Slashdot Mirror
A Conversation with Alan Lightman
An anonymous reader writes "LiveScience has an interview with Physicist, novelist, and science writer, Alan Lightman with regards to the future of science and what the next "big" discoveries might be. From the article: "Generally attack against science is part of a greater attack against intellectualism in general. I think right now we're in an anti-intellectual period in the United States, but I think the pendulum will swing back in the other direction again."
From TFA: "In the next 100 years we will have some organisms that are half human and half machine."
Half defined how? By mass? By function? There are hybrid man machines now- mechanical hearts, knees, and implanted erection pumps.
For the hubub about attacking science, is there really that much innovation being stifled? The loudest people get the media coverage. That is why, despite the fact that everyone knows they are nuts, PETA is always on the news. And why when anti-science groups go after science, they are on the news.
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
I think right now we're in an anti-intellectual period in the United States, but I think the pendulum will swing back in the other direction again.
Anti-intellectual? The US is more pro-intellectual than it has been in a very long time. It's finally cool to be smart, to an extent. If anything, the pendulum is only just beginning to swing back in our favor. It may not look like it now, but we just need to give the pendulum more time.
Here, I'll tell ya where science'll go in the next quarter-century - first, in the area of physics we'll rediscover the stick and the stone. In the area of astrology, we'll rediscover the power of the stars over our lives and our fates. In the area of biotechnology, we'll discover that we should wash our hands before we eat our latest kill; and also not to hang around the warm, softly-glowing remains of the "cities".
There. My predictions look like they have at least as much chance as Mr. Lightman's (for the record, he seems to have spent some thought on his answers, and he exhibits a certain intelligence level, but this is like me preparing a schedule for my boss showing all unplanned outtages for the next three months!).
Someone has discovered a color scheme more repulsive than slashdot's IT section! I couldn't even let the page fully load before I closed it to prevent blindness. In this one story, I think we can forgive people for not RTFA'ing.
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
Frink: Well, you should think of stuff that people need, but which do not exist yet.
Homer: You mean like an electric-blanket-mobile?
Frink: Well, I suppose that's possible...or you could think of stuff that exists and find a new use for it, like...
Homer: Hamburger earmuffs.
Frink: Well, that may...
Homer: So long sucker!
Frink: What?! Okay, calm down, Frinky. These babies will be in the stores while he's still grappling with the pickle matrix!
Developers: We can use your help.
words that he's said like this response:
"I think science has always been under assault to some extent. I think there are fashions in cycles in which science is attacked for a period of time and is embraced for a period of time and it's attacked again. Generally attack against science is part of a greater attack against intellectualism in general. I think right now we're in an anti-intellectual period in the United States, but I think the pendulum will swing back in the other direction again. I agree with you that we're not seeing anything now that hasn't happened in earlier centuries."
will come back to haunt him.
Everyone knows that any so-called science that attempts to invalidate The Great Spaghetti Monster is heresy and will be rewritten - or rather, redrawn with crayons - in the classrooms of our nation.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I think right now we're in an anti-intellectual period in the United States, but I think the pendulum will swing back in the other direction again
Primarily because it would be anti-intellectual to expect any other sort of response from a pendulum?
I myself believe it is the Greek goddess of swinging things, Pendulus (she also has two other uhm... circles of influence) that maintains the expected reciprocation, but to each his or her own....
Is there a reason I should consider this important or is this just another guy wasting oxygen?
Nope. No reason. Just go back to watching Video Mods on MTV2.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The interviewer seems to make it seem like assaults on global warming theories are non-scientific. Most of what I've seen against global warming is not whether the temperature is rising, but whether we are the ones causing it and a lot of what they say seems reasonable. Perhaps someone here i the field could enlighten us on this matter. How much has the worlds CO2 level changed and are there any controlled experiments that would allow us to extrapolate this data to global temperatures? I really would like to know what the hard evidence is that global warming is secondary to the actions of mankind and that we are throwing enough pollution into the world to have caused it... as of now, I wouldn't feel comfortable commenting on it from either perspective. My other issue with this is that how do you conduct an experiment that you can comfortably extrapolate information that would be accurate at the global level?
When all else fails, try.
