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Bill Nye Disses "Regular" Software Writers' Science Knowledge
conoviator writes Bill Nye, one of the foremost science educators in the United States states that only the upper crust members of American science and technology (with degrees from top tier schools) understand science, particularly climate change. He opines that "regular software writers" dwell in the realm of the semi-science-literate. Nye rates science education in the U.S. an F. ("But if it makes you feel any better, you can say a B-minus.")
Bill Nye, one of the foremost science educators in the United States...
I think that's overstating it a bit. I don't know what Nye's bona fides are (some: bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering in 1977), certainly he's a knowledgeable science guy who has done much to interest kids and young adults in science, and of course there is his Great Debate with the "Intelligent Design" idiots. But "one of the foremost science educators"? Hmmm.
states that only the upper crust members of American science and technology (with degrees from top tier schools) understand science, particularly climate change....
Well SNOOT SNOOT, my good mad! Not an MIT grad? Did'nt go to Stanford? Hit the bricks! You opinions, masters, PhD, or whatever? Not worth the paper your diploma was printed on.
Good grief.
Of course Nye is a Cornell University guy, so, you know, everyone not of the Ivy League is suspect. I wonder which secret society he is a member of...
Science in the US get's low grades? University in general in the US gets low grades. Why? It's not about education, it's all about money. And football, don't forget the football.
So let's just solve this by insulting everyone. Washington State University knows nothing about medical science. Oregon State University knows zilch about forestry (or is that not science?). There are many well known public and private universities that while not up to Bill Nye's Ivy Standard, do good and great science.
Nye is off the beam.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Go read any slashdot article on climate change and Bill Nye's claims become self-evident.
In the original comment, Bill Nye was clearly stereotyping and generalizing. In the statment "software writers" and "farmers" and "people" are all generalized into this large pool of scientifically illiterate people that Bill presumes are a part of the large group of deniers. Offensive, sure. But let's see this in the context it was spoken in.
He wasn't singling-out software writers (ie, programmers) in the interview. To summarize what he actually said:
"Scientists in America are really good, but average people need to understand science, too. Average people, including programmers."
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Nye did not talk about the specific shortcomings of software writers, but of society in general.
[WP:] What grade does America deserve in science?
[BN:] Well, this is the world’s most technically advanced society, and we have people denying climate change. These guys are still in deep denial, and future generations, what few of them will be alive, are just going to go, “What were you freaking people doing? What was wrong with you?” So, in a sense, an F. But if it makes you feel any better, you can say a B-minus. We have this top tier [of scientists] in the U.S., the people who graduated from Stanford, from Berkeley, from MIT, Cornell. Those people are still exceptional and really good. But we have this enormous gap between that and just regular software writers and farmers and people that need to be scientifically literate.
He mentions "software writers and farmers and people" to mean "members of society". A regular garbage man is also one of the said "software writers and farmers and people".
Every time I see this guy he is insulting people who don't have all the facts rather than trying to answer questions and help EDUCATE...I am pretty sure man made global warming is totally real but I have a couple questions that I can not seem to get answered because when I reach out and try to ask someone I am called a denialist or some such and demeaned. so i am left to assume that they are trying to deflect.
Isn't it very strange that Bill Nye is supposed to be such a science educator yet he makes vast generalized statements that violate the spirit and substance of the scientific method with his almost every appearance on the news or in print.
To claim as Bill Nye does that "skeptics of a science claim" are not scientists is absurd as the very heart of science is skepticism of all claims made by anyone including and specifically those claims of other scientists.
Science literacy isn't believing the claims of science.
Science literacy is being able to do science according to the scientific method, something that Bill Nye evidently has forgotten.
Says the guy who doesn't even have a science degree. Just a masters in Engineering.
Hey "SCience GUy" I'll see your crappy Masters in Engineer and raise you a PhD in Mathematical Physics.
I would opine that anyone who refers to the field of software development as "software writing" hasn't had much to do with the development industry at any point in their life and wouldn't really know how science literate most developers are.
Wow, holy crap is this article being intentionally bad at characterizing what Nye said in the article. The "F" rating was for overall population in the USA (based on the high level of climate denial).
His comment about him writing that you need to be from a top-tier school is wrong, as well - he was taking about how we have top-tier scientists in the US (and gave a few schools as examples) and compared them not to non-ivy schools, but to farmers and CS majors who talk about climate change as if they're experts.
Read the linked article - Nye intimated nothing that the summary does.
Lots of climate change deniers, cornucopians and similar delusional folks in software development.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Michael Faraday, was from a top notch university . The climate has certainly changed these days !
Does this guy read Slashdot? How does he know that people who are good with software could have such poorly informed and ridiculous opinions on matters of scientific interest? Makes me want to give the guy a high five!
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Summary is misleading. Nye basically says US as a whole is failing when it comes to educating average people about science. He admits that, sure, we have top top-tier institutions and scientists, but we need to do a better job educating the average person.
Hardly the swipe aimed specifically at Slashdotters that TFS makes it out to be. Furthermore, if we use /. as a case study, given some of the gems I've seen here recently, I think "semi-science-literate" isn't a bad estimate of the average.
He was stating that we still have the best minds in the world, the graduates from those top tier institutions. He doesn't say that no one else besides them understands science; he was merely making the point that despite feeling the nation as a whole rates poorly in science, we still have brilliant minds.
He does indeed suggest that the average software writer is science illiterate. I can't say one way or the other whether I agree with him.
Knowing how to write code doesn't make you scientifically literate. Scientific literacy only comes through rigorous study and training.
Not sure why anyone would think otherwise.
Is it just me or is he just trolling now?
What he actually said was: "Those people are still exceptional and really good. But we have this enormous gap between that and just regular software writers and farmers and people that need to be scientifically literate."
He didn't say that only the top tier folks are scientifically literate. What he said is that there's an army of folks who aren't.
actually, it's the people with catchy, rhymey names that are in the upper crust of science and technology.
I resent that, I'm a "Application Stabilization Specialist", and d___ proud of it.
