As I pointed out in my previous post, IF you are generalizing then your generalizations are irrational. They are effectively circular logic. I pointed this out above.
That isn't how knowledge works. If I KNOW something then I have KNOWledge of it. I am therefore not ignorant of it.
As to whether one group understands what science is or not... ALL ideological factions will contradict ANYTHING if it damages or undermines their ideology.
If I showed you research that welfare hurt people would people that support welfare change their minds? No. So are they science deniers?
By your logic, EVERY political faction is a science denier.
So worst case an isolated wilderness in the middle of alaska will be contaminated. Unfortunate but no real impact on the lower 48 or anyone that lives in Alaska since you can find parts of the state that are totally depopulated.
Look, I am looking for a place to put it. And at some point, I'm just going to put it in someone's backyard and leave. There are a lot of reasonable places to put it. Accept one of them. Any one of them.
Accept none and I'm just putting it on the sidewalk.
That is pure supposition. You have no causal link anywhere in that. The mere presence of foreign species to the island could do all of that all on its own.
Nope. I was fine with Yucca. The stuffing is what people standing in the way of nuclear power should do. It is the best power source known to man and a bunch of fucktards let it get shut down by the coal and natural gas lobbies. That is who has been funding anti nuclear groups by the way. Not concerned environmentalists. The coal and gas lobby.
Because I value my own life and will do what I must to survive
As to the basis of your opinion... you've offered no reason for saying I should kill myself. It is logically impossible to argue against a position that is not defined appropriately.
Is that because you're too lazy to explain yourself or because you're an intellectual coward that is afraid that if he puts out reasons they'll be hammered flat with superior reasoning?
It is one of the two.
Until you define your position, it is of no value.
It is all relative. Over thousands of years it might be a concern but over decades or centuries I wouldn't worry about it too much.
The nuclear issue is not going to require storage for thousands of years unless our civilizations collapse. And if they do, a nuclear leak in those frozen islands is going to be the least of our problems.
But if that bothers you anyway... find any place where no one can possibly claim to be a neighbor and put the facility there. Storage shouldn't be a big problem for more then a generation or so. We should have fuel reprocessing facilities at some point which will reuse waste fuel until it is all but inert.
No you couldn't argue it is ignorance unless they literally don't know. If they know... then they have KNOWledge of the issue. And if they have knowledge of it then they're not ignorant of it.
Disagreeing with you doesn't make someone ignorant unless they are UNknowing of your position or the issue.
For example, lets say someone that gets a degree in geology and astronomy says that the world is 6000 years old.
Is that person ignorant of geology or astronomy? Nope. They passed their tests. They got a degree in the subjects. Which means they knew what answers those subjects said were correct and answered them correctly consistently enough to get a degree.
So what does it mean when that same person says the world is 6000 years old? Well, it means that is what they are saying for "some" reason. You don't know why. But ignorance isn't one of the reasons because they clearly know the answer in the text books.
They could be crazy... they could have gun against their head with a person that says that if they don't answer X or Y they'll kill him. You don't know WHY they're saying that. But if they know the science then they're not ignorant.
They don't have to agree with the science to know it. Do you get the distinction? If I know your name is John but I also refer to you as frank, then I am not ignorant of your name. I am CHOOSING to call you frank even though I know your name is john. Maybe I'm doing it to offend you? Maybe I'm doing it for some other inscrutable reason. It is hard to say. But you can't say I am doing it because I am ignorant of your name.
Get it?
Seriously, if you ACTUALLY care about finding out who is literate in science and who is not... do not ask politically charged questions.
Ask questions about physics, chemistry, and biology that don't really have any political weight. What you should find if you do that is that there isn't an ideological distinction between those that know and those that don't. There are a lot of people ignorant of science from all political camps. And there are plenty of scientific geniuses from all political camps.
If you ask a politically charged question then you're going to get a politically aligned response. That isn't surprising. If you want to ask about science - PERIOD... then ask about science - PERIOD.
Only parts of our country talk loud about free markets. The other parts frequently crypto communists. We do what we can to hold the line against the socialists and communists. But they're insidious, relentless, and come in huge numbers. Much like zombies really.
... What? This is perhaps the most idiotic thing I've seen today.
You're saying that people ONLY have political opinions? So if I like red cars that is a political opinion? Or when I say I like red cars, I must be lying because it isn't political?
I have lots of science opinions that aren't political.
Are you saying "people" are some non-person group that unlike you or me is incapable of having non-political opinions? Because they aren't non-persons. The reason "people" appear inhuman is because the concept of "people" is inherently dehumanizing. It typically involves generalizing large numbers of people and only looking at a few variables you're interested in which boils lots of people you know nothing about down to a few numbers. Which is of course inhuman but that is not because they are inhuman but because your analysis dehumanized them.
