the immediately preceding question, made fleeting at best due to the lack of context. That's why it's not asked or answered much if at all.

 

[oldsoul]

Seems like a pretty basic and simple question, right? So, when did we, as a society, stop asking such a basic question? Think this isn't a problem? Answer this: "when was the last time you asked "why" when considering your position on a given topic?"
More to the point, why did we stop asking why? I suddenly have an tongue-in-check answer... When Bud Dry pulled the ad campaign, "Why ask why? Drink Bud Dry." I know that's not the real answer, but thought is was funny, so I had to add it.
But, seriously, when and why did we stoop asking ourselves and each other "Why?"

I don't know if it stands to reason, but it may have something to do with people searching more for validation than answers. Then you can add the bonus of being attacked by someone who may disagree with your reasoning, having already decided they are have a better understanding. "Why" kind of gave way to superficial judgment calls that are associated with whomever you may be asking, and if you desire a more in depth answer, it will probably require you ask yourself and qualified resources/references rather than asking anyone you meet on the street.

That is a very thoughtful reply. I must commend you on that. It also happens to, roughly, coincide with my own thoughts on the matter.

 

[oldsoul]

This thread seems to have diverted off the original intent of the topic. Therefore, I repost this:
I was referring to a broader scope of discussion. Such as:

• Why are guns good or bad?
• Why are public schools better than private, or the reverse?
• Why do people believe what they believe?
• Why are some people liberal, and some conservative?
• Why do you do the work you do?
• Why do you live where you live?

Etc.., etc.
This is the "why" I am referring to when I ask, why we have stopped asking "why". As asserted before, things may not have ever been such that we do ask "why". If that is, indeed, the case, then I ask "why not?".

• Why are guns good or bad?
  • Guns, in and of themselves, are neither. That they are neither is why nobody asks this question with the hope of being taken seriously.
• Why are public schools better than private, or the reverse?
  • One class of school is not inherently better or worse than the other. Here again, that that one is not, as a class of learning institution, better or worse than the other is why nobody asks this question with the hope of being taken seriously.
• Why do people believe what they believe?
  • This question has no context; therefore nobody with any sense is going ask or answer it with an expectation of or aim to provide a lucid and accurate answer. "Why do people believe 'such and such' about XYZ?", is a question folks will answer.
• Why are some people liberal, and some conservative?
  • This question one can credibly, coherently and cogently answer.

A large body of political scientists and political psychologists now concur that liberals and conservatives disagree about politics in part because they are different people at the level of personality, psychology, and even traits like physiology and genetics.

There is by now evidence from a variety of laboratories around the world using a variety of methodological techniques leading to the virtually inescapable conclusion that the cognitive-motivational styles of leftists and rightists are quite different. This research consistently finds that conservatism is positively associated with heightened epistemic concerns for order, structure, closure, certainty, consistency, simplicity, and familiarity, as well as existential concerns such as perceptions of danger, sensitivity to threat, and death anxiety.​

The occasion of this revelation is a paper by John Hibbing of the University of Nebraska and his colleagues, arguing that political conservatives have a "negativity bias," meaning that they are physiologically more attuned to negative (threatening, disgusting) stimuli in their environments. In the process, Hibbing et al marshal a large body of evidence, including their own experiments using eye trackers and other devices to measure the involuntary responses of political partisans to different types of images.

One finding? That conservatives respond much more rapidly to threatening and aversive stimuli (for instance, images of "a very large spider on the face of a frightened person, a dazed individual with a bloody face, and an open wound with maggots in it," as one of their papers put it). In other words, the conservative ideology, and especially one of its major facets—centered on a strong military, tough law enforcement, resistance to immigration, widespread availability of guns—would seem well tailored for an underlying, threat-oriented biology.
The authors go on to speculate that this ultimately reflects an evolutionary imperative. "One possibility," they write, "is that a strong negativity bias was extremely useful in the Pleistocene," when it would have been super-helpful in preventing you from getting killed. (The Pleistocene epoch lasted from roughly 2.5 million years ago until 12,000 years ago.) John Hibbing appeared on the Inquiring Minds podcast earlier this year, and he discussed these ideas in depth.

Granted, there are still many issues yet to be worked out in the science of ideology. Most of the commentaries on the new Hibbing paper are focused on important but not-paradigm-shifting side issues, such as the question of how conservatives can have a higher negativity bias, and yet not have neurotic personalities. (Actually, if anything, the research suggests that liberals may be the more neurotic bunch.) Indeed, conservatives tend to have a high degree of happiness and life satisfaction. But Hibbing and colleagues find no contradiction here. Instead, they paraphrase two other scholarly commentators (Matt Motyl of the University of Virginia and Ravi Iyer of the University of Southern California), who note that "successfully monitoring and attending negative features of the environment, as conservatives tend to do, may be just the sort of tractable task…that is more likely to lead to a fulfilling and happy life than is a constant search for new experience after new experience."