OK, can anyone point to a single line in that interview that suggests this guy knows anything that qualifies him to hold forth on "the future of science"? He seems to have a strong layman's familiarity with current work in physics, a high school student's background in any other science and a lot of pompous namedropping about the novels he's read.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
> I think right now we're in an anti-intellectual period in the United States
It is normal for the dominant fashion of a nation to be modelled on its leader (eg making yourself look like you've got syphillis was popular hundreds of years ago, when the rich and powerful all had syphillis).
That would be the most interesting, a human brain in a machine. Just hook up the cranial nerves and spinal cord and you're all set. We're pretty sure from amputations that you're still sentient after losing limbs.
We already have artificial cochleas and retinas interfacing to cranial nerves.
Well, /.ed for me. But to comment on the summary:
""Generally attack against science is part of a greater attack against intellectualism in general. I think right now we're in an anti-intellectual period in the United States, but I think the pendulum will swing back in the other direction again." "
I'm not so sure about the pendulum eventually swinging back. I think American culture tends to look away from those things we are not the best at -- and since we're losing the lead in science, Americans will no longer consider scientific achievement to be a benchmark of success. Sour grapes and all that.
he fact of the matter is that intellectualism is no longer the primary route to riches, fame, or other rewards in the US. Sports figures and other entertainers dominate pop culture. Intellectuals do not get elected to national positions of leadership, nor do they often get elected to state leadership positions.
As other nations take the lead in various areas (whether it's scientific achievement, literature, or what-have-you), Americans will always find something else to feel superior and smug about. We've seen this since the dawn of mass media.
What scares me is that the American superiority/inferiority complex seems to be directing itself at world power. Sure, we're not the smarterst anymore. Nor are we the most productive. But you can bet yer bottom dollar that we could whup anyone if we devotyed the resources to it.
My end point is this -- the American inferiority complex, reinforced by the loss/coming loss of our lead in economy, science, athletics, etc, is leading to a classic bully syndrome. The wars in the Mideast we'll be fighting aren't just about oil -- they're also about proving to ourselves that we're still #1 in some fashion, that we still matter.
Sorry for the long-windedness, but the only way we're going to "swing back" is if people push really hard for it. There's no natural tendency to do so, IMO.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Nice guy. Living in Memphis and all, I had the chance to meet him a few months back. He gave a lecture mirroring his new book (The Discoveries -- good book, by the way. Has a physicists perspective on ground-breaking pubs, and then the original pubs themselves, mostly unabridged). Since I also live in Memphis, there is a lot of that bible-belt mentality here... Earth is only 6,000 years old, etc. Anyway... somebody asked a question at the end, obviously of a pro-Intelligent Design slant, trying to get him to comment on it. It's refreshing to hear his take on the absurdity... and I can only hope that since he has status outside of the science community as well as within that his comments will make people think. (Basically... his answer was science and religion address different questions. Don't try to mix them).
Mike.
Mmmm......sacrelicious.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
Or cave paintings. The Lascaux paintings are no older than about 20,000 years.
A lot of talk but no intellectual rigour.
> he fact of the matter is that intellectualism is no longer the primary route to riches, fame, or other rewards in the US.
Has it ever been?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You know things are bad when you come across a parody and you stop for second and check to be sure they are not really serious.
Whoever said that intellectualism contributes toward strong leadership? You could say the two are somewhat exclusive -- one requires a degree of introversion and introspection while the other calls for the opposite.
Really what you need are leaders who recognize and respect the value of intellect, and who will act upon the recommendations of smart people. To a certain extent, George Bush owes his successes to the fact that he actually does do that. I don't buy that he's as much of a hayseed as he pretends to be. The reason he doesn't do what I would like to see done isn't because he's stupid; it's because he doesn't share my priorities.
Breakfast served all day!
I think I might give this article a pass, based on that quote
How's his son David doing? Last time I heard anything about him it was 1983....
Approaching Normal
Left half human, right half machine!
which is better then top half machine, bottom half human.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I met him in college years ago when he held a discussion for the honors program at my school. I have a signed copy of Einstein's Dreams in my library. This was a very small group - perhaps 15 students, 2 faculty members, and him, so it was more informal and personal.
In person, he comes across as very sincere and intellectual. I believe that he has a good, rational, critically-thinking mind, and thus, compared to many other humans, the oxygen he uses is much less wasted.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
The global internet is making the world smaller. The idea of the nation matters less and less. In the future, everyone will be brown, and smart people will lead the world in wealth, power, charity, and evil.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
free thought is bad in a nation whose government uses irational fear to control the populace. if we actually used our brains we would wake up and complain about all the liberties we are giving up.
