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The US Public's Erratic Acceptance of Science
An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. general population is often the butt of jokes with regard to their understanding of science. A survey by the Associated Press now shows just how arbitrary and erratic the public's dissent can be. 'The good news is that more than 80 percent of those surveyed are strongly confident that smoking causes cancer; only four percent doubt it. Roughly 70 percent accepted that we have a genome and that mental illness is seated in the brain; about 20 percent were uncertain on these subjects, and the doubters were few. But things go downhill from there. Only about half of the people accepted that vaccines are safe and effective, with 15 percent doubting. And that's one of the controversial topics where the public did well. As for humanity's role in climate change, 33 percent accepted, 28 percent were unsure, and 37 percent fell in the doubter category. For a 4.5-billion-year-old Earth and a 13.8-billion-year-old Big Bang, acceptance was below 30 percent. Fully half of the public doubted the Big Bang (PDF).'"
Not implying. There are a lot of willfully ignorant people that prefer their religion's tale of a 10,000 year old universe to cosmology, geology, astrophysics, and biology. but they really should be a tiny minority on par with other mental illnesses. Sadly, this affliction is rampant in the USA. Happily, it is a dwindling number, and perhaps will soon be eradicated.
Don't ALL scientists doubt the Big Bang and other models for the universe in the sense that they are all subject to comparison with observations? If a model conflicts with observation, the model either must be dropped or modified.
Science isn't about believing something to be true.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Mental illnesses are just what society calls people that do not follow the norm in the way they think or behave.
Funny thing about this is that anyone actually involved in science would reject the assertion that any theory of how we came to be is a fact. They might say it's a theory with strong evidence, or a weak hypothesis (as in the case of the big bang), but would reject any assertion that one theory was a "fact."
You are going to see that where Science conflicts with Religion, and in some cases Industry. The Current Science that we have, with the technology and Anthropology we have, rules out the possibility of the Christian religion having any basis in reality. It doesn't rule out the possibility a god exists. It only means that the current dominant Abrahamic religions are not realistic descriptions of the universe we live in.
But these religions justify how we treat other people, why certain social groups are stigmatized, and have a heavy impact on who are leaders are, what our laws are, how we raise our children, and the legitimacy of the standing governments. If the Religions aren't true, then there is no justification for the political positions of MANY people in the US Government.
In other cases, its that we are so dependent on dangerous sources of fuel, like Coal, and Petroleum, that there is the fear of an economic death spiral. So we shut our eyes and want to live in fantasy land, until it kills us.
The article conflates two very different types of science. One is experimental: cigarettes cause cancer. That's a testable, provable (and proven) hypothesis. The scientific method can be used. Alternate explanations can be systematically disproven.
Then there's the science that says, "because X and Y are true, it makes sense that Z is true". Note that it does NOT say "therefore Z MUST be true", which is what the article is implying. Z is something like the story of the universe from Big Bang through inflation up to today, or the story of manmade global warming. "Science" can project itself in those directions and come up with some answers, but there is no scientific method on a narrative. There are no controlled experiments. Every alternate hypothesis cannot be evaluated. They are at best projections, models. They're not "truth" without faith.
Put yourself in the shoes of the AP. All of those sciencey things are the same, because they're science. Anything more than 0% dissent is too much.
Even when the theories are totally wrong anything more than 0% dissent is too much. Or maybe that should be ESPECIALLY when the theories are totally wrong....
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
You eat organic food, don't you?
Only about half of the people accepted that vaccines are safe and effective, with 15 percent doubting.
When I read that I hear:
Only about half of the people accepted that foods are safe and taste good, with 15 percent doubting.
THEY'RE NOT ALL THE FUCKING SAME! That's not science.
I don't think the survey is very fair for the question about the Big Bang. I consider myself well informed and try to keep at least a layman's understanding of scientific breakthrough. I understand the concept behind the Big Bang but cannot understand most of the hard science behind it.
Am I willing to take someone else's word just because? I don't possess the knowledge to verify their research. In my opinion, most people should be uncertain because it's not something we're ever likely to prove.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Soon on the cosmic scale perhaps. I will probably be several hundred years at best.
Just like anything, people will consign to obvlivion anything that doesn't fit to their preconceived notions or the general dogma of the day.
Just look how any science that deals with racial differences (IQ, etc) is handled in the scientific community itself, or how Stephen Jay Gould was able to make a career out of political correctness on accusing past scientists of bias with brain sizes... while being completely off the mark himself.
Various stuff like that happens all the time in every era. Humans remain human.
We should be glad we are a country which does not take the word of "authority" at face value. Surely the best scientists and innovators come from that tradition. If a person does not understand a proof, they should not blindly accept it.
I've never read up on it, so if you asked me I might say "I don't know". That doesn't mean I don't accept a scientific explanation for the creation of the Universe, it just means I don't know enough about it to say "Yep, that's what happened".
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
How many can tolerate the obvious truth, supported by thousands of studies, that average differences in intelligence across the various peoples of the world and especially races are due to genetic factors?
How many accept the fact that pervasive poverty and barbarism in the world has little to do with history or materialism, and instead is due to the fact that the poor are so because they have less ability to control themselves; hence their prodigious fecundity?
People are usually unwilling to accept scientific truths that contradict their religious worldview. In the case of the typical slashdot reader, that worldview is the belief in the equality of man and the tablua rasa myth.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
No, it's not. That opinion is just rampant among people who view themselves as intellectually superior. And they use it to delegitimize the rest of the county, declare the debate as over, and ram their "solution" through, over the protests of the people it's supposed to help.
Climate change: A theory about very complex system to model with the most famous proponent being a politician who stands to make a lot of money if the theory is widely accepted but whose personal behaviors (traveling by private plane, having a huge house) indicate that he's not too worried about how much impact he makes. Of course there will be some doubters
Vaccines are safe and effective: Are people questioning science or are they questioning politicians and pharmaceutical companies? Even good-hearted politicians might be tempted to tell a noble lie about this. If a vaccine isn't safe but it is effective, then the negative effects of killing a few people directly might be considered to be outweighed by the positive effects of indirectly saving even more. And of course pharmaceutical companies have profits to worry about (that they use to bribe politicians). The research funded by those companies says the vaccines are safe? There was a lot research funded by cigarette companies saying smoking was safe too.
The age of the earth and the big bang? It is one thing to know and understand the science, it is another to believe the evidence isn't outweighed by other knowledge. Do I believe dinosaurs existed? Well I believe that we find dinosaur bones in the ground that appear to be millions of years old, and that the science of evolution is sound and explains many things including much human physiology and behavior, and I certainly do make use of that knowledge for understanding animals and other humans. But if you asked me if I "believe" in evolution... well the Bible can be interpreted to say otherwise and I believe God can give us whatever evidence he wants - though I don't know if he would. So such a survey might count me as a doubter of evolution even though I understand and use the theory regularly.
I'm not saying Americans are well-educated about science. I've seen plenty of evidence that they're not. On the other hand I've dealt with a lot of foreigners and their scientific understanding seems pretty limited too. What I'm saying is that these kinds of surveys can be very misleading about people. It's sort of like that question about Obama's religion and the supposed proof that Fox viewers were ignorant because they thought he was Muslim. But those same viewers had been fed plenty of information about his church in Chicago - how could they be as ignorant as people were claiming? What the people pushing the survey were ignoring is that Fox viewers might be well aware of what Obama claimed to be but just didn't believe him because of other things he said and did - while the survey pushers were simply taking everything Obama said at face value without any skepticism.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
This is what confidence in evolution, the big bang vaccines, etc mean in the context of the poll.
Smoking causes cancer
A mental illness is a medical condition that affects the brain
Inside our cells, there is a complex genetic code that helps determine who we are
Overusing antibiotics causes the development of drug-resistant bacteria
The universe is so complex, there must be a supreme being guiding its creation
Childhood vaccines are safe and effective
The average temperature of the world is rising, mostly because of man-made heat- trapping greenhouse gases
Life on Earth, including human beings, evolved through a process of natural selection
The Earth is 4.5 billion years old
The universe began 13.8 billion years ago with a big bang
Except, perhaps for the "mental illness" question, there's not much room for quibbling over the meaning of each, imho.
Thank you. I was going to say the same thing.
I'm not entirely sure what your point is supposed to be. If your definition of safe is "completely devoid of any possibility of risk," then I wonder how you justify getting out of bed every morning. A more reasonable argument is that safety is always a relative measure. Injuries attributable to common vaccines are uncommon, permanent damage is incredibly rare, and death occurs at a frequency that can best be described as vanishingly small. On the other hand, many of the diseases that we vaccinate against often cause permanent damage or death, and weakening the herd immunity puts not only the individual at risk, but society at large. So, yes, there are some potential (though very small) risks to vaccination, but that does not mean that they are unsafe.
Rhapsody in Numbers
Aren't vaccines statistically safer than surgeries (with all those MRSAs, VRSAs, potential post-op cardiac arrests and embolisms etc.)? Are anti-vaxxers refusing surgeries?
Ezekiel 23:20
True, but until we educate them, creationists will operate from the fervor of religious fanaticism.
actual science that can be proved
If you think that science can prove anything, then you know nothing about science.
I guess you can call crossing the street in a crosswalk safe. Some people do get run over and killed but most come out OK. Not as safe as simply not walking around lots of cars. But safer than jaywalking.
I guess you can call walking across a field safe. Some people do get hit by meteoroids and killed, but most come out OK.
There I fixed that for you.
Doubt "Big Bang"?
Well you should.
It can be said that: Under the conditions for which we need a working model, this 'Big Bang' hypothesis behaves in a way that consistently explains our extrapolations from observable phenomena. It also introduces some inconsistencies when take as a factual occurrence, when we introduce additional extrapolations from different phenomenal observations at quantum level. For those, notions such as "time" or "location" seem to be irrelevant, if not non-existent. This demolishes the very concept of actual measurement in any possible way - so let us posit additional models that require among other things, the hypothesizing of multiple, non-observed dimensions that nonetheless allow our maths to be validated and not face the ontological consequences of nothing being real.
Zeno had similar preoccupations, with time and position.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Compare the two questions:
"Are you confident that the earth is billions of years old?"
"Are you confident that the earth is 4.5 billion years old?"
Version 2 was the version they asked. Frankly, I'd not express too much confidence in that. Just too much precision. Version 1 would have been a much fairer test.
Ad hominem, no true Scotsman, a false analogy, an appeal to authority, some God of the gaps, and straw man arguments---and that's just what I can see off the top of my head. Nice. That is some mighty fine trolling.
Rhapsody in Numbers
Exactly which side are you arguing for?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
My biggest problem with surveys like these is that they public are being asked to reply with certainties that are far greater in clarity and definition than any scientist working on these fields would ever propose. And then the ignorant public are laughed at for doubting scientific truth. No cosmologist would ever state they were 100% certain that the big bang happened, and yet we laugh at the public for not being certain either. True ignorance shows itself as certainty, either for or against supposed "scientific" principles. Being uncertain is okay, as long as you are aware of some of the options.
We don't believe in radical loony monotheistic religions from the middle east -- we're Christians.
If your definition of safe is "completely devoid of any possibility of risk," then I wonder how you justify getting out of bed every morning.
Probably by the fact that lack of movement leads to significant health issues?
Ezekiel 23:20
It's actually much worse than this.
They don't believe in a "literal interpretation of the Holy Bible"
They believe in what someone tells them is a "literal interpretation of the Holy Bible". In reality, they're being manipulated for someone else's agenda. These people base their interpenetration of reality from the words of what might as well be modern day witchdoctors.
These people are a danger to themselves, and through the machinations of Democracy, a danger to you and me as well. Were the anti-vaxx movement to take hold we'd be in deep shit if a major outbreak occurs.
Yeah, but that is a long term risk. Just getting out of bed, he could step on a LEGO or small animal, trip, smack his head into his dresser on the way down, and bleed out onto the floor. Clearly, it is much safer to simply remain in bed. The health problems could take years (or at least days) to develop. :P
Rhapsody in Numbers
Compared to the religious masses of the rest of the world, who subscribe to much stricter tenets which are largely contradictory to science, I call bullshit.
