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How To Make Science Popular Again?
Ars Technica has an interesting look at the recent book Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, a collaboration between Chris Mooney, writer and author of The Republican War on Science, and scientist Sheril Kirshenbaum. While it seems the book's substance is somewhat lacking it raises an interesting point; how can science be better integrated with mainstream culture for greater understanding and acceptance? "We must all rally toward a single goal: without sacrificing the growth of knowledge or scientific innovation, we must invest in a sweeping project to make science relevant to the whole of America's citizenry. We recognize there are many heroes out there already toiling toward this end and launching promising initiatives, ranging from the Year of Science to the World Science Festival to ScienceDebate. But what we need — and currently lack — is the systematic acceptance of the idea that these actions are integral parts of the job description of scientists themselves. Not just their delegates, or surrogates, in the media or the classrooms."
As much as many people would like to think otherwise, public policy is set by elected officials who may take science into consideration, but also must consider economic trade offs and cultural issues. Throw in the usual paranoid claptrap about corporations if you want, it doesn't change the facts.
Just because the Republicans did not rush headlong and unquestionably into the public policy positions championed by the James Hansons and Al Gores of the world doesn't mean they were conducting a war on science.
If science is unpopular today it is because of the arrogant, dogmatic and privileged folks who stand at its door. Add to that the people who embark on regular crusades, telling people they are stupid and ignorant for not listening to them, it's no wonder students shy away from science.
You're asking the wrong question. Science being unpopular is a consequence of the culture of consumption in North America, while in Japan first, and now China there is real research at the Universities and real Engineers in every office.
I think it's safe to say we are all apathetic to the scientific apathy.
'nuff said
From TFA:
From quotes on websites to a joke by Stephen Colbert, they offer anecdotes about how the public was against the IAUâ(TM)s (International Astronomical Union) decision to remove Pluto from the list of planets, leading the authors to call the situation a âoeplanetary crack-upâ and then ask, âoeDidnâ(TM)t the scientists involved foresee such a public outcry?â Well, if the scientists did foresee an outcry, then what? Should they conduct a public vote next time?
Mooney and Kirshenbaum barely mention any of the scientific bases for the IAUâ(TM)s decision. Instead, they present the case as if the astronomers chose to reclassify Pluto on an inexplicable whim, and it makes one question whether or not the authors looked into any of the actual science for themselves.
I think it's pretty well established that the goal should not be to fit science into pop-culture, at least not if we want it to remain correct and relevent. Your average citizen doesn't care that pluto is only the first discovered Kuiper Belt object, they care that they learned it was a planet when they were a kid. That isn't thinking scientifically. There is no way to make the decision popular without compromising on proper science.
It's not an easy problem to fix. It seems to me like it requires you to teach people to care about science, rather than making science into something people care about. It wasn't that long ago when Bill Nye was getting kids interested in more pure science. Now about the best we have is Mythbusters, which certainly piques curiosity, although it has to resort to explosions and skipping most of the steps in the scientific method to make it palatable. They even have a "warning" for science content, which is a bad sign (tongue-in-cheek or not). Maybe we could get back to that, but it seems the prevailing momentum is toward smaller tidbits and shallower topics.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
To stop teaching kids that religion is an alternate view to science. Religion should be taught nowhere near science, they are two distinct subjects. Oh yea and get rid of the crazies that bash science.. do these people not realize that pretty much everything they use in their life was adapted using the scientific method?
Science's irrelevance is some of the long-time-in-coming consequences of a society that emphasizes short-term, extremely self-interested value system with a repudiation of the notion of social plurality.
Unless they adapt by supporting cavemen and women riding dinosaurs or hitching a ride on some other demagogue, Science remains irrelevant.
After all, I don't benefit from science in any special way. Where's my flying car so I (alone) can leave the unwashed masses on the ground. How about my super-smart pill so only my children and I don't have to work very hard?
I mean c'mon... This science thing is bunk unless I alone profit at the expense of everyone else.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Naked girls. Guys would flock to science if there wers lots of naked girls.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
a big part of the problem I suspect is that people don't get to do much science around the house or at school. I suspect that if they were actually allowed/encouraged to do so you would see a rapid increase in the public's interest in science. unfortunately, DIY science has been under attack for quite some time in the home and in the school system its self. mostly in the name of safety... The proper response to safety concerns would be to educate the public on relevant safety practices rather than ban or severely limit scientific experimentation by the public. It would also help to show how the sciences are relevant to everyone's every day lives. Much of the reason the public's interest in the sciences is lower than it could be is that they do not see why knowing basic science is useful to them. It has to be more expansive than "because it will create jobs" which it will certainly but the immediate impact of the sciences must be emphasized.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The only way you'll make science popular is to get society to quite worshiping brainless athletes. Sorry, but I don't see the moronic masses giving up their worship of sports because they lack the ability to understand science easily so they cling to the unintelligent things that they can easily grasp.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Do nothing. Just accept the fact that you and your kids will have good jobs and those that do not like science & maths will be fully qualified for menial labor. It's a self-correcting problem. The only downside is that in a democracy these people can vote. When it gets bad enough, just move election day to coincide with a popular televised sporting event.
Speaking as a European, actually science is pretty popular in the USA, globally (except for the mad handful who think science is the sworn enemy of their faith). Actually, I quite like to think of the USA as the country of nerds. Case in point, that's where all the Europeans nerds want to go cause since some time around the 1930s that's where all the big science and engineering are. In Europe (UK excluded, too much of an American satellite to be representative) we don't make offerings to the holy ghost of Charles Darwin, and we couldn't care less about science fiction (seriously, we care nowhere near as much as people in the USA do). But we're better at mathematics, physics, chemistry or biology, because secondary education didn't fail us. It's not a cultural problem, it's all an educational one.
The problem is not how "popular" or "cool" it is, the problem is with education. To put it simply and bluntly, your educational system sucks, particularly when it comes to science. Reform it. Education is pretty much the same problem for anyone, you're doing it wrong, look at how others are doing it right.
An obvious rift exists between many religious and scientific communities.
Yep, and there shouldn't be one. Science and faith aren't incompatible, some great men of science were also men of faith. But in America more than anywhere else it was turned into an epic science vs faith war where everybody picks a side and the battlefronts are shit that no one would normally care about, like biology and genetics or palaeontology or even palaeoclimatology.
Also, why the hell can't I post this comment? It says "There was an unknown error in the submission.". It seems Slashdot is crumbling to pieces day after day.
You just got troll'd!
Become Neil Degrasse Tyson's facebook friend. He's making science interesting again, especially with Nova Science Nows profiles on science. If science oriented kids knew there a lot of people like them, they'd be more likely to pursue it as a career.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/cosmic/
I think that part of it is that engineers and scientists are now directly competing with their third world counterparts which is depressing wages. Why bother going through the effort of getting a hard degree like science or engineering when you can waltz through a business degree instead and get paid similarly?
We could introduce mindgame.
... it to Popular Science?
If you're truly trying to integrate science with "mainstream culture", a big part of the overlap is in engineering. Science for the sake of scientific knowledge is great, but we've found that it's often easier to connect to people by looking at how science connects with their lives, which often falls into the realm of engineering (or medicine). We have tried to do that with our free educational electronics videos.
Even as science and medicine and gadgetry continue to advance, it's important to make it accessible and exciting to those outside the field. But while the original book being reviewed argues that "the scientists themslves" must take up the lead in educating the public, the fact is that making these subjects accessible has its own set of required skills that are not necessarily the same as those needed for being an excellent scientist. Some will be able to do both, but it's not for everyone.
For public school situations take that damn football money and use it for science classes.
2nd Hire decent teachers that actually enjoy learning and teaching.
3rd Encourage questions. Ask the students questions, and then wait for a response. Let them actually think! Have some actual communication.
Optional: go places! Take students to new environments to get them to think outside of the box. Science is awesome, you don't have to dress it up to make it fun!
All else fails: Blow shit up! Then explain why it blew up!
If you're going to be an evangelist for science, there are a lot of potential pitfalls. I personally was almost turned off science by the half-assed philosophy that many scientists seem to implicitly hold.
For people on the borderline---who might've accepted a scientific worldview but ultimately rejected it---anecdotally the biggest factor I've found is a feeling that accepting the scientific worldview is nihilistic. Usually this seems (again, anecdotally), to be a result of some particularly overreaching attempts to use science as a sort of naive-reductionist philosophy, where every discovery of mechanisms delegitimizes higher-level things, because now they're "only X", and in some sense don't "really" exist anymore. People particularly object to this with humans. Arguments like "X is just brain chemicals" or "Y is just evolved behavior" get thrown around, and you ultimately end up at claims like: "You don't really love her; that's just brain chemicals". "There isn't really any such thing as morality; that's just evolved group behavior". And people generally recoil at and reject that view, if you're implying that actually nothing about human existence is "real".
Of course, nothing in science actually demands that sort of explanation at a philosophical level. Nobody argues that since chemistry is "just physics", it's therefore in any sense not real or illegitimate. It's a perfectly correct way of explaining, at a particular level of description, how the universe works, and chemical properties are real properties, that really do exist. The fact that chemical properties are due to lower-level interactions doesn't change that. Daniel Dennett even coined a term for some of these kinds of philosophical misuse of science: greedy reductionism.
Fortunately, I was saved from that by some more philosophically sophisticated scientists who pointed out to me that the views held by people who study physicalist explanations of the world are much better thought out. And on, say, what the mind "really" is, fully defended physicalist accounts of mind don't have the same greedy-reductionism that characterizes the rather questionable comments of a lot of neuroscientists.
Sure, there are all sorts of other problems, like fundamentalist Christians who won't ever accept any explanation not derived from the Bible. But as a scientist, I tend to think some outreach is better than just attacking them: there's plenty I might change about their organizations, but I can't, so what can I change about mine? Simply being more accurate about the philosophical implications of science, I find, helps to dispel a lot of unnecessary worries, while having the added benefit of actually being, well, more accurate.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I thought this is why we've got 15 different CSI's on every week.
Are you saying we need more?
It is generally cultural. The best way to fix this problem is to make scientists super stars of sorts. If the entertainment industry were to make scientists in the main heroes of TVs and movies without it being comical or inhuman or superhuman. Show them as average people who are doing great things. Image like a CSI or ER or something where it is the people creating the drama and the science is merely the device for solving the problems. But you can't show the characters as super human like Spock or Data. They have to be average people and make the science exciting. Don't think it will ever happen but a guy can dream right?
There is also the problem that the average person doesn't know what a scientists does. Any idea how many people ask me what I do when I say I'm a scientists? And if you tell a girl that you have a phd in one of the hard sciences you have about a 75% chance of them doing their best to avoid talking to you again. And don't get me started on the pay scale compared to my education level.
So in summery; If you want more scientists
A)make scientists popular and sounds like fun and prestigious
B)make them appear actually human and not super or sub human
C)make it clear and concise what they actually do
D)make it easy to be in the field (but not necessarily to get into the field)
E)and pay them better!
Take the "Bill Nye the Science Guy" show and give him a co-host. Preferably someone who is both sexy and science friendly (Kari from Mythbusters comes to mind).
Call it "Penetrating the Mysteries of the Scientific Method". Instant Success. Check please.
Not to make this a US only problem, but the books reference do apply strictly to US. There was a big sea-change in the 90s where smart became unpopular. The culture today is obsessed with celebrities and other voyeristic experiences. What is needed is some good old fashioned competition. When other countries start to drastically exceed the US in science innovations and applications to daily life, then some of us will wake up from the stupor and numbness of "reality" tv. It's already happened in several key areas like commonly available bandwidth to the home. Society needs to: wake up and rediscover the joy of learning, creativity, and exploration.
As you can tell, I think this article touches on a very serious problem. Sagan said it best:
In today's society nothing draws crowds like glamour. So, get some researchers rediculously overpaid, have them hit the clubs in Bentleys sippin' Cristal. What is popular is what will lead people to live the way they want to live. Currently, that is through finance and investment banking. But, if you could make being a researcher more glamourous and fun (in terms of the lifestyle it would afford) then people would flock to it. After all, how do you make something popular when it leads to a decade of post-secondary and then publish-or-perish with a possibility of stability with tenure AFTER moving around englessly from post-doc to post-doc.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
What we need is decent paying jobs for scientists in the United States- not popularity.
love is just extroverted narcissism
If each schools Academic Decathlon team got the same amount of exposure as the high school football team did then you would see a lot more interest in academics from the general population.
My senior year our Academic Decathlon team made it to the national conference in Chicago. I heard that we placed in the top 10 in each category, but I never did see a single thing about it in our local paper. And this was a small rural school.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
1. Teach critical thinking - Kids need to learn at an early age how to figure things out for themselves. This goes from how do I turn the TV on to Why is the sky blue. Self exploration of knowledge leads to a door that's hard to close. Starting at an early age, this could be enough on its own
2. Teach humility - We've all ran into ridiculous theories and misconceptions perpetuated by someones unwillingness to admit error. Before any progress can be done to foster a world driven by scientific process people need to be willing to say "I was wrong".
3. Say goodbye to religion - I have no problem with any specific ideology but an organization whose very approach means ignoring point number 1 and some amount of point number 2 will have no place in a scientific society. Sorry.
We must all rally toward a single goal: without sacrificing the growth of knowledge or scientific innovation, we must invest in a sweeping project to make science relevant to the whole of America's citizenry. We recognize there are many heroes out there already toiling toward this end and launching promising initiatives, ranging from the Year of Science to the World Science Festival to ScienceDebate. But what we need--and currently lack--is the systematic acceptance of the idea that these actions are integral parts of the job description of scientists themselves. Not just their delegates, or surrogates, in the media or the classrooms.
They briefly touch on this when discussing movies but somehow everyone is forgetting that the problem isn't in science or scientists, it's in what motivates us. Our capitalistic society is simply getting better at convincing us that research and experimentation aren't rewarding. Making money is. A 9 to 5 job coding Jakarta Struts will net me more cash than working on my doctorate regarding AI or NLP ever will. Sure I could hit on something big and then put in 80 hours a week and try to launch a start up but that's like playing the lottery.
... that's not the answer. The answer is to increase monetary rewards for scientists. We can rip on intellectual property and intellectual property law but that's one of the few examples where our capitalistic system ties inventions and discoveries monetarily to their originators. And when that's in place we'll ask why it matters that those "scientific" progresses were made since we can't readily access them in a cheap manner?
We don't need to destroy the whole system, just make it monetarily worth while to devote your life to science and the scientific process. This mission statement seems to just make scientists more popular or more prestigious
Right now, you'll make more money as a surgeon doing gastrointestinal bypasses than you will experimenting in surgery and medicine. Because GI bypasses are a surefire bet in America. And one person doing them will help individual people but not really society unless you look at GI bypasses on the whole. The same can be said in so many other fields.
The funny thing is that the general populace isn't really interested in science, they're interested in how science can provide them cheaper things, better health, easier money, naturally selfish goals. Look at the quest for knowledge, it's only worth pursuing if it has very practical uses that are often tied to money. In short, you're not going to change this because capitalism's been so successful and changes to how it works now are going to make people unhappy. The discussion is worthless unless you're willing to change how the system rewards scientists across the gamut--not just special institutions or foundations but from the single scientist up to the largest corporation.
My work here is dung.
Where are the gloriously rich scientists? Where are the magazines that follow their every move? Were are the TV magazine shows that detail the newest and coolest science trend and personality?
Has the media and non-scientific populous shunned science or has the science community shunned those that participate in popular media and those in society without science training or aptitude?
You don't get tenure by writing popular science books. You don't get credit for science reporting in main stream media outlets.
how hard can it be to glorify scientists in the same way we glorify pop stars and rich pretty people?
the hardest part is that maybe some of these scientists actually doing something to move the world forward arn't TV pretty.
It's not just science that is unpopular. Pretty much all higher learning is unpopular. Even basic literacy isn't considered important to a large section of the population.
Proverbs 21:19
Maybe part of the issue is an insular religious culture or something like that. Maybe. But I'm pretty certain that's not the whole story.
Even a lot of bright people with serious aptitudes for science show they know the score when they head for Wall Street. It doesn't take long for the socially aware to observe which kinds of knowledge and professional positions are respected and rewarded by society at large.
Sure, there's a literacy dimension to the problem: If you tell people you study math, 90% of them won't even know what that means. The educated ones will ask you: "What is there to study beyond calculus, really?" The rest (except the smart ones who went into business) will ask you: "What are you going to do with that -- accounting?" So, yeah, a literacy and cultural campaign might help... but the thing is, lots of people use social heuristics to decide what's important among the many things they hear about and investigate further. And for those who do, they're going to quickly see a lot of things yield better social and economic returns than math and science. You can have a lot of scientists doing public outreach, but until the societal cues change, I doubt it's going to make much of a dent. In order to solve the literacy/cultural issue, you're first going to have to solve a literacy/cultural issue. You're going to have to demonstrate rewards that matter to people.
Tweet, tweet.
Another Sagan would help a lot with this. I mentioned Bill Nye but he'd have to do more than the kid stuff...
so, what, get the scientists from the national labs to do one show-and-tell a week in a school as part of their job description ?
That'd work if the question was: How to start the biggest flame war ever?
In true Slashdot fashion, I haven't read the book we're talking about, but I've read a lot about it, and while some of what they're saying is sensible (if not terribly new), the part about how "New Atheists" are being unhelpful with their stridency irritates me. So, people who don't believe in God are supposed to confront those who reject science on the basis of faith by being...nice to them? We've basically been doing that for decades, and it doesn't seem to have helped much. While some of the writers identified have been more angry than is perhaps helpful, most of them have simply not been willing to give faith a free pass. The problems America has with scientific literacy have a lot more to do with the fact that more people are unwilling to come out and say "that's absurd, here's the science", because it's seen as impolite, than because everyone's so scared of those "New Atheists".
Bobb9000 - raised by the wolves,
Oxford education as phrased by the wolves.
I think you're a troll, but I'll bite anyway. As someone who is fascinated with all things science related, I bemoan the total apathy towards science within the community. However, I feel that it is important to point out that it is not just science that is being neglected by the community; politics, philosophy, social conscience and other highly important fields have also been totally lost to the common mind.
It's not just discussing the latest article in Nature magazine or Scientific American that results in dumb stares, but also trying to discuss things like the relative merits of current geopolitical policies of various nations, how and why the legal system has gotten to its current state, even this very subject, the apathy of the common person, is not the sort of thing that most people are able to discuss in any depth.
This may all sound very high-horsey, however, I challenge anyone to go to a party, bring up a discussion about the question of whether mathematics is invented or discovered, and see how long you can keep it up. I'm likely to get laughed at for the mere suggestion of this, someone will call me a dork or similar.
The thing is, I actually get out a lot. I travel several times a year, and spent a lot of time meeting new people. It's something that I really enjoy. I'm not a dork. I think.
So, how do we make science (and other "intelligent" subjects) popular again? I dunno, how about priming children in an environment that's a bit more stimulating than the modern day care facility. How about teaching them the basics in an environment that's a bit more positive than the jokes that are primary schools where teachers' hearts are rarely in the job. Don't even let me get started on the barbaric mass-cagefight that is high school.
You want to know why science is not popular in the first place? Because we (as a society, we can't just blame the "education system", after all, parents, they're YOUR kids) as a society are teaching our kids to be consumerist, apathetic, self-centered brats. We need a whole new social order, including a new social mindset that teaches people a proper set of values. Science and all the higher arts won't be popular again until people learn to value them.
Thus, asking how to make science popular I feel is the wrong question. The correct question is how to teach people it's value.
I hate printers.
It's not just science -- intellectualism generally isn't valued (you betcha!). Society can benefit from an increase in general knowledge of science, but science bores individuals. I don't think the Internet is helping. When people took in their news in print or broadcast television or radio, they were exposed to all types of news -- the available technology compelled us to be generalists. We can now choose to focus on whatever we find interesting.
I see nothing in that Knuth quote that contradicts anything Dawkins said about random processes being blind. Are you sure you're not putting your own biases into Knuth's mouth?
Calling it iScience would do the trick.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
In order to boost the image of science, and work in the field of science, you have to show that working in the field of science is desirable and successful.
In other words, you have to convince people that doing the extremely hard work of science is worthwhile.