To be fair, L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Dianetics and Scientology was American so that makes us #1 in that field. Gold Base, FLAG, AOLA, and Celebrity Center International are all in the United States.
oh come on, this is clearly troll bait, and bait it did.
Look at how many people think they're scientifically literate because they think --
... and that's just the tip of the iceberg. You don't have to talk to flat earthers and antivaxxers to see profound science illiteracy; usually, the people condemning the science illiteracy are just as wrong, but about different things.
I accept that I'm not as well versed in formal science as I'd like to be. I care about it a lot and think i's deeply interesting and I've read about it a lot but that's still no a formal education in science.
I think a lot of us are the same way if we just have CS degrees and I don't see what's so hard to admit about that.
Fact.
Well, this is the world’s most technically advanced society, and we have people denying climate change. These guys are still in deep denial, and future generations, what few of them will be alive, are just going to go, “What were you freaking people doing? What was wrong with you?”
No. This is why Nye, and people like him, are not "the foremost science educators" anywhere. This is not science. Science is not about being correct, science is not about deferring to authorities; science is a process for understanding our world, for explaining and predicting. It's a philosophy, not a set of facts. People in the future will be saying “What were you freaking people doing? What was wrong with you?”, but they won't be saying it to climate change "deniers" or "sceptics" - they will be saying it to the "science educators" who thought levelling charges of heresy was a better course than providing a reasoned, evidence based argument.
You see if you truly believe in the scientific method, and the wider philosophy of rationality, you provide a reasoned, evidence based defence of your position and attack on your opponents position. You don't tell them that they're not qualified to speak because they don't have a PhD from Harvard, or because they disagree with the "consensus". Science does not rely on qualification or authority or consensus and the myth that it does is the biggest threat to scientific literacy today.
And show some f***ing consistency, please. If you're going to shout down "conservatives" for being unqualified to talk about climate change please shout down "liberals" and "greens" that talk about, and accept, climate change as being unqualified to talk about it too.
I don't think so. He's just a man who liked to draw attention to himself. Who makes this stuff up?
Not just cheese makers and the sellers of cheese
At this point, anyone who disagrees with him on pretty much anything is much more likely to be right, by Occam's Razor.
Ok "regular software programmers." Go actually read the article, and then come back and read the summary again.
Now, Nye was trying to say that our technical work force is not trained in enough science. Maybe that's right, and maybe it's wrong, that would be a better discussion for Slashdot. Nye (or the reporter) obviously did a bad job here. At the same getting offended at being called less scientifically literate than the top tier of scientists doesn't help either.
Bill Nye is an arrogant ass and comments like this prove it.
It must be great to be THE self-proclaimed expert on EVERYTHING.
He and Stephen Hawking must hang out and laugh about how stupid everyone else on the planet are.
Why are left-wing blowhards always so utterly convinced of their own moral and intellectual superiority?
Hey Bill. Kindly go fuck yourself. Seriously. If you believe (and apparently you do), that only Ivy League universities can provide any education of merit, then you really are more of a mindless tool than I suspected. Oh and Software writers don't have a science education? Fuck you again Fucking Bill Nye! I took "environmental geography" in University. I took the exam paper to the Prof. to get marks because I didn't "memorize" the formula for footprint, I just derived it on the fucking spot, and my numbers were more accurate than the cooked solution, and so I got an X on the paper, and it quickly got changed to a check. I've seen how "Bright" some of them can be. I put you in that camp too Bill. Blanket, far reaching statements about entire groups of people will get your sorry miserable hoi polloi (that's great unwashed to you Bill) ass kicked to the curb. You obtuse fucktard.
Bill Nye has sold out to the illuminati. He is promoting their global warming agenda.
In other news from entertainers vaccines cause autism and madonna is still trying to act young.
What a coincidence, I always thought Bill Nye's knowledge of science was rather shallow. Apparently he thinks the same of me.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
He plays a scientist on television. He is a leading science celebrity. His opinions are both interesting audience grabbers and substantively worthless. He might be right, but the fact that he was the one that said it doesn't make that any more likely.
I'm one of those regular software writers - Science (not even small-s science) isn't exactly my purview. I don't actually have the spare time to dig into the various sciences, of which there are many.
So, not particularly offended or even worried.
Except on people who are willing to listen to reason and accept evidence. Like for example, take the anti-vaccine crowd.
You show them studies that say that the risk of the vaccine is really tiny and there's no correlation of receiving vaccines with autism. They whip out Jenny McCarthy and other anecdotal evidence, and postulate vast conspiracies by Big Pharma to perpetuate the fantastically profitable vaccine industry even though vaccines are unbelievably dangerous. Fact is, Big Pharma makes its money on Viagra and pills for chronic diseases, not really on vaccines.
If someone wants to believe something, your reasoned arguments and evidence based defense of your facts will never persuade them otherwise. Instead, they just end up believing even harder in what you challenged them on.
--PeterM
As evidenced by Node.js and Scala.
Whoever wrote the lead-in either can't read, doesn't understand basic English, or is a semi-science-literate who's butthurt for being called out as one. Nye hit's it pretty much on the head in his assessment... we have some fantastic scientists in this country, but they are surrounded by a huge morass of people who are intentionally ignorant and outright hostile to anything remotely intellectual; we need more scientists in this country, and less stupid.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
That's how I always wanted to die!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
He argues about climate denial, and resorts to insults attempting to make the point. Antagonizing people is probably the worst method of teaching them. Sure, he was answering questions but they were _his_answers. I never thought of him as a smart guy, but a decent entertainer. Entertainers need to make noise every now and then to stay relevant in that business. I know this as Sophistry, not Science.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
"The simpleton's theory is usually correct."
With all the information that has come out about fraudulent studies on the so called global warming
I assume you're talking about this.
and the 1800 scientist who signed a partition saying that it was a fraud
That "petition" was a hoax.
Bill Nye is an entertainer. Just because he used to play a character called "The Science Guy", that doesn't give him credibility on all matters pertaining to science. (yes I know he has an engineering degree-but that's a long time ago. He hasn't been paid as an engineer in decades) His opinion carries the same weight I would give to any entertainer's
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
Honestly? I probably have a whole list of people who it would be interesting to introduce to your uncle, then.