Unfortunately, too many of those kids also flunked math, and don't understand that the odds of any one of those things leading to success as being highly unlikely, and that what is likely is that they're about to enjoy a long and unprosperous career in the food service industry.
I also think American business has also, for all intents and purposes, posioned the well. The smart students can still read, and when the news is full of stories about companies closing research divisions and outsourcing the ones they didn't close to India or China they tend to think that maybe, just maybe, there isn't a future in research and technology anymore.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Anything to do with cosmology and string theory will have no impact on our daily lives by 2100. Stem cells, while interesting, have been blown way out of proportion relative to their actual importance. They will (in some incarnation) probably play a role in the only point I agree with here - the biotechnical merging of man and machine. I think the anime series "Ghost in the Shell" is not terribly far off the mark with respect to how this will transform our lives.
On the other hand, there are two big technological transformations that were completely missed that I am convinced will happen this century:
1: AI. It's always 30 years away. But it is much less than 100 years away. Computers will be as smart as us by mid-century and much smarter by 2100, by when we will have the MotherBrainSkyNet.
2: The energy revolution. A combination of rising dinofuel prices, falling renewable prices, and mid-century industrial fusion will completely change our use of energy. Global warming will be large averted.
The world of 2100 will be richer, cleaner, and more peaceful than that of today. The biggest problem will be convincing people to have enough babies.
My end point is this -- the American inferiority complex, reinforced by the loss/coming loss of our lead in economy, science, athletics, etc, is leading to a classic bully syndrome.
The economic/intellectual/productivity fear happened in the 80's. Remember how the smarter, more productive Japanese were taking our jobs and taking over the country? You had similar "Buy American" and "The Cold War is over & the Japanese won" fear mongering.
The wars in the Mideast we'll be fighting aren't just about oil -- they're also about proving to ourselves that we're still #1 in some fashion, that we still matter.
The wars in the middle east are about securing strategic resources and trade. The US's closest "ally" is Saudi Arabia, who internally hates the US, so they invade Iraq to setup a puppet government as a backup to keep the oil flowing if the Saudi Royals lose power.
Sorry for the long-windedness, but the only way we're going to "swing back" is if people push really hard for it. There's no natural tendency to do so, IMO
Throughout US history there have been periods of religious fervor like "The Great Awakenings" then the pendulum moves back. It isn't like the current sense of nationalism and spirtuality is unprecedented.
Kirk: But you are both half human, half machine.
Other guy: But I am human on the left half, and he is human on the right half.
Girls are taught that math is for boys? Did you miss the latest Newsweek article which reports that, all across the board, girls are scoring higher than boys?
It is the job of the intellectual to sit around and think up stuff. It is the job of the scientists to tell the intellectuals that they are either full of shit or right on. It is the job of the revolutionary to change the world. If you consider yourself one of they above but do the job of one of the others you are doing the rest of us a disservice. Scientists should never be intellectuals and logic and intellect are not comparable.
My job as a gadfly is to tell everyone they are full of shit. Which makes me idealy suited to post on slashdot.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
That's pretty much anti-intellectualism, for my money. YMMV
"Do not drill any holes in your cat - it will not like it."
-- Nick Davies
There's a very strong difference between an entrepeneur and an intellectual. An intellectual attempts to solve problems for the intellectual curiosity, whereas an entrepeneur solves problems so as to make money. Just because you are smart does not mean you are an intellectual.
You can be anti-intellectual and still appreciate entrepeneurs. An important aspect of anti-intellectualism is the belief that those eggheads should quit fucking around and get down to business. An entrepeneur (or an engineer, to a lesser degree) is a person who has gotten down to business.
A person can be anti-intellectual and still appreciate the things which intellectuals do. Similarly, people can like Spiderman and the Interweb but still wanna give geeks their respective wedgies.
"Science is like sex. Sure it gets results, but that's not why we do it." -- Richard Feynman
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
...may be correct. In which case "intellectualism is no longer the primary route to riches" is a weird statement for a different reason.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
No more oxygen wasted any slashdoters use making blogging entries.
keeps screwing up their argument. When they argue that global warming isn't happening, or man is not causing it, they are being flat-out stupid. There is no scientific debate at all about either of those two points. The only debate now is to what extent it is going to happen, and what damages (and benefits) will it bring.