All of this matters, of course, because we still operate in politics and in media as if minds can be changed by the best honed arguments, the most compelling facts. And yet if our political opponents are simply perceiving the world differently, that idea starts to crumble. Out of the rubble just might arise a better way of acting in politics that leads to less dysfunction and less gridlock…thanks to science.​

• Why do you do the work you do?
  • This question isn't asked because it lacks enough context to get anything meaningful from the answer. It's not answered much because it lacks the context a potential responder needs in order to know how to answer it. Where where? The firm, the town, the field, the country, indoors, outdoors, something else?
• Why do you live where you live?
  • Here again, both the merit of the question, as well as any potential answers, is, as with the immediately preceding question, made fleeting at best due to the lack of context. That's why it's not asked or answered much if at all.

Your missing my point. The point is not the questions themselves, but the introspection one must do in order to answer the questions in their own mind. Maybe the wording is poor, but it seems to me that most of the arguments for/against things is whether or not they are "good or bad". That is where I was envisioning this thread to go.

 

[320 Years of History]

This thread seems to have diverted off the original intent of the topic. Therefore, I repost this:
I was referring to a broader scope of discussion. Such as:

• Why are guns good or bad?
• Why are public schools better than private, or the reverse?
• Why do people believe what they believe?
• Why are some people liberal, and some conservative?
• Why do you do the work you do?
• Why do you live where you live?

Etc.., etc.
This is the "why" I am referring to when I ask, why we have stopped asking "why". As asserted before, things may not have ever been such that we do ask "why". If that is, indeed, the case, then I ask "why not?".

• Why are guns good or bad?
  • Guns, in and of themselves, are neither. That they are neither is why nobody asks this question with the hope of being taken seriously.
• Why are public schools better than private, or the reverse?
  • One class of school is not inherently better or worse than the other. Here again, that that one is not, as a class of learning institution, better or worse than the other is why nobody asks this question with the hope of being taken seriously.
• Why do people believe what they believe?
  • This question has no context; therefore nobody with any sense is going ask or answer it with an expectation of or aim to provide a lucid and accurate answer. "Why do people believe 'such and such' about XYZ?", is a question folks will answer.
• Why are some people liberal, and some conservative?
  • This question one can credibly, coherently and cogently answer.

A large body of political scientists and political psychologists now concur that liberals and conservatives disagree about politics in part because they are different people at the level of personality, psychology, and even traits like physiology and genetics.

There is by now evidence from a variety of laboratories around the world using a variety of methodological techniques leading to the virtually inescapable conclusion that the cognitive-motivational styles of leftists and rightists are quite different. This research consistently finds that conservatism is positively associated with heightened epistemic concerns for order, structure, closure, certainty, consistency, simplicity, and familiarity, as well as existential concerns such as perceptions of danger, sensitivity to threat, and death anxiety.​

The occasion of this revelation is a paper by John Hibbing of the University of Nebraska and his colleagues, arguing that political conservatives have a "negativity bias," meaning that they are physiologically more attuned to negative (threatening, disgusting) stimuli in their environments. In the process, Hibbing et al marshal a large body of evidence, including their own experiments using eye trackers and other devices to measure the involuntary responses of political partisans to different types of images.

One finding? That conservatives respond much more rapidly to threatening and aversive stimuli (for instance, images of "a very large spider on the face of a frightened person, a dazed individual with a bloody face, and an open wound with maggots in it," as one of their papers put it). In other words, the conservative ideology, and especially one of its major facets—centered on a strong military, tough law enforcement, resistance to immigration, widespread availability of guns—would seem well tailored for an underlying, threat-oriented biology.
The authors go on to speculate that this ultimately reflects an evolutionary imperative. "One possibility," they write, "is that a strong negativity bias was extremely useful in the Pleistocene," when it would have been super-helpful in preventing you from getting killed. (The Pleistocene epoch lasted from roughly 2.5 million years ago until 12,000 years ago.) John Hibbing appeared on the Inquiring Minds podcast earlier this year, and he discussed these ideas in depth.