I've almost lost count of the number of times I've watched someone with no real scientific background in the field make a blanket statement declaring anyone who doesn't believe in climate change/global warming is clearly an idiot.
The fact is, things are much different than that. Quite a few folks who are FAR from being idiots think it's fear-mongering, misplaced nonsense. (I'm certainly no climate expert myself, but I think I fall someplace on the spectrum far from "clueless idiot" -- and I've read enough compelling information from both sides of the argument to feel like the "best stance" to take is one of questioning everything. If we're talking about pretty painless changes we can do, such as substitution of one chemical for another in a product, to reduce the ozone layer depletion - great. Why not? But demanding people spend billions of dollars to try to "fix" the whole climate situation? That just seems like a REALLY tall order for something that reeks of special interest agendas, right now, especially when we don't even have a consensus on a solution that would definitely reverse the claimed problem and revert it to "normal" in a useful time-frame.
So the irony is a bit thick with Mr. Nye.
http://www.nature.com/nclimate...
But hey he wants to believe in the climate doomsday good for him, I'd like to see that kind of money spent on an asteroid watch/defense system. That's something we know actually happens and in a world armed to the teeth with nukes the effects can be really unpleasant.
What stands out to me about your post and the grandparent post is how both of you malign someone with no evidence. I'm certainly not taking you seriously about speaking for "many people [in Seattle]" either.
Digital Citizen
I hope he is freezing his global warming ass off right now
Whoever you are, you're a bunch of assholes.
AC is right.
I love being a moderator now and then and I know not everyone would agree with my assessments, and I'm certain they have good reason now and then, but this consistent down-voting of reasonable observation peculiar to this thread is alarming.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Arrogant west coast yuppie assumes that since farmers are from flyover states, they must be stupid. However, one makes a living talking about science, and the other by applying a dozen fields of science. Seriously, let's list them: agronomy, biology, botany, climatology, meteorology, chemistry, economics, physical chemistry, medicine, and a bit of psychology. Sure, agronomy, the study of crop production and soil management is a large part chemistry, but they're also studying the biology of the small creatures and fungus in the soil. They understand, intimately, the difference between climatology and meteorology; one is a problem over several years, but a hail storm can destroy a year's work. Chemistry, well, in a dozen different ways. Economics is still the driving force in the commodities market, but zoology and veterinary medicine are important to all but the largest of farms. Physical chemistry? Well, yes, they're very concerned with some interesting properties like mass flow and drying grains, drying fields and the like. You can't let the silage get too dry before you bale it, not bale it wet. That, sounds to me like the product of a liberal education, not the bullshit pomposity that comes out of "liberal arts" colleges for the last 50 years.
This is what was actually said in the interview:
I read the article in the link in this post and it seems to be a complete disconnect from the post. Did he even read it? I don't disagree with Nye at all and everyone needs to have some basic understanding of science or else everything the least bit technical in this world is just magic.
A decade or more ago I had a temp working for me who was a CS student at a nearby university. He was good at the routine stuff, but one question and his reason for it blew my mind. It had to do with how a change in our DNS server got to all the other DNS servers on the Internet in just a few hours. After some discussion on how this worked I realized that his primary misunderstanding was that he did not realize that the speed of light was a wee bit faster than the speed of sound.
if ( $var === TRUE )
{
; do something
}
elseif ( $var === FALSE )
{
; do something else
}
else
{
; this will never happen but let's code it anyway in case it does happen
}
You must not have been following the debate in the 80's when the evidence that was coming in that the ozone layer was in trouble and some scientists were saying we needed to phase out chlorofluorocarbons -- there was a great cry that the civilized world was going to end without air conditioning and we would all die sweaty and uncomfortable. Same thing happened in the early 70's when leaded gasoline was phased out -- we were going to have to abandon gasoline powered cars, it would be impossible to design a usable engine to run on low octane unleaded. Those examples are why I am skeptical when told how expensive it will be and that it will practically destroy civilization to phase into non-fossil energy.
... Science as pop stars do about geopolitics. It is always painful to listen to some pop star lecture people about the middle east or the economic policy of the Fed. It is no less annoying when a television entertainer tries to browbeat basically everyone by suggesting that he's in some elite cliche of thinkers... when really he was paid to put on funny outfits and act WAY too excited about pouring baking soda into vinegar.
Bill Nye is a poor man's Mr Wizard. Anyone remember Mr Wizard? Way better. And everyone notice how Mr Wizard has spent years acting like the smartest man in the universe long after he stopped even doing his show? Me neither. Get over yourself, Bill. You're not half as smart as you think you are and if the software engineers don't get it then you don't either.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
But demanding people spend billions of dollars to try to "fix" the whole climate situation?
That's one really unscientific part about how many people view Global Warming. It could very well be a true phenomenon. That doesn't mean we understand it well enough for a large central organization to command that we spend billions of dollars to 'fix' it. It very well could be that we should be scrambling to keep our tech base up to the task of dealing with consequences we can't prevent at this point. It could be that the 'fix' hasn't been discovered yet, and that hamstringing our economy will prevent us from ever figuring out what to do.
If a programmer understands recursive functions and graphs like most should, the programmer is perfectly capable of understanding issue such as climate change. The problem is that the public and the politicians receive only a simplified, compressed version of the effects and end results, not the understanding itself. A dynamic phenomena is presented with static representations.
You must not have been following the debate in the 80's when the evidence that was coming in that the ozone layer was in trouble and some scientists were saying we needed to phase out chlorofluorocarbons
And we did, and there's actually been improvement. Of course, more of the world has to phase out CFCs, the whole world isn't on board yet. A notoriously difficult state to achieve.
here was a great cry that the civilized world was going to end without air conditioning and we would all die sweaty and uncomfortable.
What? No. No there wasn't. There was a great cry that if we didn't keep our ozone layer, we would be sorry. Then we phased out CFCs. Now only TX and AK (out of the USA, that is) are ozoneless.
