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Mars & The Teachable Moment
Gallenod writes "In this article at space.com, Edna DeVore, Director of Education and Public Outreach for SETI, states that people are being continually exposed to pseudo-science from watching television and reading tabloids. Her examples include the "face" on Mars (which she discusses in detail in the article), alien autopsies, Area 51 in the Nevada desert as alien storage quarters, the "non-landings" on the Moon, UFO's, and alien kidnappings. DeVore describes the current Mars missions as a "teachable moment," an opportunity to teach factual science and astronomy in the context of sensationalistic psuedo-science and the legion of money-grubbing opportunists who make their living churning it out."
The examples given are more like pseudo-reality than pseudo-science... I was thinking more along the lines of the show 24, where they can track a suspect from their cell-phone to the exact room they are in.
We regular readers of /. are continually being exposed to pseudo-intelligence and it does us no harm. Now wheres my teddy bear, I want him to explain this 2 + 2 thing to me again
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
fark mars rover photoshop contest
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
... I know that they have all been following the progress of both rovers on Mars. It has been an ongoing "project" for them since the rovers were launched and it has even driven a few parents to donate various bit of hardware to the school's computer room.
Free Firefox news reader.
I have a few friends that seem otherwise rational, but are fascinated with the pseudo-science. From what I can see this stuff is a new age religion for people who think they are too educated for classical religion. It provides a framework of an intelligence beyond understanding, that has a plan for us and provides a reason for our existence. Instead if God, you have Greys. Factual science is not going to convert people away from this.
But if I said we found evidence of Martian civilization that killed themselves because of high-carb diets? I might end up on Oprah.
The problem is the American public wants exciting news so much, they'll believe anything. I mean, look at your local news. Then look at BBC. BBC would put most people to sleep in America. Our news quality is done in Europe, but there they call it "The Sun."
What science needs is more Page 3 girls.
Or is it that she is just another cog in the vast conspiracy machine trying to detract people from what is really going on? I mean, it would seem so simple for the Illuminati to put an "actual scientist" in a place to debunk the "myths" that about. Come on, we know what is really going on! Stop covering things up! Maybe they should reveal the truth behind the s786fh&^23b!@}{!n7afy23jsdf.... NO CARRIER
FNORD
--Chag
if a lot of Sci-Fi on TV wasn't a big "public education" project.
This was covered, on a tangent, in a STNG episode. The short-version is Picard attempts to make first contact, but the political leaders decide that the populous isn't ready - and that a public education project will be started/expanded.
For example, there are the persistant rumors that Orson Welles radioplay was an experiment designed to gauge public response, and that shortly thereafter it was decided that *we* aren't ready.
Continuing rumors like that the original Star Trek didn't have enough advertising income to keep it on the air for a single season, and certainly not enough to carry it for three.
Now the government is getting publicly involved in the effort, with the 'life on Mars' possibilities that were thrown about in the last few years.
40 years ago, how would people have reacted to the government saying that there might actually be life on Mars? Today, it's no big deal - because we've been "educated".
Thats if the people are teachable, you still have those people who think the moon landing was faked, and then some people do not trust the government all together. I realize that this may seem extreme, and maybe a lil OT, but honestly, I think a private corporation reaching space will do a better job of teaching. Like X-Prize for instance.
je suis parce que j'aime
but I found a Battle Axe, then a Rocket Luancher and a Shotgun, and I blew all those Creatures back to their motherplanet... or maybe that was a game I played.
- Your stupidity got you into this mess, why can't it get you out? -Will Rogers
*THEY* are trying to convince us to take the tinfoil hats off so they can begin the reprogramming! Don't do it!!!!
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Edna, I don't know but I would be happy that people are talking about space on any level. For all of us who grew up watching Star Wars and Star Trek, I think some sensationalistic psuedo-science has it merits in getting people interested about space. I don't know what would be more sensationalistic than finding aliens.
...it was actually pseudo-science that got me interested in the real thing. Books from the elementary school library about UFOs, Bigfoot, and ghosts scared the hell out of my teachers, I'm sure, but they got me interested in peeking into life's mysteries on my own.
I'm not sure what flipped the switch from credulity to skepticism, but those early things got me interested. Maybe it was like the old myths of our ancient ancestors: wrong, but they still showed some drive towards explanation and understanding, however over-simplified.
I'm not saying we should have classes on UFOs, but I wouldn't be too alarmed to see my kid reading about them.
Unless he started growing strange mushrooms in the basement or wearing a tin-foil hat...
I think pseudoscience meshes better with many people's worldview than actual science does. It's hard for laypeople to understand the terminology and goals of real science, and the language is often couched in ambiguity and qualification (because scientists don't want to make unsupported statements). "Pseudoscientists" on the other hand, can say whatever they want, because their only concern is attracting eyeballs and therefore either religious converts (in the case of "Creation Science") or people's dollars (in many other cases). And there are a huge number of people out there who are PROFOUNDLY uneducated about science, and either distrust REAL scientists because they can't understand them, or because they've been taught that nonsense feel-good alternative theories etc. are being "suppressed" by the scientific community.