Logic and truth will get you nowhere with a fanboi.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
The Moon? Been there, done that. Got the rocks and T-Shirt to prove it. We'll be back in spades once we get this budget silliness sorted out
The transistor? yeah, hi. We did that too.
The Integrated Circuit? You're welcome.
The Internet? Surprise! Conceived,, born and built in the USA.
Need I go on?
Yes, we have a fair amount of stupid fucks in the U.S. population. I'll bet you have a fair amount too.
Per capita, I'll bet you've got more stupid fucks than we do.
Poke fun all you want, but there's a lot of stupid fucks in the world that would believe anything they were told. Americans don't have a lock on stupid, it's pretty much the universal condition.
The day that I trust an Associated Press survey to tell me anything unbiased about public opinion is the day I accept the flying spaghetti monster as my lord and savior.
Sadly, the rest of your claims are pretty much true.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
As opposed to what? Inorganic?
Have gnu, will travel.
Are you being serious? None of the things in that article are seriously under any reasonable doubt. If given a choice between true/false/unsure on any of them, then yes, the only reasonable and rational decision is 'sure'. Anything more than 0% dissent is too much. Now if you were given the option to put a confidence estimate, like say 99% sure, then yeah, I'd agree with you. You could reasonably have maybe 1% doubt about the big bang. But that's not "unsure", by any metric.
There is controversy in science, and a lot of it. For instance, there's controversy on the efficacy of a lot of recent drugs and medical recommendations. But there's no controversy that vaccines are effective. There's no controversy that evolution is real and did happen. There's no controversy that global warming is happening. There may be controversy about the _results_ of global warming in the future - and that's an entirely reasonable, but separate, debate.
Much as most don’t understand the scientific definition of “theory,” you seem to be using the wrong definition of “doubt.”
Proper scientists recognize that a currently held theory is merely the best explanation we currently have for a phenomenon. In light of the evidence, they believe it’s PROBABLY MOSTLY true, but they are willing to easily accept that it isn’t if new evidence demonstrates that the older theory doesn’t explain all the facts. This isn’t “doubt” so much as “critical thinking.”
The doubters the article is referring to are people who, DESPITE the evidence, believe the theory is NOT true. Of course, most of them are painfully unaware of the evidence, they have no idea how to get to it, and they wouldn’t know how to interpret it if they had it. A lot of that is due to a broken educational system.
People say there’s “mounds of evidence” for evolution. So I’ve asked biologists if there was a compendium of major publications in the area, but I didn’t get very far. There are decent college text books, but many don’t present the original evidence; they only recount the findings from the literature. Part of the problem is that most of the “evidence” is boring tables of measurements of fossils and bones. If you won’t know what the numbers mean and how they relate, they’re just numbers. They are the evidence, but it doesn’t help they layman at all. Another part of the problem is that any summary of the evidence would leave out too much. A proper treatment of the topic would be on the order of “every peer-reviewed publication on the topic since Darwin.” This is because publications cite each other so they don’t have to reinvent the wheel. They make “assumptions” they don’t have to justify because someone else already did, but it’s a major undertaking to follow all the rabbit holes. Biology PhDs have trouble with that. A farmer will be hopelessly lost.
With most sciences, most people are clueless. But since they have no other reason to doubt it, this doesn’t cause any conflict. People have heard of chemistry and astronomy and mostly just consider them to be overly difficult or esoteric. It’s only biology (and some of cosmology) that makes any statements that go against things people have been taught to believe. They have no hope of understanding the science, but they do believe what their religious leaders tell them, and there is nothing intelligible to the that says otherwise.
It’s this lack of understanding of what “common folk” go through that makes me really angry with people like Richard Dawkins. As far as many people are concerned, he’s nothing more than an arrogant jerk who thinks that everyone who believes differently from him is a moron. I’ve seen dozens of videos of him on YouTube, and I never see him present evidence. He merely claims that it’s there and believes that it should just be obvious to everyone what it means. It’s like me (the computer nerd) when I was in high school who treated people unkindly because they didn’t understand computer as well as I did. Now I’m a CS professor, and I have to teach basic CS concepts to young adults. It’s VERY challenging to get some concepts across, but I work hard to do it. Dawkins is terrible at this. Perhaps if he deigns to teach an undergraduate course now and then, he might do okay, but he strikes me as one of those all-too-common lecturers who has no patience for anyone who questions what he says. His attitude reminds me of so many religious people who insist that you’ll go to hell if you don’t believe blindly exactly as they do. I guess calling someone a moron isn’t as bad as telling them they’re going to hell, but it’s a similar intolerant attitude, intolerant to people who don’t share your same training
Ah, so you've never worked for a survey company, eh?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
You also have a pretty fucked up understanding of Christianity
So do a lot of Christians. See "Christian economics", "protestant work ethic", and similar.
You might want to start with looking at who actually proposed the big bang theory in the first place, and until you do, shut the fuck up you ignorant twit.
Yes, a Catholic priest. As a general rule, Catholics seem to be significantly more sane than various American protestant sects on several issues.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
The biblical interpretation is easier, thus more readily accepted.
Consider the physics you need to understand for the Big Bang Theory to make sense.
The science required to understand carbon dating, relativity, or how evolution actually works.
Some of that shit is hard for some people. Especially liberal arts majors.
But "magic-man done it" as an explanation for the world as it is, that's simple and satisfying, without being too taxing on the limited gray-matter.
Without too much effort, it's possible to imagine that you understand the universe, and these fancy-pants professors are just trying to over-complicate things to ensure they remain employed.
From Dr. David Goodstein, 1994: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg...
"In the meantime, the real crisis that is coming has started to produce a number of symptoms, some alarming and some merely curious. One of these is what I like to call The Paradox of Scientific Elites and Scientific Illiterates. The paradox is this: as a lingering result of the golden age, we still have the finest scientists in the world in the United States. But we also have the worst science education in the industrialized world. There seems to be little doubt that both of these seemingly contradictory observations are true. American scientists, trained in American graduate schools produce more Nobel Prizes, more scientific citations, more of just about anything you care to measure than any other country in the world; maybe more than the rest of the world combined. Yet, students in American schools consistently rank at the bottom of all those from advanced nations in tests of scientific knowledge, and furthermore, roughly 95% of the American public is consistently found to be scientifically illiterate by any rational standard. How can we possibly have arrived at such a result? How can our miserable system of education have produced such a brilliant community of scientists? That is what I mean by The Paradox of the Scientific Elites and the Scientific Illiterates.
The question of how we educate our young in science lies close to the heart of the issues we have been discussing. The observation that, for hundreds of years the number of scientists had been growing exponentially means, quite simply, that the rate at which we produced scientists has always been proportional to the number of scientists that already existed. We have already seen how that process works at the final stage of education, where each professor in a research university turns out 15 Ph.D's, most of those wanting to become research professors and turn out 15 more Ph.D's.
Recently, however, a vastly different picture of science education has been put forth and has come to be widely accepted. It is the metaphor of the pipeline. The idea is that our young people start out as a torrent of eager, curious minds anxious to learn about the world, but as they pass through the various grades of schooling, that eagerness and curiosity is somehow squandered, fewer and fewer of them showing any interest in science, until at the end of the line, nothing is left but a mere trickle of Ph.D's. Thus, our entire system of education is seen to be a leaky pipeline, badly in need of repairs. The leakage problem is seen as particularly severe with regard to women and minorities, but the pipeline metaphor applies to all. I think the pipeline metaphor came first out of the National Science Foundation, which keeps careful track of science workforce statistics (at least that's where I first heard it). As the NSF points out with particular urgency, women and minorities will make up the majority of our working people in future years. If we don't figure out a way to keep them in the pipeline, where will our future scientists come from?
I believe it is a serious mistake to think of our system of education as a pipeline leading to Ph.D's in science or in anything else. For one thing, if it were a leaky pipeline, and it could be repaired, then as we've already seen, we would soon have a flood of Ph.D's that we wouldn't know what to do with. For another thing, producing Ph.Ds is simply not the purpose of our system of education. Its purpose instead is to produce citizens capable of operating a Jeffersonian democracy, and also if possible, of contributing to their own and to the collective economic well being. To regard anyone who has achieved those purposes as having leaked out of the pipeline is silly. Finally, the picture doesn't work in the sense of a scientific model: it doesn't make the right predictions. We have already seen that, in the absence of external constraints, the size of science grows
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
The survey is crap.
Just take this statement: "A mental illness is a medical condition that affects the brain."
Does mental illness affect the brain? Or is it caused by the brain? Is distinguishing the two even sensible? Is it a "medical condition" or a behavioral state? Is asserting that it is a "medical condition" a political statement that someone should take issue with (e.g., PTSD is listed in the DSM--is that a "medical condition"? Is depression following sexual abuse a "medical condition"? Is obesity a "medical condition"?)
Or this statement: "Inside our cells, there is a complex genetic code that helps determine who we are." Does the genetic code "determine" who we are? What does "who we are" even mean?
"Childhood vaccines are safe and effective." *All* vaccines? Even ones I don't even know about?
"The universe began 13.8 billion years ago with a big bang." I can't remember if it was exactly 13.8 billion years ago. Was it a big "bang" or a big "expansion"?
It's gratifying to see that the public's general acceptance of scientific theories is roughly proportional to the actual evidence to support the theories themselves. For things which there is good evidence, there is broad understanding; for things which are highly questionable and politicized, there is much skepticism.
Good for the US population. :)
I'm just wondering, do people distrust science, or do they distrust corporations? I trust science that it is capable of producing vaccines that are perfectly safe (well, as safe as a medical treatment can become, there's always a minimal risk involved, but in general the gain outweighs the risk by some margin). I don't trust corporations to not cut corners and endanger lives if they can get away with it while making a buck.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You might want to start with looking at who actually proposed the big bang theory in the first place, and until you do, shut the fuck up you ignorant twit.
The fact that Lemaitre formulated this theory doesn't buy him any credibility for his religious beliefs. Aside from his work with mechanics and optics, Newton was more than a bit of a crackpot what with all his alchemy and wierd religious beliefs.
Also, keep in mind that Lemaitre was Catholic. And that particular branch of Christianity isn't held in high regard in the USA specifically because of its pragmatism (in recent times) regarding the absolute infallibility of the Bible. That's the primary thing that gets Americans laughed at. A 6000 yer old earth, created in 6 days, etc.
Unless you got a better theory, I guess there's little alternative.
And no, "a wizard did it" is NOT a theory!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Maybe we can develop a vaccine to address the illness?
I stopped listening when one of them wanted to argue that the King James book was God's word.
God's word? That book is a translation of a (very bad, I may add) translation of a translation of a translation. And possibly you have to add another "of a translation" in there, the jury's still out on that one.
That's like a homeopathic dose of God's word.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Pretty sure the sidereal movement of the Earth is going to cause a "sunrise" in a few hours, irrespective of the state of this unresolvable argument.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
That's ok and fine. I'm a very liberal kind of person, and hence everyone has the right to believe whatever they want to believe. God on a fluffy cloud, Zombie Jesus and the egg hiding bunny, fat smiling guy who teaches about having no wanting in your life is the road to ascension, hell, even the gobbelygoo about some alien body snatchers that came here on intergalactic spaceplanes and got dumped into volcanoes. Whatever floats your boat, if you feel better with that whole gunk, have fun!
Just keep it out of schools, science and laws. Don't mix fiction with reality.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
My 0.02c. Not intending to start any debates, just stating my opinions.
Climate change; humans have been stripping forests, burning coal and oil & turning existing eco-systems into single crop farms. Of course we're having an effect.
Vaccines; Much better than the alternatives, even if *all* of the scare stories are accurate. Though I doubt large numbers of negative results would be hidden by all of the worlds varied medical systems. They don't all have the same blindness to Big Pharma's influence.