Today, my general impression of scientist is person who is used by corporations to weave a web of self-serving patents for itself while giving little compensation or recognition to the scientist.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
The first problem with American culture is simple credulity. There are accepted dogmas that are not meaningfully challenged in the mainstream. There are inroads being made, but there are two entities fully tied to the status quo, which are christianity and business.
For the most part, Christianity demands reason being left at the door. If you've seen the way young kids are indoctrinated, especially in evangelical circles, you immediately understand why skepticism has been eliminated from American vocabularies. There are some things you just don't question. Period. The bible is true - period. The world is 6000 years old - period. Anything outside of this one book is considered false until proven true, and only if it is congruent with a particular interpretation of the bible.
Business has similar dogmas that have now been accepted without skeptical analysis. The market always works. Unions are always corrupt and run by the mafia. Government is always bad, unless you're talking about nuclear weapons or invading other countries, in which case government is always good. (It amazes me some people can have a total meltdown over imaginary government death panels, and in the next breath praise former CIA torture policies.)
In a skeptical environment, these dogmas do not hold up to scrutiny. Therefore, a skeptical environment can only be allowed when it makes more money. Shell does not look for oil based on a Young Earth model, because that wouldn't yield oil. The Christian community will misuse scientific theory to strawman evolution, but would never apply any scientific principles to their own faith. Pharmaceuticals will claim that they have to gouge American consumers for their medications to afford the science, and hope you will ignore the fact that they spend more money on marketing than research. Every day drips with irony after irony.
There are elementary philosophical discussions that simply don't exist in American thought. Is it ethical to make money without working? Is it ethical to invade another country who has not attempted to invade you? Is it ethical to have private entities profit from going to war? Is it ethical to treat Christian churches as tax exempt entities when they are clearly creating wealth that is not going to charities?
All of this has a root in the idea that money is the only way to value anything. Once this becomes your basis for reasoning, you immediately eliminate all possibilities that don't involve profit. And unfortunately, many valuable things lay in areas which may never be profitable for the existing business infrastructure. How can new ideas flourish in such an environment? How can new technology replace old technology? How can we progress?
The answer is that we have lost our position as the meritocracy of ideas. Great minds from muslim states don't even bother applying for student visas. Exxon owns patents expressly so they won't be used. Businesses bully the rest of society with well funded teams of lawyers to keep markets uncompetitive.
We haven't woken up to these facts, because in true dogmatic fashion, we aren't allowed to consider the possibility.
As much as many people would like to think otherwise, public policy is set by elected officials who may take religion into consideration, but also must consider economic trade offs and cultural issues. Throw in the usual paranoid claptrap about corporations if you want, it doesn't change the facts.
Just because the Democrats did not rush headlong and unquestionably into the public policy positions championed by the James Dobsone and G.W. Bushes of the world doesn't mean they were conducting a war on religion.
If religion is unpopular today it is because of the arrogant, dogmatic and privileged folks who stand at its door. Add to that the people who embark on regular crusades, telling people they are stupid and ignorant for not listening to them, it's no wonder students shy away from religion.
Substitute two words, and your argument becomes the "arrogant, dogmatic" statement you are railing against.
We don't care much fer yer fancy book lernin' 'round these parts.
Science is part of education which is valued by parents, especially in Asia. In America, parental expectations are not so high, especially among immigrants from the south.
We go through cycles where a samrt science type gets fabulously rich such as Edison or Gates. But money doesnt motivate scientists as much as a passion to know more things.
All you have to do is overthrow the government and put an autocratic technocracy in its place. All citizens would then be ordered to love science upon pain of death.
Then again, if you want people to genuinely love science, I suggest you find a more useful way to occupy your time. Science doesn't get funding because we're not in a cold war. Science got funding during the cold war, not because it was popular in a cultural sense, but because it was seen as a solution to winning the cold war.
So, I guess you could always get elected president and start a war, but that doesn't seem to be working too well recently. Alternatively, you could become a teacher and spout a bunch of drivel about how science will show us the way. Or you could just become a scientist yourself and stop worrying about what other people think. There is plenty of funding for science available. If you don't believe that's true, then I suggest you get your head screwed on right, because non-science professions at universities have to work with far less.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
Western society in general and American culture specifically is a lost cause. Keeping the majority of people dumb is far more profitable in the short term for corporations, theocrats, bureaucrats and supporters of the police state. And most people are happy with it as long as they keep getting soap opera melodrama and fake reality tv. We are living in a culture where showing intelligence is looked down on, much less encouraged.
Sorry, I am not feeling optimistic today... :(
Who the hell modded this incoherent crap insightful?
This may not be a popular answer, but maybe if billions of people didn't believe their imaginary friend is the answer to every question, they might care more about investigating the real reasons for things.
The argument isn't that random processes prove that a designer doesn't exist, but rather proves that a designer isn't necessary to have design.
Basically, the default stance is, "There probably isn't a god because of the lack of evidence supporting the hypothesis." Creationists use, "all things designed that we know of have designers, therefore we have been designed by a designer." Dawkins and Hawkings embraced random chance in the ability to make things that appear designed, effectively shooting down that argument as evidence to support the existence of a designer.
It's not really the facts of any given science that is interesting (since those evolve) but the way of thinking about the world that is important. Teaching kids about scientific inquiry will help them understand the nature of theories, evidence, etc. If we were feeling really adventurous we'd give them some basic philosophical education including epistemology. Most of the FUD surrounding various controversies that involve science is epistemic (e.g. deriding evolution as "merely" a theory, etc).
When a sizable chunk of the American populace believes that the world was created 6000 years ago by an invisible man in the sky, it's pretty much pointless to try to discuss science with them. Top it with a shot of "smart people are elitist", and the country is pretty much fucked.
The general idea being there is a lack of discord in fields of research because the money for research comes with strings attached in the form of corporate sponsored research or politically motivated public-sector grant processes.
Here's a nice example of one way the social science of economics has become irrelevant.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/09/why-economists-rarely-saw-bad-things-about-the-fed.html
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Then for those passionate enough to make it through the academic minefield that is science, what do you have to look forward to? Post Docs? A highly competitive research field?
It is no wonder intelligent people go for their MBAs, it is much more efficient you just put a quarter the effort into it and earn 3x as much, get more prestige, and a have fraction of the workload.
It is the same problem with Political Sciences, who is crazy enough to waste their time doing it? By all accounts it isn't worth the effort.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
Isn't sciences already popular? All you guys like sciences. :-D. But to be serious, compared to say 200 years ago, we have a lot more people interested in scientific research then ever before. I find it pretty hard to believe that science is _unpopular_.
WTF Slashdot, why do I have to login 50 times to post?
Hmm, "collaboration between Chris Mooney, writer and author of The Republican War on Science, and scientist..."
So it's a book between a political hack and a real scientist. I don't think that's how you make science "cool" again (i.e. with more of this bullshit polarization we've been going through in the last ten years).
...of stupidity, in this case. Don't put a blind eye to it.
Though I'm not sure how it can be implemented in a planned way, if it's not really present in particular society; "you can have acces to something only if you show basic understanding of the principles behind it" is too harsh and probably not doable. What then?
Oh. and ditch fixation with religion (that one's easy, just fallow your own contitution for starters). Throughout the world there is a very strong iverse correlation between that and development indexes. It's not a direct causation so it takes time to trickle down...
One that hath name thou can not otter
In Cat's Crade, in the guise of Dr. Hoenikker "Any scientist who cannot explain his work to an eight year old is a charlatan." If you can't separate scientific process from opaque jargon, you'll never be able to engage the layman. As such, IMO, the burden falls on every one of us to try and make scientific knowledge as accessible as possible to anyone who cares to listen. Also, spending some cash on science education (maybe as much as we spend on athletics...) to get good teachers, and engaging materials and activities might help. Or maybe another Star Trek TV series. It worked for me when I was growin' up.
I didn't read the article but... Cheerleaders. Why do you think 13 year old boys are more interested in football than physics?
Until young ladies decide that intelligence is a hot property in the males of the species, science will be at best a second or third choice for young boys. If I had a son, I'd advise him to consider becoming an athlete or musician before thinking of being scientist or engineer.
How about not banning scientific tools and ingredients in the name of War of Drugs and War on Terrorism?
Chris Mooney interviewed earlier on The Colbert Report about the importance of science. Funny, tragic, effective.
I'm glad the article mentions this aspect of the problem. I work in a university maintaining computer equipment. Just last week I was in a biology class as it was ending, and the professor got into a heated debate with a student who was clearly a creationist. And it reminded me of how some who should know better do so very little to help the religious understand science, rather, they distract from the actual questions that need to be asked. (For the record, I was raised a creationist and I am certainly not one now, if I am religious in any sense it is perhaps in the vein of Einstein's 'god'.. and I can tell you that if anything impedes the creationist coming to understand evolution, it is belligerent atheists who do not understand the creationist mindset.)
As an example.. back to my anecdote: The creationist assumes that all scientists are acting out of some personal vendetta to get god, that's what his bible literature and church has told him. The teacher immediately makes the tactical blunder of outright implying 'you can't scientifically prove your myths' and as correct as that may be, saying this outright only confirms the fears of the student, making the student become defensive, hence confirming the fears the teacher has that his student is living in a delusion. And the conversation can go in circles for hours, the teacher not really helping the student, the student not learning anything about scientific methodology.
How different that conversation would have gone if the teacher simply started things off by saying 'science is simply a method for testing and observing the world. it cannot prove or disprove the existence of your god. that's not what it's for. some religious people think god exists and used evolution and the big bang to create the universe. scientifically, we can't know. all we know is that pretty much all observational evidence points out that the universe is expanding and that life is evolving. it doesn't tell us how/why/where it all came from.'
I don't know if this would convince the student, but it would at least be a start, rather than arguing about the student's internal belief system, which will certainly not get the student to crack that textbook and start analyzing the facts for himself.
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." George Bernard Shaw
The argument this clown is using is exactly WHY so many distrust science. Because the scientists are so obviously political these days. Now this wouldn't be bad if they were political scientists (i.e. the fuzzy social sciences) but it has no place in physics or chemistry.
You can't have it both way folks, which view of a scientist do you want the masses to have?
1. The scientist as the almost monastic searcher for facts, discovering new wonders by relentlessly collecting facts in the field, doing careful experiments in labs full of shiny equipment, publishing carefully reasoned papers which are mercilessly peer reviewed and basically being devoted to following the facts wherever they lead. But in the end, scientists tell us how the universe works and what is possible. Engineers use that knowledge to build things after the marketing dept identifies a customer for it and then the politicians decide how to regulate and tax it.
2. Philosopher Kings. Politicians with PhDs. Victims of several bad ideas, namely that a) expertise in one narrow area implies a general wisdom; b) that rule by a technocratic elite is 'better' than rule by the consent of the governed; c) that just because science says something is possible means we must do it, because morals aren't scientific after all.
The last century has shown a marked shift in the public's idea of the word 'scientist' from the first to the second. This explains their change in attitude. In other words if Hansen and his ilk stopped the politicking and went back to their lab and produced some results that didn't get shredded people might start readjusting their views again. Even better would be if the other so called 'real scientists' policed their own a little, forcing the ones who want to take up a new career in politics to LEAVE science first. Because it should now be clear that attempts to lend the good name of science to a political argument doesn't actually work, that instead the bad name of politics attached to science.
And here is another good example of the problem. Carl Sagan's _Cosmos_. It is a wonderful introduction to science in many ways yet terribly flawed by Bad Idea A from above in that Sagan mistakenly believed himself an expert in Foreign Relations apparently for no other reason than he was a smart fellow. But the series is full of the most naive useful idiot twaddle of the sort that, with the Cold War ended, few would dispute. When the grandkids are older I plan on showing them the series and use it as an example of the problem of scientists trying to become political leaders without first investing the effort to actually become an expert.
Democrat delenda est
Ok, laugh at the Republican creationists, but if you really want to see some fancy political tap-dancing on a political issue, just try mentioning the well-documented and annoyingly persistent relationship between race and IQ to a liberal. It's like arguing with a creationist that goes to 11.
Bring in the money, then science will become popular again.
The problem is with the audience for science, not science. Don't dumb science down, make it more "interesting", bla bla; fix the audience. The fact that science isn't popular is a symptom of a larger problem with the audience, not an isolated problem due to something with science. Well, perhaps attempts to dumb down or make more interesting science has contributed. I know I am very put off by most current science articles, with their stupid wit and over-simplification of things. But if I pick up things written 50 years ago, I a much more interested and enjoy reading them, since the authors just present the facts, without any wit or slang, and let the science itself entertain me.
Hollywood please listen up!!!!! One of my role models growing up was Spock from Star Trek. He was not a Nerd or a Geek. Ever since the late 1980's Hollywood has been portraying intelegent people with a penchant for science as nerds and geeks, for example Erkle. Who would want to be like him? Now Abby from NCIS she's cool, so are most of the SG1 team. But those characters are in the minority. Hollywood, make being smart cool again!!!!!
Meddle thou not in the affairs of Dragons, for thou art crunchy and with most anything.
Well, Hawking has gone further than that, turning the Anthropomorphic Principle on its head and asserting that if God does indeed exist, then God is very much constrained in the kind of Universe he can create that would support life (the Principle is often invoked as an argument for God).
At the end of the day, however, science really cannot say anything about God, or at least God as formulated by people in the Judeao-Christian tradition. An omnipotent, omniprescent being can do anything He wants, make it appear divine or natural at His whim, and thus can explain all possible observations, rendering the explanatory power of invoking such a being meaningless. The moment you invoke parsimony as a reasonable means of finding the best explanation, you tacitly admit that God is either restrained or restrains himself, and thus renders the question of His existence or lack thereof a question of no particular concern to science.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Learning how to make gun powder was very cool. Then of course, the chemistry and physics of it pushed me to learn more. And it also had an affect on how I viewed hisrory.
which means neither the parents, teachers, students, or politicians, are allowed to be offended by the results. The results are that we are not all created equal and testing can show it. Hence we dumb it down dragging some of the brightest down with us and discouraging some who may have had a chance to some of the brightest from ever showing it.
Throw in the self destructive behavior of certain cultural elements and the high minded liberal mindset where these self ascribed people with all the knowledge deem what each "group" can do and how best to "level the playing field" and we end up with a system which essentially declares one race inferior to another and backs it with claims that the test/course/etc is racially biased - as if information can be such.
Top it off with a system designed to keep bad teachers in the due paying roles and to lard up the administration with every family member a local politician knows of who needs a job and is it any wonder we fail our kids?
I do know one thing, it certainly wasn't religion that dragged down our education system, we did our best to drive that out of our schools we forgot to watch was being done by other means.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I wouldn't say that Americans are particularly bad about anti-intellectualism. There is certainly some level of that present in our society, but I think that the same sensitivity to "elitism" can be found to varying degrees in any society. This really struck me during the presidential campaign in 2008 where elitism was made an issue. To say nothing of the political games involved, I think this worked primarily because no one likes to look or feel stupid, or hell, even inferior in any way to anyone else. Science can easily be perceived as threatening intellectually by those not well versed in it. It has come a long way in the last century or so and it is almost impossible to get a good grasp of any discipline in a short period of time. Because of this attainability of the knowledge for many, it is threatening and often ignored. I remember seeing many creationist videos using this for a political advantage. It is easy to demonize that which isn't understood. I just think we in the US get a little more militant about superiority issues because of a fairly aggressive attitude towards success. As mentioned by mpapet, we are a pretty individualistic society, and as such we might fear what could be threatening to our individual success, like the intellectual superiority of another.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
Honestly I believe that kids would be more responsive to education if it were higher quality. Teachers think their job is to inspire kids, teach them values (right, wrong, and the meaning of life shit), and appreciate art.
I shit you not my senior year of high school English was read Shakespeare and tell the class how it makes you feel (not even write about it just show and tell shit). That's it. The whole fucking year was Shakespeare. The previous year was all about being a creative writer. It didn't matter if you couldn't spell or come close to writing grammatically correct sentence or even punctuate it. If it matched the teacher's idea of what creative is... you win.
What does this have to do with Science class? The same two kooks that taught my English classes are now teaching biology and algebra.
I have a PhD from a top university, with a decent set of publications. After several months of looking, I was unable to find any science job, and switched to the tech industry.
You, sir, are and idiot :)
Christianity demands reason being left at the door. There are some things you just don't question. Period. The bible is true - period. The world is 6000 years old - period.
And you're wrong. Period. The percentage of overall Christian sects which are biblical fundamentalists is small. And I'm not even including the non-fundie Roman Catholicism, which is the largest Christian denomination by far.
But don't let the truth stand in the way of your bigotry.
The outcome of a science and/or engineering degree at this point is competition with millions of people making $8/hr.
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Seriously, in a self-interested, capitalist society what could POSSIBLY motivate a young person to expend limited educational resources on something that resulted in that?
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Any rational person would go for medicine, law or finance or any other field with higher pay with less chance of outsourcing.
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Whine and hand-wring all you want. We did this to ourselves when we started giving away the store to save a few bucks for next quarter. We'll never win another war because of superior technology. Any technology we *do* create will be outsourced in seconds, so why please explain to me why I would ever bother?
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Hope you're all enjoying the global marketplace.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
http://libwww.freelibrary.org/closing/
Quote:
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* Sigh *
I notice science museums try compete with video games and F/X movies with flashy exhibits of their own to teach science. Real science involve more work like learnign lots of background material, doing tedious investigations, and writing papers.
I must confess I was probably hooked by "science entertainment" in my youth, but it was of a different kind than now. I found science books with their glossy color photos more interesting than reading fiction, which was just words. And I loved to play with "science kits": erector sets, chemistry labs, and electronics building kits.
Seriously, what does it do for me to have a knowledge of science? Playing with science is a fast track to trouble with the law in many respects:
bio = drugs or terrorist
encryption = terrorist
decryption = pirate
non-medicinal chemistry = terrorist
electricity = safety hazard (building/fire codes, etc.)
I'm sure the list can go on and on and on.
Those with the desire to pursue science are no longer satisfied by using baking soda and vinegar to shoot a cork out of a glass bottle. The old tricks are just that - old. In order for science to progress, we need new things to try that aren't copyrighted, patented or outlawed. Prohibitions are not all bad, but they need to be worth their cost.
In order to be "cool" science must be accessible to everyone and they must be free to create new uses. We are in a state of over-regulation where anything "new" is considered too dangerous to put into the hands of common man. I somewhat understand this given what I've seen of "average" people. However, the people who would be drawn to this stuff are being held out due to fears of losing what little freedom they have left. How many of us made our own fireworks when we were young? - Ok, they really were just small bombs - but you can be sure there are risks associated with playing with science, and there comes a point where you just need to stand back and let Darwin do his job.
Science will never be "cool" as long as it's considered a tool limited to those with connections to wealth, corporations or the government.
DISCLAIMER: This post was not checked for speling and grammar- if you complain- you're a whiner
If you got any gonads, identify yourself. :-D
Yes, I'm sure, especially since I read the entire book. Knuth is talking about algorithms that are designed to use randomness in order to achieve a purpose. Inside the system, the observer would just see the randomness. But to thereby conclude that it is "blind" is to miss the point.
"We must all rally toward a single goal: without sacrificing the growth of knowledge or scientific innovation, we must invest in a sweeping project to make science relevant to the whole of America's citizenry."
Science is relevant to every last person on the planet, given the science behind world-altering technology related to Nuclear energy, Climate Change, and biological engineering (just to name a few). The problem isn't that it's irrelevant (although that may not have been the author's precise intent in that word.) The problem is that what little science is picked up by the general public is subject to spin by those who have nothing to do with (and little comprehension of) science, namely politicians.
What's required isn't to make science popular, it's to make fact checking and critical thinking popular. It doesn't matter how little or much you understand of Clean coal technology (as an example); when you are subject to misleading information from all angles of mainstream media what you need is the ability to think for yourself or you are going to be led astray (from science). Too many people are willing to believe whatever 'preferred news outlet x' has to say on a subject and their beliefs quickly align with whatever interest the "journalist" has in mind for them. They proceed with their lives thinking that they are sufficiently informed since they were assured by their favorite news outlet that the "science behind" a particular issue aligns with their interests.