The scientific community shares some blame as well - "popularizing" science is seen as a vulgar activity by many, when in fact it should be seen as essential as long as the truth is not distorted along the way.
Freedom: "I won't!"
I always took those reports with a grain of salt and enjoyed them as bits of entertainment. I remember when the "face" came out. I was in my high school science club and we had a scientist from NASA show up to our school. He gave us this pretty neat (geek alert) report discussing the face. Just remember, half of what you hear is a lie, the other half is a mistake.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
freaks will get more time on TV (Check Jerry springer) and most people believe TV, so if you put idiots infront of a TV which says "ET will beam you up" they will start packing their bags ready to go.
If you tell them it's just a very rocky place with no aliens, maybe some very very minor life forms and a former ocean. They go "pfft, it's like a desert, I perfered the green men on NBC and Fox"
It's the modern world.
--- [Insert intresting Sig here]
This is certainy not an issue limited to pseudo-science.
It seems to me that schools don't do a very good job of teaching critical thinking.
Does what I am reading/seeing make sense ?
How do I verify that what I'm someone is telling me is reasonably true and accurate ?
I think the author does a very nice job of pointing out that something like the face on mars is a great way to teach those skills with very specific examples.
It certainly should not be limited to science.
The ability to reason and think critically is also being severely hurt by the increasingly abusive marketing aimed at children, IMNSHO.
I'll even go out on a limb and say that this is in large part the cause of the political polarization in the US. Critical thinking includes taking in opposing views and trying to understand if they are valid or not.
Absolute statements are never true
Here is the key part of the article.
"Now, imagine being a science teacher with a classroom full of 15-year old students who believe the television accounts of the face on Mars, cities on the Moon, alien autopsies, etc., and you are teaching your unit on space and astronomy. A careful excursion through the characteristics of the planets and their moons interests your students; the red spot on Jupiter would hold at least 3 Earths, a cool factoid, but it doesn't grab them. The face on Mars does. And this was what I discussed with the science teacher at NSTA. "
Have you've ever thought it is the failing of teachers, not of the students or tv producers? If these shows are wrong, prove it to them. Show the students how to questions these things. You could talk about media motivation, about what other scientists points of view are. You can talk about past things which were thought that were wrong. There are a lot of things that a teacher can do. Don't blame the student for being a weak teacher.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
There really are people who believe this stuff. And forget the pseudo-science, just having a dumb story in the media, ANY media, is enough to convince a lot of people.
As much as I desperately want to believe that most people are fairly intelligent and take this stuff with a large grain of salt (like a salt block) I continually meet people who absolutely stun me with their gullability (stupidity is too mean a word, but perhaps more applicable?).
I have an Uncle who was absolutely convinced that the Mars rover had snapped a picture of a "Martian Cat" with big "martian-looking" eyes and then thought for sure the government was covering it up by removing all the copies of the "World Weekly News" from the stands before anyone else could buy a copy. The obvious fact that the store sold out is perhaps even more depressing though. Who buys that crap? Oh yeah, my Uncle.
But I agree in general, pseudoscience is everywhere and quality science is scarce. Science Fantasy tends to dominate, whereas Speculative Fiction is very thin on the ground, and pure science is almost extinct.
Part of the blame is with the scientists. Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan managed to combine science with art. So did Isaac Newton (pianist) and Steven Hawking. If the rest can't be bothered to reach the unwashed masses, then they can't object too hard when the unwashed masses try to figure out the world for themselves.
The other part of the blame is with politicians. Science and arts get next to no budget, whereas the military gets a fortune. Guess the mindset of the next generation - it's not going to be on physics or painting!
The arts and the sciences need EQUAL time and EQUAL budget, and the artists and scientists have to do whatever it takes to get that, or their discipline will die out, to be replaced with re-runs of Scooby Doo. If that's not what you want, then show the world why it should care.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The trouble with psuedo-science is that it sounds good to the untrained mind. But the thing I love the most is when a purveyor of psuedo science says the me something like, "You need to be more open minded to understand this". I have a relative that was trying to sell me a "Ozone Generator" and air purifier ( filter ) for my home. I had one of these units in my home as a trial ( I paid no money ). I checked out the supposed "science" behind the device and found that there was ample evidence that high concentrations of ozone are actually dangerous to people especially asthmatics. Since my wife has had asthma in the past, I became very concerned. I called my relative and told him I would be returning the device and that he should think twice about making outrageous unsubstatiated claims of scientific evidence where none existed. He had the gall to tell me I would understand the "science" if I were more "open minded".
It is muddy headed thinking like that that results in most of the worlds troubles.
I hate egghead articles like this. She seems to assume that everyone without her credentials and background is a moron with no common sense.
Frankly, in my experience, the opposite has been true. Friends of mine with little to no post-secondary education, blue-collar types, seem to be more grounded and sensible, whereas the highly educated literate I dealt with in University were so gullible it was ridiculous.
