SOPHISTRY'S CHOICE

You know how some people believe that “the more we learn, the less we know”?

This is totally incorrect.

Seriously, flip it around: “The less we learn, the more we know.” That doesn’t make sense either, which merely exposes this syllogism for what it is: Sophistry.

Sophistry is a disease of the brain that can be linked to excessively high levels of oxyglutamine, the chemical that causes Sophistry. Discovered in 1962 by someone whose name we won’t bother telling you because you’ll forget it soon anyway, oxyglutamine is a neurotransmitter that is identical in composition to partially hydrogenated corn syrup. In fact, in undeveloped countries oxyglutamine is often drained from the skulls of dead prisoners as an inexpensive substitute for this wonder sweetener.

Unfortunately, this poses an ethical question: if it tastes so good, then how can it be good for you? The answer will shock you like a licked battery: it can’t.

Soon after the discovery of oxyglutamine, when the chemical's neurological function was still unclear, studies showed that very little of it actually exists in the human brain: about as much as would fit in a raindrop-sized thimble. Protests arose from the usual assortment of cranks, crackpots, and the government: America’s oxyglutamine levels had to be brought up to snuff if we were to compete with the wily Japanese, and the even wilier Nipponese. Despite the fact that nobody knew why we needed more of this chemical than anyone else, a wide variety of procedures were initiated, and abandoned, and then initiated again before being abandoned twice more.

Baby food manufacturers attempted to address the crisis by including jacked up levels of oxyglutamine in their strained yam gravy. Public schools initiated mandatory spinal injections, and oxyglutamine tests became de rigeur for executive corporate positions. Also, they made it taste better.

But it soon became clear that the brain rebels against being told what to do – like a disobedient teen in a trampy outfit, it would rather make its own mistakes. Excessive levels of oxyglutamine causes synapses to “clear the way,” as it were, rearranging themselves all in a line to avoid contamination by the interloping compound. With the synapses all queued up, the brain can only make the most general of sequential connections - and the result, in the end, has been an epidemic of Sophistry.

Sophistry can most accurately be described as a condition in which things that sound true are assumed to be true; or, alternately, that things that are assumed to be true sound true. Though the condition dates back to caveman times, it is only today, when we are surrounded on all sides by teetering towers of verbiage in all spheres of our lives, that the condition has became more than a horsefly-level inconvenience.

To avoid Sophistry, simply don’t believe any cause/effect or if/then or and/or statement. When reading a sentence, analyze every word for possible “Trojan horse”-style deceptions. Shun your friends and neighbors. And above all, avoid oxyglutamine. If you see oxyglutamine walking down the street, cross to the other side, or shoot it right between the eyes. If you don’t have a gun, break a bottle over its head. If you don’t have a bottle then you’re screwed. Sorry.