However, the anti crowd does have a good argument that they do not utilize fully - an economic argument. It is not at all clear that any potential global warming mitigation is beneficial. In almost all cases, either the cost-benefits come up negative, or just slightly positive. In the latter case, there are many other humanitarian issues with superb cost-benefits (50:1), so again, it is not clear that any government action to mitigate global warming is justified.
Sometimes, global warming activists will make claims like "we can mitigate global warming by X percent with only 2% of the world's projected GDP", to which a wise person would respond that with 2% of the world's GDP, we could provide food and clean water to everyone who does not currently have it, along with providing basic health care and making massive inroads against HIV and malaria. Which is more important?
I live in Va. My grandmother lived here too. She said "if you grow tired of the weather (climate) here, just wait, it will change".
It's interesting to note that the "hot-button" issues you listed are all ones where the opponents are on the political right, while you ignore the "hot-button" issues where the opponents are on the left. Which would you rather do?
1: Walk into your local church and try to have a reasonable discussion about evolution
2: Walk into Harvard and try to have a reasonable discussion about biological gender differences
The left has as many scientific taboos as the right (race and sex with respect to genetics, genetically modified foods, pretty much anything to do with economics when human lives are factored into the equation, etc). Both sides ignore evidence that contradicts their beliefs.
With respect to global warming, its simple, if the government says "global warming IS a problem" (which is what the scientists want, they want the governments of the world and the people of the world to recognize global warming as a problem), then everyone will start calling for solutions. The only solution thats worth considering is a reduction in the amount of polution we emit into the atmosphere. And, that means big $$$.
Basicly, its cheaper for the big companies that create all this polution to buy off the governments of the world (or at least in america) so they will pretend that all the polution they are creating isnt anywhere near as serious as the scientists say it is than it is for them to actually clean up and polute less.
Regardless of the actual science behind global warming and the whole debate about how serious it is etc etc, there arent too many scientists that would argue that reducing the amount of polution that we produce (e.g. all that smoke comming from all those factories, power plants etc) is a bad thing (and they are only paid to say that by the big companies who dont want to stop producing all that polution)
and Bjorn Lomborg's "Global Crises, Global Solutions". Numerous experts were invited to address these various issues and debate one another. When you read the Global Warming chapter, it becomes pretty obvious that unless you make some really outlying assumptions (both scientific and philosophical) there is not a whole lot we can do about global warming that is worth the price. Meanwhile, the chapters on such things as malaria mitigation come up tremendously positive. As one economist put it, would you rather pay $400 to buy an African family a solar-powered cooking stove and do them a little bit of good, or would you rather pay $10 and buy them a mosquito net, and do them a lot of good? The choice should be obvious.
Now why on earth would global warming reduce GDP by 20%? Not even the whacky whackies would predict that much. How would a 3C rise in temperature reduce your work output by 20%? Seriously.
When the economist crunch the numbers, it comes out as a wash at best. We can do better with things with the money.
What do you say to scientists like these that say the Sun may be just as, if not more responsible for, Global Warming, if it exists, than CO2 emissions? Kind of hard to wave the Kyoto treaty at the Sun and expect it to care. Despite claims to the contrary, plenty of people are still unconvinced, and not because they're sticking their heads in the sand...
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
That's the path technology is just beginning to start down--taking human intelligence and augmenting it synthetically. Google and Wikipedia are great examples; in seconds I can have information at my disposal on almost any subject or topic. The systems are dumb tools under human direction, but highly complex in their operations. The future holds greater responsiveness, availability, portability, and customization. The future will still be led by humans, but they'll be remarkably well-informed, with near perfect recall, thanks to their tools.
It does not hold self-aware robots with personality who converse with us as equals (let alone superiors). There is just too great a fundamental distinction in the modes of operation between intelligent life and machines--life survives to reproduce, while machines follow orders even if it means their death. I don't know of any evidence that this distinction will change any time soon. Without selfishness and the survival imperative there can be no intelligence.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I had a professor in college that didn't give any A marks as a rule, and mapped grades to a curve, pretty unfair. But I didn't say, "hell, he's not going to give me an A, so I'm not going to do anything towards the goal that I can do", e.g., study lots and make a B. No, I studied and made the highest grade in the class, and got my B. Studying and learning was something that I was in control of, and I did it, in order to solve that problem. Waving hands in front of prof and making threats to get the administration involved were not going to solve the problem, and so I left them alone.
