Stupid Quote of the Week

This week's winner is professor Arthur Brooks, who is quoted in the UWM Post as saying, "As a scientist I cannot understand why anyone continues to smoke given the overwhelming evidence that clearly shows smoking to be harmful to one's health." In our continuing role as advocates for the obvious, let me explain.

It is common knowledge that smoking is an addiction. If someone is addicted, they focus on doing the addictive behavior, to the exclusion of factors that would encourage them to stop, such as reasoned arguments about how detrimental it is. I have run into people who can cite every health risk associated with smoking but still do it because they don't have the willpower to stop (by their own admission, no less). Stopping something based on knowledge of its drawbacks is a rational response. Addiction, by definition, is not rational. People cannot be reasoned out of something they didn't reason themselves into.

If smoking can be solved by education, it is not an addiction. But we know that it is an addiction, so as a logician I cannot understand why anyone continues to promote educating the public about the dangers of smoking given the overwhelming evidence that clearly shows educating someone to overcome smoking to be useless.