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Truth? He pretends the 14th amendment doesn't exist and that states can do what ever they like to the people who live within their borders. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/We_The_People_Act he We the People Act is a bill introduced by Republican Congressman Ron Paul. Most recently in 2009 as H.R. 539, and back in 2004 as H.R. 3893. The bill intends: To limit the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, and for other purposes. The bill intends to please both the God-fearing religious right and the big-government-fearing libertarian right by doing the following: Prevents the Supreme Court and all federal courts from making decisions regarding: State and local laws concerning free exercise an establishment of religion the right of privacy including sexual practices, orientation or reproduction the role of the Equal Protection clause on the right to marry. Prevents the reliance on any federal court decision on any of the above topics. Prevents the Supreme Court from "redefining marriage" using the Equal Protection clause Allows the Congress or the President of the United States to impeach judges who breach the act. In Congressman Paul's own words: The We the People Act forbids federal courts, including the Supreme Court, from adjudicating cases concerning State laws and polices relating to religious liberties or "privacy," including cases involving sexual practices, sexual orientation or reproduction. The We the People Act also protects the traditional definition of marriage from judicial activism by ensuring the Supreme Court cannot abuse the equal protection clause to redefine marriage. In order to hold Federal judges accountable for abusing their powers, the act also provides that a judge who violates the

...a political problem to be resolved through rhetoric and propaganda. To be sure, both sides are engaged in some degree of each, but at the end of the day it does make a difference whether the scientists seek out the politicians or the politicians seek out the scientists.

Nope. You've just provided another example of the balance fallacy.

There's a BIG difference between the type of people who get into science as a profession and people who get into political lobbying as a profession. Equating the two is just stupid.

Poe's Law

For one thing, it's a logical fallacy. For another, it's an incredibly lazy way to silence dissent.

The problem is that these shills are often doing the Slashdot equivalent of the Gish Gallop. Sometimes it's best to just shut them down by outing them as shills.

(Not that I'm particularly fond of this either, but sometimes it's necessary as a matter of pragmatism.)

Good example of Poe's Law

WOOOOOOSH http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poe's_Law

There is a polite refutation to a whole string of stupid creationist arguments on RationalWiki.

Bill Maher is an outright germ theory denier. Most of the Republican party denies evolution and global warming. The Democrats are slightly better, in my opinion, but they've still got a bunch of flakes who have elevated a good idea (organic food) into some kind of pseudo-religion. My sister is like that. She thinks that organic food has magical properties that make it somehow better than any other food. She also refuses to give her kids vaccines. It's funny, because she'll rant about how anti-science the Republicans are in one breath, then rant about some bizarre anti-vaccine conspiracy theory in the next.

People are hypocritical, ignorant morons. That includes you, me, and everyone else. Thinking that you're immune to this kind of cognitive bias is yet another form of cognitive bias (known as bias blind spot).

Poe's law in effect.

Yes, I did some googling, and it turns out that CAGW is another denialist invention. It seems to be an attempt at setting up straw man because denialists are unable to argue against the actual scientific theory, AGW.

Poe's Law: "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing."

Slashdot is populated predominantly by engineer types. Engineers believe in processes and systems, engineers believe in the objective world and the scientific method.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Engineers_and_woo

...it's a beautiful instance of the archetype: Poe's Law

And you should read this:

http://spikejapan.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/spiked-eamonn-fingleton/

The single biggest tip off is the use of Shadowstats. If you take Shadowstats statistics to their rational conclusion, US Treasuries have a _negative_ interest rate. Which is to say that buyers of US Treasuries are paying money to lend money to the US Government.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Shadow_Government_Statistics

"the one time he stumbled in to something interesting with the case against Water Memory he created a perfectly blind study without taking in the error factor.
Then did not follow up to find out why the two studies differed and were both repeatable getting the same data along the two different testing technics."

uhm, link? I'm sure that's described in parseable english somewhere. I like to read actually, very much so -- I just don't have much patience for empty words.