I'd say that it doesn't matter whether global warming is caused by the Sun or by CO2 emissions - the effects are going to be the same no matter how it's caused, and if we don't want the global civilization to undergo mass disruption, then we need to figure out a way to ameliorate or adapt to it.
Since we can't do anything about the Sun's output, we need to look at options like: 1) play with the balance of gases that we are outputting into the atmosphere to compensate for the extra heating, 2) put up big sun shields between the Earth & the Sun to control the amount of light reaching the Earth, 3) anticipate how climate change is going to screw over various parts of the planet & implement migration plans (or forestation plans) to make sure that most people will end up in a habitable zone, or 4) some mix of many plans.
I'm sure there'd be a few other interesting ideas if people brainstormed some, but I haven't heard policymakers proposing _anything_ effective - just tiny little adjustments in industrial output which aren't going to do squat against the magnitude of the effects which are being measured by climatologists.
Contrary to your final statement, a lot of the people who need to be doing something about the situation _are_ the ones who are sticking their heads in the sand. Unfortunately, they are probably well-off enough to adapt to a changing climate, while the bulk of the world's population is probably going to end up enduring quite a bit of hardship (if not death by wars & famines & such).
Yup, he must be very famous, since I have never heard of him.
Oh well, what the hell...
People are simply tired of a relatively small subset of society going "we're smarter than you, better than you, and we know what's best for you"
. . . only that's not what's going on. Now it's a different small subset of society telling them "don't listen to those arrogant intellectuals, listen to US arrogant intellectuals at the Cato Institute/Heritage Foundation/Federalist Society/Focus on the Family instead, cuz those other intellectuals think they're better than you, and they don't hunt or have genuine southern accents or own ranches in Texas"
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
"Girls are taught that math is for boys? Did you miss the latest Newsweek article which reports that, all across the board, girls are scoring higher than boys?"
I don't claim they're not good at it, but culturally they're taught that there's no future for it for them, and it's just something to learn until college. After that they're supposed to be liberal arts types. The only real exception I've noticed is that there's a push for women to get m.d. degrees.
Vote for Pedro
I always thought the big bang theory sounded a lot like genesis "in the beginning", if someone were to have written it a few thou years ago. Taken with a little grain of salt and lacking good terms (at the time), it fits precisely. And I have seen nothing in the bible that discredits evolution, either, it says the animals and everything were made, but says nothing about after the fact, leaving gradual evolution totally inside the sphere. Well, that's my opinion as a non fundy believer. I've never had a problem with it.
As to anti intellectualism, scientists are sometimes their own worst enemies,(they are human, I don't blame them for being human,but they have "weaknesses"), anyone who steps out of the currently accepted norm is immediately labeled a quack or a crackpot. Witness thus, just an example because it directly relates to my own personal anecdotal, something that changed my life because I *know* now this subject is quite valid (direct, indisputable observation), but ignored and ridiculed: there are billions of galaxies out there, we'll take that as a given, the odds of more life are huge, the odds that more life could be more advanced than us are huge because of the sheer age of the universe, the odds that even a thousand years (whatever) more advanced than us would mean some pretty spiffy space travel and drive tech and stealth tech, etc, are almost probable. See where this is going? So how come, despite millions of sightings by people all over the planet,going back hundreds of years, we can't get a rational UFO discussion going? How many governmental whistleblowers from how many nations does it take to sink in? How many redacted documents that get leaked out or dragged out from FOIA requests, etc, etc, will it take? How much more evidence is needed to see that there has been an ongoing mulit-governmental decades long cover-up? Where are the mainstream scientists on this? Oh ya, afraid of getting blackballed "out of the community" and away from grants and a paycheck, so they chicken out and shut up, except for a few brave ones.
There's more out there, that's just one glaring example that comes to mind.
GMO scare stories hurt our farmers overseas, and the refusal to have honest discussions about race and gender are strongly affecting our education policies. Likewise, the hard left's refusal to put values on human rights causes us to waste huge amounts of money on preventing minor risks.
and we will spend a lot of time trying to find our ghosts.
The problem now is not lack of information, or lack of access, but indeed the opposite. There is far, far too much of it! I am a scientist. Papers in my sub-sub-sub specialty are now being produced so fast that I can no longer read them all, or even give them more than a glance. I do not think there is much hope in "augmenting" our abilities without completely moving them outside of our bodies. Our brains are pretty well optimized for their jobs as is. But if the augmentation is outside, why not replace the whole? We will. In any case, I think if you have any machine that is close to real AI, it will have a survival instinct. Indeed, this may be one of the defining characteristics.