This is just so fundamentally fucked up I don't know where to start with it.
I think you confused yourself.
If you honestly don't have a single scientific opinion that isn't political then you don't give a shit about science in the first place and shouldn't even be having this conversation.
I don't have a problem with flu vaccines. They're great. You can take them six times a day from now until the sun burns out.
I wish you well with them. But I do not see why every person in society must take them when only a very small portion of the population is actually at risk from the flu.
If you are in that group, then take the vaccine. I am not.
Here you're going to get silly, so let me hammer home why what you're saying makes no sense.
The "flu" is not one disease. It is possibly hundreds of related diseases that rise and fall from one year to the next. You cannot vaccinate against them all. It isn't possible. It is like trying to get vaccinated for the cold. It doesn't work.
Now, you can get vaccinated for ONE year of the flu. And even that is a GUESS as to what will be going around this season.
Now, let us compare that to the measles or polio... I can get one vaccine with some boosters now and again and I'm good for life. Why? Because there aren't 10,000 fucking versions of those going around.
You get me one vaccine I can take that will last decades at a minimum against the flu and I'll consider it. Short of that, observe some basic fucking hygiene you filthy fucking animals. This issue is mostly an issue because people have bad hygiene. in the same way that washing your hands avoids a lot of medical problems... simply not touching things and then pushing your finger into your eye will also avoid most issues as well.
I don't do that. I don't touch public restroom doors then tough my eyes. Nearly all infections of the flu come in through the eye. Not the nose or the mouth. The eye. Tell people that. Tell them to avoid touching their eyes during flu season after touching public objects. Everything form money to door knobs. Just don't. Wipe your eye with your elbow or your wrist or anything but the finger that just touched whatever.
End of discussion. I'm sure you have a stupid rebuttal... I don't care. Stop wasting my time with this idiocy.
This thing has to be built. And there is a district somewhere that would have it. Put it in Alaska if you really want to put it out in the middle of no where. Possibly on the Aleutian islands if you really need to go nuts with it. There are islands out there that no one lives on. We have many places in the US where no one lives that could host a storage facility. We have nuclear weapons test sites for example that could be used. Might they be as ideal as the yucca mountain site? Possibly not but no one can claim they're going to make once pristine land a nuclear waste dump if the site was literally nuked... repeatedly.
First, if you are measuring knowledge, the question is whether people are AWARE of the subject and the relevant variables.
Second, ignoring what you know to and instead holding to ideological positions even though they are in opposition to what you know about science is not evidence of ignorance of science but rather evidence of a strong ideological association.
Third, as to your final statement that being invested in something fallacious doesn't make you more scientifically literate then a nutcase... this is irrelevant. The question is not whether they are nutcases or not but rather whether they are ignorant of the science. If I know everything you know about science but conclude instead that the world is 6000 years old then I might be a nutcase. However, I would not be ignorant of the science. I would quite clearly and by definition know everything you know. I simply would be choosing to believe something different DESPITE knowing the science.
The problem with the study is that it is looking politically charged science issues as being the most important questions about science that someone should know. That is clearly nonsense. Newton's laws of motion for example are a great deal more important for scientific literacy then whether or not you believe in global warming for example. The only entities that regard global warming as the most relevant are the political entities that are fighting political fights over those issues.
This study is survey of public opinion about politically charged science issues. It is NOT a science literacy survey. Remove the political issues and ask uncharged scientific questions. Ask physics questions. Ask chemistry questions. Ask biology questions. Ask mathematical questions.
THEN you'll be conducting a scientific survey. Just asking as bunch of questions about issues that are ideologically charged simply gives the false impression that people that believe in ideology X are smarter then people that believe in ideology Y. When in reality, the knowledge of both X and Y is probably about the same. The difference would be that X or Y has different conclusions or interests in the issues which leads to differing conclusions and arguments. However, that doesn't mean either X or Y has superior knowledge.
Then don't claim your study is measuring anything about science.
Admit it is a political survey. Then that is also fine. But issuing a political survey under the pretense of science demeans both the people issuing it and science itself by associating it with politics.
Science is inherently apolitical. Any political faction that presumes to claim to be the party of science is both wrong and effectively attacking science at the same time. Science does not ally with factions. Science is science.
Science is the autistic kid that is great at math. That kid doesn't take sides. That kid isn't even aware of the sides. Saying he is with you is like one kid or another grabbing the autistic kid and CLAIMING he is on their side.
Now can any given political faction probably cite one thing or another that science agrees with more then their rivals? Sure. But by the same token, the opposition probably has more then a few things going for them as well.
