Why do people get all worked up over stuff they know nothing about?

FUN. and mundane uneducated lives. never underestimate them.Think ZOMBIE invasion.
A plethora of logic and wisdom hath no solution. Only a baseball bat to the skull will redeem them. ;-)

Hence it’s the internet everyone can speak their minds even though not all are correct.
Nobody’s forcing anyone to read what they post or think .. at least they can speak their minds and opinions.

Oh and since you brought it up. It’s clear that 99% of the users have nothing to do with nuclear reactors. Should we all shut up ?

I think it has to do with our brain lateralization. The right hemisphere responds emotionally; it has feelings about this or that, but doesn’t rationalize those feelings. That’s the job of the left hemisphere. The LH will attempt to piece together a rational explanation to justify the feelings of the RH. But it’s really acting in service to the feeling, and will select or fabricate “facts” that support the feeling. When it has cobbled together an explanation that seems to fit with and support the feeling, it feels satisfied that it has found the truth of the matter, so why question further? That satisfaction feels good, and further digging might upset it. Challenges by others brandishing contrary evidence likewise threatens that inner satisfaction, so we go into a defensive posture.

We rarely go so far as to actually challenge our feelings about this or that.

Just wanted to share the viewpoint of a neurobiologist, Michael Gazzaniga, who has researched this phenomenon (from here):

“The left hemisphere,” says Gazzaniga, “is a chatty know-it-all, working behind the scenes to piece together a stream of sensory impressions into something that makes sense. The right brain is focused on the big picture, and does not have the same compulsion to figure out the ‘why’ behind events.”

In addition to pinpointing the left brain as the storyteller, Gazzaniga and his colleagues found that when the left brain didn’t know something, it went ahead and filled in the gaps. “The left brain recognizes patterns and pieces data together in ways that fit a pattern,” notes Gazzaniga.

Gazzaniga describes one experiment in which a split-brain patient was shown two pictures. The left brain saw a chicken claw, and the right brain saw a snow scene. Next the patient was asked to select a picture of an item using his left hand (controlled by the right side of the brain). The patient selected a shovel. When asked why, the verbal left brain launched into a detailed explanation of how a chicken claw is part of a chicken, and that a shovel is needed to clean out a chicken coop.

Besides making zero reference to the snow scene, the patient’s left brain was never at a loss as to “why” it had done something. It never questioned its chicken-coop story. “The left brain,” comments Gazzaniga in his book, “observing the left hand’s response without the knowledge of why it has picked that item, has to explain it. It will not say, ‘I don’t know’ ”

Anxiety mixed with bullshit is endemic in those particular individuals.

@thorninmud Interesting. Maybe I am more different than I thought since I prefer to admit ignorance over bullshitting, and ask questions rather than make shit up. Does that make me weird?

Totally agree. Google and wikipedia are very handy, aren’t they?

Hmm, maybe people think they know. A lot of subjects you mentioned revolve around beliefs, and sometimes it seems that faith doesn’t require one to inform oneself any further than what said faith teaches. That probbaly shouldn’t apply to things like politics and reactors, but I seem to notice a very religious like mindset scanning over subjects that aren’t religion. Maybe it’s how people feel about certain things, the emotional impact being a trigger for getting worked up and such.
Just a suggestion. I don’t really know, and I’ve seen plenty of religious people that keep striving for knowledge and comprehension about many things. So that kinda shoots my theory down the can. Maybe some people just want to be right, for the image it may give them if others fall for it. I guess the reasons can’t be all that numerous, but there might be more than one.

To paraphrase Mark Twain: “I never let facts interfere with my theories.”