Same thing happened in the early 70's when leaded gasoline was phased out -- we were going to have to abandon gasoline powered cars, it would be impossible to design a usable engine to run on low octane unleaded.
Well, they had a point in a way; modern small engines which are actually efficient and clean generally depend on premium fuel, since they are TGDIs.
Those examples are why I am skeptical when told how expensive it will be and that it will practically destroy civilization to phase into non-fossil energy.
Of course it will be horrendously expensive! A bunch of rich assholes will find a way to get richer in the process, at everyone else's expense.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I agree will Bill. I am sometimes amazed by how man smart people I run into that don't know anything about climate change and other issues of science.
âoeThere are myths and pseudo-science all over the place. I might be quite wrong, maybe they do know all this ⦠but I donâ(TM)t think Iâ(TM)m wrong, you see I have the advantage of having found out how difficult it is to really know something. How careful you have to be about checking the experiments, how easy it is to make mistakes and fool yourself. I know what it means to know something. And therefore, I see how they get their information and I canâ(TM)t believe that they know it. They havenâ(TM)t done the work necessary, they havenâ(TM)t done the checks necessary, they havenâ(TM)t taken the care necessary. I have a great suspicion that they donâ(TM)t know and that theyâ(TM)re intimidating people.â
â" Richard Feynman on âexperts
Shame on you poster for twisting Nye's words. He is hardly being elitist. Cherry picking his remarks. He's just saying you need a degree in the field to know what's going on. That been truly in almost every field for the last few decades. Lay people, software writers included making there beliefs on the basis of the hard data are practicing woo woo of a sense regardless of which side of the climate change debate you are on. At the end of the day his argument could be distiller down to the idea that leaders should rely on there experts not find experts that support their regulatory capture requirements. That's just good reasoning and something to be concerned about
Computer "Science" is not even science. I believe this guy is basically right: most CS people are a mix between programmers and engineers, but know very little about science, and the methods of science.
Richard P. Feynman said it like this: "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts."
There are MIT professors who don't agree with Nye on Climate Change. I don't get the top tier nonsense. It's like he thinks there is a vote or something. Now who needs a science lesson?
I know, maybe the submitter should become plain old literate, before worrying about scientific literacy.
Nye said it's the top tier that earns the US a "B-minus" grade, counterbalancing the "F" for poor scientific education in lay society.
Saying "regular software writers need to be scientifically literate" is not dissing them. It's saying they've been poorly served by science education until now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d5nrRvsuCk
...coming from a guy who was worse in every way at science education than a guy with big hair and a partner in a rat suit.
Anyone who says you couldn't possibly understand is either selling something or trying to direct your attention away from something they don't want you to see, because you would understand quite well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
relies almost entirely on emotional response and belief
Funny you mention that, because it sounds a LOT like the reaction you get from the Warming Alarmists when you point out that the rates of warming are not nearly as high as they thought (and are not going anywhere at the moment) and that simply by observing what has happened when know the models of runaway warming are very wrong. That's not emotion, that is observation based on fact, but you point that out wand what you get back generally "relies almost entirely on emotional response and belief". Usually they will bring up "what about the future generations", etc. etc.
Global Warming Alarmism long ago passed into cult status based wholly on keeping people in line through fear. Or at least that's the attempt anyway, they tighter they squeeze the more free thinkers and rational scientists slip through their grasp...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Who is this "Bill New Years Eve" of whom we speak?
Seriously, somebody called "Frosty Piss" has top comment? This is why slashdot sucks.
An astronomer might know a little about the optics inside his/her telescope, but the level of understanding that a physicist would have is simply not in scope.
Actually I would expect an astronomer to have a level of understanding of the optics in their telescope comparable to that of a physicist's understanding of their own experimental apparatus. If you don't understand the apparatus you use to collect the data then that data is useless because you won't know whether some interesting feature of the data is due to some new phenomena never before observed or because you forgot to plug in your GPS cable properly.
According to you, Einstein was all washed-up before his hair went wild, Gallileo whould have been put out to pasture before he did his best work, etc.
Why do I suspect you are a young idiot in mommy's basement who, armed with a K-12 education and possibly a year or two of junior college poly-sci, has decided that anybody who disagrees with you is a fool - and you've noticed that most of the people who openly disagree with you are your wiser elders? High school and college instructors love to tell their captive audiences/students that they are much smarter and more mentally-nimble than their parents.... but the truth is actually that the young have generally not been around long enough to see first-hand all the forms of deceit practiced other people, and are therefore simply more ignorant and gullible. Their instructors prefer them over the old precisely because the young are not yet equipped with fully-functional bulls**t detectors and are therefore more-easily propagandized.
He argues about climate denial, and resorts to insults attempting to make the point. Antagonizing people is probably the worst method of teaching them.
Yes but he is at least honest about that: he is one of America's foremost science educators and he grades America's science education as an 'F' so exactly how good a teacher did you think he was going to be?
" But "one of the foremost science educators"? "
Hence the "F".
That was elitist. That really took my opinion of the guy down a notch.
-A guy with degrees from Cornell and Yale
I'm sorry, my brain suddenly switched to korean before realizing what happened and I lost track of what you were saying. If Slashdot allows it one day, you should just draw pictures.
Bill wears a bowtie. You don't have to listen to him.
You're skipping steps. Once you can get everyone to agree its happening, then you can start arguing about what to do about it. We should have progressed to this step years ago, 30 years of scientific consensus on this topic and we're still trying and failing to convince people its actually happening. Not only are we failing to convince people but more of the population is being convinced of the opposite! It's quite amazing really, there is money and politics on both sides and few people willing to meet in the middle. It was easy when the EPA was new, you look at that river that caught fire and you ask yourself, how do we fix that? Easy problem, extremely local.
As soon as other parties have to get involved it all goes to hell. Look at acid rain from the Ohio Valley killing forests in the Green Mountains. Very little being done there because the victims of the pollution are somewhere else so it's not your problem. I'm a little jaded of course growing up in Vermont with family in upstate New York.