Btw, there is plenty of scientific and economic support for Lomborg as well. Yes, he touched off a firestorm by daring to touch a sacred taboo. God bless him for that.
Three nobel prize winners contributed to GCGS. I bet they are all crocks.
I agree that it is more of a cultural anti-intellectual movement, and I agree with what another poster said about the anti-intellectual movement coming to the forefront because it is the loudest voices (those that disturb the grain the most) that are heard. But these voices seem to be in the minority, despite their influence. From my experience, what we usually hear from the media does not affect scientific research, because researchers know better and cast aside comments concerning intelligent design and other BS as trivial. But where it can hurt research is when it comes time to pay the bills and previously reliable monetary sources are no longer there (i.e. federal funding cuts for stem cell research). So even though you may relegate issues such as stem cell research to being an inconsequential hot button, these "hot buttons" are of tremendous importance to our future and the ignorance of the government (I don't mean to use ignorance in a derogatory manner, but just as a term describing limited knowledge of a subject) prevents scientific research from being fulfilled. As for intelligent design, it won't impact our current generation of scientists and researchers, but there is a lot more to accomplish in the field of biology ahead of us, and these kids that are currently being taught ID, the ones that will be carrying on our research in the future, will be missing the core structure of biology, the theory of evolution, biology's unified field theory that ties everything together, and that's a damn shame. So, the government does have at least some part in this movement.
It's not so much the supposition that people are 'causing' global warming, since there are a LOT of things 'causing' global warming (cows eating grass and farting methane, as a random example). The point I think is most important is that the human way of life currently includes belching out rather large quantities of gasses into the air that are thought to contribute to global warming.
:)
/. readers to single out one improperly spelled or grammatically incorrectly pur phrasing, and try to discredit your post, without bothering about the content)
Humans aren't the only ones doing it, for sure, and never will be the only ones (certain landslides on the ocean bottom free up large pockets of methane as well), but they're definitely part of it.
Now the question becomes more political than scientific: I think we can take it as a given humans contribute to global warming. The question is not whether we should stop or slow down, the question is why we shouldn't.
Is there any reason we can't cute down on greenhouse gas emmisions? Whether we're responsible for 30% or 5% really doesn't matter. It's just beancounting. The fact as far as I can see it is we're at least partially reponsible, and if we can reduce that part, we'd at least have less negative impact on the environment.
(To another post in this thread: I have no clue which side I belong to, to be honest. But I'd guess the global warming side
Splut.
ps. (Yes. This post is repetative in certain place, but I've noticed a penchant for
pps. No. I'm not a native english speaker/writer, either.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
That would be both absurd and impossible to prove. How could one demonstrate that there is no underlying natural trend?
However, there is broad consensus across the scientific community that temperatures are rising and we are a significant, if not the sole, cause. If you need details, there are plenty of freebies at Nature and Science. That should get you started.
Arguing that we aren't causing global warming is little different than claiming the earth is 6000 years old and that we are all decended from Adam and Eve.
Cosmology: Getting away from the earth is too darned expensive and will be for quite a long time. What difference is worrying about dark matter or cosmic background raditation going to make in our daily lives?
String theory: Speculation on paper. We are a long way from even being able to test it in our mega mega colliders. No one is going to make a better widget based on string theory in the foreseeable future.
Stem cells: Stems cells are a road, not a destination. They are clunky to work with and have all sorts of ethical concerns. We will have better methods without the ethical issues long before 2100. In any case, stem cell research has been vastly overblown because of the political controversy. Stem cells are one possible technology out of thousands. Who knows which ones will actually provide the breakthroughs.
It just bothers me somehow that the way people instinctively view the human-machine neural interface is in terms of input, of adding senses. I mean, I understand that prosthetic sensory organs are a pressing matter. However, I have a sneaking suspician that that's only part of the reason. Why aren't people more psyched about having the ability to control machines more or less directly? Why in a world of bluescreens would they have no fear about opening a channel directly into their mind? I think it's cultural. Our culture views the machine as something providing information. We have a passive mentality. It's a sad commentary on our nature. Were I to take such things to their fictional extremes I'd go so far as to say it bodes badly for the end result of machine/man integration -- we'll trend towards becoming the peripheral device, not the CPU.
Someone had to do it.
Bring on the Cultural Revolution!