But that's besides the point.
I know Nessie and Bigfoot are just ghost stories. I know ghost stories are make-believe. I know no spaceship crashed at Roswell, I know Neil Armstrong really did land on the moon, I know the face on mars is as real as the faces in any random cloud. So do 99% of the population, I'd imagine.
So why do I watch the alien abduction "special reports" on sci-fi, or the hunt for Nessie on history channel? Because it's ENTERTAINING.
Sure, you could replace those shows with dry astro-geology lectures, etc, but people will just tune out.
TV (and I'd say all mass media) are primarily forms of entertainment to people. That's the primary reason so few share the slashdotters outrage that $NEWSCHANNEL may be biased. Endless reporting/speculating about the latest little kid to be raped and murdered is entertainment to people. They don't know or care about the child, have no personal stake in the story, yet we'll keep having news about Jon Benet et al forever.
Nothing on TV is factual, everyone knows it. I watched one of the designers on "trading spaces" install what had to be 500 square feet of laminate flooring one episode, and then at the end sit there with a straight face and say that the entire room was less than $1000 bucks.
The day I care about the "factual science" of martian geology or microbiology, I'll pick up a textbook.
I don't watch TV for "factual" science, just like I don't read slashdot for "factual" computer science.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
But it's not what people think. NASA did actually get to the moon; the problem was that it was deemed too controversial to allow footage of what was actually found there to be released to the public. Thus, faked landing footage was created.
Silly rabbit.
There's a great book by Carl Sagan that talks about his perspective on Pseudo-Science and how it's affecting Science, as well as the dangers. It's a wonderful read. The book is called The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in this topic.
Life today. Uncertainty tomorrow.
Part of the problem is that "regular" press reports much of the shadier stuff because many debunkers are not very good, and have lost credibility with journalists. Most debunkers try to paint everybody and everything as superstitious idiots. They focus more on personality patterns than the evidence itself. This triggers reporters to dig into the personality of the debunkers as well (to be even-handed), and being human, they sometimes do stupid things or jump to bad conclusions also. It thus becomes a personality shoot-out instead of an evidence shootout. If the debunkers don't have a good answer for something, they should just say so rather than point to some past "believer" transgressions.
For example, some UFO debunkers have created some rather elaborate psychology theories to explain the alleged hallucinations of airline pilots and cops with regard to some rather detailed and unusual UFO reports. (Surprisingly, most UFO debunkers don't think outright fibs are the biggest cause.) If you don't have a decent counter-explanation, just say so. Just say something like, "Just because it is odd does not necessarily mean it is from outer space". Instead they will point out a case were a train driver mistook Venus for an oncoming train in the fog and imply that all sightings are the same kind of thing. Sometimes you just plain don't have an answer. Leave it at that. If you force explanations, you start to resemble the "believers".
Table-ized A.I.
DeVore describes the current Mars missions as a "teachable moment," an opportunity to teach factual science and astronomy in the context of sensationalistic psuedo-science and the legion of money-grubbing opportunists who make their living churning it out.
I think it's a great idea, but probably doomed to fail for a couple of reasons.
First off, pseudo-science is usually described as sensationalistic because it is fairly sensational. Light on reality, but very sensational. It's much more entertaining to see faces on Mars than trace water. If you doubt this, examine the headlines on the tabloid rack the next time you're checking out in the grocery store. Style usually beats substance.
Also, given the huge volume of crap that people believe about space, any useful information will probably be lost. My last attempt to fix this problem was a discussion with a family member who is a conspiracy theorist. This person does not believe we landed on the moon. And had loads of total crap pseudo-science to back him up. As I calmly talked him through the problems with his "facts", he became more and more agitated. I was ruining his world view.
After a while I gave up. He wanted his belief, and anything I said was because "they" had gotten to me, and I couldn't open up my mind to other possibilities. Facts be damned.
I think really the only people who want the truth about what's out there are the scientific types in the first place. We don't need to see faces on Mars to get excited. Trace water is exciting enough, because we know what it implies. If the Teachable Moment finds a few of these people, that's great. Just don't expect many converts.
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
My friend says, "The moon landings were faked, and I found a website with lots of evidence."
:)
I respond, "I am familiar with it, and have found equivalent websites that debunk their "evidence" as pseudoscience, with their own, solid, evidence."
He responds, "Oh no dude, you just GOTTA read it again, it was totally faked."
Though one example is not a representative sample, his actions seem consistent with those of the masses....people simply will not bother to consider true evidence objectively, nor to educate themselves to the point at which they can even discern good evidence from crap. They respond better to a good story, and good rhetoric, and that is just the way it is.
Oh well, its just one more way in which geeks are better than other people.
all that pseudo science. In years past when I'd fall asleep to Art Bell and watch too much X-Files, those things seemed plausable to me. After ridding myself of those inputs, the fake science and the paranoia revolving around it have vanished. Not letting a radio show fill my subconscious sleeping mind every night was probably the number one way to de-program that garbage from myself.