Here is a good place to start but it is incomplete:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Water_memory

It does not really recount everything or consider all the repeated experiments since then.

In a nutshell.
A paper was published around 1980 in the Journal Nature using the standard chemistry testing protocols still in use today that suggested that water had some form of memory.
The experiments were meant to disprove homeopathy, but suggested that it may in fact be the real deal. (I have no opinions on homeopathy)
The experiment had been recreated around the world resulting in the same data.
The editor in charge of the magazine wanted the experiments rerun with Randi controlling the protocols.
Remember Randi is not a PHD or a chemist.

Randi came up with a new chemistry protocol where no one person knew what they were doing with what samples. Basically it was a completely blind testing protocol, and there have been a few TV shows on this and it was on 60 minutes and NOVA too.
Now they never ran Statistical error analysis on the new protocol so no knew what the error ratereally was.
The experiment came up inconclusive and could not prove that water had memory.

But the cool thing is this that both experiments have been recreated using both protocols several times and came up with the same data results.
Standard protocol’s says water has memory, and Randi’s protocol was inconclusive suggesting that water does not have memory.
Also Randi’s protocol has only been used to recreate this experiment.
So all other chemistry experiments still use the standard protocols today.

So my beef with Randi is that he butted in to a science lab experiment and never followed up with why the data was different and repeatable.
Although these experiments have been repeated a lot since then research in to why was dropped because of the journal bringing in Randi.

My belief is:
The data would suggest that test results are subjective much like the physic experiments done in Princeton Engineering Labs and may give us additional clues towards solving some Quantum Mechanics and M theory unresolved issues.
Then again it could just bring up more interesting questions.

Pretty much, all of them. He even published a paper debunking his own claims. Seriously, he has repeatedly claimed that he has proof that "unreliable weather stations" mean that Global Warming is overestimated and then he co-authors a paper to prove and the conclusions says that "unreliable weather stations" mean that Global Warming is underestimated in the continental United States.

Someone interested in discussing science would not use words like "denialist" with the obvious intention of provoking an angry response.

Sorry, there's no other word that fits -- and no, "skeptic" doesn't cut it. Rationalwiki has a nice explanation of the difference. There's no reason to play nice with people who have the capacity to understand scientific evidence but refuse to do so.

It sounds like you've got it all figured out.

I suppose I should probably blame this.

I don't know if you're just horribly misinformed, or a liar, but nearly every single thing in your post is wrong. It's what's called a Gish Gallop. You rattle off so many lies that people look and say "Wow, that guy sure knows his stuff" while the honest people can't refute them all fast enough. But I'll try anyway.

Starting from the quoted section:
1) He didn't reverse on closing Gitmo. The Republicans blocked all funding for the transfer of prisoners elsewhere. He is literally not allowed to spend a single cent on closing the prison. You cannot blame him for that.
2) The use of drones by police departments is a nonissue. These drones aren't carrying weapons -- they're no different from helicopters, except that they're cheaper, which is a good thing.
3) SOPA & PIPA were opposed by Obama. You can't seriously be complaining about his support for something he didn't support. You might as well complain about his support for Al Qaeda.
4) The stimulus funds did not "take over" any industries. Give one example. Just one. Literally, I want you to name a single American business which is now government owned because of the stimulus. Either that, or come back and apologize for lying.
5) TARP was passed by Bush, and didn't take over banks in any case.
6) The health care law does not take over anything. It puts some new regulations on private insurance companies, prevents individuals from abusing the system with an individual mandate, and helps individuals for whom the mandate would be burdensome by providing them with subsidies. Stop listening to Rush Limbaugh. The man is lying to you.
7) New environmental controls? You'll need to be more specific, but I suspect this is every bit as much a lie as the rest of your talking points.
8) Obama didn't make the decision about Boeing's plant. The National Labor Relations Board did. That's their job... to determine when businesses are retaliating against unions and block such maneuvers. The fact that South Carolina is a "red" state was irrelevant. Boeing was retaliating against their unionized workers in Washington state, and that's against the law.