Problem gets even worse when you talk about one country consuming as much as the U.S. does while the entire rest of the world consumes much less. Of course we're seeing China consume quite a bit now and India's consumption is on the rise. They will dwarf consumption of the U.S. as we continue to wholesale our resources to the cheapest bidder. The U.S. technological dominance is on its way out because we can't all seem to work together anymore to solve any problem. We would still rather see thousands of people go bankrupt rather than make sure they have healthcare access. Meanwhile in poor arsed Spain you get stabbed and you go to the hospital and there's no bill after. I cut my hand bad and that's a $2000 bill after insurance!
Back to the issue at hand, people want to view climate change as a problem that can be solved. The reality is that the Earth warms and cools in cycles, we're adding NOS to the fuel lines to use a car analogy. Since we're not in agreement on whether we're doing anything to contribute to climate change we can't do anything to prepare for it either. So we have a hurricane coming and we're choosing not to board up any windows.
Mr. Wizard was infinitely better. The guy would propose and develop experiments and then demonstrate them on television, complete with explanations of hypotheses and such. He also, as you mention, was very good at scoping in where he sat in the science world, teaching kids basic science.
"E=mc**2. Only true for objects at rest, and pretty much nothing in the universe is at rest. The real equation is E**2=m**2c**4 + p**2c**2. This is why light can have energy without mass: a photon's energy is carried entirely in its momentum."
Damnit, and I thought Newtons equations were wrong! How illiterati is it to simply dismiss a working abstraction because another equation takes into considerstion more variables? E**2=m**2c**4 + p**2c**2 might be horribly wrong also. If someone doesn't know E=mc**2 is just a good guess then yes, they are scientifically not fluent. Illiterate, wouldn't use that term. For literacy it would be enough to realize science can predict things, and calculate how things will happen in advance, And sometimes fail horribly at that. Because it's not the ultimate truth. And never will be.
Didn't he mean "Science Writers?" He was probably miss quoted.
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition. - Adam Smith (1723-90)
News at 11.
He's not an authority. This article reads like BS.
The problem is:
a) there is no argument
b) there are therefor not two/both sides
Next thing you tell me that going faster than light is easy, and that there are two sides of the argument about it. ...
Or you tell me there is no absolute zero temperature
Or you tell me water is not H2O, there might be another 'thing'.
Sorry, if someone claims that AGW is not real, then he has no clue about science, end of story. And I don't care if he has a doctorate in Chemistry.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
... Computer nerds know nothing about REAL science. They just pretend to. News at 11.
Well, it looks like the writing's on the wall...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Slashdot is becoming more of a joke every day. "Climate change". Do you get paid for this crap?
www.climatedepot.com
There is no such thing as 'catastrophic man-made global warming', which is why these scammers renamed it 'climate change', which we're supposed to believe means the same thing, when quite obviously it doesn't.
When people look toward him, it is about his assessment on science in the US, not about proper manner or how to handle day to day relationship. Anything beyond checking what he said is an ad hominem. He could be the greatest asshole of the world, but what we should judge is his claim and the merit thereof. Far too many people look at personality or behavior where it is not proper.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
This has to be one of the worst summaries ever. I can't tell if it was deliberately written to misrepresent what Nye said, or if the submitter really didn't understand the article he was trying to sum up.
Or maybe it was a social experiment to show how 90% of slashdotters can't RTFA, but are willing to spend half an hour writing furious rants about stuff that's not actually in it.
Didn't Feyman once say:
If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
they seem to have a common thing; illiterate on computing. Stephen Hawking saying AI is dangerous and now Bill Nye saying if common "regular" programmers are like farmers when it comes to "regular" science. Well...
Someone asked him his opinion, and he gave it.
A fairly accurate opinion, in my opinion. CS people are better educated than the average person, but many of them are still surprisingly ignorant about scientific topics.. Many of them don't even understand how computers actually work.
And most other engineers (even EEs who write software) don't know how software works (I had an EE old timer challenging me that he could write a compiler by just using look up tables to replace high level syntax artifacts into machine instructions.) Same with Physics majors writing code in, say, Python or Fortran.
See what I just did there? Every motherfucker out there is blatantly (and sometimes inexcusably) ignorant of some other thing.
And what do we mean by "understanding". Most CS grads (myself included) do not understand how computers works down to the nitty gritty levels, where copper meets the solder, where the laws of physics dictate how transistors and shit like that do their magic.
Nor should we need to. That's what EEs and CEs are for. But we do know, in general, the architecture of things, digital logic, the basic composition of computer architecture and so on and so on. That there are CSs out there who do not know that is not an indictment of the general population.
The same applies to, say EE majors that write software in C/C++/MatLab/HDLs more often than designing stuff at the physical level. Most have no clue how a compiler works, nor how a OS works. Seriously, most might now about hardware level protection, but not many can explain how the OS mediates a user-level process' request to a kernel-level call.
And that person shouldn't know. That's what CS grads are for.
That is what specialization means. To make blatant generalizations about who knows what is just an exercise seeing who has the largest wiener. That is all.
We DO know enough to spend billions.
Just because a few dollars will come from your pocket, you scream and shout and wail and kick up a fuss like a two year old giving a tantrum and refuse to look at the science, preferring to "read both sides" as if that somehow makes you "balanced".
Do you read "both sides" of a flat earth debate when deciding if you're going on holiday to Japan?
Your government spends trillions. You don't whine about that and insist that "All crime stats are made up so as to justify the spending!!!!".
This place has gone to the pooches.
"this is just as wrong as saying the sun goes round the Earth."
Nope. The Earth moves much more than the sun from the CoG path. Ergo, the sun is the centre. Dumbass.
"Both positions implicitly advocate there's some privileged and special frame of reference "
Yes, it's called "Centre of Gravity".
"Conservation of energy only happens in a static spacetime;"
Nope, it's conserved only in a closed system. Gravitational potential energy is negative, mass energy is positive. And zero point energy still conserves energy.