*TheDarb
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"Teachable science" is a cool concept and a good practice, but most science will always look like magic to some people simply because of their I.Q.s and/or mindset.
They'll continue to be unable to differentiate between genuine discoveries and pseudo-science, no matter what. But we have to try to explain these things, because they'll also continue be able to breed and to vote. However, I could be wrong, I often am.
I'm not really a web designer, I just play one on the Internet.
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Stephen Hawking
since the advent of the movement of enlightenment, science has more and more become a replacement for religion. but instead of making every one of us enlightened, rational persons this process has led to a situation in which we no longer question our "scientific" believes. instead we just assume that somebody else will have proven it, and that things couldn't be different from our expectation and our world view.
in fact, we are little better off today than the population before the enlightenment, who had serious problems with superstition, general fear of the unknown, etc. superstition is still a non-negligible factor in the lives of many today, even if outwardly sniggered at.
but most of all we tend to cling to a set of believes without ever questioning them! as my prime example I often use the phases of the moon, which nicely demonstrated my own "illusion of knowledge" which I had acquired during my childhood and never questioned.
ask yourself how the shadow on the moon is produced while it goes through one "monthly" cycle and how the sun and the earth are involved.
I will bet that more than half of you will actually have a wrong model of what is going on!
this in itself is not such a bad thing because the shadows on the moon are of such relevance for our daily lives, but it vividly demonstrates how little rationally we tend to be on topics which are not related to our "special field" of interest!
even more disturbingly it showed me with what fervor people will give blatantly wrong answers when asked about such problems. and this surely is a major problem of our para-scientific society today: applying scientific certainty and zeal to scientifically wrong statements!
jethr0
Earth is the only worthwhile real estate in the solar system. Mars and Luna are both essentially airless. Venus is way too hot. Everything else is worse. Even the places we've explored have boring geology. Space is boring.
Rocketry has hit a wall. After sixty years of rocketry, the things still barely work. In aviation, sixty years took us from the Wright Brothers to the Boeing 707. In rocketry, by 1970 we had the Saturn V and the Space Shuttle. In the 35 years since, there's been essentially no progress. (Even if the X-prize succeeds, it will have accomplished less than Yuri Gagarin did in 1961.)
If it weren't for psuedoscience and hype about space, NASA would be funded like ocean exploration. NASA would be on the Discovery Channel, like Jacques Costeau, asking for money. Psuedoscience keeps the funding flowing.
Wasn't the existence of water on Mars once thought to be Science Fiction? They used to think the canals held water until what, about the 1950's? Then that became out of favor. Now they found evidence again with the last probes that Mars DID have running water. I don't pay attention to scientists. Especially Biologists, Astronomers, and Physics. They change theories every few years and everything that was known is completely disproven. For instance, Quantium Mechanics would have made Scientists in the 1950's spin on their heads...
Fortunately, the article is really about teaching students critical-thinking skills, not deriding a "legion of money-grubbing opportunists," so the submitter of this article has [perhaps inadvertently] provided an example for this lesson.
--
"Hello. I'm Leonard Nimoy. The following tale of alien encounters is true. And by true, I mean false. It's all lies. But they're entertaining lies. And in the end, isn't that the real truth? The answer is: No."
- Leonard Nimoy {The Simpsons, "The Springfield Files"}
Learning is made easier with immediate results that make students wonder 'Why? How?' Otherwise, it's dry, boring, and students don't learn anything. They memorize what they'll need just long enough to pass the test and then forget it.
This article assumes teachers know the truth and ought to correct students misconceptions, but sadly back in 7th grade I had a social studies teacher who filled our naive young minds with such gems of truth as:
* Atari video games were funded and developed by the department of defense in order to improve our reflexes to prepare us for 21st century automated combat... the company name "Atari" was just an acronym for special black ops project.
* The United States could easily bring the Soviet Union to its knees at any moment simply by flying the space shuttle at supersonic speed back and forth high above Soviet cities, the barrage of sonic booms would cause mass confusion and panic that would cause the Soviet republic a catastrophic collapse... therefore we do not need nuclear weapons, we have the space shuttle.
There were many other examples of his wit but those two stood out in my mind. This teacher was highly regarded by students for many years because his insights, and also he would buy Chinese food for the entire class on Fridays, so we all listened to him intently... it wasn't until some years later that most of us figured out how far off base he was. I wonder how many of his students still to this day accept everything he said as fact.
pseudo-science like the shit the FDA passes off as research? Oh, wait, that's just me trolling. The scientific media (if you don't think the media is largely insane, you haven't been paying enough attention to The SCO Group's antics) is the worst -- opinions of scientists who have never pursued the material in question are given as irrefutable fact. Where's the real science?