Elsewhere Watts has claimed that this faulty sensor data undermines the entire credibility of AGW theories.

Sticking only with the first claim, the video explicitly says that Watts was shown to be wrong. The temp data was not so corrupted and inaccurate that it materially effected the conclusions based on that data.

It would be a scientific footnote , and certainly nothing non-scientist Watts would go on a crusade over, if the inaccuracies he was pursuing were known to have no material effect on the models apriori. He went at this making broad claims about the ramifications of the inaccuracies, all of which claims were shown to be false.

If all you know about Anthony Watts is from this video, google Anthony Watts denier to get at the substance of the critical arguments with his activities and the positions he's taken.

There might be soem slog inthe results so here are a couple of informative ones to get you started:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Anthony_Watts

http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Anthony_Watts

And here we see a prime example of Poe's law in action.

As 9%, and 11%, are well below the crazification factor, I think we have to treat them as statistical noise.

The reason is that if you replace vaccines with food and anti-vaxxers with breatharians or sungazers, every argument makes about as much sense, only now one side can be more easily seen for how ridiculous it is. At what point does your nonsensical bullshit go from 'personal rights' to outright child abuse? That has nothing do do with the fact that vaccines are 'science' (whatever you mean by that) anymore that with the fact that food is 'nutritional science.' You want to raise your kid as you see fit? Fine, government has no business there. You want to jeopardize the health of your child and other children? Not fine. That is exactly when government should step in. Just because some ignorant scientifically illiterate morons think that food, er, vaccines are useless and dangerous does not change that denying something critical to a child's well being is nothing short of neglect. Sorry, but the ability to hurt your child and potentially endanger others (all of which with potentially fatal results) is not a right.

The reason is that if you replace vaccines with food and anti-vaxxers with breatharians or sungazers, every argument makes about as much sense, only now one side can be more easily seen for how ridiculous it is. At what point does your nonsensical bullshit go from 'personal rights' to outright child abuse? That has nothing do do with the fact that vaccines are 'science' (whatever you mean by that) anymore that with the fact that food is 'nutritional science.' You want to raise your kid as you see fit? Fine, government has no business there. You want to jeopardize the health of your child and other children? Not fine. That is exactly when government should step in. Just because some ignorant scientifically illiterate morons think that food, er, vaccines are useless and dangerous does not change that denying something critical to a child's well being is nothing short of neglect. Sorry, but the ability to hurt your child and potentially endanger others (all of which with potentially fatal results) is not a right.

Creation science is one of the greatest sources of really concentrated stupidity to be found anywhere.

Ladeez gemmun, I give you: baraminology.

I'm not surprised Dawkins doesn't debate Craig, not because he's afraid of losing (he wouldn't) but simply because it's a waste of time. The guy and his cohorts crave the publicity and would proclaim victory even when it became clear they got their ass handed to them.

A few of the tea party are also there. Does that mean they're radical right wingers and communists at the same time?

Even if they were, what does that change? Can they not be partially (or entirely) right? To attack a movement because of a few people involved in it is simply ad hominem. Especially since, as I illustrated above, you can criticize any large movement people as including some specific group of people. That's how movements of thousands of people work.

I agree with the gp: stop the fucking fear mongering. You're as bad as Faux News. I get that you're afraid of change and big mobs of people in the streets might threaten your bottom line (of course, it probably exists only in your dreams, but whatever). However, these people are getting together to do something to save the country. You're whining about them being communists on slashdot. Get a fucking life.

Actually, it might just be an excellent example of Poe's Law. There don't seem to be any real cues that it's satire or serious, so different people interpret it differently. This is probably more a sign of the readers' mindsets than a comment on the message itself.

And those of us who understand this are presumably examples of the third possibility: a "meta" viewpoint that reads it as both serious and satire simultaneously.

I found myself in a real quandary: Should I post this, or should I give the author another "Funny" mod? Maybe I should first see if I want to reply (seriously or jokingly) to any other posts? Nah ...