"E=mc**2. Only true for objects at rest"
Wrongo again. E=mc^2 is ALWAYS true, since you used m (no subscript) not m subscript 0, or rest mass. m, unlike m0, is the mass NOT AT REST, if the mass is not at rest.
"If you measure a particle's position, you'll necessarily tweak its velocity. That's the Uncertainty Principle. No, that's the Observer Effect. "
Nope, that's the uncertaintly principle, derivable from a QM wave equation of the particle and its interaction.
"... and that's just the tip of the iceberg." ... of your overwhelming ignorance and arrogance of self-aggrandizement.
You're paraphrasing Dijkstra, but missing his point. Astronomers, in general, know a heck of a lot about optics. His point wasn't to excuse ignorance of how computers work (he worked on the design of the STANTEC ZEBRA and wrote an incredibly scathing review of the IBM1620, for example, so clearly knew his way around the design process), it was to point out that this is a building block.
I'd consider any computer science curriculum that doesn't cover logic gates up to building adders, the basics of pipelining, the memory hierarchy and virtual memory translation at a minimum to have seriously skimped over computer architecture. The better ones will include design and simulation (on FPGA if budgets permit) of a simple pipelined processor.
I would challenge anyone to show me a CS degree that doesn't have any of what you mentioned. This meme/fad/bullshit has been running for a long time among hardware degrees, that we CS grads never see such things (and I love their faces when I show them otherwise.)
The thing is, and this is what I've personally observed, that CS detractors claim we do not know those things listed above because we do not know the basics of electrical engineering. For example, knowing the exact working of a capacitor by reciting the laws of physics (and interactions) that make its work possible. Or reciting what a Thevenin's equivalent is.
Of course we do not fucking know (nor should we need to). And then we spend most of our careers working at higher levels of abstractions, so we won't recite out of heads how to construct a digital adder with a carry bit, nor remember how we built a basic ALU in our undergrad studies 10, 15, 20+ years ago.
But that does not constitute any evidence that we never see anything regarding computer organization and architecture (a fundamental subject that all CS students must pass to graduate.) And making assumptions like that can only to "conclusions" that are not only stupid, but malevolent.
There is a degree of truth that many CS degrees have lowered the requirements and put too much emphasis on higher-level programming languages to the detriment of lower level ones. But that is not the state of the field in general, nor a characterization of all who work in the profession with that degree.
YMMV, but people who make that kind of ridiculous assumptions are just carrying a big chip on their shoulders and need to make shit out to feel good about their career choices. It is not just ignorance, but arrogance.
He opines that "regular software writers" dwell in the realm of the semi-science-literate.
Anyone who says 'regular software writers' doesn't know shit about the subject he/she opines about. Seriously, what is a 'software writer', and what does 'regular' mean in this context? Define 'regular'.
I've always liked the 'science guy', but seriously, his use of language to describe whatever the hell he tried to describe leaves a lot to be desired and betrays a certain level of ignorance on a science/educational topic. Considering that software development, engineering and IT are some of the most important fields in the modern industry, that is ignorance of science and knowledge applicable to the current times.
Not even Bill knows everything, and he, just like everyone else, should STFU every once in a while on subjects not too familiar with.
Physicists are sloppy coders :) (well this one anyway)
I rather see science as becoming politically motivative anymore. I don't see scientists coming out for or against global climate changes. But rather I see politics taking their findings and spinning them in a way that favors their ideology. Most science is factual, but some has to be based on drawing conclusions based on rather incomplete data or average out data to show a trend. This is what is why so many question climate change. Its because many of the theories and predictions of the past have not exactly happened has stated. Like your local weather forecast, sometimes things don't happen as predicted. Personally as a weather enthusiasts, I believe this whole global warming or climate change prediction is a hack for politicians and that what we should be doing is simply making World wide changes for the sake of better health for all of us including our World. But it seems people like Al Gore and Obama have found this Climate Change campaign to be either financially beneficial, politically beneficial or somehow benefits companies that support climate change products. For example, if you invented the automobile you would put out negative propaganda about horse and buggies right? If you want to sell alternative energies you would say they are better for the Earth then fossil fuels. I think we do have climate change, it has been happening ever since the Earth existed and will continue to happen. Human's may have a significant affect on that change and we may find that we can affect it negatively or positively. I think though, most scientists don't seem convinced as much as some that are politically motivated.
I'm just a lowly programmer, so I have no idea about science. Yes, I have read a lot about this subject, and I do have a sciency background, but I am not a climate scientist so my interpretations may well be faulty.
You say there's no consensus. Everybody I ever spoke to who has actual degrees in relevant fields says it is a thing, and a dangerous one. Everyone who doesn't have a relevant degree says it's nonsense. In this case, I choose to listen to the ones who officially know what they're talking about. However, of course everyone is free to have a different opinion.
How to solve the issue? I don't know. But the least we can do is try to not make the problem any worse. Yes, and spend billions of dollars on that. Billions of dollars are wasted annually on bloody stupid shit, so why not waste it on something that could potentially save our planet, and all of our lives?
What bothers me a lot about the let's-keep-stinking-up-the-world attitude is that you're not just doing it locally. Your chemicals, your pollution, they affects other countries as well. If you can limit it to yourself and your area, really nobody gives a crap if you poison yourself, your foods, your family, etc.
instead of commenting on the summary... You might be surprised...
Many software types are inflicted with the god complex. Numerous posts here substantiate that very fact.
I've never had much respect for Bill Nye. He has a 4 year Mechanical Engineering degree from a school that is not known for having a stellar engineering program. He did his "career" time as a cubicle slave at Boeing doing nothing particularly innovative or important. From there he "retired" into consulting where he began his career in entertainment.
There is nothing special about Bill Nye. Nobody should be going to him for advice.
The guy is an actor not a science. One of his paying jobs is to be the spokes hole for a climate NGO. He is not a climate scientist! He pushes his employers agenda.
and as always, please listen to the no Agenda Show. the best podcast in the universe.
Wait, did I say totally?
I meant all but the software developers part.
Not only do most developers not know science, most of them don't even know how to fucking program.