You can't claim science is on your side unless the opposing faction really is just anti science in general. And there is no major political faction in western civilization that is generally against science. You'll find factions that are against some concepts or theories or even just hypothesis in science but not an actual opposition to science itself.
The only issue there is that if pollen blows into my field, I don't think it is reasonable that I have to pay you a licensing fee.
Take for example a bull that breaks through a fence and breeds with some of my cattle. Do I have to pay a breeding fee for you bull's "service" to my herd? No.
And the thing is that Monsanto has done that in the past. What is more, they'll have funny genes that will not only not fertilize my crops but will literally make them sterile. There are terminator genes that won't breed true. And so that bull that hopped the fence not only bred with my cattle but effectively implanted defective genetic material that will miscarry.
In regards to corn specifically, the GMO corn should probably not produce pollen. Or if it does, that pollen has to not screw up non-GMO corn and has to not incur any fee to Monsanto etc.
If a farmer is just trying to grow his crops and wants nothing to do with the whole thing, these GMO crops often make that very difficult. If the GMO crops don't spread their DNA to non-GMO crops then they're fine. I really don't have a problem with GMO in theory. The issue is that in practice it tends to have a lot of problems that are not okay.
If all you're concerned with is not damaging the biosphere so that life can continue on earth... yep. We could kill all of them and the biosphere would survive.
Really, all it needs is bacteria, insects that are useful to plants, and plants.
Here you'll likely point out some unusual situation where mosquitos pollinate or something. That isn't vital. Worms serve a much larger role. Even bees could be done without if you had to... keep in mind that plants were sexually reproducing long before bees or similar insects.
That said, I'm not talking about killing everything that isn't vital. I am merely pointing out that we can kill them without damaging the food web significantly.
This notion that the balance of nature is precarious and unstable and always on the brink of collapse is ignorant. Nature is extremely stable. In fact, you'd have to work intentionally to destabilize it and even then it would find a new equilibrium very quickly.
Every mosquito on earth could die tomorrow... and life would go on with not a lot of disruption. There are some fish that eat a lot of mosquitoes but most of what feeds mosquitoes is not blood. Keep in mind that only the breeding female drinks blood. The larva, males, and females not about to breed do not drink blood. If mosquitoes did not exist then another insect likely already in those rivers, lakes, and marshes would fill the niche absent the blood sucking part. And those insects would feed the fish likely as they already are and have been for ages untold.
Mosquitoes are not a vital species. They're merely extremely annoying, a massive viral infection vector, and probably one of the largest killers of human beings in the history of ever. Fuck em'.
The survey is tainted by asking a lot of politically charged questions.
Yes, they're science questions as well but if you're looking for science literacy rather then political factionalism you'll ask questions that don't have political connotations.
The reality is that given poltical factions are going to have ideological positions on some of these things and people that ascribe to them are going to be inclined to say they believe or do not believe something on that basis. That does not mean for example that they are not aware of global warming theory or how it is supposed to work at least to the same level as people that say they do believe in it. The difference rather is that one faction is politically invested in one conclusion and the other is invested in the other.
If you are ACTUALLY interested in scientific literacy, then ask questions on which no major political faction has any stake.
For example, ask some physics questions. Ask some chemistry questions. Ask some biology questions. As them about mitochondria and the speed of light. THEN you'll be asking science questions.
Absent that, this survey reads more like a political ploy to embarrass a political faction that is at odds with their political rivals on a few issues. Which has basically nothing to do with science.
Here various political asshats will chime in with the comment that "but that political faction is full of dummies because they don't believe X or Y or Z"... Well, not believing something is not the same thing as not being aware of it. If you're testing for knowledge then simply knowing about it passes that standard. And if they're mostly disagreeing with the point not because of science but because of politics then their position is not one of scientific ignorance but rather a political disagreement. Which means your citation basically boils down to "ha ha they disagree with me about some political points, what a bunch of idiots"... which is actually a pretty stupid comment.
Look, if you care more about science then your petty political rivalries, then just talk about the scientific issues that are not political. If you can't find any interest in yourself for that sort of discussion... then have the honesty to admit that science doesn't actually interest you and your primary interest is using science as a pretext/weapon to piss all over you political enemies. Doubt that will happen... but the honesty would be refreshing.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't really care where they do it so long as they do it somewhere.
As I pointed out in my previous post, IF you are generalizing then your generalizations are irrational. They are effectively circular logic. I pointed this out above.
That isn't how knowledge works. If I KNOW something then I have KNOWledge of it. I am therefore not ignorant of it.
As to whether one group understands what science is or not... ALL ideological factions will contradict ANYTHING if it damages or undermines their ideology.
If I showed you research that welfare hurt people would people that support welfare change their minds? No. So are they science deniers?
By your logic, EVERY political faction is a science denier.