Obama's performance has been pretty lackluster. So much for Hope and Change, huh?

But the modern Republican party and the Tea Party (who are basically the Totalitarian Christian Theocracy party these days) scare the fucking shit out of me. HOW DO YOU PEOPLE EVEN CONSIDER VOTING FOR THEM!?

Whatever Obama's flaws, he's *gotta* be better than someone who literally prays for rain while denying climate change, or someone who believes gay marriage is the #1 issue to affect America in the next 30 years, or someone who was so homophobic that the gay community named a mixture of semen and faeces, a by-product of improperly performed anal sex, after him.

How does this... how is... I don't even...

Just where do you get your news, anyway?

And FWIW, it's pretty much impossible to be WORSE than someone who:

1. Campaigns on the premise that $200 billion deficits per year are unsustainable
2. When elected, runs $2 TRILLION deficits.

Yep - the Obama MONTHLY budget deficits (which in truth began when Democrats took control of the US House of Representatives - where all spending bills must originate...) exceed the YEARLY deficits under George W. Bush - which Senator Obama called "unsustainable".

That's Greek-style government. It's impossible to be WORSE than that.

Barack Obama: when he reaches rock-bottom and has to stop digging - HE'LL START BLASTING.

Gonna be hilarious to see Baracky's "they all RAAACISTS!!!!" meme crash-and-burn with Herman Cain on the Republican side....

Obama's performance has been pretty lackluster. So much for Hope and Change, huh?

But the modern Republican party and the Tea Party (who are basically the Totalitarian Christian Theocracy party these days) scare the fucking shit out of me. HOW DO YOU PEOPLE EVEN CONSIDER VOTING FOR THEM!?

Whatever Obama's flaws, he's *gotta* be better than someone who literally prays for rain while denying climate change, or someone who believes gay marriage is the #1 issue to affect America in the next 30 years, or someone who was so homophobic that the gay community named a mixture of semen and faeces, a by-product of improperly performed anal sex, after him.

How does this... how is... I don't even...

if I did I would be identical to them

Wronger than wrong

Einstein's theories are not measures but theories so they can't be inaccurate: they are either right or wrong.

"just the same as Newton before him was inaccurate."

Newton was not inaccurate, he was wrong. In fact, he was wrong in a very accurate way (unless you are talking about cosmic distances and masses or really fast speeds, the measures you'd experimentally get would be those predicted by Newton's formulae).

You are being wronger than wrong.

First, Einstein's theories also contain mathematical models. These mathematical models lend themselves to predicting the results of measurements. Depending on how much these measurements differ from those predicted by the model one can find out how accurate the model is.

Of course, I'm splitting hairs and we're both just playing semantic games, but I suppose my point is that there is not a single monolithic "wrong", but rather a gradient of wrongness, with models that more accurately predict reality being less wrong than others.

I actually can't tell if this is a Poe or not.....oh, wait....did I just Poe myself? (And are recursive Poe's even redundant?)

The part where he goes "No True Christian...." I think his claim is one of the poster boys for the No True Scotsman Fallacy.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_True_Scotsman

Sure. But the Turing test is a piece of garbage too. I have a deep respect for Allan Turing, and all that he has done for science. But the Turing test was death to AI the moment he proposed it. It MUST be forgotten and burried, and maybe incidents like these can help us achieve that!

The Turing test just represents the constant problem of scientists having no way of understanding what the public will pick up on.

In retrospect, it's obvious that the notion of a test where you talk to a computer to figure out whether it's smart is incredibly approachable and understandable, especially compared to the arcane shit that is virtually every other AI concept. But at the time, Turing probably just thought it was a neat thought experiment and was probably happy that his field was getting lots of attention, even if people were taking the Turing test thing way beyond its useful domain. It's only now, when AI is well established, that we realize that it's kind of grown into a monster.