So many developers google stuff and copy-paste some stack overflow answer in to their document and that's their work done for the day, time to go browse Reddit or Facebook and be objectively worse than Hitler.
It is fine if you do that on the odd occasion, but most people do it consistently through their entire careers.
That bit is definitely right.
He has a BS in Mech Eng.
He is NOT a Phd in climate anything.
He also does not understand statistics
and how cherry picking stats changes the whole meaning of the experiment.
That is what is being done by some of the climate scientists.
If you want to help the environment, stop buying crap from China.
ABC - Anywhere But China
regular software writers" dwell in the realm of the semi-science-literate.
Judging by some I know to reach an average of "semi-science-literate" isn't bad going
My experience, interacting with with software developers for over twenty years now, is that pseudo-science and superstition run rampant in this collective, at least as much as in the general population.
I seem to remember in the past slashdot had more level-headed responses than knee-jerk "how dare you" responses. Or maybe I am remembering things wrong. Or maybe I am on tumblr by mistake?
For a smart guy he really should realize that the best way to get people to change their opinions is not to constantly insult them. Every time I see him he seems to take the approach that he is smarter than you and you are an idiot if you don't agree.
Now Dean Kaman is a much better example of an education advocate for the purpose of education, not political agenda. And he's actually a really good guy.
I agree with Nye. Software developers think they know everything. And as a software developer myself, you must agree with me because I am always right.
Fantastic job at getting young minds interested in science by convincing them they need a degree from only a top-tier university.
Bill Nye is the Al Sharpton of science.
Television entertainers know about as much about.. ...Science as pop stars do about geopolitics.
The exception that proves the rule?
Bill Nye is a leftist "science" activist. I used to have a lot of respect for him, but lately he's really become a conceited, hateful dick. Not sure what got into him lately but honestly I'm a little saddened by him.
I think a big part of this is the under emphasis of science in the traditional liberal arts education that forms the core education of many college students.
While you would be hard pressed to find a college curriculum that did not include some science requirement, those required credit hours can often be met by non-major or survey courses which lack the degree of rigor required to get students to actually think critically about science.
Those who did specialize in computer science early on, after high school let's say, tend to not understand physics / chemistry / biology / etc. as well, and it shows.
That doesn't mean they are anti-science / anti-global-warming or anything like that, just that the rest depends more on ambiant politic than critical use of scientific knowledge when shown scientific studies...
Since Nye is in effect saying we're mostly a bunch of barely-literate, benighted voodoo practitioners in terms of science, I wonder where he'd come down on having a poll test for scientific literacy? Or maybe just eliminate voting altogether and adopt rule by technocracy.
Well, you made a large jump: that it's not worth spending billions of dollars even if there is no problem. There are people who suggest just that as an economic stimulus. But heck, people certainly disagree about economics.
Which is kinda meaningless. You're trying to say you're a skeptic. But anyone can say "I need more info to make a decision" The question is, what decision do you make today.
If you really question everything, if you really are undecided, a few billion at the government level to prevent an ELE seems like a no brainer.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Our entertainment industry is insufficiently versed in the sciences. In order to be entertaining on a global scale we need to provide our entertainers with a good scientific foundation to base their career on. ...what do you mean this isn't relevant?
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
-- Isaac Asimov
I've seen some of his presentations. They're a bit more high brow then anything Bill Nye ever put together.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Bill Nye is a poor man's Mr Wizard.
No he's not! He's a poor man's Professor Proton!
Christ almighty! Get your facts straight, Karmashack!
That is all.
I understand that my profession isn't the pinnacle of human knowledge, and there is a world outside of my text editor. One can be very successful in this industry without having a scientific background or scientific understanding. But there are a few sectors of the industry where the scientific method is a fundamental part of the job. While he dismissed a large group of people in a single broad statement, he's still mostly right.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
to have been born into a family rich and/or connected enough to afford an Ivy League education when the few available spots for those who were not rich and/or connected enough were already taken. Oh, waitlisted, hooray. Always an elitist wanna-be, never an elitist. *snif* :(
After getting my BSEE I begain my career designing integrated circuits, I soon started writing software to aid me in design and then migrated into the in-house design automation software group, working on projects such as gate-level simulations and circuit synthesis. I tried to get into the computer science program for my masters in the BIG local university. I was told flat out to forget it as EEs didn't have the necessary background to get into the program. I then went to another school where I completed masters in Biomedical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Computer Science. It's let me work productively with Physicists, Mathemeticians, Engineers, and Computer Scientists. There is room for all to coexist and learn from each other, but experience has made me skeptical of pretty much anything my co-worker's say until I do the research myself. That skepticism has served me well throughout my career.
I think that Bill's generalization should be taken with a grain of salt until actual data supports his suppositions.
an engineering/science degree + computer science degree
Nye doesn't say that only people with degrees from top tier schools get science. He's saying that he gives overall science education in the US an F, but that there is wide variation between the people who do understand science well, **SUCH AS** people with science degrees from top tier schools, and a lot of other people who think they understand science better than they do **SUCH AS** your average code monkey.
I used to have a lot of respect for Bill, but the things I've been reading about him over the last few years make me thing that he might have onset something (Alzheimer?). How old is he? It feel like this is a kind of common thing. A person that I respected for many years gets older, starts saying crazy things, and loses all credibility. That unfortunately casts a shadow over all the good things they did before boarding the loony train.
That's what I call some Nye sass. I love me some Nye sass.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
"Well, this is the world's most technically advanced society, and we have people denying climate change. These guys are still in deep denial, and future generations, what few of them will be alive, are just going to go, 'What were you freaking people doing? What was wrong with you?' So, in a sense, an F. But if it makes you feel any better, you can say a B-minus. We have this top tier [of scientists] in the U.S., the people who graduated from Stanford, from Berkeley, from MIT, Cornell. Those people are still exceptional and really good. But we have this enormous gap between that and just regular software writers, farmers, and people that need to be scientifically literate like Freeman Dyson."
Bill Nye, the Science Authori-tye!
He needs to have his colon examined. I think they may find a large insect lodged in there.