Age of the earth; Personally I think a global flood story fits the geology better than reliance on gradual processes. Perhaps triggered by a huge asteroid bombardment that hit the entire solar system (my fathers pet theory that he has been researching and may write a book on). Most of the geological record is made of very clean flat sedimentary layers with no signs of habitation or erosion. I believe the Fossil record was mostly sorted by water, sinking based on size or density not age or biological complexity. All those dinosaurs died out quite quickly after the climate changed or humans decided to hunt them. I have yet to see any evidence that compels me to believe that evolutionary processes can create new cellular machines. Yet animals change in various ways and adapt to external selection pressures quite rapidly. Most evidence of adaptation seems to be achieved though tweaking the parameters of existing features, or the destruction of existing cellular machinery.
TLDR; I'm not ignorant of the common scientific theories, the data they are based on and how they are derived or tested. I choose to believe that there is a better interpretation, based on data and ideas that are wilfully ignored.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
IIRC it was a pope who said that the bible should be used as a guide for getting into heaven, not as a guide to find out how the heaven works (in reply to the question whether the whole Big Bang thing could be real).
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If a vaccine isn't safe but it is effective, then the negative effects of killing a few people directly might be considered to be outweighed by the positive effects of indirectly saving even more.
If a vaccine kills fewer people than it saves, then it's pretty safe.
But on a topic I'm not an expert in, I'm more likely to believe a consensus of scientists, because I understand how the general process of science and its testing and its refinement works, and I buy that process as the best mechanism we have for getting more reliable information about stuff; what it is and isn't and how it works.
More likely than I am to believe
a) a bunch of self-interested amateurs (or specialists in different areas than the subject in question), for example, those for whom a status quo way of doing things is lucrative, affordable, or comfortable and convenient, and for whom a fact if true would be inconvenient/costly.
or
b) Some people whose methodology is to follow old traditional teachings without questioning or testing.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Climate change: A theory about very complex system to model with the most famous proponent being a politician [with vested interests and suspect behaviour]. Of course there will be some doubters.
Thank you for summing up the core of the problem: too many people think celebrities are more believable than science, when it comes to being told what to think.
If Al Gore had "discovered" climate change, and was the only significant person promoting the theory with little convincing evidence, then people would certainly be right to doubt. But when Gore is only one notable figure of many that's echoing what the huge majority of climatologists have been telling us for decades, and when those climatologists have reams of peer-reviewed studies summarising multiple lines of evidence to back up their conclusions, then who gives a flying fuck about Gore?
Sadly, the answer is "the public", or more specifically, that sector of the public that don't want to accept any responsibility and would rather reframe the debate to be about celebrities and their credibility. Same goes with vaccines - much of the focus is on McCarthy instead of the evidence. Plus of course the Bible itself is probably the biggest celebrity ever, in a way.
Solution? Dunno. Stop clicking on every damn story with a celebrity in it, maybe, and perhaps then "news" outlets might not give such weight to their opinions. Won't help people face facts, but it will reduce the noise levels at least.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Right now, in the states, there are two dominant (political) tribes, and one of those tribes has very strong (even if unscientific) positions on several of the issues canvassed.
It is not surprising that people parrot the accepted and expected storyline that their tribe tells about those issues.
Tribal following is what people do, a lot of the time. Who knows what they really think, or even whether they bother to think. Parroting takes a lot less effort, and ensures you're a member of the in-group.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Science cannot prove anything. For a proof, you have to have the all encompassing, absolute truth. That's not what science is about, though. Most people don't seem to understand it. Science is the way. Not the goal. Science gives you an explanation. The best explanation we have at the moment maybe, but it never claims that there will never ever be a better one in the future. We might find out something that changes everything.
When I tell you that the hammer you hold in your hand will fall on your foot if you drop it, it will most likely be true. The reason for this is, according to our current understanding, gravity. Gravity, that is the currently established theory, is a force that makes every mass attract every other mass in the universe, according to the laws Newton formulated. We even have pretty accurate formulas that can tell you just how strong these masses will attract each other.
This theory is "good enough" for a lot of things. It was at least enough for us to leave our home planet and travel to the moon that orbits it. And, just in case some Moon-landings-deniers will butt in, can we at least agree on having sent some probes there? If not, I'll settle for stuff like the ISS which also relies on Newton being at least kinda-sorta correct.
But then there's Mercury. And Mercury is, well, it isn't quite orbiting the way it should. For the longest time we thought that there must be another planet closer to the sun, because that Mercury didn't fly right. Something had to disturb its orbit. And for quite a while the working theory was that there's another planet, closer to the sun, that we just cannot observe because it's SO close to the sun that it disappears in the corona and we can't see it.
Until about a century ago that Einstein dude came and said something about heavy masses actually not only affecting other masses but actually light and hell, even time. At first that sounds completely out of whack, but then we made some observations, and that also explained why Mercury keeps wobbling like that.
So our new working theory is that relativistic model on top of Newton's. And it fits pretty neatly. It's actually like that this part is "done". There is no unexplained stuff anymore, everything's wrapped up neatly. Of course, there are a lot of other theories still under heavy construction. That dark matter/dark energy thing alone is a bit one. Maybe we will find it. Maybe some new Einstein will come along and give us a neat discovery that allows us to formulate (and test!) a new theory that suddenly makes that dark matter/energy go poof just like that "innermost planet" went away when the wobbling Mercury was explained by relativity that worked far better than the old theory of that phantom planet.
Science will never present an ultimate, final proof. It offers a working theory. Something that is, according to the currently available information, good enough at explaining what we observe. One day a better theory will come along and we will adjust our working theory, and it will fit our observation better. That's an ongoing process, one that will most likely never come to an end, at least as long as we don't stop wanting to know more about the world that surrounds us.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Your post proves my point. You care more about moral posturing and displaying your conformity with a bankrupt ideology than you do about the truth.
I wonder what is going to happen when cats like you read Nicholas Wade's new book! .
You'll probably have a heart attack. And you still won't live in a majority black neighborhood. And you won't wonder why Slashdot doesn't run a story about the major New York Times Science writer admitting that yes, it's true. Intelligence is genetic. In fact, any behavioral attribute that can be reliably measured has a genetic component.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
I distrust the people who tell me the science is settled, and that corporations are always to blame.
What if it kills 2 fewer than the 160 million it saves. Would you consider that pretty safe?
Some times it is a bad thing.
A dissenting opinion which has no evidence to back its claims has little to no value.
When the proponents of that dissenting opinion misrepresent the scientific method to fool the science illiterate masses, it is a bad thing.
Several dissenting opinions we hear now days holds on by plain deception.
I don't think that's even the point. If people doubted the big bang because they carefully considered the arguments and found some flaws that made them doubt it, that would be fine. They doubt it because they can't imagine the terms involved, because a religious book says it isn't true, or mainly just because they don't want to think about it. For the same reason that people think low frequency radiation from their computer is dangerous but Gamma radiation from water at a hot spring isn't. For the same reason people use IE instead of Firefox or Chrome. It usually isn't that they've educated themselves and weighed the evidence - it's that they can't be bothered - and yet at the same time, they feel a need to express their uneducated opinion.
Anecdotal Evidence/Case in point: A friend of a friend who lives in Kansas, USA started trying to buy up bottled water after the Tsunami incident in Japan. Because, you know, the water in the US was going to be contaminated soon. Riiight. Here I live in Tokyo and the water is generally safe, but the water in Kansas was to be undrinkable. Yet he was going to solve this by somehow buying enough water to last a lifetime? I guess food wasn't to be affected. People are just, in general, stupid and illogical - and it doesn't seem to bother many of them.
People in society need to start doing two things:
1. Educate themselves so that they can do some critical thinking about the world in general and enlarge their world view. Start actually caring about things other than which celebrity is cheating on who.
2. Recognize when you don't know and don't care to put forth the required effort and defer to the experts instead of talking bullshit. Sure, the experts may be wrong occasionally - especially about models of the universe or financial predictions - but they have in general a much better chance of knowing what they are talking about than you do, if you can't be bothered to do #1 above.
As opposed to food that is fertilized with a substance that does not come from the excretory organs of an animal.
Age of the earth; Personally I think a global flood story fits the geology better than reliance on gradual processes. Perhaps triggered by a huge asteroid bombardment that hit the entire solar system (my fathers pet theory that he has been researching and may write a book on). Most of the geological record is made of very clean flat sedimentary layers with no signs of habitation or erosion. I believe the Fossil record was mostly sorted by water, sinking based on size or density not age or biological complexity. All those dinosaurs died out quite quickly after the climate changed or humans decided to hunt them. I have yet to see any evidence that compels me to believe that evolutionary processes can create new cellular machines. Yet animals change in various ways and adapt to external selection pressures quite rapidly. Most evidence of adaptation seems to be achieved though tweaking the parameters of existing features, or the destruction of existing cellular machinery.
Read up on Strata Smith. Basically your theory is similar to the theories before he noted that fossils were increasing in complexity as they went up the layers, and he could identify the layers based on the fossils he found in them and he could successfully predict the next layers above and below. This made him money predicting where coal would be found, which was big money back in Victorian england. So basically your theory was disapproved over a hundred years ago, assuming you take into account the evidence. If you ignore the evidence, well then, basically any theory can be proved. That is how religion works.
They don't want to be educated. But that doesn't really matter to you, does it?
I suspect most of these results aren't necessarily coming about because of religion, but from basic ignorance of science. Ask questions about something the listener has no knowledge about in any meaningful way, then they either guess the answer or they give the answer that they are expected to give by society. This applies to even people who give the "correct" answer, I doubt many of those who agreed that smoking caused cancer ever read the scientific reports about it or that those who agreed with the big bang theory understand what it really is.
In other words, this is not a poll about understanding science but a poll about which viewpoints are commonly accepted or not.
And this is not use a problem in USA, you will find this around the world, but it's more fun to make fun of the US and pretend that it's more ignorant than elsewhere.
Even if you will find more people in Europe that agree that climate change is caused by humans this does not mean that there are more people who read science journals over there, but that the prevailing public attitudes lean in that direction more than in the US. In the US we've got some people trying to actively sway public opinion about climate change for economic reasons, thus lots of doubt is created which is less common in Europe. For both Europe and the US the vast majority of the people have only heard about climate change from the news media anyway.
A huge issue is that even the people claiming to be intelligent can not differentiate between theory and fact. I blame our horrible education system and 'reward everyone including people that get it wrong' methodology. These same people lump inductive and deductive reasoning into one category because they are not taught the difference. Unless of course they happen to take an elective college class or by happenstance figure out the difference on their own.
Hell, if they took 10 seconds to look at the Wiki page for the inductive reasoning they would realize their idiocy.
Inductive reasoning forms the basis of most scientific theories e.g.; Darwinism, Big bang theory and Einstein's theory of relativity.[2][3]
Good luck getting these morons to think, I gave up long ago because these same idiots get mod points so if you debate them you must be a troll.
In my opinion, articles like TFA make matters worse. They don't point out that these theories are just that, it's expected that everyone has an absolute belief in what ever theory they are handed. Interestingly there are thousands of doctors that question the massive vaccination policies today, but we are not allowed to debate any of their merits because it's taught as fact that vaccines cause no harm. (also makes a few companies assloads of money, go figure...). We still have no idea what caused the Universe to exist, and if you ask that question you must be one of those religious people and not believe in the big-bang theory.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Well I don't thin it's unreasonable to declare Vaccines "safe" and still have a few people die from them every year.
People die from placebo pills. People die from injections of saline solution. People die from nothing or from unrelated things.
"Safe" means that your chances of dying are less after the vaccine than before it. If the vaccine has a 1% chance of killing you, but you have a 50% chance of dying from a horrible disease without it - then the vaccine is safe and effective. If the vaccine has a 1% chance of killing you, but you have only a 0.001% chance of dying from the disease it prevents then it may be a bad deal (not "safe") even if it is effective at preventing the disease from killing you.