History just keeps repeating itself... Don't believe me? Galileo comes to mind, but I think Edison said it best: "The inventor tries to meet the demand of a crazy civilization. Society is never prepared to receive any invention. Every new thing is resisted, and it takes years for the inventor to get people to listen to him and years more before it can be introduced." (emphasis added) And this is for actual inventions -- ideas made into reality and easily demonstrated. Something more esoteric is orders of magnitude more difficult to convey.
Hell, "pseudo-science" is the kind of snide commentary that might have been applied to Semmelweis in his day. That's the doctor who tried in vain to get other doctors to realize the importance of washing their hands after working with cadavers and before assisting in labor and delivery. He was ridiculed and ignored, too, until the microscope was invented and finally made it blatantly obvious why washing hands was a good idea. But because he did not have that proof, his contemporaries dismissed him as a lunatic, and women continued to die due to easily preventable childbed fever.
There are charlatans out there, but that does not mean that every wild idea is the uttering of some nutball. The term "pseudo-science" is used by the closed-minded to justify their continued obsessions with The Way Things Are(TM). It's just as bad as the Church's refusal in Galileo's day to look through the frickin' telescope. No, actually, it's worse, because we have the advantage of historical perspective.
Well, students of history do, anyway.
There aren't any canals. The "belief" that there were canals on Mars, carrying water was an artifact of the relatively poor resolving power of the telescopes of the day, and the human mind's desire to find patterns. It's virtually the same process behind the claims of the "Mars face".
Current science says that it would be extremely unlikely that you would find liquid water, on the surface of Mars given it's current conditions (temperature, pressure).
Evidence found by the Rovers indicates that at some point in Mars past, there was likely a standing body of water, probably a highly saline "ocean".
These statements are not contradicting each other.
Yes, but they will cower in fear when VGER returns!
Antidotes:w w.randi.org
http://www.badastronomy.com
http://w
Jason Ohler just gave a talk at NASA/Goddard, in which he discussed the problems with technology, and in teaching students about art as related to communication.
He also touched upon issues with manipulated information, and how most kids these days just think if it's on a website, it's got to be true. [which was the slogan of ScoopThis.com, since gone, but by the same person who did the Metallica Hoax].
One of Dr. Ohler's points about deception in communication was that it's best to make it seem plausible, but incorrect, rather than just ranting. [He cited a webpage about Martin Luther King, that was indirectly tied to a white supremicist group, that just slightly skewed the details] Unfortunately, kids don't understand that a website has no due diligence required in confirming their sources -- and newspapers and television news are trying so hard to scoop each other, that we end up with Jack Kelley, Jayson Blair, and the like.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I think the trend with pseudoscience is a reaction to the fact that mass media has basically given the populace attention-deficit-disorder.
Instead of teaching people about robotics we now have "robot war death matches". Instead of Paleontology we have the story of the lonely Velociraptor fighting for his life in an epic miniseries. Instead of archeology we have shows teasing the viewer over whether or not aliens from Mars built the Mayan temples. No more "scientific-themed" shows about weather, geography, or geology unless they involve tragic sinkings of famous ships, cars being blown through the air, the search for amazing lost treasure, or cities overrun by lava with frantic cameramen running for their lives.
Your average person nowadays, can't seem to stomach "pure science", unless something involved isn't bleeding, exploding, covered with gold and diamonds, or posessed by a supernatural/alien presence.
Mistaking entertainment for news/sports/other is common these days. The human abilities that allow us to imagine wonderful, futuristic technologies are sadly housed in the same brains that often have difficulty distinguishing reality from fantasy. Not to get all "Matrixy" on you, but have you ever dreamed something that you absolutely thought was real? I know I have had dreams that I _swore_ were real, only to eventually realize that they were in fact, dreams. This ease in confusing the real with the unreal is something that is persistent accross cultures and as another poster mentioned, is also what makes it so easy for humans to believe in religious dogma. Humans as a whole are easily duped.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
The problem is that our educational system doesn't teach basic critical thinking skills - those aren't developed until college (if then). The problem is that our educational system is a garbage-in, garbage-out system with a watered-down politically correct curriculum that warps context and is rife with inaccuracies and some outright lies. They're designed to increase "self-esteem" for some, at the expense of actually being able to be a productive and informed citizen.
There is an excellent article that was online a while back called Sesame Street, Epistemology, and Freedom that gives a good background into some of the problems, causes, and solutions in terms of our educational system's woeful lack of critical thinking skill-building. Thankfully the Internet Archive still has a copy since I've not been able to find it online. A sample:
If we can't teach children to think abstractly and learning how to quantify and qualify the streams of information that blast them every day, we can't expect to maintain an informed and reasonable democracy. Unfortunately we have an education system build by people like Horace Mann that were designed for the Industrial Age and are wholly inadequate for the intellectual demands of the Information Age.
Have you ever seen a phone conversation in a movie devolve into a fifteen minute discussion on a coworker's hair? Or seen a lead in a movie take a ten minute dump? Movies don't include the mundane details because they are boring and don't move the plot along.