"Remember how the smarter, more productive Japanese were taking our jobs and taking over the country? You had similar "Buy American" and "The Cold War is over & the Japanese won" fear mongering."
But fear-mongering is not what we're seeing now. I don't understand this parallel you're drawing when what the American culture is experiencing now is not remotely the same as the cultural attitude during the 80s.
"The wars in the middle east are about securing strategic resources and trade"
That's not all they are about. They are also about increasing government spending to stimulate the economy, they are also about making the common American feel good about the country (and thus it's leadership). Maybe not so successful at that, but definitely intended to do so.
"Throughout US history there have been periods of religious fervor like "The Great Awakenings" then the pendulum moves back. It isn't like the current sense of nationalism and spirtuality is unprecedented."
The nation is comprised of individuals, and it's the effort of some of those individuals that cause the 'pendulum' to swing back, or to push the boulder back up the hill. It's a Sisyphusian struggle, not a passive pendulum that we can afford to sit back and wait for it to swing back in the direction we like.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
"Look at the Forbes 400. I think you'll find more intellectually inclined people than sports figures and entertainers. They include software developers, mathematicians, economists."
But, most people don't look at the Forbes 400. They look at movies and television programming. The Forbes 400 is less and less relevant to American culture.
Also, the majority of the people on the Forbes 400 didn't rise to the Forbes 400 through their own actions -- they earned their money the old-fashioned way -- they inherited it.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Personally, I think it's an expression of despite for the arrogance and mass murder conducted by intellectuals and scientists, during the past century. It does seem that intelligence is a self-limiting genetic trait.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
The one in my lifetime was how fast internet applications took off like a rocket once they finally did. I think the critical year was 1993 when the number of Mosaic downloads and websites starting increasing in the hundred thousands per month.
An amusing anecdote was Nick Negropronte's book tour for his interesting book Being Digital (1994) which was collection of his columns in Wired magazine up to that time. Nick was the founder of the MIT Media Lab and Wired magazine. The interesting thing about the book is THERE IS NO MENTION OF THE WORLD WIDE WEB. Thats because it took off so fast that it even caught pundits like Nick off guard.
How, exactly, can there be broad consensus for a conclusion for which it is impossible and absurd to provide convincing? Let's take softer standard, then. What evidence is there that demonstrates it more likely than not that man is the significant, if not sole cause of warming? I'm not saying there is none; I am actually curious about this, but as a skeptic by nature I demand evidence, not consensus.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Others have already made this point, but I think I can make it better. The US has a strong current of anti-intellectualism in its political culture. Only one American President has had a PhD (Woodrow Wilson) -- and he was sandwiched between anti-intellectuals like Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge. Campaigning against effete intellectuals who couldn't do an ordinary working man's (yes, there is strong gender bias in the anti-intellectual culture) job is practically an American pasttime. Even while scientists were respected for their achievements in medicine and space exploration during the 1950s, perceived egghead Adlai Stevenson lost to perceived dullard Dwight Eisenhower -- twice. Needless to say, things did not improve under the Johnson or Nixon Administrations. I'm sure anyone who noticed politics in the 1980s is aware that Reagan portrayed himself as a genial old man with a sense of down-home humor, not an intellectual prepared to discuss the details of policy. Bush I had the good fortune to run against someone even more ivory-tower than himself, the sensible but nearly robotic Michael Dukakis.
In short, there is a strain of anti-intellectualism that has dominated American culture for at least a century, and ikely much longer (anyone remember the so-called Know-Nothing Party?) In America, being perceived as "intellectual" -- educated, cosmopolitan, well-spoken, intelligent -- is quite different from being perceived as "wise" or even "smart." Intellectuals seek to change the culture around them using ideas; those who feel intimidated by them tend to resent the (real or perceived) air of superiority that comes with education and serious scholarship. And since Americans tend to think of American heroes as being virile, hard-working men rather than serious scholars and thinkers (both views have some merit), there's no counterpart to the European intellectuals that laid the foundations for human rights, democracy, and public participation. Intellectuals in America are seen as artifical constructs and not as organic producers of the national culture. This is no "phase" -- it is part of the American condition.
Make cheese not war 8:)
What difference does it make if man caused it or not? What goal are you going to reach by making any such distinction? How will that argument put bread on your table, or increase your grandchildren's chances of having happy, productive lives? I refer you to a prior post and submit that you are following a rhetorical pattern that has very little to do with science, based almost entirely on economics and politics. I expect that your mind was made up before you saw any data, and if you change your mind it will not be (primarily) because of the data but rather because you will have reorganized your political and/or economic priorities.