You can't change the laws of the universe, and well done science is almost as unwavering. When these things conflict with what you want, your best bet is distraction and misunderstanding. THATS the problem we face.
Kook alert
Scientists have a wealth of number crunching power at their collective fingertips to pull from to get results, people are already doing it for free with projects like Boinc. Create a business model where participants can be paid credits in aggregate for time spent working on projects. The requirements are tighter, the controls are tighter, the projects are more focused and accredited or approved by educational institutions, with oversight. Corporate sponsors are brought to the table and can provide projects to work on, providing a modest budget to pull from. To encourage more participation by new scientists, any scientist with a minimum level of education can launch their own project, there's an approved toolset to use to help get the project started, and to encourage anonymous participants to help crunch the project and get results, the participants earn "credits" that can be loaded onto a credit card and spent at approved locations for real world items.
Sound familiar, right? We already see this type of activity with Boinc and separately with reloadable credit cards like Netspend. In an overpopulated sea of distributed computing volunteers, let's start paying these thankless people for their scientific contributions and encourage more scientists to get involved and solve problems.
Americans will become interested in Science again if they know they or their children can have a future perusing it.
That will only happen if America stops outsourcing its R&D and limits the number of scientists it imports.
Dropping no child left behind, and actually promoting achievements instead of preventing failures wouldn't hurt either.
What relevance does this have to anything? So two people have different hypotheses on how the application of a theory may prove or disprove "design" (I'm assuming you're referring to "intelligent design"). Religion was never addressed in the original topic, no need for it here. One pitiful, poorly-chosen example does not justify dismissing science altogether, as you just have. That's about as mature as dismissing the entire field of biology because there are multiple arguing factions debating whether or not a low-carb diet is healthy. Furthermore, nobody cares. Is godd some sort of underlying principle that is taught in the classroom as a fundamental law, like thermodynamics or chemistry? (Hopefully not). Finally, the fact that "god" can neither be proved or disproved, now or ever (thus, a useless theory) is not something that is testable, repeatable, and based on solid principles, so again, why bother bringing it up here? (MOD-1, flamebait)
Posters in science and math departments of Danica McKellar and other attractive geek women may help make these subjects less intimidating for female students.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Is there really a complete lack of college graduates with scientific majors seeking scientific jobs? Are brilliant scientifically-oriented minds really being drawn completely away from anything scientific related? I really don't think so. As long as there are always enough people with the capacity to perform the available scientific jobs out there, and their minds are being educated and nurtured appropriately to inspire them to push the limits of our current understanding while having the associated technical knowledge to do so, then I don't really see what the problem is.
The science police should be caring less about breaking in to mainstream media and more about how they are educating their future prospects. If there's anything science doesn't need, its more prospective candidates coming from the mainstream MTV crowd.
LOL. I get this a lot. It's better to be a kook than an ass kisser any time. Are there any people with gonads left in science? Or more to the point, are there any gonads on Slashdot?
I wonder how much postmodern thinking influences people perspective on science. Postmodern thought is mainly associated with a person's view on religion, but it can also impact non-religious related topics.
I recently read a survey about students view of religion going into and coming out of higher education. Religious students that majored in science kept their religious views they had going into the program. Students that majored in social studies and philosophy, which are majors have have heavy influence from postmodern thought, became much less religious. It would be interesting to find out each of these group's view on science. We already know the religious group thinks highly of science or they wouldn't have majored in it. Would the group highly influenced with postmodern thought change their view on science?
If scientists got paid like doctors, lawyers and investment bankers, there would be a lot more interest in science. I'm mostly talking about the US. I think there's interest in other countries where people see it as a way to improve their lives. Over the last 20 years, the United States has systematically exported much of our science (and engineering) know-how to Asia because it was so much cheaper to do it that way. Whether it was a good idea or just the way things work, that's what happened. We'll start paying scientists decent wages and the interest will come back when someone attacks us and then won't make our bombs for us cheaply to toss back at them. Actually, the bigger problem is that the bombs will be products (drugs, electronics, cars, etc) we can no longer afford.
All you have to do is follow the money.
Beyond our own interests and ambitions, most of society just wants to have a decent job, go home, spend time with their family...
This is for any society.
So let us see here... why would anyone in the Western World go into science or technology/engineering?
You have the chance to study hard, work on new unsolved challenges... all for the reward of no job security, middle class pay...
Yep sounds like a good deal to me! The reality is that anyone who is capable of really contributing to science/engineering has the ability to be a doctor, lawyer, accountant, teacher, nurse... At the end of the day, this is where most are going to go as that is where the money, power, and stability. It is not that people in the Western World are not capable of doing science or engineering. They are... they just choose not to. There are better professions. The few that do go in aim for management.
The opposite is true in India and China (at the moment). The best people go into science because of the large rewards. A good engineer in India working for a US firm will make more than a doctor.
No amount of tv shows or media hype is going to change this reality. Hey, I just got an e-mail from my University talking about promoting engineering as the 'caring profession.' I kid you not. My brother who was engineer heavily involved in research and smarter than myself, left the field to be a lawyer.
My younger brother wants to be a teacher. It pays very well in North East.
Once you stop the profession of science and engineering from being attractive as a career, the drive to pursue it as an interest dwindles.
That is it. It's not complicated. We all only have so many hours in a day.
Many of the ways we think are going to help kids with science/engineering/math are actually going to hurt it.
Things like boosting teacher salaries. Hey, my brother is just as scientifically capable as myself, yet he wants to be a teacher because it offers the best lifestyle and is funded by the government. Duh... it's just going to keep draining the good people from science.
As far as I am concerned, until the rewards (read money/stability) are realigned in the Western World, few capable people are going to go into the field. You don't see that being addressed now do you?
Looking back, I'd probably make the same choice. I wouldn't go into the field today. I'd just become a doctor/nurse/teacher/lawyer and write open source code if my interest piqued. Millions of smart youngsters are making the same choice.
I am more dismayed with the general unpopularity of any knowledge whatsoever, and the insistence by the population to actively deny any ability of a rational person to do any of the following:
1. demonstrate knowledge through application of knowledge to life;
2. demonstrate an understanding of the difference between fact and fiction;
3. demonstrate an ability to distinguish between proof and evidence vs. rumor and false testimonial claims
I guess as long as benched pro athletes make multiple times as much money and fame as research scientists or other knowledge workers, things will be this way.
stuff |
Of course, a lot of it has to do with education... but a lot of education has to do with what your philosophy of life is.
For example... more recently, it seems, individualism has been raised to an incredibly high pedestal. It no longer really matters what others think, as long as you think you're doing the right thing. It doesn't matter what your parents teach you; in fact, your parents really don't know anything. It doesn't matter how well you do in school, as long as you are popular and have "social skills." It doesn't matter how you succeed in your line of work, as long as you think you do well. It doesn't matter what kind of art you produce, as long as it's "self expression." It doesn't really matter what you learn, as long as you LIKE learning it.
With that sort of prevailing pop-culture attitude/philosophy, how CAN scientific endeavors thrive? There's no reason to look or learn about science. It's just some other guy's research, why would I want to read about it? Why should I care?
There IS a correlation between some historical scientific figures and their philosophy of life. For example, some believed in a Creator, and that had a great deal to do with their philosophy of science, and thus gave them a reason to pursue it. That's just one example, there are examples of completely atheistic scientists too, I suppose.
Short version: if your philosophy of science (which comes from your philosophy of life) gives you no reason to pursue scientific endeavors (including "education") then why should I expect you to do so?
And, at least in the US, when our schools promote a rather distinctly weak philosophy of life and philosophy of science, when the schools are more interested in "educating" with political and social agendas instead of actual useful educations..
I actually came from a homeschooling situation and then went to a public junior college for a year or two. I learned far more before high school than most of my junior college peers knew... and not just in scientific subjects, but things like grammar and vocabulary. As for what I missed socially and politically... yes, I did miss out on some things. Like drugs and learning that wearing pants such that you have to hold them up with one hand is "cool." And learning that treating girls like sex objects is a good thing to do. And learning that lying and cheating is the way to succeed and get an education... or at least get through high school. Somehow, these kids were in "college," presumably "graduated" from high school, and didn't even know what an "adjective" or "adverb" was... let alone how to do simple algebra or what in the world an ion is.
I think there's something wrong with a lot of our philosophy... philosophy of education, of science, of life... and it distinctly shows up in schools. It seems that the ones I saw in my limited public school experience that succeeded were of two kinds. The first: they came from a family that promoted (or required) a different philosophy. The second: they were older people that realized what a failure the philosophy they had or their family had, and were now working to fix it by finishing their education and actually working hard and learning. I very much respected the older (30s and 40s) students in my classes because I knew they were likely having a harder time than I was (had children, had full time jobs, etc) but were still dedicated to doing it. I didn't particularly respect the normal-aged college students that didn't care about learning and just didn't want to get an F, because then they'd have to take the class over again (what a drag!)...
Having finally read this book (despite low expectations), I can confirm that per the poor reviews it offers very little that's new. When it does forward a unique point of view, such as this suggestion that public communicator become part of the job of 'the scientist' (as in just about every scientist), it's absolutely ridiculous. Scientists usually have enough on their plates with little things like research, grant writing, internal politics, etc., without some science writers who completely lack data to back up their thesis telling them to start up and maintain a blog, column, or attend even more conventions. Those who do maintain such things tend to be either 1) incredibly busy, busier than I'd like to be, or 2) have a lighter research load than is desired by many. I'm not badmouthing option 2), it includes scientists who do try to focus more on public outreach and teaching, which is very admirable and valuable. Just don't expect every person interested in scientific research to want to devote their time to it.
All of this is a little beside the point, too. Sheril and Chris make a large part of their thesis into blaming the scientists for a lack of communication. It's why this recommendation quoted in this article is one of their only unique ones, unique in how extreme it is. While you can blame scientists for misrepresenting the importance of their research (not all research has a direct practical benefit, even if it's fantastic), blaming them for not being in the public sphere is difficult when we already have so many teaching scientists and public scientists who would love to come on television or radio and do attend conventions. The thing is, when they can even get on a show relevant to their expertise, they get a 2 minute blurb at best to dumb down their subject and try not to mess things up. They get paired with a creationist or 'holistic doctor' or just general ignoramus and have to spend their time (again, just a few minutes) attempting to debunk the inanity. That is not an environment conducive to educating the general public nor for raising appreciation for the sciences. The (partial) exception is public radio, where scientists can speak about their research for twenty minutes to an hour on something like Science Friday.
By focusing on scientists, they avoid the larger problems with the public's appreciation of science. Everyone here at slashdot knows about the fantastic solar cells that are 'just around the corner' and other tech predictions which never come to market and the same applies to science articles in general: there's a glut of misrepresented research which has been illegitimately hyped up for sensationalism, especially in medicine. Such irresponsible journalism, supported by low-level science journalists as well as their editors (either one can make a piece way too hyped), leads to a mistrust of news about scientific breakthroughs. Now, I don't have data for that (just like Sheril and Chris!), but I know that I ignore every article about a scientific breakthrough just around the corner unless I have to 1) debunk it or 2) it's related to my major and I know that other people do the same. Furthermore, journalists often simply don't understand the science they're reporting and make serious errors. Chris knows this, he's criticized shoddy science journalism in the past on his blog and made it into a theme. He knows that it hurts the reputations of scientists and the general undestanding of science. Apparently, however, rather than promoting good science reporting directly or finding a market solution to avoiding too much hype, it's time to blame the scientists for not reaching out enough.
Sorry, got on a bit of a rant there. Aside from poor journalism and a generally inhospitable media, there's also the problem of science education in school (mine was atrocious, in retrospect) and the elephant in the room: anti-intellectualism in all its forms, including a number of religious and political movements. Despite all of these forces working against the pu
I would like to have...
1) a cell phone that looks like a TOS communicator (one vaporphone was the Sona Mobile themed phone)
2) a micro-lab that looks like a TOS tricorder (hell, I'd be happy with GPS, temperature, and humidity sensors in a stylish box)
3) a laser pointer that looks like a TOS phaser (that would absolutely get attention in meetings)
Cool and useful science toys.
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
If I were to start anywhere, it would be at the elementary education level. Early on the child is a natural "scientist". Inquisitive, fascinated with why and how thing work. Somehow by the time they reach middle school, we've lost a large number of the kids. I am not blaming the teachers but more likely the means we teach science, but if you simply take a step back and look at the level of interest in "science" through the grade school years to the middle school years, I believe you would find an continual slide in interest.
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The 2005 Harris poll reports that less than half of the US population does not believe in evolution. Now though this is significantly based upon religious belief, if the individual did not feel themselves alienated from science, I would doubt that we would see these types of numbers.
The one aspect of the situation I have not seen researched is if we are suffering a collective "Future Shock", quite simply too much information, often conflicting on the major situations affecting the world where it is simply more comforting to a lot of people to try to maintain the world in traditional, and simple compartments.
Greg
How about people stop treating creationists or people who belive in God like idiots and that thier relgion is meaingless and stupid and instead talk to them like..Human beings and not attempt to "prove that thier wrong" every 15 seconds like a good chunk of the scientific community likes to do, huh?
Thats why science is unpopular, since you have people in school and on the web insulting people who are relgious every chance they get and so what does that do? Instantly snaps people into defensive mode and they refuse to listen to anything that community has to say.
How do you expect science to be popular, when every retard out there can rant about "elitism" and how people should be ashamed of themselves for having more than half a brain, it being un-American, and intelligent people actually buying into that reality?
We must stop stuffing people with special respect, support, help, feed and swaddle them, because they are failures. (No, stupid! That does not mean that we should do the opposite!)
We have to get back again, to treating people on an equal basis, and then for what they achieved and how they are.
As long as a loser who got kids with his own sister, refuses to learn at all, and expects everyone to treat him specially for it, can insult people because he is jealous, but it's a taboo to tell him what he is, because oh it's not "politically correct",
science will not become popular.
I really wish, the world wars and Nazis never had happened, and Germany (where I live) would still be the land of the poets and thinkers. :(
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I find being better educated and better informed to be an advantage. I make more money. I keep more of what I make.
Do you really think making science popular will change public policy decisions?
more cowbell
How could anybody be stupid enough to report this as a factual story? When was the last time you read a new report about any scientific development that actually contained the facts necessary to understand the relevance of the discovery? First thing we need to do: make understanding the subject a prerequisite to writing about it.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
If we want them to learn science we should make it fun.
Instead of leveling up your mage to cast a fireball, the game will teach children about the dynamic theory of combustion and then have them make Molotov cocktails.
:(
Democrats have a fair share in this too.
They love to villainize large corporations who have the funds and desire to hire R&D scientists. The extreme left environmentalists love to find and exaggerate environmental trade offs for every science and technology. Even after calculating the risks and when they say it is perfectly safe they will go. It is a Corporate/Government conspiracy. There subconscious motto is "DDT never Again!" much like the Extreme Right "9/11 Never again!". In essence they say Science is good only if you don't make a lot of money from it. So most people especially when they choose a path in life late teens to early 20's don't want to be the Evil bad guy. They want to be the good guy who helps the world... However there are also pressures to make good money too, at least a good living wage. A lot of people don't want to teach. So they will choose a path were they can be good guys, and/or make a lot of money. I don't want to work for Exon because it is an evil company who is ruining the environment, I don't want to work in a college where I have to deal with Whiny Undergrads all day... Also I don't want to spend 4 more years really focusing on a single topic.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Dawkins' point is an epistemological one. We have a perfectly good explanation for how the life that we see on earth today evolved, through (internally) random processes, from more primitive ancestors. Thus, it is not rational to introduce a new agent, God, to our concepts of the universe to explain what we can already explain without him.
I take it that you are arguing that, given what we know from computer science, the evolutionary process may well be designed by God. And this is true. But the point is that there is no positive reason to make this leap. Therefore you shouldn't make it. A standard for rational belief has to require a positive reason for the belief and not its mere compatibility with the observed evidence. If compatibility is all you require, then a whole flood of unverifiable propositions sneak in the back door. Suddenly you have reason to believe in invisible fairies, haecceities, ghosts, any force you can think of a name for (and then some) that has no observable effect on matter, etc.
caritj.org
Lasers & Titties
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
...it to Popular Science?
it'll be the year of the galactic equinox, 2012, mankind nearly destroys itself leaving the biblical 144000 humans alive to make the spaceship to escape the burning earth using... pron and beer?... Oh yea, science will be sooooo popular in 3 years, I'm currently learning how to control your mind (see what kind of bs I'm uploading already =)
People are just too stupid in this country. Idiocracy is starting to look like the work of a fortune teller. I love engaging in debates with people and it's fear-inducing to see how incapable people are of thinking constructively; yet at the same time can be so vehemently convinced that they're own ignorant thought processes are infallible. Look at the health care debate; all it takes is one trusted source to say "The President is going to kill your grandma" and an army of nitwits rises to march on DC, all the while screaming "take your hands off my Medicare you damned dirty government!" Now, how the hell is a country composed of this many stupid people supposed to reform itself?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Less books and formulas, more sparky experements!
I'm pretty tired of hearing about these two wingnuts. Their poorly-constructed attempt at a book says nothing productive and heaps blame on the New Atheists, even though the movement is incredibly recent compared to scientific illiteracy.
Having finally read this book (despite low expectations), I can confirm that per the poor reviews it offers very little that's new. When it does forward a unique point of view, such as this suggestion that public communicator become part of the job of 'the scientist' (as in just about every scientist), it's absolutely ridiculous. Scientists usually have enough on their plates with little things like research, grant writing, internal politics, etc., without some science writers who completely lack data to back up their thesis telling them to start up and maintain a blog, column, or attend even more conventions. Those who do maintain such things tend to be either 1) incredibly busy, busier than I'd like to be, or 2) have a lighter research load than is desired by many. I'm not badmouthing option 2), it includes scientists who do try to focus more on public outreach and teaching, which is very admirable and valuable. Just don't expect every person interested in scientific research to want to devote their time to it.
All of this is a little beside the point, too. Sheril and Chris make a large part of their thesis into blaming the scientists for a lack of communication. It's why this recommendation quoted in this article is one of their only unique ones, unique in how extreme it is. While you can blame scientists for misrepresenting the importance of their research (not all research has a direct practical benefit, even if it's fantastic), blaming them for not being in the public sphere is difficult when we already have so many teaching scientists and public scientists who would love to come on television or radio and do attend conventions. The thing is, when they can even get on a show relevant to their expertise, they get a 2 minute blurb at best to dumb down their subject and try not to mess things up. They get paired with a creationist or 'holistic doctor' or just general ignoramus and have to spend their time (again, just a few minutes) attempting to debunk the inanity. That is not an environment conducive to educating the general public nor for raising appreciation for the sciences. The (partial) exception is public radio, where scientists can speak about their research for twenty minutes to an hour on something like Science Friday.
By focusing on scientists, they avoid the larger problems with the public's appreciation of science. Everyone here at slashdot knows about the fantastic solar cells that are 'just around the corner' and other tech predictions which never come to market and the same applies to science articles in general: there's a glut of misrepresented research which has been illegitimately hyped up for sensationalism, especially in medicine. Such irresponsible journalism, supported by low-level science journalists as well as their editors (either one can make a piece way too hyped), leads to a mistrust of news about scientific breakthroughs. Now, I don't have data for that (just like Sheril and Chris!), but I know that I ignore every article about a scientific breakthrough just around the corner unless I have to 1) debunk it or 2) it's related to my major and I know that other people do the same. Furthermore, journalists often simply don't understand the science they're reporting and make serious errors. Chris knows this, he's criticized shoddy science journalism in the past on his blog and made it into a theme. He knows that it hurts the reputations of scientists and the general undestanding of science. Apparently, however, rather than promoting good science reporting directly or finding a market solution to avoiding too much hype, it's time to blame the scientists for not reaching out enough.
Sorry, got on a bit of a rant there. Aside from poor journalism and a generally inhospitable media, there's also the problem of science education in school (mine was atrocious, in retrospect) and the elephant in the room: anti-intellectualism in all its forms, including a number of religious and political movements. Despite all of these forces working against the pu
To bring science back in the fold of the mainstream society, we must view the posts various scientists hold as something that commands respect. Simply put, if you can make a scientists feel as if they and their work were important, then the problem will solve itself.
