Tinkering with Ideas

 Tinkering with Ideas

J. Michael Pontious M.D.

April 20, 2026

I like to tinker with ideas. Not in a grand, philosophical sense—more like taking them apart on my workbench to see how they are put together. Most don’t survive the process. They sound fine at a distance, but up close they have missing parts, loose screws, and the occasional outright fabrication.

I also have a nasty habit of saying out loud what other people are quietly thinking and hoping someone else will put it out there first. That tends to irritate some folks, especially the ones who prefer their ideas unexamined and neatly packaged.

Intellectually I suppose that it is easier…but I find it dishonest.

Much like our current political theater (because calling it governance would require a level of coherence that simply isn’t there). What we’re watching is less a functioning system, it looks more like a “scripted rehearsal” where everyone is deeply committed to their lines, even when the plot has completely unraveled.

One of the things that bugs me lately is the insistence that every conflict is some kind of moral or “holy” struggle. If you scrape off the dramatic religious language—and you should—you’ll usually find something far more ordinary underneath.

Greed…Power...Control. (Go ahead take your pick)

This is not exactly the stuff of sacred texts.

We’ve gotten very good at dressing up self-interest as virtue. Call it a crusade instead of a land grab, a defense of values instead of a consolidation of influence. It plays better. Sounds cleaner. Easier to rally people around something that feels righteous than something that’s much less than righteous.

Rationalize the deviant illegal behavior with “Boys will be boys,” as if that phrase has ever meaningfully explained anything other than a lack of accountability.

We become accustomed to the convenient dodge. If bad behavior is inevitable, then there’s no point trying to fix it. If corruption is just part of the system, then why bother calling it out? You don’t solve problems that you’ve already decided are permanent features.

That’s not realism. That’s intellectual laziness with a philosophical spin.

Then there’s the ongoing war on inconvenient facts. As a society we have built entire frameworks—scientific, regulatory, methodological—to keep ourselves from making decisions based on gut feeling and wishful thinking. They’re not perfect, but they’re a lot better than guessing.

And yet, the moment those systems produce an answer someone doesn’t like, the response is to dismiss, dismantle, or selectively reinterpret them. Suddenly expertise is suspicious, data is negotiable, and anecdotes are elevated to the level of evidence.

My personal favorite is the phrase “studies show.” It’s delivered with great confidence and absolutely no follow-through. Which studies? Conducted how? On whom? With what limitations? These are not minor details—they are the entire point.

If you can’t produce the reference, you’re not citing science. You are deceitfully masquerading behind its language.  Do not be proud of that portion of your vocabulary.

And in a world where anyone can publish something that looks vaguely authoritative, that distinction matters. A well-formatted opinion piece with a few citations is not the same as rigorous analysis. It just wears the same costume.

Of course, when evidence isn’t available—or isn’t cooperative—there’s always repetition. Say something often enough and it starts to feel true. Say it loudly enough and people stop questioning it. Say it everywhere and it becomes part of the background noise.

But here’s the problem: familiarity is not validation.

You can repeat an untruth a thousand times, and all you’ve done is create a well-known falsehood. It may influence people. It may shape conversations. It may even drive policy. But it doesn’t magically transform into reality.

Truth, inconveniently, doesn’t respond to marketing.

And that’s where all of this starts to break down in a meaningful way. Because when you replace evidence with narrative, and process with performance, you lose the ability to actually solve anything. You’re no longer asking what works—you’re asking what sounds good or what fits the storyline.

That’s how you end up doubling down on bad decisions. Not because they’re effective, but because admitting they’re not would disrupt the narrative.  So you double down.

None of this requires agreement on every issue. Disagreement is fine—necessary, even. But it only works if we’re at least arguing within the same reality. If one side is bringing data and the other is bringing slogans, you don’t have a debate. You have parallel monologues.

So I’ll keep doing what I do. Taking ideas apart. Asking inconvenient questions. Pointing out when the explanation doesn’t match the evidence.

You don’t have to like it. But if you’re going to push back, bring something more than a repeated mantra or a vague reference to “what studies say.”

Because volume isn’t a substitute for truth.

And no amount of repetition is going to change that…ever.