Proverbs 21:19
Sun's energy physics show that humanity is still thousands of years from ability to do any impact on the Earth energy balance at all.
The Sun's energy vs human capabilities
Follow the money! The biggest hedge fund made 40 billions in 2013 from green tax money and carbon trading, fear-mongered out of naive US and European tax-payers. Guess who is sponsoring Greenpeace, IPC and other puppets of those few multi- billionaires?
... regardless of any background. A university degree, os MS, or PhD's just prove how much can you stand social norms and the infectious environment most schools provide. Theyre not about education.
Bill Nye and Rush Limbaugh both deserve the same amount of respect. None. They are both entertainers playing to an audience. Neither truly understand the subject matter because their narcissistic natures don't require it. However, the real fools are those who eat their every words.
Dear Mr. Bill Nye,
I will suspend my judgement of your statements until Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson can have his say on the subject.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Well since I'm too dumb to understand it, why don't you just tell me what to think? Thanks, Bill Nye the science guy!
"Bill Nye ... states that only the upper crust members of American science and technology (with degrees from top tier schools) understand science, particularly climate change."
Isn't that the plot to the Emperor's New Clothes?
After all, everyone knows the way to disprove a contrarian point of view is to call them ignorant fools.
I liken it to the Y2K issue. For years, experts were saying "hey, get ready, all our dates are going to be foobar". I remember seeing the warnings somewhere around '90-'92. And started coding for 4-digit years.
Anyways, it was all ignored or given lip-service.
Finally, in '98 people started taking real notice. In '99 we had a consultant & vendor free-for-all. Even applications that had nothing to do with the date had to be upgraded to "Y2K Compliant versions".
So, how is it similar to AGW? Well, the time scales are different: I started hearing interest in CO2 and warming sometime in the late 80's, right after we quit worrying about another Ice Age around the corner. But the pendulum swing was just as pronounced: comments and warnings for years, then all of a sudden, everybody (hey we can make money from this) jumps on the bandwagon and it's another free-for-all.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
He's an entertainer first and an "educator" (?) second. There is an old adage - "Them that can do... do. Them that can't... teach." Think back on your best experiences with an educator and I believe that the ones you recall were the ones who were passionate and told fascinating "war stories" which connected the theory they were teaching with the real world as they had experienced it. It has been said that the "school of hard knocks" is the toughest one you will ever attend - you get the final exam before you've ever had lesson 1. I wouldn't put too much faith in science in this modern era - check out http://retractionwatch.com/ where "scientific" papers both major and minor are routinely revisited and found to be "opinions" at best, dishonest routinely and outright fraud at worst. Do a search engine query regarding academic dishonesty and or fraud and you get a hint as to why the general populace and the "scientific establishment" don't see eye to eye. You can also throw in "ivy league" if you want to narrow the search to the "elite" schools that Mr. Nye is speaking about. If I had to put my money on what "may" save this country it would be on the bright young people who gather in hacker/maker spaces and work cooperatively to teach, learn, explore and share their curiosity, knowledge and experiences, triumphs and mistakes. By the way, my commentary is based on real world experience - I have seen this country go from urban schools in poor neighbors (I grew up in the South Bronx in the 50s) where children left the 8th grade reading at the level of a college junior through a series of social experiments that have left our average students graduating from high school with a 7th grade reading level - yes, you can search for that online as well: "high school graduates reading at 7th grade level" . Our youngsters haven't gotten dumber - it is the school administrators that have gone brain dead from lack of actual experience in their "chosen field." Recently, a 33 year old principle was arrested for dealing heroin. How the heck did someone who's been an extended adolescent since he turned 18, and has yet to grow up, get to be a school principle at that age? If I had my "druthers" I wish I had the financial wherewithal to set up well equipped combination hacker spaces/business incubators staffed by a mix of passionate teachers (see the movie "Stand and Deliver" for an example) and college graduates trying to pay off obscene student loans and open the doors to any one from ages 8 to 18, sliding scale fees and/or sweat equity for payment. Kickstarter anyone? Best wishes to all of you with children... I don't envy you trying to educate them.
If Bill Nye is one of the foremost Science Educators, does that make Dora is one of the foremost Spanish educators and Explorers of the United States?
Why, yes it is. Very few programmers were dual majors or come from explicitly scientific backgrounds, which is not to say there aren't lots of scientists that program
The fact is, if you're a scientist, you can teach yourself enough R, C and or PERL (I've seen AWK also) etc. to make yourself genuinely useful to your own research efforts. OTOH if you're a programmer, you have zero chance to find the time and energy to turn yourself into a fully qualified climate scientist because that requires decades of your exclusive attention- i.e. that's your career.
Excluding therefore the "programmers" who are actually scientists, the pool of programmers who have genuinely advanced scientific knowledge of a specific vertical such that they could publish say a few dozen papers in peer reviewed journals is nearly zero, myself included.
in a non ivy-league school... Yeah, that sounds about right. Not sure that ivy-league CS majors would do any better because CS isn't taught with since science but logic and algorithms. That's not to say my classmates are apt code writes (most of them are not), but we definitely are not taught physical, chemical or other what's traditionally known as sciences. Really though, if commenters really want to be pick apart statements like that, they'd ignore the speaker's background and see if the statement itself holds true based on facts alone.
please... let me sleep... a little more... yay, no longer annonmyous coward.
This article is a parody, correct?
This guy was anointed by the press. His pronouncements are as meaningful as Jenny McCarthy's are on immunization.
The subject of this comment sums it up. He's trying to tick people off so he can be left alone. Either that or he's secretly a major douche bag.
I do get sick and tired of the self proclaimed "smartest of the elite" titles people like to give themselves. Bill Nye included. This tired old narrative has an agenda. If you drink the Kool-Aid then you believe anybody who doesn't drink is lesser than you. Since it likes to carry the title of "settled science" which is not even close to being a true statement they are offended whenever anyone demands they explain with facts versus speculation.
It's all 1s and 0s to a CPU they don't give the proverbial about laminated pieces of paper.