Currently, the dynamic is far from this simple, idealized version of reality. Right now most academic and intellectual endeavors are met with apathy, if they are lucky. Those individuals actually pursuing these fields are met with far worse circumstances as they navigate through their younger years. The lack of respect for intellectuals among the lay people has bred an environment that finds the intellectuals persevering through far more challenges in society than they ever see in school. Until America learns it needs to lift the intellectuals on their shoulders instead of keeping them on the soles of their shoes, I feel we may never see a real change.
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
It would be nice instead of just going through history as a lesson in human behavior, that they actually also integrate important leading inventors of our past. I heard about Nikola Tesla (properly) a few months ago, and was amazed by how brilliant this man was, and his grasp of knowledge for anything electrical made me wish I had learned earlier about him, as I am for certain he would have brought some extra motivation when I was going to school.
This is 1 of many men that have changed the course of history technology wise, and we know so little about what they really could do. We heard a bit about davinci, but to actually go into his works in depth, and see even predictions about the future, how it was so simple for him to imagine that in the future, man would have been able to fly by putting the materials together like a machine in those days, and give it forward motion enough to catch air currents and use those to propel themselves to their destination.
Anyways...we do not put enough emphasis on these men during school when kids NEED to be motivated
and seek out their true calling in life. I know they would rather be killing orcs on WoW, but
to build your own real operational solar panel powered radio or the like, makes a cool project, and also makes you learn about stuff. Really, we need to push more of this in school...radioshack kits and all.!
Kari Byron, Physics Teacher.
DrE
Eric Aitala
www.f1m.com
so what if most people are science illeterates (sic)?
most biologists - and, from personal experience, harvard professors who have made truly outstanding contributions to biomedical research, can't explain a transistor
I bet most physcisists don't know the difference between DNA and RNA
and so forth
knowing specific knowledge is not important
KNowing how to get knowledge is somewhat important
Knowing that you know very little, and that it is hard to find deep , unbiased knowledge, that is critical
Because
"We must all rally toward a single goal: without sacrificing the growth of knowledge or scientific innovation, we must invest in a sweeping project to make science relevant to the whole of America's citizenry."
doesn't get the applause that
"We must move forward, not backward, upward not forward, and always twirling, twirling, TWIRLING towards freedom!"
does.
why should people pay attention to a profession that requires harder work, from a young age to retirement, and pays less? it requires a lot more rigor before creativity is even allowed. i was not encouraged to think creatively until well after getting a BS. work in engineering, IT, management, and financial stuff pays much better... and some of those fields are the ones that science major dropouts end up falling into.
Get rid of nut jobs like Dawkins and focus on real hard science. When you have people trying to pick a fight with religion rather than focusing on reproducible science, people lose interest.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Substitute several paragraphs and it becomes meaningless or an excerpt from a classic novel.
So what's your point?
Do you disagree or are you just bored?
Where does Knuth say - or even imply - that God exists? Science does not state that there is or is not a God, it merely states that there is the same amount of evidence for a God as for invisible pink unicorns. Some scientists may choose to believe in a God, or an invisible pink unicorn, and some may choose not to. Dawkins states that the models work without God, and provides evidence for this. You can always add things to a theory if you wish. You could start with evolution, and then say that it's guided by God, but God acts in a way that is indistinguishable from a random process. You could then add some other force that also makes no observable change to the predictions of a theory. You can keep doing this until your theory is infinitely complex.
The scientific method (specifically, Ockham's Razor) states that you should discard everything from your theory that doesn't affect the predictions, not because those things don't exist, but because it doesn't make any difference whether they exist. If you come up with some new observations that contradict the existing theory, then you need to add a new factor in to your model, but once the new observations are explained, you stop until some future observation breaks your theory again.
Science can not prove the nonexistence of something. It can prove the existence of anything that has measurable effects, but proving the nonexistence of God is just as impossible as proving the nonexistence of pixies, faeries, or bug-free software. Whether you choose to believe in any of these is a personal choice. Of course, believing in things with no evidence supporting your belief is considered to be a sign of insanity. At least, unless a few million other people don't believe the same thing...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
From my youth I've always been interested in science. Astronomy, Chemistry, Computing and Math were my favorite subjects. However I always ran into those individuals that were gifted with greater than average intelligence that decided that it was better to lord it over the normal people and treat them like crap rather than pass on their learning. I still see that attitude here on slashdot and it bugs the living hell out of me. It's what has kept me from pursuing what I was interested in and having to settle with what I do.
I think what needs to happen to make science more appealing is to have those involved learn some social skills so that they aren't chasing away the budding botanist, or the less than stellar astronomy students who have a real interest and desire to learn, but don't want to put up with some smarmy smart assed geek, who has spent all their time with books, and not enough time with people, belittling them all the time . You want to draw people into scientific fields? You do it like a human being. You socialize.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
This is an old theme of American history, called anti-intellectualism. The American public isn't so much "anti-science" as anti-intellectual.
I think that GP has a point about the proper relationship between science and policy; all too often people use the authority of science to sneak in policy and value judgements as science (for example, intelligence testing). We need to be critical of the people who insist that science should set policy, as GP recommends.
However, to do so successfully we can't be anti-intellectual, and that's where I part with GP. The Republicans are the party that panders to anti-intellectualism; their war on science was real. G.W. Bush is an anti-intellectual poster boy, too.
Invented, just like chess.
Are you adequate?
Don't try to make science cool! Anything you try to make cool won't be! It's a scientific fact! Seriously though... someone should tell college professors to stop making science hard. If science was learnable and its concepts were more approachable then people would enjoy it. A lot of people drop out of hard sciences because professors want to make students "earn" it as well as "learn" it, like they did back in the day. I loved my science courses. I never understood why I had to run the engineering math gauntlet. The business math courses would have been a lot more practical and useful for myself and just about everybody I went to school with. I have a degree in physics... Science shouldn't be hard if you had instructors that are focused on making students understand. Physics is a good example... teachers that insist on drawing a picker and can explain concepts well make all the difference. Want more scientists... then teach science more effectively... hard = doesn't understand teacher
Obviously, if the parents feel like this, they will bring up their children to act in similarly oppressed ways, not only at home but as teachers at school, law-enforcement types and social/church leaders, too.
The only hope I can hold out for is another "60'" where a generation rejects the views (in this case of unquestioning conformity) of their elders and start to become iconoclasts. Maybe then they'll stop being afraid of everything around them (esp. other people) and start to ask the right questions and shake us all out of this malaise.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
launching promising initiatives, ranging from the Year of Science to the World Science Festival to ScienceDebate.
Such initiatives are not necessary to lure throngs of students into currently lucrative fields. One does not see a "Year of the Advertising Executive" or "World Investment Banker Festival."
This is a simple matter of education and compensation priorities.
Honestly, science seems to be more popular now than ever...
Go to any bookstore, you'll find dozens of science-based magazines in print, for every age-group and level of familiarity. These magazines can't stay in print if nobody's buying them.
There are tens of thousands of websites that report on science. There are many news reports of various scientific developments (though, regrettably, they're often sensationalized).
On television there are dozens of programs about various sciences on, entire channels dedicated to scientifically informative shows.
There are people who aren't interested in science just as there are people who aren't interested in any number of other fields that are considered important by many people. But I'd say, as a whole, the existence of so many different vehicles for conveying scientific knowledge demonstrates that science is still popular - if it weren't, economic pressure would have made the case against keeping those magazines, web-sites & television shows & channels around.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/14107/Third-Americans-Say-Evidence-Has-Supported-Darwins-Evolution-Theory.aspx
The poll shows that almost half of the U.S. population believes that human beings did not evolve, but instead were created by God -- as stated in the Bible -- essentially in their current form about 10,000 years ago...
A segmentation of Americans based on their responses to the questions about creationism and biblical literacy finds that a quarter of Americans can be considered to be true literalists -- believing not only in the literal interpretation of the Bible, but also in the creationist view of the origin of humans.
Of course you don't believe there are many creationists out there, because you're not a creationist. I have trouble imagining how many people accept this ridiculous idea myself. But there the numbers are.
And of course, Michael Crichton was a man with a serious sense of debate and mature behaviour when it came to Global Warming.
Bonus points for reading the section above that one about Michael Crichton's misuse of Peter Doran's work, and similar issues with his "evidence".
And repeat that again.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
"After several months of looking, I was unable to find any science job, and switched to the tech industry."
Err, what's wrong with that? Don't get me wrong - I think there is absolutely a place/need for 'pure' science research, but right now, the economy is pretty hosed. There's not a lot of extra money out there for that type of research, I suppose? Applied Science - in this case, taking our current scientific knowledge and putting it to good economic uses, in the form of developing new technologies could help get the economy moving along better again, at which point there may be more available funds for further 'pure' research?
2. Make more science related shows that don't make it sound too hard, but don't make it sound stupid either.
3. Tell the politicians to shut up and leave science alone.
4. Tell the religious to shut up and leave science alone.
Only after the money is there for cool lab experiments, only after the TV shows are there and remain untouched (Bill Nye should have never gone away, the fools), only after the extremist Christians stop hurling their book at evolution as hard as they can, and only after the politicians stop performing fellatio on said extremist Christians so they can keep their Fat Cat jobs will we see a return in science. Until then, we can expect evolution to still be "false", we can expect science to be "lame, gay, retarded", and we can expect all scientific advancements to be met with extreme resistance from an uneducated public watching Fox News.
One word: Mars
The only sovereign you can allow to rule you is reason.
The first law of reason is this: what exists exists, what is is and from this irreducible bedrock principle, all knowledge is built. It is the foundation from which life is embraced. Thinking is a choice. Wishes and whims are not facts nor are they a means to discover them. Reason is our only way of grasping reality; it is our basic tool of survival. We are free to evade the effort of thinking, to reject reason, but we are not free to avoid the penalty of the abyss that we refuse to see. Faith and feelings are the darkness to reasons light. In rejecting reason, refusing to think, one embraces death.
ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ONE! Just brushing up for my next big invention: Ethernet over Voice (EoV)
Well I know you're a troll out to gather more nuts (i.e. - federal grants) for your next paper however the fact of the matter is that youth is losing interest and all respect for science, at least that part that fails to deliver their next great toy, because of all the official lying. Instead of acknowledging reality and adapting to the changes required to study such in a scientific manner they prefer to lie about it by denying it's existence and run to the bank instead. On the other hand if they could just get all of those UFO's to go away -- that might help a bit. And Al Gore too. Uh, you do know that anti-gravity = free energy and they have anti-gravity.
...not killing off the nerds in your action-movies and letting the jocks survive?
...not giving people monetary incentives to make them educate themselves in throwing a ball?
...not teaching how life didn't come around in school?
...not watching Oprah?
...generally not watching tv, except for Discovery Channel (which has also gone down-hill btw. It's all about big bikes and tatoos now, screw that shit I want space, sharks and vira).
...not having to pay for your education? Yep we got that here in Denmark, it rules. In fact we get paid money by our parliamentary-government to study.
...not giving out guns like candy to make up for your kids feeling sucky at school?
All you have to do is refrain from doing something ffs, how fscking hard is it?
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
It's the fact that people consider what should be fascinating topics boring that is the problem
Thankyou for proving my point so perfectly. You did it so well that I think I may be lining myself up for a whoosh...
I hate printers.
Sorry, but you seem to state that
however; it is certainly true that
just so we could move forward, could you please give some example of a "real IQ test" which uses logic, math, and spatial recognition without any cultural biases? Most of the cases I have seen have shown problems that probably have the same solutions in different cultures, but are much easier to solve for people who have some specific experience or lack some other experience (e.g. a pattern of numbers may match some standard sequence in a culture and so the "next in the sequence" may be completely different in one culture from another. For bonus points, please tell us how to identify good "real IQ tests"; for example an association of testers you would recommend.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
...and that Bill Nye guy, too.
Seriously, it's simple. Popular culture needs engineering and scientist role models. Just how many engineers and scientists were inspired by Scotty? Get another Star Trek on TV, though for the love of Gene don't actually make it another Star Trek series.
That was way classier than what I probably may've said.
I really can't respond without thinking about the comments already there, though.
Apropos of the race to the bottom, my friend told me over lunch that last night's Family Guy had a 90-second sequence with Alan Rickman's answering machine.
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
Spatial cognition has been shown to be culturally variable; check out the work of Stephen Levinson on language and spatial cognition. It is possible to design spatial reasoning tests that are culturally biased in that regard; e.g., the Queensland Test was designed to raise the score of Australian Aborigines relative to Australian Whites.
In fact, there's just nothing culturally neutral about getting somebody to sit down to answer an intelligence test. Read the New Yorker's article on the controversy about the Pirahã and ask yourself, in the end: how would you administer an IQ test to this tribe, and would the results be more indicative of their "intelligence" or of their cultural differences to us?
To paraphrase William Labov: if you want to figure out how intelligent somebody is, you have to enter the appropriate social relationship with that person. IQ tests simply fail this; they presuppose that everybody is a well-mannered urban European middle-class authority-fearing white-coat-deferring sit-downer, who is just delighted to sit down and perform decontextualized, pointless intellectual exercise on command.
Are you adequate?
Where does Knuth say - or even imply - that God exists?
It's no secret that Knuth is a Christian. ...
Of course, believing in things with no evidence supporting your belief is considered to be a sign of insanity.
Without getting into all of the problems of your post (if I find time, I may take it up on my blog) let me point out what seems to have escaped some of my correspondents. Science isn't going to be accepted by "a few million other people" (it's much larger than this, btw) as long as what they hear is "you are insane. Science says so!"
The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics is doing great work with its public outreach program that includes public lectures that are always have full attendance and which are available online. This year they are holding the Quantum to Cosmos Festival from Oct. 15 to 25. From the "About" page: "For 10 exciting days this October, Perimeter Institute's Quantum to Cosmos: Ideas for the Future (Q2C) will take a global audience from the strange world of subatomic particles to the outer frontiers of the universe. All events will occur on-site in Waterloo, Ontario and online at q2cfestival.com."
I think it's worthy to note the second author's topics of what he calls "science". I haven't read these books, but I was intrigued (I didn't realize there was a war going on), so I found wikipedia's summary of the the 'science' topics: " climate change, the evolution/creation, bioethics, alternative medicine, pollution, separation of church and state."
I'm sorry, but when I read "science" in the headline, I was thinking High Energy Physics, Biomedical Research, Psychology, ect. You know things that still use something called the "Scientific Method" or that involve men in lab coats, toiling away at actual experiments.
While the topics of his book are most certainly relevant _Political_ topics in this day and age, passing *any* of them off as Science is laughable.
Not so much is at its the solution that lacks utility.
Think of it this way. We have a murder suspect. We have a body with a knife in the back. The knife has his fingerprints. There's a trail of blood that leads to where his car his parked. The victim's blood is in the car. The victim's blood is found at the suspect's home and the knife is in the suspect's garbage can.
The most parsimonious explanation is, of course, that the suspect did it. It creates a testable hypothesis, has a logical series of events, each in and of itself testable.
Or we can say God did it. None of the evidence is incompatible with that claim. God's powers are unlimited. But the explanation lacks all utility. Nothing in claim can be meaningfully scrutinized. No test can be formulated, no observation is incompatible with the statement "God did it". It is the great irony of trying to use God to explain phenomena; God can explain everything, and thus explains nothing.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
In order to attract the best and brightest, science and engineering needs to pay enough to attract them. I don't see it happening, the trend has been to take from the producers in society and give to management and those who move money around (banking, legal). What happens long term when everyone is moving wealth around and not enough are actually creating it?
Hear! Hear! Do a google on "Plasma Cosmology" (which I summarized here: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1367811&cid=29416583). There is tons of activity regarding better working models of the universe than the gravity model that we now take for granted. Check this out too. I think you will love it: http://www.youstupidrelativist.com/
Come up with some fun projects to do for yourself and your family: http://www.makezine.com or http://www.hackaday.com
Tried some old tried and true methods like chemistry sets: http://www.hometrainingtools.com
If your kids see you having fun with science, even if its lower level science, maybe they'd become interested. Invest in your kids. Build a train set, or a kite, or grow a garden. Teach your kids to play with science instead of sitting in front of the tube all day.
"Hey, lets get idiots to be science journalists" didn't work so well. You know, science journalists that don't get conservation of matter, that light is a form of energy, or don't get the 2nd law of thermodynamics at all.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Science would more attractive if a science lab wasn't like noodle soup. I used to watch Popular Mechanics for kids when I was in my teens because Elisha Cuthbert is hot. Really had nothing to do with the show, but I still learned stuff. All the science shows I watch on TV have relatively attractive women on them too(MythBusters, Daily Planet, MANSwers, etc).
But seriously, no one wants to work in a profession where you are surrounded by a bunch of socially inept guys all day(I know people in engineering, biology, computer sciences, etc and 9 times out of 10 they fit this description)
It's no secret that Knuth is a Christian. ...
So.. you're claiming that all christians believe there is scientific evidence that god exists?
I'm guessing it's never occurred to you that it's possible to keep one's scientific work and theological belief separate, huh?
Believing that god exists in no way implies that you also believe it's possible to prove scientifically the existence of a divine being, nor does it mean that every scientific endeavor you engage in is an attempt to find that proof.
'nuff said..
oogly boogly!
It's no secret that Knuth is a Christian. ...
Which is completely irrelevant. He did not, in that quote, say that science (in any form) implied the existence of God. He chooses to believe in God, and that's his choice and not one that I object to personally, but it has no more basis in science than Dawkins' atheism. The existence or nonexistence of God is outside the scope of science until such a time as someone provides theory which would produce different observable results if God did or did not exist.
Science isn't going to be accepted by "a few million other people" (it's much larger than this, btw) as long as what they hear is "you are insane. Science says so!"
Science doesn't say so, and I didn't say that it did. If I believe that there are magical pixies living at the bottom of my garden, you would probably consider me to be a few marbles short of a full set. If I believe in God, then that's culturally acceptable. There is exactly the same amount of evidence for both sets of beliefs. The only difference is that the latter is one shared by a lot of people (ranging from a few million to around a billion, depending on how you define 'God').
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Translation: Ignore the powers-that-be paid right wing propaganda campaign you see being waged against science your eyes see. Your eyes lie. Stop paying paying attention to what your lying eyes see. Listen to our right wing bullshit instead.
At the end of the day, however, science really cannot say anything about God, or at least God as formulated by people in the Judeao-Christian tradition.
God, as formulated by the Judeo-Christian tradition, is much closer to the Buddhist Samsara than anything else. God is the Logos. The word and the logic that binds the world to itself. Jesus Christ is supposed to be the Logos, made flesh. An incarnation of the laws (of nature) that bind us all.
Protestantism seems to have a different emphasis, despite not having Biblical support to deny any of this. It's easier to think of a man in the sky, doing stuff, than it is to think about the Big Bang and its "logical closure".
Sure, Galileo, Hansen and Gore can be criticized and torn apart for their flaws and missteps, but in the end, the only thing that matters is if they were right or not. 400 years from now, I don't think anyone who is mentally well will be claiming that anthropogenic climate change isn't a fact, just as in the present day they don't claim now that the Sun goes around the Earth. Anthropogenic climate change essentially proven at this point, the only matter of debate is how quickly the system responds and the magnitude of the change.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Dawkins shows how a random process that is blind for any final goal still manages to optimize its product. Knuth says a random process that is blind with respect to the goal can optimize the results.
Both are obviously talking about evolution in different settings.
You are probably confused by the brainwashing you received in your youth, but you are free to go educate yourself, or, as you so astutely put it, 'shut up'.
This was a .sig by Slashdot's own redheadedkitten. It is a paraphrase of a John Wayne quote from the movie Sands of Iwo Jima.
"Life is hard. It's harder when you're stupid."
Some would claim that life is easy. Well that still works: "Life is easy. It's easier when you're smart."
It isn't science education that is the problem. It is the asinine material in class, put there by socialists with an agenda. Kids aren't stupid, so they see that they are being fed crap that doesn't help them, and turn off from the whole system.
If we remind them of the fundamental truth that smart people have an easier life, the kids will at least be interested in picking the wheat from the chaff.