From the numbers I have seen, most vaccines are both safe and effective by those criteria. Of course, the more the disease numbers go down through the use of vaccines, the less danger you will be in to start with, so in the short term, it may start to look like some vaccines are a bad deal. The POINT though is that the vaccines have a very low "incidence" rate and they don't cause half the people who take the vaccine to develop autism or anything like that.
There is a suspicion that corporations will bias science for their own ends and profit (oh yes, this treatment is perfectly safe, it won't cure you, but it will treat the symptoms). They will only consider research into a problem worthwhile if they can develop a long-term treatment rather than a final cure.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
"s/electric universe/flat earth/g"
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
Strictly speaking, yes. Though it would be hard to fault people for not bothering with the vaccine, given its very small benefit.
However, in that hypothetical scenario, your error is much larger than your difference -- statistically, the number of lives that it saves versus kills are the same.
So he mapped the layers of strata and their fossils, and noticed that these layers were mostly consistent over Britain. Then he applied this knowledge to identify these same layers in other places. This is not inconsistent with a flood that deposited all of these layers in a very short time frame. Initially with all of that material held in suspension as the water was moving quickly. With each layer of sediments and organisms settling out consistently across the entire area, as the water slows down. I'm not ignoring the data, I'm interpreting it differently.
So why are there so many organisms that only appear in the "older" layers, that still have surviving specimen in the wild?
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Pay attention! There are people around you that do not conform to the current orthodoxy. They are, at best, ignorant twits, and at worst, enemies of the people. It is your duty to ridicule them and mock them. If they do not recant, you may need to increase your efforts.
Be careful about dehumanizing people that you disagree with. Someone disagrees with you too, and we all know what comes next in this movie.
There are damn few scientists doing science these days, but "scientists" willing, for a buck, to spread a thin veneer of justification over your own bias and hate are readily available.
See that "Preview" button?
As opposed to food that is fertilized with a substance that does not come from the excretory organs of an animal.
You say that like its a bad thing.
But isn't one of the precepts of science, the ability to freely question and investigate a claim and make up ones own mind a cornerstone of the foundation of science itself?
Since when do I have to stop thinking because someones says for example Evolution is proven and because we can make iPhone's and send people to the moon God is dead all because a PhD says so?
That is not science, that is doctrine and I think most people who are free and thinking, understand the difference.
To chracterize the idea that people are ignorant and stupid because they question evolution is simply doctrine.
Evolution has lots of problems to solve for itself before a model can be show that overcomes simple entropy for example in Biochemistry and Nuclear Chemistry.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
I think the KJV has some distinct advantages. For instance:
1. It's written in Shakespearian-era English, which has been proved to be about twenty percent cooler and over seventy percent more epic than modern english.
2. Some of the edits were—pardon the expression—simply divine. "I have become a brother to jackals"? Weak. "I am a brother to dragons"? Loving it. Somebody deserved a bonus for that gem.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
And what about the people that prefer the Expanding Vacuum theory as opposed to big bang? Those crazy quantum physicists must all be religious nuts with mental illness too right?
Sadly, this affliction is rampant in the USA. Happily, it is a dwindling number, and perhaps will soon be eradicated.
Just make sure you know which side of the fence you are on, because I'm not sure you do.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Not implying. There are a lot of willfully ignorant people that prefer their religion's tale of a 10,000 year old universe
That's both sad and amusing. Having read and learned about the Bible, I can tell you this much: the geneologies in Genesis and elsewhere are not complete and exhuastive. They do not claim to be complete and exhaustive. Nowhere in the Bible is it so much as implied that they are.
The standard ancient Hebrew practice of listing such geneologies is to list only the most famous/notable ancestors. More mediocre and lesser-known ancestors are left out deliberately because they were not considered worthy of mention. Thus there are large gaps of unknown time in the geneologies listed in Genesis and elsewhere. Nothing to the contrary is ever claimed. This fact is not even difficult to find out, except that it does depend on doing your own homework instead of letting the TV and the culture do the thinking for you. The main point of all the geneologies in the Bible is to establish that the line of King David was known (old testament) and is the same line from which Yeshua (new testament) is descended, which is important because various prophecies concerning the Messiah predicted this (e.g. Isaiah).
To infer some kind of final ultimate Age of Humanity or Age of The Earth from this is madness. The Bible never represents it as such, and anyone claiming it does is simply unfamiliar with the very book (and ancient Hebrew culture) they are claiming to understand. The Bible makes no claims whatsoever concerning things like how long ago Adam lived, how long ago Noah lived, how long ago the Flood was, etc.
Most self-described Christians don't know this and that's just plain fucking lazy, to be frank with you. You believe this is the WORD OF GOD and yet you can't be bothered to learn a few easily researched facts about it?? This is what happens when people always have some excuse for why they won't do their own thinking and their own learning.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
the electric force weakens linearly with distance
If by "electric force" you mean electric field strength, then no, it does not fall off linearly. It obeys the inverse square law -- same as gravity.
Vaccinations aren't that safe (there's only been a couple of cases of people getting hit by meteoroids), just much safer then not being vaccinated. An extreme example from just before vaccinations was variolation to inoculate against smallpox, one study found 2% mortality for those properly inoculated vs 16.6% mortality for the ones that weren't variolated. Much better odds of survival not to mention the other problems from having smallpox such as being really sick and ending up scarred.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Yeah that's definitely a complete and total refutation of the entire theory. Nevermind that Plasma Cosmology is real and backed by the IEEE, I am sure they are just a bunch of flat-earth dumbasses who wish they were half as smart as you.
Why not just be honest with all of us and say "HERETIC!"? Why pretend the ridicule is valid? Or that science is best served this way and not by showing that the facts are on your own side? Not terribly scientific of you, you know.
I think the KJV has some distinct advantages. For instance:
1. It's written in Shakespearian-era English, which has been proved to be about twenty percent cooler and over seventy percent more epic than modern english.
2. Some of the edits were—pardon the expression—simply divine. "I have become a brother to jackals"? Weak. "I am a brother to dragons"? Loving it. Somebody deserved a bonus for that gem.
It's not as well known as it deserves to be, but the early Christians were actually a very diverse group. What we now call Gnosticism was representative of many if not most of them.
Sadly it was systematically stamped out, largely in part because there is such great power in organized religion and adherence to its dogmas.
Excluded, "non-canonical" books like the Gospel of Thomas, the Book of Enoch, and the Gospel of Judas are really fascinating to read.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Congratulations, you've written an electric universe post that contains even more ridiculous claims than the electric universe people have.
Actually, I believe the number of young earth creationists in the US is somewhat smaller than the number of Americans being treated for mental illness. Both numbers are unacceptably high, of course.
The big bang is the theory most consistent with available data.
Whenever someone says "obvious truth", they're almost certainly not talking about science. Particularly if it's in relation to something very complicated and notoriously difficult to measure.
Give us a few examples of evidence that's willfully ignored?
Those who would advocate AGW need to provide a solid convincing answer to one thing: the temperature of every planet in the solar system has increased, not just Earth's. I think we can agree there are no humans on Venus and Neptune cutting down trees and burning fossil fuels.
Bullshit; there is no evidence supporting the idea that all planets are warming uniformly and at the same relative rate (which would be necessary for this idea). Any climate variations on other planets is perfectly well explained by proximity to the sun and natural environmental fluctuations. The warming of the Earth, on the other hand, is not explained by these factors. Besides, there's no evidence that the current epoch of warming of the Earth has tracked solar output (in fact there's no evidence that the sun's output has varied significantly, on average, in the past few millenia).
But it's curious how people would cling to the data on the climate on other planets - which is tenuous and sparse at best - and ignore the massive amount of evidence we have for Earth's climate, CO2 concentration, and the interlinking of these two.
And yes, ocean acidity is a huge problem and it's caused by CO2. In fact it's one of the main problems that our carbon emissions have caused.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
OK, I give. What was it that really eradicated polio then? I'm going to take a wild guess and say that it wasn't fluoride in the water that did it either.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
It IS inconsistent with a rapid deposit. The depth isn't correlated with density, or weight or buoyancy. Instead it's correlated with complexity. Organisms survive because they are still well adapted to their environment. Anyone with the slightest education in evolution would be able to answer that. Also, a few strata have isotopes that aren't found on earth anywhere else, but are found on meteors, and these strata perfectly partition fossil - just as if a large meteor broke up in the atmosphere and was distributed over a large area, somewhere between two ages with different animals. This is completely inconsistent with all the strata being deposited at once. Not to mention we have a very good idea of the rate of sediment deposits which is consistent with the estimated ages of the fossil records. Also consistent with documented volcanoe eruptions which have caused identifiable deposits. Also, the types of plankton and krill have changed over time in ways that leave different variants in different strata, but inconsistent with a sudden deposit, since these species all were essentially the same, and wouldn't be expected to differ in buoyancy. That's just off the top of my head - and I'm no expert. If you want to attack the science, at least learn some of it first.
Your logic is off there. It doesn't have to be either or. AGW and increased solar output aren't mutually exclusive. Proving the latter doesn't disprove the former.
How many can tolerate the obvious truth, supported by thousands of studies, that average differences in intelligence across the various peoples of the world and especially races are due to genetic factors?
Because we don't know how to measure intelligence accurately enough and control for all the other factors to narrow it down to just genetics. And that's just the problem of genetics: when you start talking about race, you're grouping people together who are vastly different genetically. Race isn't a useful category for generalizing about genetics.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
All those dinosaurs died out quite quickly after the climate changed or humans decided to hunt them.
You almost had me going there, +1 Funny
Yes, but instead of backing it up with further scientific data, or possibly applications, we continue to give a crap about sociology surveys that mean jack shit in the scheme of things. Where's the killer app?
btw, unlike crazy nutters like yourself I don't make the colour of peoples skin in the neighbourhood a deciding factor in anything. Though I have to admit, traveling through the states I felt a little uncomfortable being surrounded by so many big white USians.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
If you are reaching for your fainting couch, you were never persuadable to begin with.
What other knowledge? All the evidence points to a 13.7 billion year old universe and a 4.5 billion year old earth. Appear? Do you mean that all tests and all our understanding of physics and chemistry and geology show that those bones are million of years old? Do you really weight the claims of some primitive, illiterate people from 2000 years ego the same as the current consensus of the scientific community? Those people who wrote the bible had even less understanding of the world then the ancient Greek people that lived 500 years before Jesus. If you really weight the claims of the bible of a global flood, and dirt people, and talking snakes as the current science, then the survey was really accurate.
There is a difference between being ignorant of science as you are, and being a sceptic. Vaccines killed exactly zero people. That is zero as in 0 or none at all. But vaccines helped literally billions of people, including millions of children that before vaccines died horrible of, for example, polio.
The further I read the comments here on Slashdot, the more I believe that the USA is really an illiterate third world country.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
The Current Science that we have, with the technology and Anthropology we have, rules out the possibility of the Christian religion having any basis in reality. It doesn't rule out the possibility a god exists. It only means that the current dominant Abrahamic religions are not realistic descriptions of the universe we live in.
Which science is that then? Is it the science that claims we live in a multiverse where there are infinite universes where every possibility happens? Is it the science that claims our universe is a hologram? Is it the science that claims we popped into existence through a fluctuation in quantum probability? Is it the science that claims to explain what the universe is and how it came about, except that it doesn't know what the dark matter and dark energy are that constitute the overwhelming majority of it ... assuming it exists at all and the explanation isn't actually a modified theory of gravity like TeVeS or some such? Is it the science that claimed that the coelacanth was dead for 66 million years .... until one was caught in 1938? Is it the science that claimed the city of Troy didn't exist ... until it was found? Is that the science that said that the Antikythera Mechanism shouldn't exist? Is it the science that claimed that the walls of Jericho falling outward was a myth ... until it was proven? Is it the science that claimed it was impossible that the Bible was transmitted accurately through the centuries.... until the Dead Sea scrolls and other document fragments were found to prove that it had been?
Perhaps you should prepare yourself for further "refinement" in the understanding of science on various matters?