There were electrodes inserted in the primary motor cortex that went the other way. So someone could control a simple video game with the mind. I don't see any preference either way--both are important if you want to play video games as well as watch movies.
I hate all science that appears in the mass media, because it is overhyped to the extreme - and that is before politics. Why? Because the scientists who study it are self-selected (bias). Then they have every reason to hype their work to get funding (bias). Then they cherry-pick data (bias). Then the news selects the most outlying data to present (bias) and then hypes it (bias). If you add politics, you get yet another layer of mega bias.
Stem-cells only look so promising because you are seeing them through about a dozen hype filters. Down in the trenches, they are one technology out of many. There are tens of thousands of biomedical research groups, and probably only a few hundred do work related to stem cells. If they are such a miracle, why is this so? Why is there virtually no major corporate research, given that corporations do half the research)?
journal articles. How many more do you need?
You have some interesting logical issues. You should know that your request that I prove a negative (that no other source exists) is impossible.
Here are the three major facts:
1: We are releasing greenhouse gases
2: Models predict releasing greenhouse gases on this scale will cause warming
3: The earth is warming
What else do you need? What would consititute "proof" in your opinion?
This was not an isolated incident, either. This has an effect on our public policy as well. If one posits that men/women or blacks/whites/reds/greens/oranges are all exactly equal on average and in distribution, then one can infer that a fair system will produce equal outcomes. Therefore, one can measure "bias" in the system by noting unequal outcomes. However, if the inputs are not exactly equal, then a difference in outcome may not be indicative of a problem with the system.
Trying to root out biases is important. We cannot do this if we start with false assumptions about our inputs, leading us to waste energy trying to eliminate biases that may not even exist. We should be able to have rational discussions about racial differences in various intelligences (the evidence is strong) and gender differences (the evidence is overwhelming). The incident at Harvard proves we are incapable of this as yet.
The GMO foods issue is an even bigger problem. People, right now, are starving because of the left's anti-scientific worry over GMO foods. Take anything bad you can say about the right's objection to stem cells and multiply it by a thousand.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml;js essionid=R2SCQNKZZJTYJQFIQMFCFGGAVCBQYIV0?xml=/con nected/2006/02/07/ecnthink07.xml&%5C1sSheet=/conne cted/2006/02/07/ixconn.html
Even the editors of Science are not immune to the fear of being tarred and feathered for daring to be un-PC.
It is any research that no one would spend their own money doing. That's pretty telling to me. If stem-cell research offered a fraction of what the hype promised, then there would be plenty of reasons for evil, greedy corporations to jump on the bandwagon. They aren't.
The distinction between "basic" and "applied" research is a myth perpetuated by people that can't get others to fund their research voluntarily. If there ever was such a distinction, it has blurred beyond any hope of recoginition.
Whether global warming exists and if so, what causes it is immaterial.
What matters is that polution caused by factories, power plants, cars, trucks, airplanes etc is bad for the planet and reducing it would be a Good Thing (that at least science generally aggrees on)
No one would deny their are biological sex differences. Men have penises. Women have vaginas and breasts. There are not many exceptions or indistinct cases.
However, suggesting that gender differences have roots in biology will get you into some hot water really quick if you are in the wrong crowd. This group of people want gender to be completely divorced from biological reality, so they can shape it to their will. Telling them that their dream is not possible makes them very upset.
plenty of corporate ones. The only difference is one has a purpose and the other is a bunch of people playing around with other peoples' money. When I switch from one type of project, neither my way of thinking nor my methods change - only the goal of the research.
I'd estimate that only about 1% of the academic articles I run across will have any impact on any normal person ever. Most of them are just "Variation #23452 on Theme #964, Hey, No One Has Done This Before!"
The same crowd that champions the causes of transexuals and gays by claiming their behavior is biologically based (this is correct) is the same crowd that throws a hissy fit when someone suggests that women on the average are willing to make more sacrifices for their children and therefore will not be as likely to take up jobs that require absurd hours (like a Harvard professor), even though this is just as true and the logic is the same. It is also funny watching them squeal when someone claims that there is a wider distribution of mathematical ability for men than women which may cause the dominance of males in the upper eschelons of math, even though this also implies that there are more male idiots. I didn't hear anyone complain about that.