"...And the hundreds of Nobel Prize scientists who got involved with trying to communicate the dangers of global warming to the world long, long before Al Gore got involved in anything... Ignore them! Al Gore's special lethal uber-cooties makes what all those Nobel Prize winning scientists say irrelevant.
You're trying to make the case that evolution and biblical literalism are not diametrically opposed.
Perhaps you can explain to me how creating a person out of dust with magic (as far as humans are concerned) doesn't cause issue with the theory that we evolved from lower life forms.
The Intelligent Design crowd does not advocate for the Native American belief that it's turtles all the way down. Stop pretending that these two ideas - Christianity and Intelligent Design - are not the same political force. It's childish.
The same thing is happening in all other disciplines. I cringe every time some one thinks that "Stargate" is based on Egyptian history... Movies and TV shows also dumb down literature and history constantly.
We need better education system (someone said get rid of teachers' unions which would be a great start). I had to go through 4 years of college for the same education that a boy 100 years ago would have had. We also need people to be more discriminating in their choices of popular culture. If we don't buy what Hollywood is selling, they'll change to make a buck. Part of the problem is that Hollywood replaces interesting content with a bang and everyone says "ooo shiny" and takes that as the last word.
many just don't have an interest in it. I remember in one high school chemistry class it was hard but I earned a B, but a few of the other students didn't like it. I asked them why and they said it was a waste of time and not real work like sports like football, baseball, basketball, etc. At least those are real work they claimed, and can earn serious money, unlike a scientist who does nothing all day and gets paid for it. Their words not mine. Later in the Physics class I earned an A, and everyone else thought it was for nerds and too hard to learn.
Science needs to be made more appealing and fun to students. So they can gain an interest in it.
I could have become a scientist but I chose computer science and programming instead. That is because Science has become watered down and the scientific method is not always followed and one can get their buddies to sign off and peer review their own theory. Not all scientists do that, but if you did a margin of error calculation on their statistics you'll find some are high. There needs to be an open source program that can peer review papers to check for errors and the like to crack down on fraud and plagiarism.
I suppose the Republicans have a war on science as some of the science has been use to attack religion and religious people. It is not all creationism vs. evolution, in some public schools and colleges science is used to attack religion. When evolution was abused to say there is no God, then the Republicans got angry and tried to get it banned from schools. Evolution doesn't even mention a God or lack thereof, and science was never designed to prove religion wrong or right, in fact you cannot use the scientific method on religious things.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
...but you can't make her think.
No amount of forced exposure is going to create an interest in a subject. You don't foster interest top-down by cramming it down throats.
Our pop culture is fairly poisoned. Yes, I know that you had people decrying the fall of western civilization when Elvis shook his pelvis on the telly. But our pop mascots have fallen quite a bit since then. In my school district, they made the worst school in the worst part of town a magnet. All the black kids smart enough to make the cut stayed. All the white kids who made the cut got bussed in. So the dregs of that school got sent off to other schools in the district. We received a large contingent at my school. Now I know there's good rap out there, socially conscious stuff. That doesn't get the radio play. That's not what's on BET. That's not what the kids at my school were listening to. It's the shit Bill Cosby bitches about. So it's nigga this and bust a cap that and simply awash in directionless ignorance. This is what happens when kids are left without guidance and their only role models are thugs who happen to have a talent for sports or what can only inaccurately be described as music. I shit you not, I heard some of the bussed in kids bragging about who got the most F's on the report card.
Now just so Kanye doesn't say I hate black people, that's not the point. There's plenty of ignorant white people out there, no other way to explain McCain/Palin. And really, the ignorance is the key factor here. It's ignorance bred of inattention and neglect. There's nothing the schools can do to make up for piss-poor parenting.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Al Gore and James Hansen aren't just making this stuff up. They're simply relaying what 90% of scientists in related fields and what 90% of all scientists agree with. This is what folks in the world of science call a "scientific consensus". Unfortunately, because this particular scientific consensus is ideologically inconvenient for you, you want us to believe that 90% of all scientists in the world are part of a massive international conspiracy run by Al Gore.
No offense, you are exactly the problem that is being discussed here.
How about because math and science are hard and they don't pay well? Anyone with half a brain would find something else to do.
My son called me a 'techno-geek' last night, which obviously came from his friend who's father who went to the local vocational school and probably makes more money than me as a tradesman. What's the point of being a computer genius?
Half of this we brought on ourselves - as tech people truly are some of the stupidest - when it comes to business sense. Since the dawn of software engineering, we decided "hey, let's make a language that can allow everyone to program" and "hey, let's make software free!". Yeah, let's make what it is we do completely valueless - that's a great idea.
The problem is simple, the solution, not so...
Thinking, really thinking, (not blindly obeying, or thoughtlessly believing, or even the intellectual regurgitation that passes for education in this culture) is not easy and certainly not common. It takes dedication, it demands discipline, it calls for patience, and practice, and cultivation. These are not popular qualities in these days of "Attention Deficit" and "Hyper Activity" (and arguably never have been.) That's one more reason why we need to relearn to revere and respect those among who have bothered to cultivate this discipline, and grant their speaking with greater social relevance than the lyrics of the latest gangsta rap.
So those who do not think, reduce science to just another religion, a belief system, no better or worse than the other religions that litter the playing field of human ideologies. They have no metric by which to scale relative truths. Religions are stories in search of justification. Science (when practiced with personal integrity and dedication) is evidence in search of explanation. In science, the evidence is the first, middle, and last word. The scientist is always asking "Does reality agree with my story?", if "No", then the man of science dispenses with the story no matter how passionately he may love that particular story. In religion, the story is the thing of importance, worse, as people grow ever less rigorous (as they are wont), having already dispatched truth in favor of magical thinking, they throw away the important part of religion, the relevant human part, and begin to worship story itself, thus we arrive at fundamentalism.
There is a vital and valuable need for religion. Man has questions about himself and his relationship to eternity, for which there are no good rational answers. Science however, is the courageous search for what we are, and what our place in the universe might be. It lives in the idea that the universe is willing to teach us about itself, we simply have to have the simple fortitude to listen. The two things are distinctly different and trying to manage one from the context of the other is at best a bankrupt enterprise.
I agree, lets share the mind boggling beauty and complexity of the universe with the general public. Moreover, we should teach our children, science is not simply someone's fanciful guess at how the universe works. Every scientific idea is put to the test... does reality agree. In the end, that's the only test that matters. The rest is simply opinion.
Selective pressure will save the day.
As the world continues to make scientific progress (albiet more slowly than theoretically possible, but that is acceptable), it will slowly become increasingly difficult for the unintelligent and uneducated to survive.
Consider, for example, how many people are being victimized by identity theft as a direct result of failing to understand the Internet. Consider also how many livible-wage-paying jobs require computer literacy. Both examples are limited to computers, of course, but they demonstrate what I believe to be a continuing trend.
Plenty of people would *like* to believe that their inability to understand science is the fault of the scientist for being too unskilled to explain it to them. Might it instead be that gaining a deeper level of understanding of the universe requires a deeper level of intelligence than the average human has?
So, I say stay the course. Advance as we can, make our lives more complicated as those advances dictate, and allow natural selection to weed out those who can't cope. Yes, this attitude isn't exactly compassionate. But mother nature has never been known for her compassion.
I went and read that article, and I've got to say it didn't impress me at all.
Chrichton sounds reasonable (to the point of being condescending), but what it boils down to is "It is impossible to make predictions about climate change with any certainty, therefore climate change does not exist".
I could deconstruct his numerous arguments at length, but frankly feel I have wasted enough of my time as it is. I will observe that for a man who speaks so highly of logic his lecture was rife with fallacies.
We need a new Mr. Wizard.
Get kids interested in science and it goes from there. At least in the 90's we had Beakman's World and Bill Nye. Today all we got is Magic, Vampires and Aliens, so I guess paranormal science isn't doing too bad these days...
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
The Center for American Progress published (or syndicated) a lot of Mooney's articles until very recently. I've read enough of "Unscientific America" to know that it propagates exactly the sort of thing it evangelizes against. And that is the problem: the book is a type of evangelism by a True Believer.
What Chris Mooney doesn't seem to accept is that science only tells us how to understand and quantify things that can be empirically experienced. Science can answer certain questions about the physical world, but it will never give us is the Value or Meaning of such facts in some other context, such as philosophical, social, ethical, or theological. Science may give a certain direction to epistemic systems, such as to the reliablists or empiricists; but science can't in the end say anything at all about "right" and "wrong" or "good" and "bad."
What Chris Mooney wants us to believe, in my opinion, is that given a certain "scientific literacy," heretofore superstitious Americans will necessarily assume a different stance on morality (there are shades of Garrett Hardin in this argument). What is not clear is how scientific understanding, or understanding of an empirical or scientific method, translates into moral subjectivity. There is in fact no experiment yet devised that can examine and measure the metaphysical, subjectively experienced qualities of a moral system. Rather, Mooney appears to be part of a group of technologists who are replacing outmoded priests with a new religion. I do not see many differences between the followers of the new system and the followers of the old one.
The Abrahamic god has pretty much been shot down. The specific claims are pretty much gone (no global flood, wrong order of creation). As specified in the bible, he's not omniscient nor omnipotent (can't defeat iron chariots, needs a marking of blood to find worshipers). Even if against that, you assume the omnipotence and fall back onto "god made it look that way", then god becomes the father of lies, not satan, making him not the Abrahamic one.
Dawkins shows how a random process that is blind for any final goal still manages to optimize its product. Knuth says a random process that is blind with respect to the goal can optimize the results.
This isn't an accurate summary of the issue. Dawkins sees "random process" and assumes that it is blind. Knuth states that randomization is used in the design of sophisticated algorithms.
How does Dawkins know that the randomization seen in nature is truly blind? Is there any scientific evidence, or is it all metaphysical?
How about ceasing to overregulate home chemistry sets (which now really do little more than allow kids to see color changing tricks), and allowing for private citizens to once again be citizen-scientists without the fear of drawing the suspicion of the DHS (Look! He's got a lab in his garage! He must be a terrorist!) or the DEA (Look! He's got a lab in his garage! He must be a making meth!). Heck, I'd love to set up a hydroponic tomato garden in my basement so I can have tomatoes during the winter in Minnesota, but I don't want to risk being booked on having "drug-growing equipment" (Look! He's got them plant lights in his basement! He must be growing pot!)
I mean, come on, people! In the days after 9-11, restrictions put forward governing certain incediary chemicals nearly killed the ability of model rocket hobbyists to purchase engines online or at distant hobby shops (due to proposed shipping restrictions). The model rocket and hobby industries had to lobby to make sure those changes didn't cripple a hobby that spurred the interest of many people in the fields of aerospace, aerodynamics, engineering, chemistry, and physics. Heck, let's get back to being able to order our own chemical supplies so we can make our own rocket engines!
It has even changed kitchens. My mother had a recipie that used baker's amonia as a primary ingredient (I'm assuming as a levening agent in conjunction with baking soda). As far back as the 1980s she could no longer buy it herself without registering with a pharmacist and having them order it for her (in limited quantities--you know how often cookie-bakers must have engaged in bomb-making activities). Recently, I went to a number of pharmacies, but none of them could get it for me.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
I recommend Jerry Coyne's review of this book. It eviscerates it.
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/unscientific-unscientific-america-part-1/
It's easy to make science-related careers more popular: pay scientists more than poverty-level. Having passion for a career is one thing, but at the end of the day, passion doesn't put food on the table. The paycheck does.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Education is a value that must be inculcated by parents. The notion that scientists have a duty to make their work culturally relevant is silly. It's a mistake to lay our cultural failings at the feet of science.
Maybe we need something like a "scientist's walk of fame", for scientist who have achieved something great, in the same spirit as the stars laid down in hollywood. This would be a real world reminder of people who have made a difference.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
From your 2nd page:
Math will not lie to you. There are continuous as well as discrete values observable in nature. Much like you can only perceive somewhere in the neighborhood of 30-90 frames of video per second, just because you're incapable of observing the continuity doesn't mean it's not there.
If *YOU* "could float a goat five feet above the White House lawn, then you" would have.
Your "site"'s arguments completely ignore time as a concept, not merely as a dimensionality. ("Alex, what is Impulse?") I feel that time is a separate system from physical dimensionality, but you go to the point of saying that it doesn't exist.
Therefore, you are an idiot. Q.E.D.
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
"Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?"
â" George Dubai Bush, Jan. 11, 2000
I dunno, I've read both sides and it doesn't seem like there's much to discuss. Unless you're splitting hairs enough to consider an invention to be something created to describe a a ntural phenomena. Plato should have ended the debate melennia ago. P=NP would be better party fodder.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Someone like yourself used a scientific method to decide what the past concluded historically that didn't materialize to the present as to why a superior race epicly failed at your footsteps. You ponder it wasn't suicide like a T-Rex evolving to a chicken, because you see massive impacts in the Earth's crust just like on the visible face of the moon.
Then again, it was your indoctrination that spawned a wrath of legalized Scientology that henceforth will be known in the State as Evolution. You will pay people to teach Evolution as the standard doctrine in the education of a young child. You will give that child collegiate-level determinations that will force it to default and accept your presumptions as fact and sarcastically surmise a grading system that is based on mere unsubstantiated memorization skills rather than the scientific Method to procedurally determine fact without respect of conjecture to origin.
Where's your Evolution god now?
Scientoloty is fantasy, just like the Bible.
The method of reasoning and fact based argument is what science can give people not if they can work out a chemistry equation or physics problem which is the focus of most science classes. This is what I fee is lacking in the education system because these days, it seems the source of the information is more important then the information. Most debates have some form of backing with respect to data and normally the best argument wins not the best analysis of the data wins which is what it should be; likewise this would be more science based if the best analysis wines. However, people like to be motivated apposed to looking at the facts which is why debates break down the way they do. If you want to change the way people view science then you have to change other areas to show the influence that science has had on that field too; like fact based debates.
I don't think anybody has worshipped what I'd consider the strict Abrahamic God in about 2,300 years. God, in the Greco-Roman Jewish and Christian traditions (and later lifted by the Muslims) has a lot more in common Greek notions of a sort of ultimate prime mover than with the old Hebrew Yahweh deity.
But at any rate, falsifying Genesis stories doesn't really falsify the existence of the Judeao-Christian God. Neither the Jewish or Christian traditions really advocated a literal interpretation of Pentateuch anyways, so showing that the Flood did not happen doesn't really shake the foundations of these faiths. Yes, it certainly causes substantial problems for Biblical Literalists, but they are really a subset, and not representative of Christian theology for much of its history, which has more often than not been guided by St. Augustine's views on interpretation than on simplistic everything-you-read-in-the-Bible-really-happened-that-way.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Naturally, the one post that puts the blame squarely where it belongs (the seemingly infinite credulity of large swaths of our population), gets modded "troll".
about Stephen Hawking, Starring Vin Diesel as Prof. Hawking, produced and directed by Michael Bay. Those dudes can make anything cool and popular.
If a new cult formed in the United States that stated mankind was created by magic, and demanded that their particular belief be included in science textbooks, that would absolutely be newsworthy. My question is, what is the functional difference between the cult's irrational beliefs and those found in the Bible?
Once separated from the institution of Christianity, the notion of having such idiotic ideas in a science textbook being taught to children falls flat on it's face. This is proof to me that the idea continues to be influential not on it's own merits, but because of the institutional weight it carries.
This is the same reason, as Hitchens has stated, that you will move away from and not closer to a man on the subway who claims to be the son of god. When trying to place this idea in our current reality, it's too ridiculous to support, even for a believer. What nun would take him to the church and see if the priest could ascertain if he was indeed the resurrected Jesus? What pious evangelical would take this man into their home and then go to church and proclaim they had found the messiah?
Stories can exists by themselves in a state of suspended belief. As soon as you try to bring these ideas to the current day, they serve no use at all, besides relating moralities that have been told much more effectively by much better story tellers.
x <- The point of this thread. You -> x
note my non-anonymity
You call mujadaddy non-anonymity? Your gonads are the same size as an electron and you know it. LOL.
If you want your average person to "care", then it has to be tied to their income. Most people will not make a living as engineers or scientists. When people worked in factories it tended to matter more. This is partly why Asia is big on physics-related test scores.
Because all that's being offshored, fewer see it relevant to their career[1]. The laws of physics are the same in Timbukto as they are in NY City, thus more and more research and physics-oriented work will be done overseas (unless somebody actually does something about our fat, scary trade deficit).
More of our work is about liaisons with consumers and management than about actually making something. Thus, we are becoming disconnected with the real world and more connected to the consumer "world", which is often purposely fake, or at least distorted. The economic comparative advantage of the US is sales, marketing, and suing, for good or bad; not in making stuff. Thus, this is where the resources are going. That's how "comparative advantage" is supposed to work. (I have some qualms with some aspects of the concept, but that's another story.)
Unfortunately, science matters more for political reasons, such as environmental and medical concerns, than for a person's typical career. Thus, ignoring it for career reasons may result in an uninformed electorate who make poor voting decisions.
[1] As far as science education making for a "logical mind", often people don't relate to logic. It has to be an almost universal language in the work-place to be "heard", and most work-places are not there.
Table-ized A.I.
It's no secret that Knuth is a Christian. ...
Which is completely irrelevant.
You asked, "Where does Knuth say - or even imply - that God exists?" You didn't put any qualifiers on that question.
He did not, in that quote, say that science (in any form) implied the existence of God.
And you'll note that I didn't say that he did. What I said was the Knuth gives evidence than randomizaton can be evidence for design.
He chooses to believe in God, and that's his choice and not one that I object to personally, but it has no more basis in science than Dawkins' atheism.
Just curious, but is science the only guide to true knowledge?
The existence or nonexistence of God is outside the scope of science until such a time as someone provides theory which would produce different observable results if God did or did not exist.
First, if that's true, then why do a number of those who reply make the claim that there is no evidence for God? Second, it seems to me that you're in an epistemological catch-22. Using the example of randomization, it can be evidence for sight and blindness. Why, then, is evolution "blind"? This is a metaphysical statement, not a scientific one.
Two things in our favour, though:
Like anything useful, critical thinking is best considered as a form of technology, and as such it will have benefits and detriments, usually not the same to a large, mixed, group of people. I like it because it's consonant with my values and because I believe that it improves our spiritual and material well-being, but I know that this might not apply to everyone. Oh, and great point about humility: I've often said that graduate study's best contribution to my education was schooling me in being very ready to be wrong .
*...which is, coincidentally, the name of my retained law firm
Good comeback.
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
Not only did The Blind Watchmaker explain how the theory of evolution works, by the selection and accretion of countless mutations, it actually provided software models that you could run on your own computer, so that you could see these effects in 'accelerated time'.
Dawkins may be very vocal about his criticism of religion, but I think the world is big enough to have his voice in it. After all, religions have been saying (and doing) truly awful things about scientists for nearly a millennium. Dawkins provides a well-reasoned counter to religion. I don't think we need to make science fluffy and nice, because unlike religion, the end-goal of science is always the Truth, and the scientific process must allow us to alter its own methods if and when we find that it fails at that task.
Ugh, I didn't make myself clear at all here. Let me try again: one of Feyerabend's central arguments is that many of our dominant scientific theories, like heliocentrism and geodynamicism, only succeeded because people like Galileo pursued them despite overwhelming evidence against them by contemporary standards. The way he puts it is, very roughly, that a bunch of individually refuted theories can lend mutual support to each other and eventually, taken together, cohere and form a new paradigm that topples the old order.
This is why the separation of church and state should be doubly important for Feyerabend, despite his quote about the Church's treatment of Galileo. The Church should not have had the power to stop Galileo from teaching his theory, no matter what the contemporary scientific judgement of his colleagues was. So by my interpretation of Feyerabend's argument about the pursuit of "refuted" theories, it's simply irrelevant whether Galileo turned out to be right in the end.
Are you adequate?
Check this out too. I think you will love it:
http://www.youstupidrelativist.com/
Ew, furry alert :/
j/k, this is cool stuff lol
One of the good things about science is that even if a new (fundamental) idea is hard to get accepted, at least you know that *eventually* it'll make it into the paradigm... since in time more and more people will 'discover' the same truths as yourself (if it's correct and supported by experimentation etc).