But these religions justify how we treat other people, why certain social groups are stigmatized, and have a heavy impact on who are leaders are, what our laws are, how we raise our children, and the legitimacy of the standing governments. If the Religions aren't true, then there is no justification for the political positions of MANY people in the US Government.
Shall we contrast Marxism or Marxist-Leninism which has been claimed to be a "science" by countless millions over the last century, and which has been the governing philosophy for a large percentage of the earth's population into the 1990s (and still governs China and three lesser nations) with the Bible? Marxist principles (14:16-23:16) call for the destruction of the class enemy in the revolutionary struggle, and the destruction of primitive societies that were too far behind to catch up with the revolutionary struggle which at the time would have included groups such as the Serbs, Bretons, Basques, and Scottish Highlanders. The National Socialists, another set of socialists inspired by Marx, exterminated the "unfit," the deformed, gays, Jews, and many others.
Should we branch off into the Progressives and their ideas about eugenics?
And what of the Bible?
One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.” -- Mark 12:28-31
Your views seem very questionable on both the science and the question of religion.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Well, yes, ... - but what you are saying is nothing more than what all scientists agree on: that all theories are models limited by our understanding and observattions. The big bang model is a proper theory, by the way: a hypothesis, that has produced predictions, none of which have been falsified. And it is amazingly accurate for such a long shot. We have very little reason to doubt that something very much like a huge explosion happened around 13 - 14 billion years ago; where the doubt creeps in is some time before inflation. That is no surprise, since we, as scientists, are working within the limits of our observations and can only speculate about what we can't (yet) observe.
I'm not convinced about what you say about time and location, or measurements; for one thing, we still don't have a clear understanding of several of the fundamental concept we use. For example, why does time seem to be so different from other dimensions? Why does the speed of light seem invariable? What is a particle? And a field? And mass, electric charge, ....? Just because we have a mathematical form to fit these observables into, doesn't mean that we actually understand what they are.
Huh? You're conflating lots of things in there. There is no reason to believe (by the Copernican Principle if nothing else) that our galactic cluster is at the exact centre of a universe only microscopically larger than the Hubble Volume, and lots of reason to believe that at large present-day distances galaxies that evolved from the highly redshifted things we see in our sky have a pretty similar view to what we have, rather than a highly anisotropic one with galaxies we see occupying only half or less of their sky.
Indeed, the increasing evidence for a variety of families of Cosmic Inflation suggest that our Hubble Volume occupied only a tiny fraction of the pre-inflationary universe (some flatness studies propose that we will shortly have observations (from Planck) that fraction is no bigger than 10^-20 or so).
Thus that bits of the early universe are separated from us by such enormous differences that bound by the speed of light we will never have direct evidence of them except that they were close enough to us in our distant past lightcone (which intersects with theirs some time before Inflation) that we could predict that their local physics and large structure evolution would be similar (or not) to ours. The "not" part is interesting, since the patches of the pre-inflationary universe might not have wholly reversible microscopic mechanics -- they might have different fields or just different field minimums than our Hubble Volume appears to have, and it is not useless to go out on a limb and suggest that the inflationary field can also cause sudden superluminal collapse too. Such ideas are worth considering as a way of understanding our cosmological arrow of time, even if they may not be physically meaningful to us at any point in our future light cones.
In such a "multiverse" the other multiverses are not likely to be accessible barring time travel and the ability to withstand extreme conditions in our early universe, but there is little reason to doubt that at least near our universe are other large patches of space filled with the sorts of galaxies we have in our large patch.
"multiple, non-observed dimensions" is not the same thing, and you are probably referring to M-Theory type stuff, mainly evolving out of string theory. Essentially the idea is that a complicated massive structure might poke only a tiny bit into our 3-d space with the hidden bits affecting its trajectory in ways that we might ascribe to gravitation with dynamics more complicated than Einsteinian gravitation. There is good reason they must be *non-observed*, because objects we have studied in labs and in the sky simply do not appear to rotate in and out of dimensions larger than on the order of femtometres - if one accepts that tiny dimensions can be there without us noticing them all the time, then one can accept that there might be several of them, and then one can hide all sorts of energy in "pockets". Some people think the stuff is real, others just would like to use straightforward geometrical approaches to problems that are solvable only analytically (and often only non-exactly) in other frameworks, but don't *literally* believe that there is any physical realization of conformal fields or empty collapsing "boxes" of spacetime. In practically no physical theory based on greater dimensionality than the familiar 3+1 of our patch of the universe do you lose the idea of time and space being determined by the energy content and its coincidences.
And finally I think you dig at MWI which is just a convenient way of dealing with the tradeoffs of avoiding a local hidden variables theory of quantum mechanics. There is nothing *physical* about the measurements-not-taken in MWI but doing accounting with counterfactuals can be easier than determining preferred bases in the orbital parts of Hilbert spaces for various sets of problems.
So there you go, three big types of "manyverse" theory, all of which fully grounded in big bang cosmology (for which the evidence is overwhelming) and compati
There is no scientific proof that is does.
You can prove that smoking increases the chances of getting some types of cancer and that most lung cancer is caused by smoking.
Everyone skeptic of AGW needs to not only ignore basically all of climate science, but also the common sense argument:
The energy captured in coal, gas, and oil is the result of many millions of years of sunshine. How, exactly, does one reasonably maintain an expectation that our releasing that in a matter of a couple decades should have no significant effects?
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
It's fine that people don't want to be educated. But they shouldn't be allowed to make decisions on issues they are willfully ignorant about.
Doubt "Big Bang"?
Well you should.
I agree with you post but...
And there's always a but.
There's a big difference between someone who doubts the big bang because they evidence isn't conclusive and it's just the best hypothesis we have right now and someone who doubts the big bang because an 1700 year old book says a sky man created the earth in 7 days.
The former has doubts because their mind open to other possibilities, the latter because their mind is closed to other possibilities. Doubt is really the wrong word for the latter, but they like it because it allows them to get a word in to rational conversations and once that happens, well you know the old saying about arguing with an idiot.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
All the translation were done under the guidance of God, so all the 'mistakes' are corrections made by god. Of course God never made mistakes in the old bibles either. Times are changing God is being proactive.
It is a nice piece of circular logic. That is why it works so well.
"Only about half of the people accepted that vaccines are safe and effective, with 15 percent doubting."
Well that is kind of a loaded question, because every vaccine is different.
SOME vaccines are safe and effective, SOME are safe and not effective (i.e. a placebo, the drug companies most favorite kind of drug), SOME come with a greater risk than the disease itself.
To give the pharmaceutical industry a blank cheque by believing that ALL vaccines are safe and effective is just as stupid as proclaiming that "all drugs are safe and effective".
Every vaccine is different and the safeness and effectiveness is completely undefined for vaccines in general.
None of the questions asked about 100% certainty. They asked how confident the respondents were that particular propositions were true, ranging from "Not at all confident" to "Extremely/very confident"; I think most scientists in the relevant fields would be able and willing to answer them as they were put.
This "let's throw all vaccines into one giant pot and treat them as if they were the same thing" - opinion is the main reason why I am increasingly sceptic.
Just because SOME vaccines are safe and effective, how does this make them ALL safe? It is a fact of life that some diseases can be treated well with vaccines and some not at all.
The question about safety has to be answered for each vaccine individually (and also btw for each surgery).
To proclaim that "vaccines are safer than surgeries" - what complete and utter nonsense is that? What vaccine can cure a broken leg? What surgery can cure an infection?
what was your vaccine? chicken soup?
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Another thing that the American public is confused about, is the difference between the way science uses the word "theory," and the colloquial use of the word. In other words, most Americans think "theory" means "hypothesis." They hear "the theory of evolution" as "the hypothesis of evolution" because they have that idiom, "it's just a theory," (meaning mere speculation), at the front of their minds. This gives rise to specious arguments, even from otherwise intelligent people, such as, "Gravity is just a theory, too!" Better to explain the difference between an hypothesis and a theory, if you're going to say anything at all.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
The Vaccine is grown in live chicken eggs. If you are allergic to eggs then you cannot take the vaccine. due to the risk of egg protein being in the dose.
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
Germany, France, and the UK all decided they would do away with nuclear power.
Huh? Germany might be in a panic about it, but the UK just gave the go ahead for several new nuclear reactors in the UK, and France continues on as normal.
I could not agree more to that statement.
"Does this survey show the lack of scientific understanding of the authors?" Extremely Confident.
Both, and sometimes not without reason, but those who distrust science sure do like to pass their anti-science off as a more reasonable sounding anti-corporate sentiment.
The reason we have the scientific method is that common sense is useless when trying to discern fact from fiction. The world is constantly more bizarre than common sense dictates. It sounds like you simply don't understand what scientists claim happened back then, and so to deal with that, instead of accepting the limits of your intellect, are attacking those scientists (and those who *do* understand, or who realise the experts might know more than them). You are the ignorant twit, it seems.
How many can tolerate the obvious truth, supported by thousands of studies, that average differences in intelligence across the various peoples of the world and especially races are due to genetic factors?
Interesting question. The TV tells that evolution exists but race differences (especially in morality, behaviour and intelligence) don't exist. But evolution requires race differences - what now?
Also the TV admits that race differences exists for things that are too obvious to deny (like appearance, body size, blood pressure, testosterone levels, etc.) but deny any differences for things that may have been tested and confirmed countless times but are touching on the subject of what makes us human and what distinguishes us from animals (intelligence, behavior, morality, etc.). Essentially the TV claims that evolution works on the human body, but not on the human brain.
People who are raised by the TV (and there are a lot of those) actually believe these contradictions, it is what Orwell called "doublethink".
In other words you agree with your TV-set that the human body is formed by evolution (= genes), but the human brain is not influenced by evolution?
That kind of proves benzapp's point completely.
Because we don't know how to measure intelligence accurately enough and control for all the other factors to narrow it down to just genetics.
That is a nonsense argument and you know it.
If the human body is influenced by evolution, then so is the human brain, simply because the brain is part of the body.
When you propose that for some reason all brains are functionally the same and are not influenced by genes, then the burden on proof is on you.
Interesting, but most people will skip this because you post anonymously.
Because they go through the same testing procedures.
I know, well, I know, I know ... beta and all sorts of things, lazy editors, many downsides ...
But still, this is the site I love to come back to. As a last (AFAIK) resort of sanity in an unsound world!! - Thanks, Slashdot.
When I read the post, I had about the same feelings that our commentators have already exposed to a large extent.
It would be overly arrogant; and counterproductive, to assume that only we in the 20th/21st century have an exclusive right on science and knowledge. An alienable right, that cannot be challenged nor overruled by science and knowledge of future research.
Think back into the eighteenth century; think back when there were no microscopes to see bacteria or viruses. How the heck was it 'bad science' then, not to know about bacteria and viruses then? Pure observation assumes a flat Earth, and a sun actually rising in the morning. There is nothing wrong at all with using whatever is available to deduce about the universe.
Wrong is only, when dogma, and more so religion, stand in the way of scientific progress. It was Galileo to discover planetary movements. Until then, a geocentric approach was completely valid. The obstacles to progress were thrown in by the christian churches.
It is pure arrogance on the side of the original authors to assume authority on the frontiers of knowledge. Yes, including global warming. While I - I dare say: of course - believe that it exists and is probably man-made, it also is not an insight produced by a genius. It rather is nothing but a result of an observation, like the path of the sun across the skies of the old days, which is currently being analysed.
The misery is not, and can never be, to have different, opposing, theories. The misery only starts, when counter-intuitive theories take a grasp in science, teaching, etc. Nothing against someone's own, and very personal religion; but assuming an invisible higher being that created the universe, including stars and planets up to the human race within 7 days; yes, that is unhelpful to progress. Doubting vaccination, big bangs, and whatnot, however, ought not become scientific outlaws per se.
I think it is more accurate to say, "...because some men, allegedly holy, interpret a 1700 year old book to say a sky man created the earth in 7 days".