But you get that problem in every field of science, and it's often with even worse results. There are a few ideas in quantum mechanics that get picked up on, and you get a whole new pseudoscience, quantum woo. Okay, maybe it's just the same old bullshit with different labels. But at some point pseudoscience branched off from actual science, if it wasn't quantum mechanics, it was magnets, or maybe something earlier. The public picked up on the fact that there are these mysterious forces in nature, and some quacks decided to sell them fake medicines, and it's become a billion dollar "industry."

Biology... so you don't show up on the Internet a few years later insisting that your experience and training in engineering equips you to declare evolution false.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Salem_Hypothesis

That's why I pay my monthly dues to the IJC.. Get over it..Fuckin' goyim!

I'll admit, it does seem remote, especially if you're dealing with time periods of 50,000 years or so. What do you think the likelihood of this event occurring is? A million in one chance, per year? One in a billion per century?

Let's go even further, way, way out there. What if it was one in 10^24 per 13 billion years?

Just so we're clear on the numbers we're using, that's 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance per 13,000,000,000 years.

This is really, really, really, really, really unlikely. However, statistically speaking, this means that there are... dum dum dum...! 9 planets in the entire universe where this has occurred so far. Earth is one of them. :)

This, of course, assumes the lifespan of the universe to be 13 billion years (convenient) and the number of stars in the observable universe to be 10^24. Which, based on our current scientific estimates, is about right. It could be off by, say, five or six planets either way -- although we're only dealing with the observable universe, so there could be many many many many many more.

The scientific world is an amazing, wonderful, powerful, inspirational thing that is just so incredible in its majesty and beauty that it seems so very belittling to claim that there's a divine hand behind this truly unique and awesome thing called existence.

Bonus question: If the universe created God, what created God? If X, why can't X apply to "the universe at whole"? If NOT X, then why can't the universe be held to the same standard? "It always was, and always will be..."

Further reading:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Improbable_things_happen
http://www.symphonyofscience.com/

Sources:

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_universe
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe

I'll admit, it does seem remote, especially if you're dealing with time periods of 50,000 years or so. What do you think the likelihood of this event occurring is? A million in one chance, per year? One in a billion per century?

Let's go even further, way, way out there. What if it was one in 10^24 per 13 billion years?

Just so we're clear on the numbers we're using, that's 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance per 13,000,000,000 years.

This is really, really, really, really, really unlikely. However, statistically speaking, this means that there are... dum dum dum...! 9 planets in the entire universe where this has occurred so far. Earth is one of them. :)

This, of course, assumes the lifespan of the universe to be 13 billion years and the number of stars in the observable universe to be 10^24. Which, based on our current scientific estimates, is about right give or take (see sources). It could be off by, say, five or six planets either way -- although we're only dealing with the *observable* universe, so there could be many many many many many more.

The scientific world is an amazing, wonderful, powerful, inspirational thing that is just so incredible in its majesty and beauty that it seems so very belittling to claim that there's a divine hand behind this truly unique and awesome thing called existence.

Bonus question: If the universe created God, what created God? If X, why can't X apply to "the universe at whole"? If NOT X, then why can't the universe be held to the same standard? "It always was, and always will be..."

Further reading:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Improbable_things_happen
http://www.symphonyofscience.com/

Sources:

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_universe
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe

What anonymous doesn't have in common with those people is crippling poverty and religious conviction, that are given as the underlying cause. I don't understand the mentality involved here.

Actually, many of the suicide bombers don't have crippling poverty. They are more likely to be literate and have college degrees than the general populations from which they spring. One fact that might be particularly interesting to Slashdot is that there's a disproportionate number of terrorists who are engineers. See e.g. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/magazine/12FOB-IdeaLab-t.html and http://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/at-work/tech-careers/why-are-terrorists-often-engineers. There's an associated idea known as the Salem Hypothesis which is the observation that in the US, anti-evolution proponents with advanced degrees are disproportionately engineers - http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Salem_Hypothesis). Engineers in the United States are also more politically conservative and religious than scientists. There's something weird going on here. But regardless, attributing "crippling poverty" as a major part of why people engage in suicide bombing seems to be off.