The same cannot be said for getting new moralities or updates ways of thinking added into a religion or other doctrine of societal behaviour.. since many such human-borne mindvirus botnets have internal checksum tests that attempt to reject access to the network from nodes that have defective/altered installations - or attempt a reinstall with factory defaults.
Does soeone have a idea how to make donation more poplar
For all the references to popular esteem of the sciences the 1950s and '60s, no one is asking, 'why?'
I think the answers goes to why we follow spectator sports. It also goes to why we have the current political environment.
People like Us v Them. We like having winners and losers, even if it means sometimes begin a loser.
Fox News and MSMBC have the following they do not because the common man wants to get in to the minutia of the government sausage factory. We are not a nation of policy wonks. It's Democrat v Republican; conservative v liberal.
Science was the same way after WWII. It was our scientists v their scientists. Our bomb v their bomb. Our rocket v their rocket.
The problem with science, though, is that it isn't sexy. By the time you're an elite scientist, you're old and grey whereas elite sportsmen are young and vigourous and all the things our hindbrains crave.
Not true. While a successful scientist is usually able to maintain a productive level of performance longer than an athlete, the physical sciences and mathematics are very much a young persons game.
And science is slow - you can't follow Fermilab like some do a baseball team. Let's face it: science is slow and tedious and not very exciting day-to-day.
Again I disagree. Sports are slow. Sunday on the pitch is exciting. Perhaps the highlights of training camp are exciting. But the thousands of hours in the gym, lifting the same weights or climbing the same stairs for hours are just as boring as thousands of hours of practice a musician goes through or the preparation a scientist goes through.
The difference is not the speed and the amount of drudgery to achieve excellence.
The difference is scheduling. For the sports fan, the practice is boring but come Sunday noon, there will be excitement. For the music fan, the practice is boring but come Saturday night, there will be excitement.
For the science fan, we don't know when the excitement will come. Science doesn't work on a schedule the same way.
You want people to be able to discuss science the same way they discuss politics? You want the public adoration for scientists bestowed upon athletes? Just make science the Us v Them competition it was during the height of the cold war.
Whenever I see things like this I can't help but wonder if people aren't succumbing to the common assertion that things (scientific literacy, societal values, quality of education, etc.) used to be good, but things started going down hill this generation. Without some kind of supporting evidence my default position is to be very skeptical of this kind of assertion. What evidence shows that scientific literacy is going downhill?
Scientology is a fact in mind that has yet to appear in the wild because fiscally those memoirs have not yet been enacted yet. The Bible is tru; it happens every day one way or another. I was there. I seen it myself. You however look through a magnifying glass everyday that a bunch of electrons fill your retinues to believe everything that comes out of Trinity Broadcasting Network and EWTN because social science dictates that Religion would allow the unenlightened masses to be more controllable.
Ignore the covenanter's faith that Jesus lives just like you and me. Accept the Cathaholic faith that you will never be as good as Jesus; do as we say, we are Good(tm).
for a successful science (technology), reality must take precedence over public relations
BTW this staement was inlcuded under presure into the amendments of the Challenger discaster report!
the top 10% of US get enough education to be able to look beyond the information fog created by the US media,
who seek to blind the majority of the US into believing what they consider good for their aims right now!
if youi can, compare the number of war movies on TV just before the US went into one!
the powers controlling the US do not want an educated population, because that would endanger their wellbeing!
and so they do not want their population learn how to come to objectibe ( proofable ) conclusions - which would be the scientifi way!
good night, US
How about for a start Homeland Security stops busting people for buying chemistry sets.
I wonder if the lack of interest in Science in general is due to there being less and less 'easy' things to discover?
Back in the 1800's/1900's, Science was often associated with inventions or entrepreneurial activities. Now so much of science is very minute discoveries, often requiring specialized equipment and intense training, that the average person out there probably feels very distant from it.
What grabs the average mind more, the invention of the steam engine or the discovery of some obscure physics particle? To appreciate the physics discovery, you need to have a much greater understanding of physics, while just about anyone can be excited about a big steaming engine:)
...I am incredibly disheartened by the number of people using terrible grammar and spelling in order to bemoan the anti-intellectualism of our society.
As a scientist, I run into the mental block many people have that 'science is hard', which means anything scienc-y I say is treated like it's in another language. For example, I wrote my family and friends:
I'm launching a satellite for fun, to make music from space. It's called Project Calliope, and I'm writing about it up at: http://scientificblogging.com/satellite_diaries/feed
It's pretty much just me, with some friends helping with different parts of it, and a couple of sponsors helping cover costs (hopefully). I'll be the first to admit it's unusual, but I've always wanted to be part of the space race.
And I received one particular reply of:
Hi-in English what does this actually mean??Sounds, well , different
The answer in English is, "I'm launching a satellite for fun, to make music from space." That's really it. No deep analysis or technobabble needed.
The solution, I think, is hamsters. Everything is easy to understand if there's a cute animal. Had I said "I'm launching a hamster into space", everyone would say "cool!" or "weird!", but at least they'd get it.
A.
I'm thinking once you develop the antidepressant scientific development slowly grinds to a halt. If there's no more discontentment then there is no reason for anyone to attempt change, which means basically that we're frakked we just don't realise how badly yet. I'm just here taking notes.
In philosophy of action, a widely-held position is that all actions are caused by a combination of a belief and a desire: a person has a desire for some end, and a belief that some action is a means to that end, and therefore that person performs that action. There's a lot of argument in philosophical circles about whether all actions are desire-motivated or whether some actions run counter to the actor's desires, so lets sidestep that by instead using a term like "intention" instead of "desire": a person intends something to be so (whether they desire it or not, who knows), and believes that some action will bring that state about, so they perform that action.
The scientific method is a method of getting our beliefs straight - that is, of making sure our beliefs are correct. You are right that just because something is scientifically possible doesn't mean it should be done, questions of "should" are separate from questions of "can"; but science is still half of the equation in correctly determining what actions to take. So your dichotomy of scientists secluded away having no impact on policy-making, vs scientists ruling with an iron slide rule doing anything just because they can, is a false one. Science needs to be engaged with public policy, or rather, policy-making procedures need to engage with science. To do otherwise would be like deciding that you would like to be on the other side of a canyon, and then ignoring the fact that you cannot fly unaided and so running off the cliff is not an effective means to that end.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
The reason that American students lack interest in science (or any other subject) is that American culture does not value education. This lack of interest appears in the abysmal results in international assessments of students from various countries. American students consistently underperform their peers in the rest of the West.
Every time I hear these types of things I think back 15 years to high school, and remember how much focus there was on English classes, and how little emphasis was on science. 4 years of English was mandatory. In middle school we had both an English class *and* a literature class. We spent a massive amount of my education on what basically amounted to the useless skill of literature interpretation.
Meanwhile, Physics was optional. Required science consisted of 1 year each of Chemistry and Biology (and we had to take a generic "Physical Science" class).
I had to take year after year of literature interpretation. I took 3 years of Spanish class. We had more AP history classes than anything else in our school. Yet, science was taught by coaches.
In my opinion, most jobs out there are science based. Yes, as a computer engineer I'm biased, but still--what is more likely to get me a job, physics skills or literature interpretation? So why is there so much focus on English and literature?
In my uninformed, bound to get flamed opinion, it's because most smart science people become scientists, while most smart english people become teachers. So your average high school english teacher might have been #1 in his/her class at an Ivy League college, but your Biology teach might be the volleyball coach. Which one is more likely to inspire a student to follow in their footsteps?
There ya go. Tell me I'm wrong.
It died with Julius Sumner Miller :(
"We must all rally toward a single goal: without sacrificing the growth of knowledge or scientific innovation, we must invest in a sweeping project to make science relevant to the whole of America's citizenry. We recognize there are many heroes out there already toiling toward this end and launching promising initiatives, ranging from the Year of Science to the World Science Festival to ScienceDebate. But what we need â" and currently lack â" is the systematic acceptance of the idea that these actions are integral parts of the job description of scientists themselves. Not just their delegates, or surrogates, in the media or the classrooms."
Let the fucking air out, will you? Try this:
"Let's make science cool for everybody. A lot of us already know it is. We need to show people how cool it is. Not just teachers and such, but everybody."
Don't tell me we don't talk this way amongst ourselves, because I know better. Drop the phony academic vernacular; it's precisely the mindset that makes you do that which puts people off and makes you unable to just fucking TALK with them. Get off the stage, and stay off. Get down on the ground and get dirty. Take off the suit, put on your jeans, and go out among the populace for they are who we work for.
Oh, and fuck the media. They'll pick up on every single instance of some of "us" who refuse to give up on the Hot Air Filled High Horse, sniping at any one of us who tries to talk to people like a person. You can't stop either, but you can prove the latter are assholes by persisting and getting popular. Then the former will go where the money is, and that's you, and then your job gets easier.
And it is YOU who should teach. Let them see your excitement, as young as you can reach them. Don't just talk at them, get them to DO, right along with you. Not just demonstrations of soda volcanoes and tesla coils either. Catch as many different bugs in one place as you can. Break open rocks to see what's inside. Take them from weather vane to arrow to balloon so they understand basic aerodynamics, THEN build the model rockets and fly them, and listen to them discuss amongst themselves why some flew better than others, and often be correct, and then, if you're not gratified and convinced, got put your suit back on and stay out of the way, because some of us can do this. HAVE done this.
Money, mouth. Mouth, money. As soon as there's an opening in my county or any neighboring, I'm starting secondary education training. Having a PhD and taught college, I can teach at full pay while still in training. And guess what: a high school teacher with the same background makes about the same as a college professor year for year, and there's damn fewer headaches. It doesn't preclude my teaching undergrad or grad courses, nor does it prevent me from doing research with colleagues. But I don't have to put up with the bullshit that takes so much time and effort, and can spend those having fun teaching and being cool.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
The problem is this. . .
You, (the elite managerial over-seer), wants all the little people to toil in order to provide you with food, shelter, safety, power and luxury. It takes back-breaking effort to provide these things to you and there is no good reason to do it. As with most people of your sort, you live with a constant shadow on your shoulder; you harbor a morbid fear that one day the flow of wealth and abundant resources (which you don't work for) will cease. Because you have never really worked at anything, you fear work; nothing is more terrifying than the thought of being reduced to the status of a common peon. And so in fear, you cast about with great concern! How is your fear most likely to manifest? Why a popular uprising! Any moment now, you will be discovered and the slaves will take back what they have given you and which you do not deserve to have.
Thus, population management becomes a great concern to you. An obsession.
So how do you make sure that the slaves never have enough energy or awareness to see who is making their lives miserable and come together to do something about it? Why you make damned sure they are stupid and distracted and constantly fighting amongst one another!
Thus enters the Paradox! --To have the most fashionable elitist lifestyle, you need to employ the Wonders of Science! However, to employ the Wonders of Science, you need thinking men and women capable of sharp awareness and bright imagination. --And yet thinking men and women of awareness and imagination are exactly the kind of people who are most likely to realize that they are slaves and that you are their bitter enemy. They are the ones you fear most!
If only there was some way. . . --A method to mind-program people so that they retain the brain power necessary to engage in research and experimentation and other skills required by the Wonders of Science, while ALSO being remaining stupid and distracted. Is such a thing possible?
Fortunately for you, the answer is YES!
Among the maneuvers used to create the perfect army of mindless scientists and engineers are. . .
-Age segregation in schools. (Humans are pack animals; in healthy communities children of many ages play together, and the older and more experienced ones naturally take on leader/protector roles. In the school system, there are no clear leaders established through age, leading to endless, un-resolvable competition, generally resulting in the most base physical attributes becoming the dominant deciding factors. Say hello to "Jocks v.s. Geeks" --Those who are strong thinkers tend to seek love and approval from the only authority figures who appear to value such attributes, the teachers. All you have to do is program the teachers according to your system and they will make sure that the students are similarly programmed.
-Media! --Children who have survived the school system are shell-shocked by that war zone social structure. Their brains have developed strong wiring as they grew up, programed to have low self-esteem, to fear above all things, ridicule. So all you have to do is create a popular media which tells the population what is being laughed at this week, and you can rest assured that even the most progressive thinkers will shudder and cringe as their deep-programming kicks in.
-Meaningless debate! --It is important to maintain and nourish two opposing camps of thought on any number of emotionally evocative subjects. The population will self-divide and spend all their free energy fighting and arguing and hating one-another, while you rest safely up in your ivory tower and collect taxes.
-False Money and False Economic Theory. My typing muscles are getting tired, so I won't bother going into this. Any smart person, (who hasn't been laughed at recently), is capable of working out how money and debt keeps everybody in check.
-War. Again, no real need to explain this one.
There are, of course, many other techniques available, but these three are the work-h
How about we take the scientific achievement that took place within different cultures. It just happens that's just what this book is about.
Of course, people who argue for the "equality" of different creeds and ideologies won't like the book, at all. It makes mention of several ancient cultures that did make scientific advances, however as is obvious to see anywhere in the world today, all save 1 failed. ("equality" of creeds strikes me as being such an obvious untruth that it baffles the mind as to think rational people can actually believe it, after all if they're all "equal" then how could it possibly be that there's more than one ? How can people who build upon math, who proclaim math's achievements, believe that the principle of the excluded third is wrong ? Talk about contradictory ... but that's just me)
Mayans, Incas, Chinese, Hindus, Japanese, Egyptians, Persians ... all made scientific advancements earlier than European civlization. Muslims, Mongols, other Chinese ... killed, conquered and massacred their way to richess and scientific knowledge far beyond what contemporary Europeans had. Muslims should really be split up in 3 groups. The original arab conquerors. Then their slaves killed them and took over (the "mamluks") and then they killed themselves while carrying out jihad against Christians and Jews, only to be replaced by invading Ottomans ("Turks" more or less).
And all these civilizations have one thing in common : they all perished. Every last one. Most of these (all except the Chinese) even eradicated their scientific knowledge (esp. the muslims were good at this), and went backward in technological development instead of forward.
The sad truth is, that there is a single ideology whose adherents have produced over 99% of all scientific knowledge, and who are the only ones who rescued the remaining 1% from destruction. There is one person who exemplifies the singular ideology that created our current level of knowledge : Saint Thomas Aquinas.
Why did he learn science ? Why should humans conduct science and improve themselves using it ? To get to know the beauty of God (as in Christ) better. The catholic church followed him (eventually) and we all know the result. This very forum is built upon his legacy, as is nearly everything we have around us.
That's the thesis of this book, and the guy makes a very convincing case. No doubt though, that lots of people, who might be reasonably accused of hating the ideology in question, will deny this.
Quote from the book :
âoeEvidence scattered from Angkor Wat to Machu Picchu attests to the ability of human beings throughout the globe, not confined to the leading civilizations, to achieve amazing technological feats. And yet, and yetâ¦.Modern Europe has overwhelmingly dominated accomplishment in both the arts and sciences. The estimates of the European contribution are robust. They cannot, in any way I have been able to devise, be attenuated more than fractionally.
Unfortunately if you read the book it will become clear just how much the author dislikes this observation. 3 "fields of science and arts" were created with the express purpose of not having any competing Europeans. Arabic literature (dominated by Jews), Indian philosophy (as Europeans dominate what you might call "eastern philosophy" too, certainly up until the 1990's), and Chinese arts (which somehow magically includes the printing press ("invented" by a Chinese emperor, who did nothing with it))
The author concludes the quote above, however, with this remark, even if it's slightly out of scope for the book :
As I write, it appears that Europeâ(TM)s run is over. In another few hundred years, books will probably be exploring the reasons why some completely different part of the
For my physics independent study, this is poor quality and lots of images, if anyone is interested and/or is a scholar and wishes to help me make it better please contact me at feh nix at g mail DOT com. I know it has poor grammar, but I'm a critical thinker not an English Major ;]
http://fc03.deviantart.com/fs51/f/2009/257/8/3/Scientific_Understanding_by_wolf_ness.jpg
Richard P. Feynman is not my hero, but if I had to choose a scientist I admired, it would be him.
The problem with "science" today, is that it's not about SCIENCE, it's about SCIENTISTS. No longer must experimentation with observation occur in order to get a "scientific" result.
You'll note, no pro-man-made global warming propagandist ever say "the science proves it", they say "the scientists all agree". This is because the science isn't there - we only have relatively logical yet scientifically incomplete conclusions - yet it's being shoved down our throats as if it was hard fact, and those of us that dare speak up and say "wait a second" are told we are stupid and "deniers."
This is the same reason science floundered in the dark ages. Authority went to men instead of actual scientific observation. We are going backwards in science, and those who proclaim to be the defenders of science are the ones making it happen.
another implies that randomness can be evidence of design.
No he does not. He says that randomness can be a useful tool for a designer. That was not meant to imply, nor does it imply, that randomness is evidence of design.
The enemies of Democracy are
is why science became unpopular in the first place. Clearly one can see that whatever killed scientific advancement had a good run immediately after WWII. What exactly destroyed science is hardly clear, but it must have been very influential immediately following 1945, and lasting quite a while. Whatever made science unpopular did a lot of it's damage in the 50's.
So if something is random, there is never any design behind it? It's always the case that when randomness is observed that it's unguided?
"And it reminded me of how some who should know better do so very little to help the religious understand science"
You don't get it, I've realized the same thing you have and after my many years of polite discussion with people *they will not change*. They have predecided their need for god, if it wasn't christianity it would be whatever else was available.
Either people have a desire for truth or they have a desire for IDENTITY. Religious people who believe in god according to our ancestors sacred text *need identity*, the ones that come out of religion on their own are the ones who've always doubted somewhere in the backs of their minds that it was always false and put up a pretense to get along to save themselves the suffering of being the odd one out of their communities. I know because I've been through it.
People have a deep seated need to believe their is some higher purpose in life and if one is to take science at face value, the worldview it forms is pretty bleak... you only have a few options
You have: Endless recurrence (of ultimatley we find out existence is eternal), things are constantly created and destroyed in and endless cycle of universal expansion and collapse.
Or science finds out no matter what we do the universe will one day end finally killing everything in it and the universe will 'end' once and for all.
Science can be depressing in that while it may give us hope it also shows us just how powerless we are over nature and that there are large destructive forces in the universe that may well always be beyond our power to manipulate or control that will make all our striving for nothing.
There's a joke about elephants having the biggest brains but having never engaged in civilization - it's because they've calculated it all and that it's all pointless in the end.
Concerning Godwin's law ... who exactly was Al Gore's father ? Who started Al Gore's (not that successfull, certainly not at first) political career ? And what were the viewpoints Al Gore defended originally.
Of course, there's a reason Godwin is mentioned in that sentence.
Are they in your opinion really "as far from scientific as you can get" or do you just disagree with some of their interpretations of the data? I've criticisms of
In other words, does that go for the "early" Al Gore as well ? Just wondering ...
It took long enough for me to find this response!
I'm sorry, I've been alive for twenty years shorter than the parent poster and I do not remember a time when science was ever "popular". Popularized, maybe, with the moon shots and all, but NEVER popular. If science was ever popular how would it ever lose popularity? Think about that for a moment. Science is a constantly changing beast, with something new emerging from an enormous variety of fields ... hourly! How could you ever get bored with science should it ever become popular?
I call shenanigans on the whole notion of science having been "popular" ... well, ever! Not even in Newton's time, and certainly not Galileo's when it wasn't even called science. Hell, it wasn't even called science until the last, what? 150 years of its existence. It was a branch of philosophy (natural philosophy) before that!
Science has never and probably will never be popular. Sorry to burst anyone's bubble, but use some scientific method and tell me when science was ever popular. I have no evidence to support the assertion and know of none to even test.
So if something is random, there is never any design behind it? It's always the case that when randomness is observed that it's unguided?
No. "Randomness does not imply a designer" is not the same as "Randomness implies no designer".
The enemies of Democracy are
And you'll note that I didn't say that he did. What I said was the Knuth gives evidence than randomizaton can be evidence for design.
No he didn't, he stated that certain algorithms perform better with randomisation. Things like QuickSort, for example, have worst-case behaviour on sorted input. By adding randomization to the input, you make it less probable that the input to the quicksort is presorted. This does not in any way imply that randomness is a sign of intelligence, merely that intelligence is capable of using randomness.
Just curious, but is science the only guide to true knowledge?