Granted, there are still many issues yet to be worked out in the science of ideology. Most of the commentaries on the new Hibbing paper are focused on important but not-paradigm-shifting side issues, such as the question of how conservatives can have a higher negativity bias, and yet not have neurotic personalities. (Actually, if anything, the research suggests that liberals may be the more neurotic bunch.) Indeed, conservatives tend to have a high degree of happiness and life satisfaction. But Hibbing and colleagues find no contradiction here. Instead, they paraphrase two other scholarly commentators (Matt Motyl of the University of Virginia and Ravi Iyer of the University of Southern California), who note that "successfully monitoring and attending negative features of the environment, as conservatives tend to do, may be just the sort of tractable task…that is more likely to lead to a fulfilling and happy life than is a constant search for new experience after new experience."

All of this matters, of course, because we still operate in politics and in media as if minds can be changed by the best honed arguments, the most compelling facts. And yet if our political opponents are simply perceiving the world differently, that idea starts to crumble. Out of the rubble just might arise a better way of acting in politics that leads to less dysfunction and less gridlock…thanks to science.​

• Why do you do the work you do?
  • This question isn't asked because it lacks enough context to get anything meaningful from the answer. It's not answered much because it lacks the context a potential responder needs in order to know how to answer it. Where where? The firm, the town, the field, the country, indoors, outdoors, something else?
• Why do you live where you live?
  • Here again, both the merit of the question, as well as any potential answers, is, as with the immediately preceding question, made fleeting at best due to the lack of context. That's why it's not asked or answered much if at all.

Your missing my point. The point is not the questions themselves, but the introspection one must do in order to answer the questions in their own mind. Maybe the wording is poor, but it seems to me that most of the arguments for/against things is whether or not they are "good or bad". That is where I was envisioning this thread to go.

Maybe I am missing your point? It seems to me the questions one asks oneself matter very much. You know the saying..."If one asks the wrong questions, the answers and how one arrives at them don't matter." That is so whether one asks the question of oneself or of another.

Perhaps you have in the mind the introspective process one undertakes to arrive at one's positions on a given topic? Certainly I think the process one uses matters; however, if that process results in one asking the wrong questions, there again, the answers doesn't matter. For example, if in considering the education issue, one at some point asks oneself "are public or private schools better?", sooner or later, assuming one actually critically seeks the answer, one will arrive at the same answer I gave: on a class of school level, neither is inherently better or worse than the other. Arriving that understanding, one then must look back at the thing that inspired one to ask and answer that question whereupon one has to decide whether one needs to ask oneself or someone else a different question, or stop there if that's as far as one must go to arrive at a decision, conclusion, whatever, about the the core issue that catalyzed the inquiry.

Maybe you are referring to the penchant folks have for oversimplified answers, the misguided predilection some folks have for presuming that complex matters are indeed simple and thereby making themselves content with platitudinous and/or puerile responses to the questions they ask?

Well, I don't think that's a new phenomenon, but I'm fairly certain that when folks do that, it's the consequence of one of the forms of ignorance though it's sometimes hard to say which form is the one in play with regard to any given individual's or group's handling of a given topic. What I can say with confidence is that folks, no matter what they think on a given topic, are not receptive to suggestions/assertions that their thinking, as they've expressed it, is errant or insufficient, qualitatively or quantitatively, that their thinking does not rise to the level of being critical thought.

What is new is that unlike ever before, lame critical thinkers have a venue in which they can express the conclusions that result from their ill or under informed thoughts. In doing so, folks take comfort in the discovery that many others have equally lamely arrived at the same conclusions based upon much the same insufficiency of critical evaluation. Never before have folks had access to such overwhelming quantities of confirmation bias reinforcing information. Never before have appeals to popularity been so plentiful. Of course, never before has there been so much access to facts and credible information that challenges one's poorly conceived conclusions. Such is the Internet.

The Internet itself is on balance neither good nor bad; what one does or doesn't do with the content one finds there is what's good or bad. Some folks will avail themselves of the information and actually challenge themselves, actually put their preconceived notions to the test. Others won't. Well, there again, that behavior isn't new. "Back in the day," what share of the populace fully availed themselves of libraries? There were, proportionally, likely just as many ignorant and uncritically thinking folks back then as now. It was just harder to find them, but when one found them, one knew on an individual, named level who was. Now they're not at all hard to find, but one doesn't know who they are as individuals.

 

[oldsoul]

Maybe you are referring to the penchant folks have for oversimplified answers, the misguided predilection some folks have for presuming that complex matters are indeed simple and thereby making themselves content with platitudinous and/or puerile responses to the questions they ask?

That is exactly what I am referring to. You may be quite correct that this is not new. So then the question I ask myself is "Why?" What about human natures makes this so prevalent. This is what I am referring to.