Waiting for a PC to boot up, or seeing the real quality of video conferencing, or even watching people use the relatively user-unfriendly interfaces of real software would be boring.
Believe me, I've tried to correct her, but she's clinging to this dream.
Of course, then there's my grandfather who thinks that Venus is actually a chunk of another planet that existed between Mars and Jupiter. It was in some book he read, so it must be true!
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
What kills me is that we see computers used in a way that doesn't even make sense within the loopy rules established for them in the same danged story. Everything's dumbed down, that's to be expected, and okay, they exaggerate what today's machines can do. (You expected long moments while the characters wait for a good carrier signal?) But I at least want the rules to be consistent.
Good example: The Star Trek computers show radically different amounts of independent agency according to situation. They can make holodeck characters act according to their characters in a freely-branching story, but they can't, apparently, problem solve the task of looking for the meaning of alien symbols without specific verbal commands from a human. We're talking about a simple correlation between sounds and meanings, you know?
The quintessential pop culture computer would be Doogie Howser's. Enormous, colorful screen with GIANT letters being typed slowly enough for the camera to follow, at excruciatingly slow "silent film dialog card" pace, D-O-O-G-I-E-'-S T-R-I-T-E D-I-A-R-Y E-N-T-R-I-E-S. If Doogie was to ask for the meaning of life, and the computer was to whir and grind and maybe show an outsized Windows "progress" bar, you'd have the archetypal TV computer. (In the movies it'd maybe be more like "WOPR" from War Games.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
No. There is absolutely NO evidence for that, and it's not even physically possible for it to have happened.
badastronomy.com has an execelent debunking of that rediculous claim and many others.
is due to the polarizing atmosphere in the US.
On the one hand, you have liberal relativists, for whom no fact is concrete, and who cheerfully will advance kids through schools whether they can read/write or not, simply to make sure their "self-esteem" is intact.
On the other, you have conservative absolutists who will not only excoriate dissent, but both deny obvious facts and assert such ridiculousities as truth (or, more likely, Truth) that all actual facts become valueless.
Yeah, THAT's an atmosphere that's really going to bring out the intellectual cream of a civilization.
Now, tell me that's not flamebait!
-Styopa
I have a friend who has gotten more and more "involved" in the chemtrails phenomenon, and despite my best efforts to convince him otherwise (both factually and logically) he refuses to believe otherwise. I used to think it was a kind of tongue-in-cheek joke, but since he's started building "emitters" (large bits of copper tubing encasing helical copper wound-crystals, titanium shavings..) and claiming their power attracts forced entry into his house and black helicopters I'm kind of convinced he's slipping into a delusional paranoia.
Factual rebuttals are always refuted by claims of faked evidence or collusion based on the political/military capabilities of the people behind the phenomenon. You can't refute this -- if the person believes that the contra-evidence is faked and it can be logically fit into the conspiracy as a whole, it just reinforecs the conspiracy.
Logical rebuttals at least cause a pause, since asking how the government is able to maintain an effective, secret program that requires the participation of tens of thousands of people and billions in expenses and equipment when the CIA/FBI/Military/et al fail so spectacularly to maintain even minimal secrecy over other aspects of their operations is tough one to counter.
Regardless, there are just too many conspiracists with too much time on their hands to ever be satisfied with factual, logical explanations. In the case of the Mars rovers, it's all too easy to just deny that stuff even happened, just as they've been doing with the moon missions for decades.
In some ways the Internet makes it worse. It used to be that a conspiracy theorist focused on a single conspiracy (ie, Kennedy's assassination). Nowadays, they have access to so many conspiracies that they all get tied together, and are all part of a conspiracy universe that is self-referential and self-reinforcing.
I can only presume that the conspiracies fill some social/psychological vacuum that religion has failed to do so in modern society, that, or whatever they're putting in the water is breeding paranoia....
I think it's much harder to deal with the kinds of issues in the article; issues that most people have little or no direct experience with (Who's been to the moon or Mars or even JPL? Who's actually been to Area 51?). I think it is much more productive addressing issues that either come up in everyday life, or that can be demonstrated directly (hands-on) in a classroom. Then use these to build a good scientific skepticism.
Plenty of pseudo-science can be debunked by properly teaching probability. There are plenty of fun, hands-on demonstrations related to false coincidences. But these are all too rare. I remember a middle school math class argument among several of the top students in the class in a top district. They spent much of the class arguing over whether the probability of getting 2 heads from independently flipping two coins is 1/4 or 1/3, and never came to a resolution. It would have been simple enough for the teacher to run the experiment. My point is that if it's this difficult to get across even a simple result among bright students, then the lesson plan is wrong to begin with, and it certainly doesn't scale up to the more interesting fallacies related to coincidence.
There are plenty more demonstrations that can debunk ESP. Imagine a teacher giving a mind reading demonstration, then showing how it was done, and afterward explaining how the pros do it.
As for the "face" on Mars, the article starts to suggest some of this by bringing in examples closer to "home": local clouds and mountains that look like objects but are much more clearly coincidence.
