h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Let's not quibble over words like "believe in", there's no evidence to suggest that he meant in an idealistic way. Where I live (and, I assume, where he lives) it's really just the vernacular way to phrase the sentence.

I think you're being naive if you don't think those words are chosen very, very carefully indeed.

I also don't think you meant "idealistic", I think you meant "ideological", and that's exactly how I think it was meant to be interpreted - his position on drugs is ideological, not rational, and therefore brooks no argument. What he's clearly saying is that he has a position on the legalisation of drugs, and that position is not amenable to change, regardless of any real world data you present, however persuasive.

And he holds that position because that's the most politically advantageous position to hold. The people who vote for him don't want a politician who can be persuaded by facts. They want a politician who has principles, and stands by them no matter how stupid, damaging or indefensible they are. To Tory voters, changing your mind is a sign of weakness.

Well, it sounds as if your Conservatives and our Republicans have something in common -- the zeal of Savonarola in pursuit of principle, in defiance of fact. I hope your Conservatives at least believe in science.

Ah, you see, there's that "believe in" thing I was talking about. It's impossible to "believe" in science, it's just the way we talk.

But you could be right, and you were right when you said I meant "idealogical".

I completely agree with that, Mr. X; gravity doesn't care whether we believe in it or not, it's going to exert its force any old how.

But we do have people of influence who believe things ~about~ science. Or perhaps I should say they fail to believe things about science. At any rate, my original comment was aimed at that political faction in my country who have demonstrated the ability to hold two contradictory facts in their mind at the same time, and whose beliefs run contrary or at least tangentially to science (climate change denial, creationism, stem cell research as a form of murder and so on).

And yet their faith in the efficacy of light switches and internal combustion is unthinkingly pure.