What is 'true knowledge'? You're straying way away from science now and into philosophy. Science doesn't claim to be true, it claims to be useful, which is far easier to test.
First, if that's true, then why do a number of those who reply make the claim that there is no evidence for God?
Because they are not scientists, they are neoathiests who use science as a surrogate religion, and choose to delegate their thinking to scientists rather than priests.
Second, it seems to me that you're in an epistemological catch-22. Using the example of randomization, it can be evidence for sight and blindness. Why, then, is evolution "blind"? This is a metaphysical statement, not a scientific one.
No, it is evidence of nothing more than the fact that God is not required for the theory to work. Evolution guided by random mutation, evolution guided by God and evolution guided by pixies all produce the same measurable results. The theory that evolution is guided by random mutation has the fewest external factors and is therefore the most scientific. If you can produce a theory in which evolution guided by God would make different predictions to evolutions guided by random mutations or by pixies then you can test it. In this case, you can make a test that could prove the existence (but not nonexistence) of God.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Sure. But that's not the point. A random process is observed. Is it correct to therefore conclude that the process is unguided/blind?
OK, seriously though we really don't need to make science about doing a whole crapload of partial derivatives by hand. These are problems that were solved in times past. What we need to do now is start kids extremely early on using MathCAD, MatLAB, or Maple to solve problems. A TI-89 can do all the crap they spent years teaching me. Just teach them to use software to solve interesting equations. Taking the goal from lame mathematical memorizations to analyzing applicable situations will in itself boost interest in the sciences because kids might actually have a grasp of what a scientist actually does.
Electricians make 2x the salary of engineers?
But evolution being random isn't the only reason Dawkin's has for not thinking there is a god.
As far as evolution and God goes, saying that God shapes evolution adds nothing to the theory. This isn't explicitly denying that there is a God. If we accept God as a premise, evolution works the exact same observable way as it would without the premise of a God. Therefore God is a superfluous variable in the theory.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Sure. But that's not the point. A random process is observed. Is it correct to therefore conclude that the process is unguided/blind?
It is the point in so much as contradictory statements by scientists was your point, since they were not contradictory.
But to answer your question, no it is not logically proper to conclude that the process is unguided. Scientifically speaking, though, if you were trying to create a model for that process, then in the absence of any evidence suggesting a designer, and without any need for a designer to explain the evidence you do have, it would be correct not to include one. In every case of a random process with a known designer, there is ample evidence of said designer. There is no scientific evidence of a designer behind 'natural' random processes. In fact, in the case of the most common and popular hypothetical designers, said hypothesis is untestable and thus improper to ever include in a scientific theory.
I think you may be confusing "a 'designer' is not necessary, ergo I choose not to believe in one" with "a 'designer' is not necessary, ergo we have proven that one does not exist."
You can't prove God doesn't exist. However you can disprove the argument by the IDers that He must exist.
The enemies of Democracy are
"Athletes and musicians aren't known for having a big middle ground in which you can make a decent living."
Exactly, what I was thinking when I decided to become an engineer 30 years ago. If I were suddenly sixteen again, I'd start learning to play a guitar instead.
If you want to make science popular, you need to make the research available to the public online, i.e. open access publishing.
http://outcampaign.org/
And you'll note that I didn't say that he did. What I said was the Knuth gives evidence than randomizaton can be evidence for design.
No he didn't, he stated that certain algorithms perform better with randomisation. Things like QuickSort, for example, have worst-case behaviour on sorted input. By adding randomization to the input, you make it less probable that the input to the quicksort is presorted. This does not in any way imply that randomness is a sign of intelligence, merely that intelligence is capable of using randomness.
Suppose you were inside the computer, a la Tron, and were observing the behavior of quicksort. Would there be any scientific way to tell one way or another whether the process was designed or not?
Just curious, but is science the only guide to true knowledge?
What is 'true knowledge'? You're straying way away from science now and into philosophy.
These days it seems there's a fine line between the two.
Science doesn't claim to be true, it claims to be useful, which is far easier to test.
First, if that's true, then why do a number of those who reply make the claim that there is no evidence for God?
Because they are not scientists, they are neoathiests who use science as a surrogate religion, and choose to delegate their thinking to scientists rather than priests.
Then, circling around to the reason for this post, in order for science to be better accepted, scientists need to do a better job of denouncing the neoatheists, just like Christians need to do a better job of, say, denouncing the Westboro Baptist fruitcakes.
Second, it seems to me that you're in an epistemological catch-22. Using the example of randomization, it can be evidence for sight and blindness. Why, then, is evolution "blind"? This is a metaphysical statement, not a scientific one.
No, it is evidence of nothing more than the fact that God is not required for the theory to work. Evolution guided by random mutation, evolution guided by God and evolution guided by pixies all produce the same measurable results.
I'm not sure I buy that. Take Dawkin's Weasel program, for example. Yes, it's not an example of evolution, since it embeds information about the target in the search. Nevertheless, if the mutation rate, max number of children per generation, and max generations aren't chosen correctly, the target string isn't found. The parameters need to be "fine tuned" for it to work. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think biologists have address the issue of tuning.
Its not popular to say so, but universities don't just exist to teach students (although that is very important). America routinely produces some of the best research in the world, and a lion share of that comes from tenured faculty (and their grad students) at America's top universities.
Science has a bad rap in many circles because it represents pretentiousness and pompous arrogance. Everyone who's been around for a few years knows that the scientific community has made a lot of mistakes, but every time something new is theorized or discovered, that same community acts as though it is somehow beyond reproach.
Maybe if a little humility seeped in through the cracks in the community's personalities, people wouldn't feel so put off by the subject material.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
"People worship "American Idol" over Stephen Hawking, because they are SOLD and MANIPULATED these values"
I'd love to see a reality show about contestants developing their own Theory of Everything.
Geometrodynamics, I choose YOU!
(Actually I've still got a soft spot for Einstein's classical UFT.)
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
What is needed is some good old fashioned competition. When other countries start to drastically exceed the US in science innovations and applications to daily life, then some of us will wake up from the stupor and numbness of "reality" tv.
There already is competition. But you only have to look at the racist "thank you, come again" comments that get modded up on /. every time another technical development in India is posted. You can see from that that even the more tech savvy people in the US still don't get it. There is still this idea that the developing world is just a big joke, that the US is still #1, and that is the way it will always be. The British had lost their empire for many decades before they woke up to their loss of status. Maybe there will be the same delayed reaction in the US after the Chinese plant their flag on the moon.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
He's not trolling, his points are in order and on topic whether you agree with them or not.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I was quite stunned at the complete and total lack of good answers to this problem. It is quite simple really. A great many people ask why so many hate science, well, the answer is easy. People hate science because they are not taught science, they sit in a classroom in which teachers throw facts at them, out of context, with no meaning, with no use to the student. When you have facts thrown at you in such a way, you are not likely to remember, or care what you have heard, and because it is of no use to you, and you have no knowledge of what to do with it, then you will think it is stupid, pointless, and you will hate it. The same goes for math, history, english, and every other subject that is taught in such a manner.
So now we know the problem, which I can personally tell you is the problem, because when you actually teach science and math, and do it in a comprehensive, in context way, teaching how and why, not just telling kids that you do this set, boring process, and if it doesn't fit then it is not important. Leaving kids with just a single set process that they do not understand how to use is just going to make them hateful and frustrated, when you teach those kids in context and intelligently, then is there really any question of whether kids will like it or not. In my experience, teaching people science and math in the way I have described, they not only loved it, but understood it and learned it much faster than I have ever seen happen in a formal school setting.
So, I say you all FAIL.
The Hatchet/the barefoot inventor.
Suppose you were inside the computer, a la Tron, and were observing the behavior of quicksort. Would there be any scientific way to tell one way or another whether the process was designed or not?
Yes, absolutely. Randomness is just a small part of the algorithm, and of most Monte Carlo Algorithms. The rest is quite clearly designed. Unless you could propose some simpler way in which it could have been created, then intelligent design would be the most logical case. For one thing, there would be no evidence of intermediate steps between a pure randomisation algorithm and a randomised quicksort. This is categorically not the case for anything in our world. Quite the reverse; especially in the biological world things are quite badly designed (the human eye, for example, contains around 20 serious design flaws that even a quite stupid omnipotent designer would have avoided).
Then, circling around to the reason for this post, in order for science to be better accepted, scientists need to do a better job of denouncing the neoatheists, just like Christians need to do a better job of, say, denouncing the Westboro Baptist fruitcakes.
No, scientists just have to keep being right. Science just needs to make better predictions than religion. Science gives nations better manufacturing, better standard of living and better weapons. It is inevitable, baring a global catastrophe, that the scientific mode of thought will eventually replace faith-based reasoning, because it has such clear survival advantages. The question is whether America will continue to be a leading part of this world, or whether it will slide into a new dark age.
Just because militant atheists who reject scientific thought in favour of scientific dogma are idiots doesn't mean that people who reject scientific thought in favour of religious dogma get a free pass.
The parameters need to be "fine tuned" for it to work. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think biologists have address the issue of tuning.
You are absolutely and completely wrong. You have fallen into the trap of reasoning by analogy. Dawkins' program is a very vague analogy of how evolution works. You have seen a flaw in the analogy and believe this to be a flaw in the thing that it represents. Dawkins' program selects based on the criteria of being most like the search string. This is a departure from how evolution normally works. Evolution selects solely based on the ability to survive and reproduce (this is axiomatic; things that can't survive and reproduce, obviously, don't reproduce). A program generating a string, however, has no predators and is immortal, so Dawkins introduces an artificial culling; something that kills the members of the herd that are least like the target string. The analogue of this in the real world would be, for example, a predator that kills the slowest members of a herd of grazing animals. There is no 'fine tuning' force making these animals run fast. Some run fast, some run slowly, but the ones that run slowly get eaten.
The point of Dawkins' program is to demonstrate that random change and a goal are all that is required to produce a solution to a problem (eventually). There are some better examples. Look at any of the genetic algorithms developed for walking robots or animated creatures (you'll find a few hundred papers if you enter 'genetic algorithm walking' into Google Scholar). These begin with simple creatures and programs that fire the muscles in a random order. At the end of each generation, they breed the fastest ones together and kill off the slowest. After a few hundred generations, you get something that can walk. Dawkins' example is particularly bad, because you know what the correct solution is. In this case, however, you generally do not know the most efficient way of making a creature walk. You can find some example videos for th
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Thanks man, for your optimism that the scientific process will eventually make progress towards the truth. I've been getting impatient and have been missing that side of the big picture, and taking this whole scientific truth thing way to seriously! I gotta chill out - we'll get there eventually.
Though maybe we have limited lifespans precisely for the reasons you stated that it is so easy for people to get trapped in limited ideas, so it is natures way of giving us a way out. A changing of the guard if you will that eventually allows new ideas to enter and allows the religions to fall away and be replaced by new ideas. Those changes take centuries so they appear unchanging like rocks eroding in the rain.
What this has to do with making science popular? I have no idea, and maybe that is a silly quest anyhow. Some people are trapped for whatever reason and don't seem to be interested in the "truth", but rather tend to be more interested in a sense of stability in the world that does not challenge what they already are familiar with - which happens to be the antithesis of the goals of science, I think. The question "Are you a Scientist?" maybe could be replaced by "Are you committed to discovering the truth - no matter what you already believe?". I would also question whether it is really in the domain of science to sell science to those who are not interested, or whether that would be better for another field - like philosophy or religion instead. Hmm, religion's job to sell science - what a paradox that is in our society!
This can be an interesting listen:
http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail4230.html
Maybe it was natural selection and a good thing. I survived multiple chemistry sets and so did my parent's homes. Of course, I got my free sample of thermite igniter with the model rocketry catalog and stuck it to a power cord. Got an amateur radio license and built a bunch of stuff from kits and scratch and, perhaps as importantly there, I learned that a license that took some study could be revoked for irresponsibility -- much like my life could be if I stuck my hand in the tank circuit irresponsibly. All good stuff.
While I think that the parent to your post is slightly trolling, I do think that a valid point was raised and that your point was not really proven. That topic is fascinating to you but you don't have the right to dictate that all people should find it interesting, even smart ones. I know some really clever people who chose to study history because they find it interesting. However, I'd be pretty peeved if they hijacked a party conversation and tried to start a debate about a period in history that only they had any interest in talking about.
There are many things and topics in this world that deserve thought and debate but individuals will only care about some of them and rightly so. Just remember, things that are important to you don't mean that they're important to everyone and trying to force people to be interested is just silly. Heck, I like science, mathematics and engineering but I don't want to talk and debate those things 24/7. Sometimes I just want to sit around and talk about crap. Try it, it's fun!
I do agree that people should be taught the value of science and I would love to see the average understanding of scientific principles dragged out of the gutter, but I don't expect the majority of people to care about such debates as whether maths was discovered or invented (especially at a party of all places, unless it's a party for people into maths) just as I don't really give a crap about whether historical references to a king arthur are about the legendary figure or not. Just remember, it's a good thing to have people with a variety of interests.
Silly rabbit
I'm trying to think of a way of saying this without sounding offensive and I'm probably going to fail, so I apologise in advance: If you spent more time actually studying the results of the scientific method, and less time attacking it, then you would be able to make much more compelling arguments.
While I appreciate the sentiment, you don't have to worry about offending me. However, I'm not attacking the scientific method; rather, I'm questioning some of the assumptions that go into certain areas of 'scientific' thought. As for more compelling arguments, well, I have some rebuttals to make, but I won't get to them tonight. To much software design work to do...
The next story posted after this discusses a new discovery of a particular genetic switch which can turn blood cells into immune cells, potentially offering a new treatment avenue for cancer sufferers down the line.
If this doesn't make science popular.....well I guess there's always those pretty pictures from Hubble
"Popularized, maybe, with the moon shots and all, but NEVER popular."
I was born in 1959, and your statement is dead-on.
Ever ready to reap the benefits of science, American culture is still bitterly backward and only changes slowly despite what popular media would have us believe. The capable few change themselves, while the mob just drone along as usual. America despises smart people, exalting the retarded (note all the programs for window-lickers) and largely abandoning their gifted superiors. The US school system was a Hellmouth long before Jon Katz wrote about it.
We need a self-aware, pro-science counterculture than can enable those who are deserving and eager, and rescue/separate them from their toxic inferiors.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Yep, that's the way to make people receptive to it, make it LESS truthy.
C'mon, it's football season.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Well, it would help if astronomers would start casting horoscopes again.
And biologists need to get over there constant recommendation for moderate diet and exercise and come up with something more snazzy, like a tape-worm weight-loss program.
turning scientists into salesmen? That this plan is even considered makes me think that someone is missing a deeper problem.
They briefly touch on this when discussing movies but somehow everyone is forgetting that the problem isn't in science or scientists, it's in what motivates us. Our capitalistic society is simply getting better at convincing us that research and experimentation aren't rewarding. Making money is. A 9 to 5 job coding Jakarta Struts will net me more cash than working on my doctorate regarding AI or NLP ever will. Sure I could hit on something big and then put in 80 hours a week and try to launch a start up but that's like playing the lottery.
The odds of making a scientific discovery that will pay out at profit seem no worse than the odds that some garage band will become the next superstar; or that some kid on a sandlot will be the one out of millions who actually gets to play professional sports. There are lots of kids out there still playing music or sports, trying their hearts out to get that big break.
I don't see that in science: why not?
The answer does like in the Intellectual Property fiasco: we need to allow people freely expore any idea they wish, and expand on it, without red tape. When they wish to commericalize on successful research, that's when the businessmen and lawyers should come in to enforce profit sharing, to make sure that IP holders get their due cut of the profits; but right now we're quashing research and free thought by putting the cart before the horse.
Let anyone try anything they want, and commericalize whatever they want. If it succeeds in the free market, then pay out a fair share to the people who's work you used to build your successes. If it fails, you lose your time and investment costs, but you still had the right to try. That sounds like the only real answer to me that supports both free speech, academic freedom, and free speech.
We're a long way from that now, and that's the problem.
The last thing we want is this abhorrent set of religious beliefs replacing God. I have written countless books and articles detailing the danger of science and one of these days, I'll win this fight.
http://carlsagansdanceparty.wordpress.com
The problem, IMO, is continually reinforced disillusionment, from multiple angles. A generation or two of us have seen a whole bunch of reasons not to go into the sciences. It's nothing so direct as, say, a President standing up and telling us not to; no, it's a long chain of subtle signs that we've picked up on. We saw, in the 80s and 90s, that other countries were making cool things too... and how did US big business react to the challenge? Outsourcing. We saw the late 90s tech boom and bust, and what did we learn from it? The ones who got wealth and fame were the suits; the CEOs and bankers and venture capitalists and lawyers. The engineers and computer science guys? They got a cubicle, and, later, a pink slip. It's no secret why computer science enrollments plummeted around the .com bust and pretty much stayed down since then; it was shouted to us from the mountaintops that our own companies considered us expendable.
It needs to change. The potential seeds are there; we do still do cool things, like the X Prize stuff for example, and solar/wind/geothermal/fusion research, and computer hardware and software. There are Toyotas and Hondas everywhere, but also ipods and xboxes. We just need to show that the sciency and engineery careers aren't dead ends. Because right now, two generations of Americans remember all the times we were firmly shown that they are. They *aren't* necessarily dead ends, but large numbers of the Convinced now need to be UnConvinced, and of course the same mistakes need to not be repeated on the new generation growing up now.
Anti-science indeed. Bitching that God made the earth is not nearly as damaging to society as the liberal penchant to remove freedom from people to actually do science.
You know why science isn't popular? Who can actually do it? It's because liberals and all their sissy crap made it off limits and useless to kids. Between the lawyers, consumer advocates, and all the other crap, liberals have successfully gotten rid of teaching electronics, teaching chemistry, having model rockets, building model aircraft, are trying to get rid of cars and would probably get rid of boats if they could, and people are expected to learn about science? Seriously. Show me the state park where you are allowed to launch a model rocket. Show me where you can fly a model airplane. God help you if you put a remote control boat in a pond. That would be some nature area for ducks and some endangered spore. Meanwhile, spores and mold have their own land but human kids have to sit in their rooms with nothing to do but play Wii and pump each other in the ass.
Liberalism and science are fundamentally at odds, even more so than creationism and science. Liberalism says that the earth should not be altered by man to save the spores. But you can't learn about something unless you play with it...
This is my sig.
A great man once said "You don't truly understand something until you can explain it to your grandmother" maybe people would understand and "like" science more if it's not percieved as becoming more abstract and difficult by the second by the average academic(anyone doing the educating). No matter what we do, it'll take time to raise a new generation of people who are interested in science and change the current generation to be more open to scientific theory and questions
It might help if the scientific community would stop calling stuff junk science just because it does not agree with what they learned. The history of science is littered with theories that turned out to be wrong. From what I have seen in the past decade with patches being applied to the big bang theory to accommodate observable facts, I would be looking around for some new ideas. Somehow dark matter and dark force fits into a novel better than a scientific journal. I have always been of the impression that if you need to inject data to make your theory work it is possibly flawed in some elemental way. Now we are asked to believe that nothing can go faster than the speed of light except in one special case that is unprovable. When there are exceptions to an assumed absolute it isn't one anymore. BTW climatological data indicates the earth has been cooling over the past decade, everybody panic, another ice age is coming.
JoeR
I'm not so sure about this. I'm not old enough to say from my own experience (and I don't think anyone else here is old enough either), but wasn't science sort-of popular back in the time of Edison and Tesla, back when they had public demonstrations with high-voltage machines and electrocuting elephants?
Of course, that's much more applied-science and invention, rather than pure science like physics, astronomy, etc.
Without wading thigh deep in troll shit, I'll make my point and leave. There is no need to make science popular. It is not a religion. Science is the method. That is all. People like the benefits of science very much, thank you for asking, they just don't care how it's done. Just like most of you don't care how your car works, or your washing machine. But without science you would have none of those convenient devices. So stop trying to force people to choose a side, and just use science as it is supposed to be used, conjecture, experiment, observe, record results and then measure your results against your conjecture. Make changes as needed. All this fuss is making science out to be something it isn't. I don't see any campaigns designed to bring common sense to the masses, but that's really is all that science is. Just a bit more formalised. Science doesn't have anything to say about God, scientists are just people who try things out in a methodical fashion. I'm sick of news reports saying "Scientists blah blah blah ...". They make it seem like they are a peculiar race of people. Fucking cooking is science, pottery is science, motor racing is science, but you never hear the news saying "Scientists have discovered a particularly nice type of bread", or "scientists have just won the LeMans 24 hour".