And another avenue would be to critically examine in class some commercials or other easily accessible and refutable examples of TV propaganda. The goal would be to break down the idea that any media source is unconditionally reliable.
But as long as the gambling industry continues to grow, and particularly those games with fixed odds against the players like the slots and lotteries, I see little hope of wide success.
My wife loves this old movie (starring Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn). She loves to watch it whenever it comes onto AMC.
I for one hate the movie because of the butchering they do to the IBM computers back then. To some extent, it's a byproduct of our education and experience, we can recognise the major inaccuracies in a movie or TV show, and want to fix it.
On the other hand, when a show comes on that utilizes speech pathology or audiology (what my wife has a masters degree in) she cringes and tries to explain what they've done wrong.
In short, it depends on your level of knowledge about the props or plotpoints in the movie.
Yeah. I can't believe I spent all that money on my "Face on Mars" mug and Alien Autopsy Med-Kit.
Capitalism: Taking advantage of impressionable people since time immemorable.
I don't believe these "pseudoscientists" are the problem. Hell, they are just making an honest buck selling their stories to the masses. If the masses choose to believe them, why are they to blame?
(Its not like they're spammers).
No. The problem is with the educational system that allows these people to finish high-school without even having the ability to critically think about what they are being fed.
However, smart consumers are bad business.* Given the current non-separation between big-business and state, there is too much short-term gain to be made by keeping the population stupid.
*As an IT management book I was reading on the weekend stated, IT people don't care why the Marketting people believe that consumers want an intimate, emotional relationship with their hand soap, we just implement the web-page.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
Rent or buy Penn and Teller's Showtime series "Bullshit!" on DVD. Put on the episode about creationism.
You want to fret about pseudo-science? In Georgia, they modified the textbooks to remove references to Darwinism, or in some cases, put it up against some cockeyed theory wrapped in a vaguely reasonable name, "Intelligent Design".
There are entire relious groups in the American South dedicated to "Intelligent Design". It postulates an absolute literal reading of the bible. The heavens and earth really WERE created in 7 days. 6 actually, he rested on the seventh. No word on the 8th or 9th. Adam and Eve were real, we did not evolve, we were blond haired and blue eyed right from the start, etc etc.
Penn and Teller then proceed to smash these idiots in the mouth. But, it's pretty scary. When the religious factions of the U.S. start re-writing textbooks, and debunking real science in favor of pseudo-science, it's scary. They interview this moron who thinks the Grand Canyon proves God created the earth in 6 days. How, I'm not sure. But he has an entire museum, well funded, dedicated to smearing Darwin. He tells people that at the end of his life, Darwin recanted all he said, and begged forgiveness from God. That and a bunch of other lies.
Penn postulates at the end of the episode that bullshit science is usually easily spotted for it's adherence to some sort of faith based postulate. Dogma eventually gets exposed.
That's why I love P&T, promoting a different kind of lifestyle. They call it, "Intelligent Skepticism". Thank your God for guys like them.
A big problem with science education is just that; teachers often are ill equiped to answer important and difficult questions. I've most often seen evidence of this in the evolution versus creationism debate. If a kid asks (probably in highschool) how evolution could be possible in light of the second law of thermodynamics, most high school teachers cannot give an adequate answer. That doesn't mean that adequate answers do not exist (they do).
Take for another example the intelligent design propaganda piece Ten questions to ask your biology teacher - excellent and compelling answers to all of those questions exist, but they are seriously tricky and would trap an average educator. You need to be very well trained in biology and other natural sciences to field those questions. Most teachers with an undergraduate degree in science and an education after degree simply don't have the knowledge.
If you are writing a script for a spy thriller, hacking into a computer system becomes identical to a safe-cracking: A specialist does arcane tech stuff while the hero brandishes a gun and stands guard. This should never take more than a minute or so, unless you have a "B" story to cut away to, in which case it can take hours.
Crucial data must exist on only one copy of portable media, which can't be duplicated (more than maybe once), erased, or even remain on the computer it came from. Otherwise, the file in question fails to work as a "McGuffin", and lazy writers can't make use of it.
People who understand computers are like good mechanics. If a grease monkey can make a working airplane out of two broken ones of completely different designs, then a good hacker can log onto the alien computer systems with his Powerbook.
Film directors tend to be old guys who don't really understand how computers work, so they frame them in contexts which they grok. This is also why sci-fi directors almost never get deep-space physics right. Ships on Star Trek move like naval vessels because directors know how to do that. When there's no "up," no gravity, no friction to slow your inertia, and no objects close enough for your movement to be observed by the naked eye, the typical director is utterly lost. Hense, when Kirk outwits Khan's "two-dimensional" thinking patterns, he does so by moving the Enterprise "down" while retaining the same Y axis. It's essentially a submarine attack, rather than a battle between free-moving objects with no fixed reference apart from the nebula they are drifting through. Film directors get submarines. They don't get the void of space.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Or maybe it's because NORMAL people really don't give a fuck about the correct physics of outer space travel, they just want to watch a movie that doesn't suck.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
...was when the previous lander crashed because of a unit conversion problem. It shows the importance of units and unit conversion.