At the most general level, that usually implies that this is a God who came to earth, sacrificed himself (to himself but that's another story), and then rose from the dead. What you're saying is that the Universe came to earth, sacrificed itself, and then rose from the dead.

Honestly, that makes even less sense than religions generally do.

That's because you're essentially saying "If we redefine God to be a deepity, wouldn't it exist?" - well, yes, that's true (trivially, the universe itself does exist), but you can't really have a conversation when you use your own, unique definitions of words.

Except that is not what I am saying, I think you are missing my point, so I'll paraphase myself; Is the existence of science itself the evidence of "Gods" existence?

I don't know how to test that but I think that calling that a "deepity" or being unable to rationalise it by just saying "no" is just a way of being mentally lazy. I'm not saying that's what you are saying, just that it's too easy to dismiss ideas that way instead of being rational and, at least, finding a philosophical test.

What if I was to posit that what we call "God" is actually the universe itself and that life is an attempt by the universe to understand itself, using reason, in the brief period that life can exist before the universe subsequently decays into entropy.

You're free to do that if you want, we really can't stop you.

However, after that point, when you tell someone "I believe God exists", they will not have the faintest clue what you're talking about - they'll think you're talking about the usual definition of God, which in the USA means something at least vaguely like the God of the Christian Bible. At the most general level, that usually implies that this is a God who came to earth, sacrificed himself (to himself but that's another story), and then rose from the dead. What you're saying is that the Universe came to earth, sacrificed itself, and then rose from the dead.

Honestly, that makes even less sense than religions generally do.

What you're talking about might carry the label "God" in your mind, but pretty much everyone else you talk to will have an entirely different concept of what that word means.

That's because you're essentially saying "If we redefine God to be a deepity, wouldn't it exist?" - well, yes, that's true (trivially, the universe itself does exist), but you can't really have a conversation when you use your own, unique definitions of words.

I suspect it was just a hopeful mod. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between satire and fundamentalist views.

XFree86 died when the community got up and left. Even with free hosting, the remaining XFree86 partisans couldn't keep it alive and lost interest.

Before that, the X Consortium - backed by the might of industry - died when no-one could be found to participate in it ... because XFree86 was where the action (i.e., community) was.

Citizendium forked from Wikipedia, recruited a pile of academics, then Larry Sanger drove them away. (And then the cranks moved in.) When someone said "chaps, CZ is dead" and tried another fork, they called him ... a "traitor". This from the project that was a fork itself.

XOrg is under the MIT X11 licence, but seems to get plenty of contributions back - because it's where the community is. An open source licence with centripetal force from the gravitational pull of the community.

Wayland's lead developers and all the people pushing for it in Fedora are X.Org developers. They're not "traitors" to X, they're people with their eye on the target: a good open source desktop.

EGCS won by the community getting up and leaving GCC.

LibreOffice won when the community got up and left Oracle. Oracle and IBM's approach in trying to claw it back is gibberingly, hilariously misconceived. (And Rob Weir blew his cred irretrievably lying about what the FSF had said and directing abuse at the FSF rep who tried to correct his lie. Once a shill equals a shill.)

OOo=XFree86 with a sponsor. Yay sponsors. Can IBM employ enough contributors to single-handedly make up for the enthusiasm to be found at LibreOffice? I really doubt it.

XFree86 died when the community got up and left. Even with free hosting, the remaining XFree86 partisans couldn't keep it alive and lost interest.

Before that, the X Consortium - backed by the might of industry - died when no-one could be found to participate in it ... because XFree86 was where the action (i.e., community) was.

Citizendium forked from Wikipedia, recruited a pile of academics, then Larry Sanger drove them away. (And then the cranks moved in.) When someone said "chaps, CZ is dead" and tried another fork, they called him ... a "traitor". This from the project that was a fork itself.