So just stop trying to impress people with the word "Science". If you want to encourage people to learn more methodical practices, get them to research things they are already interested in, don't just say "now we'll do some science !" Take an ipod to pieces and conduct experiments on it, rebuild a car engine, bake a cake, throw a fucking pot ! If the people are interested, they will want to know more. Until then you're just fostering ill-will and a new kind of class divide.
I miss Carl Sagan. Without him we are lost.
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
I live in Highlands Ranch, CO. Recently, I was watching Eureka, and they spoke about something living at the corner of Watson and Crick. I though that was BRILLIANT. LOVED THE WAY THAT SOUNDED. Dawned on me that our society no longer reveres scientist and brilliance. Instead, they love criminals like Bill Gates, Michael Vick, T.I., pimp C, etc.
I have been trying recently to get a hold of some folks from Shea Homes to get them to name some of the new roads coming into Highlands ranch after Scientists and perhaps after a couple of Top Teacher or two (perhaps Susan Elliot Way).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
In Australia in the '70's and '80s we had a brilliant, albeit low budget, science education show The Curiosity Show. It was similar to MythBusters but concentrated more on simple demonstrable scientific prinicples rather than "wow, coke cleans nickels". This show piqued my attention towards learning more about "science"
It's no secret that the Scientists of today are continually progressing to the way that the religious leaders of old treated the heretics of the old church. If you speak against them, then it is heresy! There is no more room for true science were actual truth is pursued, there is only room for pseudo scientists ready to accept the indoctrination and paper documents offered by said indoctrinators.
I have personally sat in classes were my instructors offered readily disprovable scientific facts, and to tell them that they are wrong only nets you some negative attention. They expect you to accept what they say as science truth without proof, just as the religious zealots of old expected people to accept their truths without proof! We all know that they become downright unfriendly when you don't wish to accept them as truths!
Science has long been about politics. A prime example is this one.
Hold the position that a particular race is genetically less intelligent than other races, as a scientist, will net you a very nasty character assassination at the hands of the media.
Hold the position that your sexual preference is a product of genetics, as a scientist, will net you a hero's welcome as a leader in genetic research at the hands of the media.
It's simple. Public opinion is easily driven by the "Light" that the media shines on a particular subject. If the media approves of your science, be it truth or untruth, then so shall the blessings of the media rest upon your shoulders as a mantle of light. Shall the media approve it not, truth or untruth, then upon you shall rest their vile gaze or if you are lucky you will receive no attention at all.
It's fairly popular now, and it was in the 60s when I was young. Computers, astronauts, rockets, all that stuff fascinated me and most of the guys I knew.
The internet has only made science more popular. Scientists, on the other hand, can be controversial, depending on what they espouse.
Robert Oppenheimer was a hero until he wasn't anymore. At one time, he was Time Magazine's Man of the Year, back when that really meant something.
Then he began espousing, and next thing he knew, he was out of a security clearance and out of a job...
Ask Me About... The 80's!
Thanks man, for your optimism that the scientific process will eventually make progress towards the truth.
Well, it's not really optimism but rather a feature of the scientific method if you think about it - while it certainly is POSSIBLE for false information to enter the repository that we call 'scientific knowledge', and this certainly happens on a regular enough basis with small things (as people pose and test new hypotheses, and they are then refuted or confirmed as the years pass), the overall trend will ALWAYS be an increase in the breadth (range) and resolution (accuracy or precision) of our knowledge. The scientific method, when applied properly, is inherently self-correcting. :)
Now, this can be likened somewhat to certain open source projects, which while yes they may be available for anyone to scrutinise and attempt to submit improvements (like scientific knowledge), there may always be areas that don't receive much attention, and these bit can contain 'bugs' for some time... but as soon as those parts become relevant and more frequently used, the bugs will be ironed out relatively quickly.
Even if every country in the world converted to official theocracies tomorrow, I believe this progressive course would not be significantly slowed unless they started killing scientists and people who think like scientists.
I've been getting impatient and have been missing that side of the big picture, and taking this whole scientific truth thing way to seriously! I gotta chill out - we'll get there eventually.
Sure thing matey - we all stand on the shoulders of giants... some generations are destined to be the equivalent of giant human pyramids (great leaps in the collective knowledge), while others may have to settle for being shoulder pads (little incremental refinements) ;)
Though maybe we have limited lifespans precisely for the reasons you stated that it is so easy for people to get trapped in limited ideas, so it is natures way of giving us a way out.
I think it has more to do with our metabolisms, but ok. :)
A changing of the guard if you will that eventually allows new ideas to enter and allows the religions to fall away and be replaced by new ideas.
I pray to the Sacred Spaghetti that this day may come sooner rather than later!
Whatever happens, I certainly plan on moving to Sweden before I start a family - they have one of the only school systems I would consider putting my own children through (pretty much anywhere else I'd homeschool). They also have a lower mindvirus infection rate than most other countries. ;)
You mean .... Newton wasn't a popular kid at school?
What this has to do with making science popular? I have no idea, and maybe that is a silly quest anyhow. Some people are trapped for whatever reason and don't seem to be interested in the "truth", but rather tend to be more interested in a sense of stability in the world that does not challenge what they already are familiar with - which happens to be the antithesis of the goals of science, I think. The question "Are you a Scientist?" maybe could be replaced by "Are you committed to discovering the truth - no matter what you already believe?". I would also question whether it is really in the domain of science to sell science to those who are not interested
Well... here's where I turn to Dawkins (in his written word, not his spoken; he has very little patience for the indoctrinated, which is of course understandable). In his books he quite eloquently espouses the appeal of a life spent in pursuit of knowledge, and the wonderful purity of trying to do good for its own sake, and realising that we DO have power over our own lives and our own choices.
He also has an awesome knack for breathing life into what may previously have been thought of as fairly dusty subjects. Even though I already considered myself an undoubted atheist and moderately well-versed in the ways life worked, I was nonetheless engrossed in his treatment of natural selection in The Blind Watchmaker! I actually just took it down off the shelf last night because it's been 6 months since I read it last, and funnily enough it's the only non-fiction book I've ever considered RE-RE-reading (I have a good memory for books, I hardly ever put any through a second iteration).
His TV appearances and debates are enjoyable for a difference reason - it's funny seeing stupid ideas get shot down, but it's in his written work that he really shines, since there he can truly be an illustrative, positive force, and not just The De-stupidator. :)
Uh, you missed the point by getting stuck in the detail. The point wasn't about that specific question, but *any* in-depth topic. Try discussing history, science, philosophy, whatever with an informal gathering. Most people today would rather discuss the latest exploits of some Hollywood idiot or who the highest point scorer is in their sport for that season. Getting them to discuss *anything* complex, even things that affect them, is nigh on impossible.
Sports stars make lot of money and that makes sport popular. Software guys are/were popular thanks to Bill Gates, Steve Jobs,Page, Brin and the like who make tons of money. Unless there is something in it aspirationally, no field is going to become 'popular'. And today most people aspire for lots of money which means unless there are rich scientists, science will not become popular.
O this learning! What a thing it is - William Shakespeare
After 15 years in science I got a real job (not a postdoc) and am no longer qualified to get stamps for free food at red cross/vicks.
I can afford an average public school for my kids and am required to work at least 70 hours per week.
Yes, we know that there are a lot of creationists in the United States. The United States is not a representative cross-section of Christianity. Almost all of the world's Christians are either Catholic, Orthodox or Anglican, and none of those denominations believes in young-Earth creationism.
Sell next-gen consoles as kits! So they have to get their heads around some basic electrical engineering and motor skills! YEAH! 8D
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
A reality show creates emotion. Science does not. That's the core of the problem. People choose things that will increase their dopamine levels, because, deep down, we are animals.
Science was popular enough the magazine Popular Science was in most supermarket news racks much like computer game magazines are now. It wasn't popular with everyone, but enough were interested to have a huge circulation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_Science
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/index.html
The truth shall set you free!
was voted the most likely to be a well-mannered urban European middle-class authority-fearing white-coat-deferring sit-downer
By the way, I have this 450-Volt battery and a student whom you are to teach something...
I'd argue it depends on what you mean by popular.
Science is certainly popular amongst enquiring minds, hence why we have countless regular scientific publications, and various TV documentaries.
Of course, that doesn't mean Science is popular with everyone, or even the masses, but then, people might argue Hannah Montana is popular- not with me she's not, and in fact, I'd imagine not with any of the 200 people in my office. Why? Because it's a kid thing.
So we've got this situation, where Science is popular with people who have at least a brief interest in it, but I'm not sure what TFA is asking? How do we make science popular with people who aren't interested in it? How do we stoke that initial interest?
I don't think the right question is being asked- what we need to ask is how can we restore public trust in science? That's the fundamental issue here - and as stated further up, the problem is that people don't trust science because you have everything from creationism, to herbal remedies to misleading names such as Scientology trying to rid the science bandwagon to give them an air of credibility where none exists. To me a good start in solving the problem would be for products like herbal remedies to have a legal requirement under the advertising code to have a warning along the lines of "This product has not been scientifically proven to have any actual effect", just like cigarette packets in the UK have a warning stating smoking them may lead to lung cancer. To me, a product trying to pass itself off as having some scientific merit where it doesn't demonstrably so is false advertising.
Of course there are other things that can be done, better education in school, or via TV documentaries and such as to how to tell whether something is scientifically valid.
But if we're just going to ask how we can make every single person interested in science then the answer is simple- we can't, there are billions of people who simply have no interest in it, just as many scientists have no interest in spirituality.
It's better to think that someone is a pushy meddlesome asshole than you are an idiot who couldn't find their own arse without an atlas.
Sometimes people are wrong.
And some people don't like it, so they call those correcting them "elitist assholes".
They are often anti-intellectual.
Currently our university lectures are as appealing as having a news reader read the book of a teleprompter. Nothing society can do that will compensate that, get the scientists to be inspiring and then the only thing society has to do is give them some time on television.
You are aware that this month's issue of Popular "Science" has alien hunting tips and a few short paragraphs of fundie-inspired "we will outlast the heathens at rapture" type prepping tips?
That magazine is not science my friend. They may be fans of _technology_ but there is very very little science in it.
It may have been. Curiously, the 1920s had a lot in common with the 1997-2007 era, with technology being popular and nerds were common. From Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920's
That book was required reading in a general studies history class I took in the late seventies, I still have the paper copy. Apparently my college wasn't the only one using that text, as the whole book's hosted at the University of Virginia's web site. It's a well written eye opener.
Free Martian Whores!
Duh!
Well there are a lot of very entertaining TV shows that contain science and or education out there. Most of the designed with kids in mind. Mythbusters also comes to mind for all age levels. Now I would hesitate to call it "hard" science, but it certainly is fun, AND promotes science.
Problem is both the kids and adults that watch these shows are ALREADY interested in science. The difficulty is attracting people who normally don't care.
Compounding this problem there is a GLUT of programs on TV which are totally absurd from a science or technology perspective. They basically prey on the watchers ignorance to get by. This is pretty much any mainstream program featuring any sort of technology. They don't even TRY to be correct, it is more about cool effect and look. NCIS, all the CSI's, etc... To compound this they all continue the same lies, and to invoke Goodwin it was Goebbels that said the number one rule or propaganda is repatition as most politicians are well aware. So if you ask some dumb idiot on the street they will think something is true because they say the same thing on 10 TV shows and 3 movies, so it must be true... Hence another goodwill point for Mythbusters.
I also know They Might be Giants recently came out with a science album, which is nice, but again only those already interested will buy it. The problem is not content, as that is already out there, it is a cultural one in society at least in the west anyway. I think something needs to be done at the National level, something big to promote it. Competitions with large rewards, more university scholarships, prestige awards with big attention, icons and individual achievement, I am sure there are plenty of things that can be done at both the public and private level. The problem is that this is a long term problem that isn't on the radar. So politically no one cares, so no one is going to do anything about it unless they personally feel it needs to be done (and even then to do it justification would be difficult). Also there will not be immediate results and measurable gains in the short term. I think this is something that has to happen nationally, but the problem is that national governments tend to suck at anything long term pretty much because at least here in Canada the political system rewards short term results and terms are 4 years or less, then it is someone elses problem. It seems to me that the solution is the education or promotion of the public that this is a real issue or problem so that eventually it will become s hot topic politically and will force some politition to do something about it from a policy perspective.
Like the movie.
Smart people (aka people of science) have few kids. Those kids they have the tend to be raised like minded.
Dumb people (aka unbelievers) have a ton of kids. Those kids they have tend to be raised like minded.
Repeat.
Its a numbers game you can't win. Also blame parents.
Now if only there was a way to make smart people have more kids...
I see some sort of mineshaft type solution to this problem.
Either that or a dystopia where the state raises all kids not to be idiotic morons. The only think I can think of is little Kurt Russell in Soldier.
Charles Darwin film 'too controversial for religious America',
A British film about Charles Darwin has failed to find a US distributor because his theory of evolution is too controversial for American audiences, according to its producer.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6173399/Charles-Darwin-film-too-controversial-for-religious-America.html
If we shifted the obscene amounts of money spent on high-school athletics and college athletic "scholarships" (an oxymoron, IMHO. Emphasis on the 'moron' part) and channeled it into true academics specifically science and engineering, we'd be in a much better position in the world.
First rule of Science Club:
Don't talk about Science Club!
Smart Americans would have to be stupid to pursue a STEM career today. Why spend all that time, money, and effort, only to be replaced by a cheaper offshore worker?
The H-1B is absolutely not needed, we already have the L-1, the O-1, and the OPT, among others.
Tits. Big ones.
Science has never been popular with Joe Sixpack and Jane Packaday for a variety of reasons, most of which have already been said. The barrier to entry is the biggest one. Science takes a lot of background knowledge relative to other endeavors to get in to. What matters is results. Do the Sixpacks care HOW a car works? unless they're a mechanic by trade or by hobby the answer's probably no. They care that it DOES, that is all. Science is popular when its results are visible. internal combustion on self-contained mobile platforms made cheaply enough for the Sixpacks to afford transformed society. Telecommunications equipment running in to every home and business made the world smaller. Integrated circuits made the world smarter. Mass-produced integrated circuits making computers affordable to the Sixpacks made the world smaller, faster and smarter all over again. How do you make science popular? make it appeal to the average user. The problem however, is that science and averages don't mix. you don't innovate or learn when you stick within the boundaries set forth by the law of averages. Joe Sixpack, by definition doesn't think outside of the box. Science will always be the domain of the free thinking folk who ask "WHY?"
Popular again? When was it ever popular? I hope we technocrats aren't the latest victims of the "good ol' days" syndrome.
:P
:P).
My point is that science was never popular. At best it was identified with it's real-world manifestation (that we call technology) and at worst with all the evils that beset the god-fearing majority as a result of some busybodies "who just can't leave well enough alone". I don't think most people really have an opinion on science in the abstract sense until it morphs into something they can see or touch or otherwise sense.
If this thread is considering the question "how to make tech popular again", there are several answers out there already that are working (slowly but surely). The fact that technology can stand relatively independent of the deeper ideas that create it (assuming there's at least a handful of people who get the big picture) is good - it prevents the emergence of a ruling technocracy (something that I, even as a beginning scientist, have no wish to see in my lifetime). In this day and age, this fact has already made tech popular. But it has the disadvantage of creating a subclass of people that can make and work the technology without having to internalize the accompanying physical insights into how the universe works*. This, by the way, is the only way I've found to explain the engineers who work with terrorists (not their psyches - I'm no psychologist - just the reason it's even possible). Sad as it is, you don't really have to understand the solutions to the mysteries of the Universe that our scientific ancestors spent their lives exploring once some brilliant engineer who has done that figures out how to use that knowledge. Once that original bit of insight from the scientist and the subsequent intuitive leap to tech by the engineer are in place, anyone with the money and minimal expertise can repeat the miracle. The very reproducibility of tech without any need for ritual or mantras may yet prove deadly for science (and indeed, society). In my more idiotic/pessimistic moods, I sometimes wish we had continued to do things like the Pythagoreans. But of course, where discovering the truth is concerned, such dramatized secrecy as exists in pathetic little conspiracies or the big religions ultimately leads to a dead end. Open source ftw, eh?
Anyway, I'm rapidly veering off on a tangent. The main point here was to make that distinction between science and tech and emphasize that science was never "popular" in any meaningful sense of the word. For the hyper-sensitive in the readership, please try not to read any qualitative judgments into that distinction (or if you do, recognize that you're just projecting
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* As an example, consider that the solid state transistor responsible for every single computing advance in the last few decades exists solely because quantum mechanics had been discovered (or invented?) and it's consequences for the properties of matter fairly well understood by then. Tons of people work with microprocessors on every level imaginable. Yet, how many really get the science behind it? More importantly, is it really necessary? Not really, if the intention is to use the damn thing. Even well known (and useful) electronics textbooks like The Art of Electronics play the game that way (as they should). But that is the essence of the distinction between science and tech.
PAY A NIGGER.
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods
Start by changing the unfortunate acronyms that define U.S. public education about science: PUS (the Public Understanding of Science), PEST (Public Engagement with Science & Technology) and PAWS (Public awareness of science).
I have long thought that science and math should be taught together. Instead of saying "Hey, we need you to know how to do quadradic equations for some other classes we'll be teaching you next year.", why not say, "Check out what happens when I (insert Bill Nye type demonstration)". Then, try to predict what will happen. Oops.
I guess we gotta learn some math to do that."
If math was made immediately applicable, it would not only help with math understanding, but it would also help people relate to science in a more structured (and less "opinion oriented") way.
One other comment (probably get me modded to oblivion). The authors might try not painting a political party (Republicans) with the broad brush of a sect (religious zealots). This mischaracterizes the fight as something between specific political factions rather than a general fight against ignorance.
Parents need to et their children explore.
The them bang pot. Let them measure everything, let them help you cook, give them something to explore. Magnets, water oil, whatever.
You make that normal for a child, and science will be with them forever.
Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about that far more eloquently then I.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
And this just shows how ignorant many people are about what science is, and what questions it answers. All those questions you pose are philosophical questions. Science simply doesn't address those; it can only address things that are observable and testable. For question on anything else, you need to go elsewhere, like the philosophy department. Why this simple fact can't be drilled into every student's head early on in school, I have no idea.
I am really surprised that so many Americans are interested in religion. Yes, I guess that there is the "going to Hell" fear in the back of some people's minds, but hey, look at all the incidents of priests behaving inappropriately with children and need I bring up Baker and Swargget to illustrate that even people in the center of religions indoctrination are disregretful of the wrath of God. Maybe its because that many young adult boys believe that a good side effect of religion is that it keeps young girls in line, else they would be running off and having sex with all of their male friends.
"Science simply doesn't address those; "
But that's the whole point. You see for many people... knowledge of facts cannot be disconnected into discrete areas of knowledge disconnected from one another.
People want an overarching story and purpose for their lives. Everything I said in my previous post shows you don't understand people's desire for purpose and higher unified meaning in life at all.
People want an overarching story and purpose for their lives. Everything I said in my previous post shows you don't understand people's desire for purpose and higher unified meaning in life at all.
I understand perfectly well. Science simply can't address questions of things that can't be observed or tested, no matter how much people might want some purpose for their lives. If they want to discuss things like "purpose", ethics, morality, etc., those aren't questions for science, they're philosophical questions. Religion is in many cases an implementation of philosophy.
If people want a "unified" system that addresses everything, both observable and testable and otherwise, too bad. It doesn't exist. But I guess that's why many people in the USA choose to follow a religion which tells them it has all the answers, and that the Earth is 6500 years old.
You see for many people... knowledge of facts cannot be disconnected into discrete areas of knowledge disconnected from one another.
Well, I don't know what to tell those people other than they're idiots.
If you need your car fixed, do you go to a roofer or a carpenter? Those are discrete areas of knowledge too.
... and kill Rene Descartes altho make sure to reinvent everything he did in his name except one thing ...