One thing that religious people fail to recognize is that society didn't lock up or medicate people 4000 to well under 1000 years ago for hearing voices. One aspect of these people (yes, even today) is that frequently they are very "religious" and fixated on the holy book du jure. Hearing voices from unseen entities could only mean for these societies that they were hearing angels, devils, saints, G-d, but not Allah...apparently Allah is so "other" that he doesn't communicate directly, he's got himself an escape clause (isn't is always the way) that allows him to use angels as intermediaries. And let's face it, which nice Muslim wants to be stoned for claiming to hear Allah on the line, an angel though is acceptable.
Angel: I command you to perform jihad against apostates.
Guy: Err....why?
Angel: (Allah, what'll I tell this guy....tell him, tell him, it is Allah's will) It is Allah's will.
Guy: Well, that settles it! Allahu Akbar, praise Allah and pass the ammunition, gonna kill me some apostates!!!
Guy: Are you an apostate?
Guy 2: Who wants to know?
Guy: Allah. Now are you or aren't you? I gotta kill me an apostate.
Guy 2: Nope, not me...but that fellar down the street who I think nicked my camel, he's definitely an apostate.
Funny thing is two of the main three that pointed out the problems with the flood idea were clergymen. If your religion cannot survive contact with reality then it's a far weaker thing than theirs.
The "fossils are from a flood" thing is not from the Bible but instead an extrapolation from it to try to explain fossils. If they are from a different cause that's only challenging the extrapolation and not the religion itself. The truly sad thing is the step backwards were branches of a religion founded long after the flood theory was abandoned by the mainstream decided to revive it again - something about seeing educated clergy as an enemy I believe. A lot of this anti-science bullshit grew out of seeing Jesuits as competition for flock members.
There lies the problem :(
So a vaccine that failed the test stops being a vaccine? That is news for me. Also we do not live in a static world - yesteryear's vaccine might be ineffective to today's viruses. Also what about vaccines that have been approved in some countries and rejected in others?
Also this does not distinguish between the "no-brainer" vaccines where the benefits clearly outweigh the risks and costs and the vaccines that are just barely beneficial.
So basically the question is completely wrong and should instead be: "Do you believe that the testing procedures of vaccines are safe and effective."
In that case I would also say that this is doubtful.
Yeah that's definitely a complete and total refutation of the entire theory. Nevermind that Plasma Cosmology is real and backed by the IEEE,
We have sponsored cosmology now? What model does the NRA support?
Why not just be honest with all of us and say "HERETIC!"?
Nope, when we're honest we say FRUITCAKE!
In another post you denied the politics that you've just put on show with the post above.
The argument that AGW skeptisism is a consequence of ignorance is just a warmist rationalization. A figment of their fevered imaginations.
No, the problem is that mostly rational people simply can't understand the crazy shit that goes on in the heads of RWA's, so we foolishly assume that they are stupid or ill-informed.
Doublethink is hard, most of us can't do it.
I remember when the consensus was that a 100nm process architecture was "impossible" and "beyond human capability to manipulate matter."
aha, thanks for explanation
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Very few of the "scientists" opining about climate change have that as their specialty. And even bona fide climate scientists often talk about areas they know next to nothing about (e.g., climatologists talking about statistics).
In most cases, "consensus" means that a couple of people did an experiment, a few more people were on a couple of papers, and the rest of the community just thinks the results are plausible but has no independent evidence to support them.
The Bible is a lot like many other SciFi stories. It works out well in its own little universe, the suspense of disbelief only becomes hard if you try to fit it into reality.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Science and religion try to answer very different questions. Science tries to find the answer to "how". Religion tries to find the answer to "why". They may appear similar, but their intention is a completely different one.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Sadly, this affliction is rampant in the USA. Happily, it is a dwindling number, and perhaps will soon be eradicated.
I wish you were right. I wish it was a dwindling problem, soon to be eradicated. I want to believe that. However, conservative Christians (which should make heads explode with paradox) aren't going away anytime soon. I think you are right that most Boomers that hold these beliefs will be departing in the next decade or so. But they have grandchildren, many of whom listen. I have been teaching middle school geography for ten years. This year was the very first time I had 2 sets of parents question my teaching of the Big Bang as they didn't believe it. I teach at a private school with intensely involved parents so this was not an issue of some parents just happen to start paying attention. While not a strong example, it does lead me to believe that the idea that Young Earth/ID types are fading away is simply not true.
Sig Registration Form 34c_766(a) submitted to Ministry of Signature Management. Approval pending.
The energy captured in coal, gas, and oil is the result of many millions of years of sunshine. How, exactly, does one reasonably maintain an expectation that our releasing that in a matter of a couple decades should have no significant effects?
Except that the energy being released by burning all that fossil fuel is trivial.
Google gives me 144000TWh in 2008 world energy consumption. Call it 2x10^17Wh
Solar flux at Earths surface is around 2x10^17W. Geothermal is around 5x10^13W.
Almost 10^5 hours in a year, so Geothermal heating is about 4x10^18Wh/year
The heating from burning all that fossil fuel is small in comparison to the heating due to natural radioactivity in the Earth's crust which, in turn, is negligible in comparison to the energy from the Sun.
It's the CO2 that is the problem. Even though it traps a tiny extra fraction of that incoming solar radiation, a tiny fraction adds up to a lot of energy and it's year in, year out.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
And your medical qualifications are?
Please let us know. They must be pretty damn impressive to be better than those large numbers who participate and do not find it doubtful.
Let's just assume you are not a doctor, let's say you program computers for a living. How do you react to someone that says all software is shit and we should just solve problems on paper? Even at such an extreme I think that's a fair comparison to your statement above, and hopefully should illustrate how utterly ridiculous your comment above is.
Clearly, the survey used the wrong terminology. It should have asked something like "do you disbelieve (or maybe, "reject") these theories?"
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
"Do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk, ice cream? Ice cream, Mandrake? Children's ice cream!...You know when fluoridation began?...1946. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works. I first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love... Yes, a profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I — I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence. I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women, er, women sense my power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, Mandrake...but I do deny them my essence."
You want to believe the Earth is 5000 years old? Great. Hand in your mobile phone and GPS device, relinquish all rights to CAT scans and other modern medical technology. We'll keep vaccinating you for public health and we'll provide sanitation so you don't spread cholera. Other than that, enjoy the technology of the goat herders who created your religious beliefs.
So a vaccine that failed the test stops being a vaccine
Yes. Next question.
The fact is that the antivax advocates have managed to convince a statistically significant portion of the population to forego vaccines, which has resulted in a lowering of herd immunity, which has led to measles outbreaks in various areas of the US. I'll continue to err on the side of caution, thanks...
>The Current Science that we have, with the technology and Anthropology we have, rules out the possibility of the Christian religion having any basis in reality.
What the fuck?
No. Not in the slightest.
You can certainly argue against literal interpretations of Genesis, but most Christians do not and have not believed in a literal interpretation. Biblical literalism is a very modern phenomenon, dating to the start of the Fundamentalist movement with the publication of The Fundamentals in 1910.
1910 AD. Not BC.
Only someone with no understanding of either science methodology or history would make the claim that you did.
I think at that point they would be meteorites, and not meteoroids ;)
Too late... http://www.cdc.gov/measles/out...
I think different people are studying the origins of the universe vs the general population's understanding of science. I for one am interested in both. It bothers me greatly that the people running the country don't generally have much understanding of science. I think it might be handy, esp. for things like the dept of energy, but what do I know?
Surveys like this are always carefully designed to get the result the journalist has already decided he wants. In this case, there is a hell of a lot of wiggle room in these questions. For example, contrast "The Earth is 4.5 billion years old" with "the Earth is millions of years old" Might we get a different result? As other posters pointed out, someone might not be sure about 4.5 billion as the figure, and so might have answered with less confidence. Or "The average temperature of the world is rising, mostly because of man-made heat-trapping greenhouse gases" as opposed to "The average temperature of the world is rising". As other posters pointed out again, the survey here is conflating two questions.
There's also the question of sampling. Who would even participate in this survey? All these results describe is the part of the population that is willing to participate in surveys like this. I am not too confident that this adequately represents the American public.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Most of the vaccines are safe, and most of them are effective. However, there are many vaccines with spectacularly bad side effects on a minority of people, and some even with side effects on every taker.
I would put the exceptions mostly on technological problems or medical "conditions".
And vaccines (in case of epidemics) protect both those that took them and those that didn't (considering that a large immune population reduces greatly the spreading of epidemics) - "I haven't took the vaccine, and I'm fine" is quite plausible if everyone _else_ took their vaccines.
But according to cargo-cult Christians (i.e., fundamentalist "religious-right" types), the Bible is the "literal Word of God" and therefore cannot be wrong (even when it's self-contradictory).
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
No, say what you want, but "created in 7 days" is explicitly what that book says. You might interpret it differently, and you're free to do so, because, you know, it's just stories, but there's no interpretation required for the book to say that.
Unless of course you think the more complex theory full of mysterious unobservable entities like dark matter is correct and better uses Occam's razor.
Well, yes. There is no evidence at all supporting the Electric Universe folderol and none of the predictions that it makes come true. For that matter, most of them are impossible. On the other hand, the current construct is internally consistent, can make predictions that work, and is supported by a couple of centuries of observation. So-called 'dark matter' and 'dark energy' simply mark the threshold where our current powers of observation fail, we need better equipment to explore that section of our universe. So yes, Occam's Razor would come down on the side of current cosmology.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
It was slightly more accurate in its time. Since then, the English language has drifted quite a bit in the last 400 years. My criticism of KJV readers has always been that they are reading a book written in a language they do not understand.
Those 80% are simply parroting back what the government and various anti-smoking groups flood every source of media with. They don't have to understand science to parrot something back. Some do, but most don't.
Besides, saying smoking causes cancer is a lie. Or at best a less-than-accurate statement. Smoking doesn't cause cancer. Smoking increases the risk of cancer. People have cancer cells in them all the time, and the immune system fights it.
If smoking caused cancer, everyone who smoked for some period of time would get cancer. A small portion of smokers lives to a ripe old age, at which time getting any disease is roughly the same as if they had never smoked at all.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
I live in the deep heart of the "bible belt", and while this has been my first experience meeting young-earth creationists, I can still count all I know on one hand. I would not say that all the Big-Bang "doubters" are YEC. There has to be something else.
Lots of minerals though
In the case of magnesium it falls as the inverse cube law. Since there are no mono poles.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
So what the hell is redshift? If it is caused buy well motion then why are faster things not further away from us? What magical thing gives us these redshifts. Cus it is a red shift. All the absorption lines are shifted in the red direction. Explained very well by relative velocity. If they are moving and well must have been moving for at least a while then why are they not further away if they are moving away from us faster.
Thing about the electric universe is that it explains NOTHING about this universe.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Also:
Roughly 70 percent accepted that we have a genome and that mental illness is seated in the brain; about 20 percent were uncertain on these subjects, and the doubters were few.
Honestly, I don't know what it means to say "we have a genome". Is that a meaningful statement? I would be uncertain about agreeing with that just because it seems like a weird thing to ask if I accept it. And "mental illness is seated in the brain"? Does anyone actually feel like we can sum that up so easily? We don't even understand what mental illness is half the time, and I don't know what it means for "mental illness" to be "seated" anywhere.
It seems like a dumb survey and the motivations are suspect. I feel uncertain about the Big Bang, not because I'm a creationist, but because we had to rewrite our understanding of time and space about 100 years ago, and we still haven't really settled the issue in a conclusive way. The Big Bang seems like the most likely explanation we have, but if you told me that we'll make a discovery in the next 100 years that will lead us to a significantly different explanation, I wouldn't be too extremely shocked.
So maybe we shouldn't be so quick to jump on the "everyone is stupid!" bandwagon.