XOrg is under the MIT X11 licence, but seems to get plenty of contributions back - because it's where the community is. An open source licence with centripetal force from the gravitational pull of the community.

Wayland's lead developers and all the people pushing for it in Fedora are X.Org developers. They're not "traitors" to X, they're people with their eye on the target: a good open source desktop.

EGCS won by the community getting up and leaving GCC.

LibreOffice won when the community got up and left Oracle. Oracle and IBM's approach in trying to claw it back is gibberingly, hilariously misconceived. (And Rob Weir blew his cred irretrievably lying about what the FSF had said and directing abuse at the FSF rep who tried to correct his lie. Once a shill equals a shill.)

OOo=XFree86 with a sponsor. Yay sponsors. Can IBM employ enough contributors to single-handedly make up for the enthusiasm to be found at LibreOffice? I really doubt it.

Oh gee, didn't see that one coming. No one's ever accused me of being an industry apologist. /sarcasm So, have you ever worked with GMOs? I have. Have you ever been in a molecular biology lab? I have. Have you ever even talked with a plant biologist? I have, quite frequently. Or are you just playing the same tired canard that every quack, crank, and denialist plays when they have no evidence to back their unscientific point yet refuse to consider that maybe they're wrong? Have you ever considered that maybe the reason I'm handwaving is because all the science is only on one side, and all the other side has is sloppy studies, non falsifiable musing, and a conspiracy, which you so nicely demonstrate with your shill gambit. Everything I've said is basic information that just about any plant biologist will tell you, not controversial at all among relevant experts. I hardly went into the details. And if you'd actually read what I wrote you'd see I covered that several times. Funny thing about stupid conspiracies is, they always attack some big company or something with over the top misinformation, so whenever you correct those lies for the sake of accuracy, you are then accused of working for them and dismissed. A great strategy for appealing to the scientifically illiterate.

But hey, if actually knowing what you're talking about makes one a manipulator, no wonder the world is in the state it's in. It's people like you who assume anyone who actually has education and experience is part of teh ebil conspiracy. Am I condescending? Maybe a little, and you know why? Because education won't work, people like you won't read the easily available texts on the subject, you won't listen to petty little things like facts and reason, or even basic logic. Cracking a damn science book is so hard for some people that I don't see many other options besides mockery. It worked for science based medicine, maybe it will work for science based agriculture, and speaking of which, people like you are the reason kids still die of measles.

Consciousness is weird. Quantum theory is weird. Therefore quantum theory must explain consciousness.

That's essentially the argument here, and it's pretty easily seen as fallacious. There's no actual evidence that consciousness requires quantum mechanics, besides the trivial fact that our brains are chemical computers and chemistry requires quantum mechanics.

In a nuthsell, Quantum woo.

The real test of Science is whether quantum bogodynamics can explain why the fuck this article was written, much less published in Discover, much less posted on /.

"Everything has always been like this" is a great null hypothesis, not only because it's neutral, but because the evidence doesn't support it.

Certainly, which is why it is discussed in conventional teaching of evolution or cosmology. But the null hypothesis of a static universe or planet is of no interest to advocates of "intelligent design," because it doesn't give their own favored narrative privileged status. The strategy used almost universally by advocates of pseudosciences such as "intelligent design" is to avoid formulating a testable (and thus potentially refutable) hypothesis, and to focus entirely upon scattershot attacks on the accepted theory (the notorious "Gish Gallop" ). The underlying assumption is that there are only two alternatives, so they do not have to support their own claim, but only find fault with evolution.

In accordance with Pope's Law, I can't tell if this should be laughed at or laughed with. My parody detector is completely fried in these crazy years.

I think it's rational to distrust sources that repeatedly lied to you. It's irrational to just believe any source that disagrees with sources you distrust... The problem is that some conspiracies seem fairly rational and have no obvious facts that contradict it. When conspiracies become better and better and regular news outlets become worse and worse there will be a point where you can't distinguish fact from fiction anymore... It's like a news variant of Poe's law!