/. and me.
I use this in lecture and lab as an example of why we just can't assume the next person will kind of know what we are doing, even if we don't completely specify it. Ironically, I just mentioned it today before reading this story - but maybe I shouldn't mention that. Maybe someone will take it as evidence of a psychic connection between
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a war on terrorism? How can we end a war on a method?
The suckiness of movie physics is directly proportional to the audience's knowledge of physics. If NORMAL people understood more physics, the bad-physics movie would suck more.
You don't see many flying pigs in movies, and when you do, the filmmakers will usually go out of their way to explain how the pigs are able to fly. This is because most NORMAL people understand that pigs, on average, don't normally fly. An unexplained flying pig in a movie would increase the suckiness of the movie.
If most people understood the correct physics of space travel, they would be less likely to accept the bad physics and the filmmakers would make sure it was correct.
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
I have relatives who believe everything in/on:
- In Search Of...
- Art Bell
- Weekly World News
- etc..
There is no point to arguing with them. Any outright contraditions to their beliefs, even when backed by hard science, are simply ignored as being part of the "plan". Whose plan, I'm not really sure. At any rate, according to the aforementioned accounts, we're currently being experimented on, mind controlled and invaded by soviets/aliens/time travellers/elvis/whatever.
Here's what has been working with them. Every time they mention [insert appropriate psudeo-science here], I counter with something completely factual and only marginally related to what they are talking about. If they mention alien cities on mars, I talk about the latest findings in martian geochemistry and don't mention aliens at all.
This has two effects:
1) They sometimes learn something.
2) I have factual ammunition that I can use later. For instance when Art Bell says that mars is made of pocket lint, I can bring up the conversation we had last week on mineral salts. And then they listen to reason (sometimes).
Hope this helps (despite some very hopeless people in the world).
#include "humorous_pop_culture_reference.h"
While they do not fly or take a part or store alien space craft at the location. More funky unusual aircraft have flown from Groom lake than you can shake stick at. The U2, SR-71 family, Have Blue, F-117 and even some Russian aircraft used for evaluation have flown and still fly from that area.
Lots of cool stuff but no space people I am afraid.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I doubt it. They still wouldn't give a fuck. I KNOW the REAL physics, and sometimes it just doesn't matter. Reality isn't fun. It isn't interesting. I live here, it's fucking boring. I don't want to watch movies filled with people acting like everyone I know doing the usual things I do. I want to see something INTERESTING.
It never ceases to amaze me how people can complain about physics in a movie, but be able to completely buy into the fact that they're in OUTER FUCKING SPACE surrounded by MIDGET BEARS and massive turd-shaped monsters. It's called "Suspension of Disbelief". At some point you have to give up your pedantic whiny-assing and just say "Fuck it. It's cool."
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
I will pass up moderating this thread.
This is exactly like having pictures in a novel that don't corespond with your mental image of the characters and the scenery. After watching the first movie, possibly the second as well, theories started to form. Most people had a personal theory as to the reasoning behind the matrix, or even the "Matrix in a Matrix" theory to explain the multiple existances of Neo. The disallusionment came from the third movie being too simple and not satsifying the expectations and theories the first two movies raised.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Hey, I've got one of those in my home too! Although mine's called a 'laser printer'.
You must think in Russian.
Oh ... I see where you are coming from ... "intelligent, purposeful. design". Sorry. I'll let you get back to your prayer meeting.
The real Captain Avatar is a fictional character, so I suppose he doesn't mind if I impersonate him.
Erm, no, that's not how it works.
The first 4 years all German kids go to the same form of school - Grundschule(loosly tranlated: basic school) - where you learn to read and write, basic math and all the rest.
After that there are three forms of schools which cover 5th - 10th year.
Which school form you go on to, is not decided by a test, but from overall grades on your yearly report. Plus the teachers give recommendations and the parents have a say too.
The three school forms are:
Hauptschule, for the weakest pupil. Which is aimed at preparing the children for the crafts and trades.
Realschule for the middle Ground.
Gymnasium for the strongest. Which is aimed at preparing the children for Univerity.
After the 10th year Haupt and Realschoolers can choose to go upwards to Gymnasium which then goes on for 3 years. After that you get a certificate called Abitur. Which is basically just a university permit.
But you can STILL get the abitur even when your already adult, your not barred from it. And you can even get to University without Abitur, if you worked for some amount of time in a line of work corellated with your study, e.g. working as a carpenter you can go to University to study architecture, or as a metal worker you can study engeneering and so on.
As for the number of people who visit each school form I have only the 1995 numbers - which were as follows
Hauptschule 26 %, Realschule 40 %, Gymnasium 24 %.
The missing percent come from some special school forms which I didn't list in my summary.
Hope that clears it up a little.