The scientific process requires that alternative (or unpopular) theories that seem to be supported by experimental observation be tolerated and given due consideration. Calling people names is the antithesis of the process. Maybe they are dead wrong about the steady-state theory of the universe, and/or maybe the big bang theory is dead wrong. Science allows for the possibility that the unlikely is true and the likely is false. To me, this is the maddening thing about general apathy/hostility to science; what science considers a strength (always allowing for new evidence to contradict current generally accepted theories), un-science (for lack of a better term) considers a weakness. Some people are so consumed by the need for absolute truth that they dismiss science out of hand, because by definition science defies the concept of absolute truth. They can't handle the fact that some things can't currently be explained fully, it's too much grey for them. The universe is a complicated, subtle, and unimaginably diverse place, with laws of physics that may not even be consistent in all locations.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
So why the surprise when they Pick & Choose what to believe from Science?
Much as most donâ(TM)t understand the scientific definition of âoetheory,â you seem to be using the wrong definition of âoedoubt.â
You are using the wrong definition of "wrong". As far as I can notice, the survey doesn't define "doubt". So any definition that fits the context cannot be said to be "wrong".
Doubt could mean the slightest chance of it being false, or a reasonable chance of it being false. Both definitions fit the context. Note people doubting things just because they weren't there during the big bang - they are just expressing their inability to be absolutely certain.
It is just a bad survey, like most others. See questions are lumping multiple assumptions - "universe beginning with a big bang". So one has to doubt it if one doubts universe didn't exist before big bang, and also doubt it if one doubts there was a big bang at all.
There is possibly, or likely a science ignorance in the US public. But this survey proves nothing either way.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
QUESTION AUTHORITY
Listen to Authority's response
If Authority is right, accept it
Most people stop at the first step.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
And they should. You can't go around screaming "mercury" like there's only one form of an element, and it always has the same property no matter what chemical compound it's part of. Imagine we had the same lecture about "sodium" (an explosive metal) or "chlorine" (a deadly poison). Can you BELIEVE they put sodium AND chlorine in our TABLE SALT! It's an explosive deadly poison! They're killing us all!
Oh, actually, I didn't get through the quackery far enough to see that chlorine came up in drinking water. This AC really hasn't ever heard of table salt.
Most of the stuff in that post is conspiracy level "they're lying to us and everything's a poison" diatribe. Do a little research and you'll see that 1) thimerosol wasn't in most vaccines and was removed from nearly all of them at this point because of the paranoia and FUD, 2) even when it was in some vaccines, it is mercury compound with no demonstrated physical harm, unlike, say, the stuff in old thermometers, 3) this "mercury is always evil" argument ignores any rational analysis of toxicity levels, disregarding how minimal the amount of mercury was in any of the vaccines compared to other general exposure.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
So, are you saying that generating sociology studies will create a better interest in science? So far, it has not. You know what generates more interest in science? Applications.
Don't ALL scientists doubt the Big Bang and other models for the universe in the sense that they are all subject to comparison with observations? If a model conflicts with observation, the model either must be dropped or modified.
Science isn't about believing something to be true.
Obligatory
I think it is important to note that in the 80's, Steven Weinberg wrote something to the effect of "It is shame that the Big Bang Theory is the most likely form of cosmology, since that theory most resembles the description in Genesis."
The ultra conservative Christian people people do not scare me much. I get where they are coming from ( mostly, of course there is the occasional Westborro church ) and most just want to believe what they believe and teach their kids so.
The scary people are the people who make science their religion usually without knowing what the science says and also criticising religion without knowing what the religion says. Or knowing who the scientist they make their new high priests are. They might as well be following Immanuel Velikovsky.
I proposes you suck at reading comprehension.
What I did not say is "all brains are functionally the same and not influenced by genes," go read what I wrote again.
Furthermore I assess that you are a complete retard for even thinking that's what I said. Learn to read.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Perhaps I'm wrong, I was going by memory from the reactions from the nuclear power incidents in Japan. I remember all those nations having decided to shutdown all nuclear power by some future date to prevent what happened in Japan. Quite likely most if not all changed their mind since.
Germany seems to want to replace nuclear with wind and solar, good luck with that. UK and France have not built a new nuclear plant in decades. Either way the USA has plenty of oil, coal, and natural gas to sell them if they need it. If the USA builds more nuclear power then we'd have even more to sell.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Shouldn't be allowed by whom?
My point is that the entire organic food movement is not based in science.
Relative to something like the Big Bang, while it is the predominant theory in cosmology today, it is not an established fact. If half the public doubts that the Big Bang as it is currently understood, was the causal factor in the creation of the universe, they shouldn't be that much different than cosmologists who are constantly searching for better ways to understand how our universe came to be. Doubt is not evil. For that matter, neither is believing that every single scientific conclusion or currently popular scientific theory must be treated as fact. However, sometimes I think the news media and their surveys overstate their point and expect all currently held scientific positions to be treated by the general population as immutable fact that should never be questioned. It's as if the news media wants its audience to accept the statement: "Trust me, I'm a scientist." Science is all about questioning and never about blindly accepting someone else's conclusions.
Improved sanitation. When there is no fecal matter in your drinking water it really helps to not spread disease of all kinds.
Nope, just Polio. All the other diseases are doing quite well.
>The Current Science that we have, with the technology and Anthropology we have, rules out the possibility of the Christian religion having any basis in reality.
>>Only someone with no understanding of either science methodology or history would make the claim that you did.
Rarp! Rarp! Straw man alert!
Seems to me that the first poster was right on the money. The second poster apparently has some ax to grind. Despite being raised Catholic, I'd be surprised if even the Pope would doubt the first poster's statement. I suspect that the Pop would respond that scientific knowledge is imply not relevant to Christianity's faith-based belief system. "Having no basis in reality" is kind of a major point of religion.
Need some examples? Try:
- the Immaculate Conception
- the Resurrection
- the multiplication of loaves and fishes
- the story of Lazarus
- the mystery of the Holy Trinity
- and don't start me on the Old Testament.
It's endless. Throw a dart at any page of the Bible.
Now, nit-pickers can argue specific points ("There actually is a recorded, historic basis for the Great Flood, for the parting of the Red Sea, etc.") but the issue is that Christianity, and nearly all god-based religions, are based largely in myth and, judged by the same standards by which we evaluate other postulates every day -- in areas that range from science to economics to political beliefs (well, maybe not political beliefs) -- such religions are dense with preposterous assertions. This is pretty obvious -- no one can contest that statement. And as for "Literalists" -- who claim to believe that every word of the Bible or Koran or Bhagavad Gita whatever is literally true -- such people are likely either mentally disturbed or are part of some bizarre insular culture; in either case, their weird beliefs have no role in discussions among rational, aware individuals. At the risk of being politically correct, I hope we can all agree that such belief systems are so nutty that we can simply dismiss them as background noise.
Look, people believe whatever they need to get them through the day. If the prospect of dying, for example, generates paralyzing fear, then belief in the afterlife can be a useful tool for helping a fearful person live his or her life. God bless ya. And moral codes, many of which derive from religious beliefs, are useful social controls. The problem arises when complex, fantastic, belief systems must be constructed to rationalize or justify such teachings, and when these belief systems are promoted as the "word of god," thus making it difficult for them to be adjusted to keep up with changing cultural mores and advances in scientific knowledge. When that happens, you wind up with these weird disconnects, with people clinging desperately to superstitious beliefs that were plausible in the Middle Ages, but which are incongruous and counter-productive today. And that result in excruciating and unnecessary discussions like these.
A lot of what has been stated from science in the past was wrong. Not all genetic characteristics are Mendelian, for example.
I read a story recently where the characters on cereal boxes were said to be looking down at the children in the grocery store aisle.
http://www.scientificamerican....
Try this yourself. Take a cereal box and hold it up high. The Trix rabbit will never be looking down at you, because it is a 2D picture. Science can be downright flawed and stupid.
I do agree with the practice of using dead material for vaccine. However I question the use of adjuvants. Many things have been introduced to us in the past which were said to be safe and later the scientists flip flop. Who else flip flops? Politicians! Maybe this is the issue: politics within science are causing science to promote one view and quash any dissenters. There is also the corporate line. Who makes and tests the vaccine? Do I trust corporations to look out for me? No. If you say yes to that question, you must be young and naive. I can tell you that within a corporation, there is no freedom to exercise one's opinion. So you a reliant on the opinion of whoever is boss. Are all of your bosses right all the time? What kinds of people tend to become bosses? Yes people, not critical thinkers. Therein lies the flaw.
As for the big bang... What difference does it make if I agree with that or believe in a steady state universe or whatever? Anything that insists on 100% conformity is a cult. So I question why is there a hunt down on those who disagree with the big bang? If big bang is truly science, has it been replicated in a study using the scientific method? No, it is just a conjecture. Like the way Nietzsche conjectured the reabsorption of semen into the blood with monks makes them strong.
I think this is great that people are not ready to accept everything that is supposed to be true to the mainstream view of science. Anyone who believes science is always right has just found a belief system to replace the religion they said they could do without.
The scientific process requires that alternative (or unpopular) theories that seem to be supported by experimental observation be tolerated and given due consideration.
Exactly!
That's why it's fine to call someone who talks about "Electric Universe" a FRUITCAKE! Because he is.
They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
I would guess that the source is an anti-vaccination site.
I found this dissection of his first quote, when I searched for "Dr. Bernard Greenberg". Basically, the good doctor appears to have been most concerned with how the media was overstating the effectiveness of the vaccine.
The other two quotes may be real as well, but both come from anti-vaccination campaigns, so while the quotes may be real, they are less likely to be truthful.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
You've completely missed my point. The correct response to something like this is to present evidence that contradicts the theory. Why you insist on calling him/her names is a mystery.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
We have one. It's called 'education.'
Gut bacteria and virus have both been implicated in "mental" illness. Look up "Toxoplasmosis".
There's a reductionist orthodoxy, which views man as a brain on a stick - or a monkey driving a robot. Transplant the monkey in a new robot, and you have the same being. Only it's just not true.
Your entire nervous system is an extended "brain", in some regards. The entire "Me" that we have is a hive, and a colony of interdependence. Without getting all speculative or "holistic" examine mitochondria, for Pete's sake!
For the geek set: Luke is as much a manifestation of his midichloreans as he is a history of brain impulses. Put his brain in C3PO and you don't get Luke+Life Extension. You get a limited Luke simulacrum, able to replay Luke memory without new Luke experience or interaction. Plop his brain into Han Solo's body, and he will not be Luke anymore - He may be surprisingly like Han, with amnesia.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It is quite surprising that those outside of the US are so gungho "believing" in hypothesis and theories before they have become proven laws.
Gravity:
Hypothesis, Theory, or proven Law? Law
It is proven. It has a test. Take any object. Raise it above the ground with nothing but grown underneath. Let it go. It falls to the ground. All objects, regardless of magnetism do this. It is a law. It has a proof.
Big Bang:
Hypothesis, Theory, or proven Law? Theory
Why is it just a theory? We have very little proof of this. Just a little mathematically calculations based on the expanding universe. I've never met a scientists who fully believes this.
Climate Change being causes by humans:
Hypothesis, Theory, or proven Law? Theory
It started as a hypothesis. Some evidence exists which allowed it to graduate from hypothesis to theory, but not enough evidences of the past exists to compare it to. Also evidence shows that one volcanoe can do more damage in one eruption that humans have done in hundreds of years, so this one is harder to prove than those scientists studying it admit. Not to mention all the controversial falsification of data that came to light a few years ago. Fudging the numbers to prove human caused global warming is going to increase disbelievers.
The earth being 4.7 billion years old:
Hypothesis, Theory, or proven Law? Hypothesis/Educated Guess
There is some evidence but it is based on controversial dating techniques that have been proven to be fallible. There is no proof that some of the earth doesn't appear this old because it was floating matter in space for billions of years. Scientists are doing their best trying to determine that though. Also, the rate of decay may have been far greater before the atmosphere or due to any of a million unforeseen reasons. Basically we do some carbon dating and a few other advanced dating techniques and then we've pulled a number out of are butt for this hypothesis.
So it isn't that in the US we don't believe in these scientific hypothesis. It is that we believe when it is a law. We are taught the scientific method year after year and we understand that a bunch of hypothesis make it to theory before finally being proven false.
