knowknot at mindspring.com wrote:
>
> On 10/30/07, Miles Jackson said:
>
> > Capitalism in our society could not function
> without literate adults.
>
> Re. this "could not function" characterization, presumably the "literate
> adults" here referred were not the persons (if one believes widespread news
> reports, said to be in the millions) who in recent years eagerly agreed to
> variable rate mortgages in the belief, despite explicit cautionaries in
> their mortgage notes and related loan documents literately alerting any
> reader otherwise, that "variable" excludes "increasing" (not to dwell on:
> very probably _will_ increase) and despite, too, a comparatively huge
> amount of information, readily accessible to actually "literate" folk, if
> they actually were that, exacerbated in these self-destructive decisions by
> their also not understanding simple arithmetic?
I suppose you are speaking of such illiterates as the CEO of Merrill Lynch and of the large hedge funds who threw billions of dollars away.
One part of literacy, probably the major part, is trusting expertise. That is, when competent scientific opinion overwhelmingly rejects evolutionary psychology amateur scientists who are literate accept that and don't go on making up their own just-so stories. In a complicated world the _only_ way to understand it is to choose the best experts one can find. That's what the people who took out those mortgages did.
It seems that this thread is just another explosion of blame-the-victim.
Carrol