This sounds like instructions given for a test, not a survey. With these instructions I'm not surprised that people lacked confidence over hyper specific questions such as "The Earth is 4.5 billion years old". Maybe they thought the earth was 5.5 billion years old.
We have sponsored cosmology now? What model does the NRA support?
The Big Bang, obviously. Especially the variation where multiple Big Bangs occur.
And that is just one of many! I sometime think the average person could not understand science were they given the tools. They do not have the mental make up to understand science. Even when you take them through step-by-step, they get lost. They don't have to do the math. They can accept you do, but given all the numbers, step-by-step they still don't understand. When it reaches that level, it's not only frustrating, but a lost cause.
It's really, really hard to measure intelligence in any meaningful way, partly because we really don't know what it is. We can look at intelligent people, and find they score higher on some tests, but since we can't rate it objectively we can't show how reliable our tests are. (We can determine that different tests are measuring the same thing, such as IQ, which is not proof that they measure what we want them to.)
Measuring traits like IQ across different populations runs into real problems. The ones I've seen have cultural biases, so you're likely to score higher if you're of the same culture as the test maker. Measuring the genetics runs into much greater problems. Say we determine that two populations have different IQs, and the population with the higher IQ is also wealthier. There's probably a relation there, and it likely runs two ways. Smart people are likely to make more money, and people raised in better conditions are likely to have higher IQs. Individual IQs are partly genetic, we know that, but that doesn't mean there's a statistically significant difference between racial groups. The fact that some are going to be generally taller doesn't mean that some are going to be genetically smarter, the brain being a much more delicate thing than the bone structure. In general, genetic diversity within racial groups is much greater than genetic diversity between racial groups, This doesn't mean there aren't racial traits (people who look like me digest milk a lot better than people who don't, for example), but there's no good reason to conclude that intelligence is affected.
In short, there is no "obvious truth" here. There are possibilities, but I haven't seen a good study that rejects the equality of genetic intelligence hypothesis.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Um, no, if you want to claim something positive (that racial groups differ significantly in intelligence due to genetic factors), you have the burden of proof. Human brains are known to be different, and are influenced by genetics, so that's a straw man. The population statistics are far more uncertain.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Are you sure that's what the original Hebrew words mean? I've read the Bible only in English translations, which means I'm depending on somebody else's interpretation of the Hebrew.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The non-retarded people those decisions will impact.
Actually, there IS quite a bit of entirely legitimate controversy about whether global warming is happening. It certainly has NOT happened in the past 14 years, which is quite contrary to all the warmist's climate models. And further, there's incontrovertible proof that far warmer periods happened naturally hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, and millions of years before the advent of fracking and SUVs. (Yay, internal combustion and *horsepower*!)
It is curious though, that the more evidence accumulates that the earth is NOT warming, the MORE CERTAIN the IPCC is that global warming must be happening. (see http://wattsupwiththat.files.w... to see how reality drifting from the model bizarrely leads to increased certainty...)
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
A product bearing the USDA Organic certification mark "has been produced through approved methods that integrate cultural, biological, and mechanical practices that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity. Synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, irradiation, and genetic engineering may not be used."
when science gives me antibiotics and cell phones, i believe in it totally. when it tells me i need to be careful about where I toss my waste products, it's a hoax. I've found this rule to be easy to follow.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
I dunno, seems like both sides of the argument are deliberately being dumb. No, you can't find logical explanations of what are put forward as miracles. if they had explanations, they wouldn't be miracles. And by the same token, you can't find scientific evidence of how your miracles happened. If you find scientific evidence, then God didn't reach down from the heavens and make it happen to show His power. Science is belief, but based on the preponderance of continuing evidence of an impersonal logical system of predictable repeatable operations. Religion is belief, based on at most sporadic evidence of individual occurrences which stand out from the daily routine operation of the universe, but doesn't require them.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
You might want to start with looking at who actually proposed the big bang theory in the first place, and until you do, shut the fuck up you ignorant twit.
Yes, a Catholic priest. As a general rule, Catholics seem to be significantly more sane than various American protestant sects on several issues.
Now, if the rightwingers would look up who actually proposed global warming and anthropogenic global warming in the first place; hint, not Al Gore.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Not implying. There are a lot of willfully ignorant people that prefer their religion's tale of a 10,000 year old universe to cosmology, geology, astrophysics, and biology. but they really should be a tiny minority on par with other mental illnesses. Sadly, this affliction is rampant in the USA. Happily, it is a dwindling number, and perhaps will soon be eradicated.
Everybody does it. Previously, however, I had assumed that the majority stop putting their fingers in their ears and yelling "No no no no!" when they hear something that might crimp their style, after they are two years old. Now, I see I had been optimistic.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Those who would advocate AGW need to provide a solid convincing answer to one thing: the temperature of every planet in the solar system has increased, not just Earth's..
Please let us know where you heard that., I really would like to know who's saying that. Even the biggest wingnut's haven't gone that far, I'd love to read it.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Those who would advocate AGW need to provide a solid convincing answer to one thing: the temperature of every planet in the solar system has increased, not just Earth's. I think we can agree there are no humans on Venus and Neptune cutting down trees and burning fossil fuels.
Bullshit; there is no evidence supporting the idea that all planets are warming uniformly and at the same relative rate (which would be necessary for this idea). Any climate variations on other planets is perfectly well explained by proximity to the sun and natural environmental fluctuations. The warming of the Earth, on the other hand, is not explained by these factors. Besides, there's no evidence that the current epoch of warming of the Earth has tracked solar output (in fact there's no evidence that the sun's output has varied significantly, on average, in the past few millenia).
But it's curious how people would cling to the data on the climate on other planets - which is tenuous and sparse at best - and ignore the massive amount of evidence we have for Earth's climate, CO2 concentration, and the interlinking of these two.
And yes, ocean acidity is a huge problem and it's caused by CO2. In fact it's one of the main problems that our carbon emissions have caused.
Indeed. in fact, shouldn't the moon be warming then? it's right next door. we can train IR thermometers on it and everything. It's getting much the same sun as we do. shouldn't it be warming? unless there's something in our atmosphere that's important for the warming? for that matter, we do measure and record solar output. it's not like we have to impute it by observing the temperature of Uranus. It's like actual primary sources, data, peer reviewed papers, etc. are Kryptonite to rightwingers.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
The energy captured in coal, gas, and oil is the result of many millions of years of sunshine. How, exactly, does one reasonably maintain an expectation that our releasing that in a matter of a couple decades should have no significant effects?
Except that the energy being released by burning all that fossil fuel is trivial.
Google gives me 144000TWh in 2008 world energy consumption. Call it 2x10^17Wh
Solar flux at Earths surface is around 2x10^17W. Geothermal is around 5x10^13W. Almost 10^5 hours in a year, so Geothermal heating is about 4x10^18Wh/year
The heating from burning all that fossil fuel is small in comparison to the heating due to natural radioactivity in the Earth's crust which, in turn, is negligible in comparison to the energy from the Sun.
It's the CO2 that is the problem. Even though it traps a tiny extra fraction of that incoming solar radiation, a tiny fraction adds up to a lot of energy and it's year in, year out.
Indeed. Denialists often calculate how little energy that is per cc, or per liter of atmosphere. They never continue the logic and figure out how much effect that little energy would have 24/7, given the little mass in that volume of air; or, total the energy over all the volume of the atmosphere and see what a titanic amount of energy we are putting into it.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I don't spend a lot of time debating the meaning of fiction in various languages. It's literary esoterica.
This is not what he claimed, however.
He said that science, quote, "Rules out" the possibility of the Christian religion being true, which is utter and complete bullshit.
It does not.
You are shifting the goalposts and you are not unique. When pressed, you fall back to a reasonable argument (the risks of vaccination are less than the risks of non-vaccination) but *only after* the initial blanket assertion of 'safety' was challenged.
This pattern will lead to people instinctively questioning your credibility, and frankly it should. Too many people think it's ok to lie as long as it's for a good reason - like convincing your stupid neighbor to do the smart thing when it could affect you both, am I right? No, it's really not ok. Convince her in the short term with a lie - in the long term she is less likely to listen to what you have to say at all.
TFA in the broader sense is fatally flawed as well. It purports to measure acceptance of science, but it measures instead acceptance of scientism, and the two are very different things despite the surface similarities. Scientific thinkers will 'fail' this test on several points, as they habitually doubt everything to begin with, and most especially e.g. cosmological theories developed on the basis of incredibly limited data which can be expected to be revised significantly many times over the next few millenia (if someone survives to do the revisions at least.)
What it's really measuring is whether or not people obediently recite the catechism of the state church, nothing more.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Never trust a poll until you can see how the questions are worded.
Also: Many people, when asked a question they have not thought of recently, will not want to admit ignorance and will make something up for an answer. That applies to everyone, including the scientists !
There's nothing wrong without being a biblical expert, but please don't claim to be one. I don't know if the original said "created in seven days"
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It matters in the sense that the "young-earth creationists" are easily ridiculed and the mountain of evidence against them is strong.
It matters because it's easy, in the soft minds of so many, to represent all creationists as young-earth creationists who believe things that are easily and trivially falsified by geological, astronomical, and nuclear-physics data. So precious few people are willing to do a little reading and learn that in the hundred years prior to the 1960s almost all creationists were ancient-earth creationists, that a handful of charismatic, vocal, wrong religious people are the only reason we even know of such a thing as a young-earth creationist (oh and the idea of a pre-flood canopy of water vapor is frickin impossible as well, and not even Biblical).
If you have ever actually met and talked to a number of atheists, they tend to have a lot of anger and resentment towards established religion and the more nutty followers of it. Some of them even have victim/persecution complexes. They tend to paint with a very broad brush and deny entirely that reasonable spiritual people exist. That would, after all, get in the way of their resentment. I don't believe I have ever met a pro-atheism atheist, but I have met a lot of anti-fundamentalist atheists. The common trait most of them have is that they cannot disagree with something without also trying to destroy it, which could be a lot more effective if they made any attempt to understand why those beliefs arose in the first place.
All of this is readily understood by those who simply want to objectively understand the beliefs in question, both scientific and religious. It tends to be lost upon those whose primary concern is winning converts.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
It's no wonder why science is failing. Students "in general" take the easy courses. They earn degrees the would have been better off financially had the went to work right out og high school. I taught while working as a GA on my quest for a masters. This was intro to CS. The lack of knowledge was ...difficult to describe. That these people were going to vote4 with equal weight to intelligent people is scary. The came out of college or a university with an education, but in many cases no more intelligent than when they went in. The old saying about sending a Jackass to college and you get an educated Jackass. Gone are the days when a degree helped. No t5he degree needs to be in a specific field and specifically a science field. They need to make passing a tough money management course a prerequisite for entering college to prevent these huge tuition loans. Can't get a job with a degree so borrow another 50 - 75 thousand for an advanced degree in the same field?. It's hard to imagine people like that ever getting out of high school. Sure college is expensive. I quit a well above average job to earn a degree and earned a full ride GA for a masters. I figured $60,000 a year was probably on the low side, but I paid for it (up front). If you can't afford it, wait till you can and make certain you are cut out for college! This approach would have kept tuition at an affordable level and a lot of people out of debt!
The proof is copious and easily verified. We have well over a century of intelligence tests, thousands of them. Hundreds of twin studies. Lives tracked from birth until death.
There is virtually nothing that has been studied as intensely as intelligence. The fact that you don't know this, is proof alone of the level of propaganda that exists in the West.
There is none of this elsewhere in the world. The Beijing Genomics Institute has 15,000 scientists working around the clock to identify the genetic signatures of intelligence such that the data can aid in their very mature state eugenics program.
While dumb Americans keep hunting down the evil white racists that are the cause of Detroit being a hellhole, China is busy creating a super race of men.
I have hope that Nicholas Wade's new book will finally put a stop to this nonsense. But I'm not going to hold my breath.
I don't read or respond to AC posts