So worst case an isolated wilderness in the middle of alaska will be contaminated. Unfortunate but no real impact on the lower 48 or anyone that lives in Alaska since you can find parts of the state that are totally depopulated.
Look, I am looking for a place to put it. And at some point, I'm just going to put it in someone's backyard and leave. There are a lot of reasonable places to put it. Accept one of them. Any one of them.
Accept none and I'm just putting it on the sidewalk.
Nature doesn't work that way. You're presupposing some consciousness in nature and that sort of gaia nonsense has no basis in evidence.
Don't know what you're talking about. The firmware change can be undone with a simple firmware update that takes a couple minutes.
That is pure supposition. You have no causal link anywhere in that. The mere presence of foreign species to the island could do all of that all on its own.
Nope. I was fine with Yucca. The stuffing is what people standing in the way of nuclear power should do. It is the best power source known to man and a bunch of fucktards let it get shut down by the coal and natural gas lobbies. That is who has been funding anti nuclear groups by the way. Not concerned environmentalists. The coal and gas lobby.
Idiots.
Because I value my own life and will do what I must to survive
As to the basis of your opinion... you've offered no reason for saying I should kill myself. It is logically impossible to argue against a position that is not defined appropriately.
Is that because you're too lazy to explain yourself or because you're an intellectual coward that is afraid that if he puts out reasons they'll be hammered flat with superior reasoning?
It is one of the two.
Until you define your position, it is of no value.
... If you want to have a political survey then ask those questions.
if you want to have a science question that is not biased by politics then ask questions that don't have a political connotation.
Your study absent this isolation is really just looking at who is in which ideological camp. it is not a test of literacy.
Unless people want to start stuffing it up their asses they're going to have to put it somewhere.
Fine... then we'll build coal power plants and just not do nuclear. You win.
Either let the waste be stored some place or it is hydrocarbons forever.
It is all relative. Over thousands of years it might be a concern but over decades or centuries I wouldn't worry about it too much.
The nuclear issue is not going to require storage for thousands of years unless our civilizations collapse. And if they do, a nuclear leak in those frozen islands is going to be the least of our problems.
But if that bothers you anyway... find any place where no one can possibly claim to be a neighbor and put the facility there. Storage shouldn't be a big problem for more then a generation or so. We should have fuel reprocessing facilities at some point which will reuse waste fuel until it is all but inert.
No you couldn't argue it is ignorance unless they literally don't know. If they know... then they have KNOWledge of the issue. And if they have knowledge of it then they're not ignorant of it.
Disagreeing with you doesn't make someone ignorant unless they are UNknowing of your position or the issue.
For example, lets say someone that gets a degree in geology and astronomy says that the world is 6000 years old.
Is that person ignorant of geology or astronomy? Nope. They passed their tests. They got a degree in the subjects. Which means they knew what answers those subjects said were correct and answered them correctly consistently enough to get a degree.
So what does it mean when that same person says the world is 6000 years old? Well, it means that is what they are saying for "some" reason. You don't know why. But ignorance isn't one of the reasons because they clearly know the answer in the text books.
They could be crazy... they could have gun against their head with a person that says that if they don't answer X or Y they'll kill him. You don't know WHY they're saying that. But if they know the science then they're not ignorant.
They don't have to agree with the science to know it. Do you get the distinction? If I know your name is John but I also refer to you as frank, then I am not ignorant of your name. I am CHOOSING to call you frank even though I know your name is john. Maybe I'm doing it to offend you? Maybe I'm doing it for some other inscrutable reason. It is hard to say. But you can't say I am doing it because I am ignorant of your name.
Get it?
Seriously, if you ACTUALLY care about finding out who is literate in science and who is not... do not ask politically charged questions.
Ask questions about physics, chemistry, and biology that don't really have any political weight. What you should find if you do that is that there isn't an ideological distinction between those that know and those that don't. There are a lot of people ignorant of science from all political camps. And there are plenty of scientific geniuses from all political camps.
If you ask a politically charged question then you're going to get a politically aligned response. That isn't surprising. If you want to ask about science - PERIOD... then ask about science - PERIOD.
Only parts of our country talk loud about free markets. The other parts frequently crypto communists. We do what we can to hold the line against the socialists and communists. But they're insidious, relentless, and come in huge numbers. Much like zombies really.
If only shotguns were a reasonable solution.
... What? This is perhaps the most idiotic thing I've seen today.
You're saying that people ONLY have political opinions? So if I like red cars that is a political opinion? Or when I say I like red cars, I must be lying because it isn't political?
I have lots of science opinions that aren't political.
Are you saying "people" are some non-person group that unlike you or me is incapable of having non-political opinions? Because they aren't non-persons. The reason "people" appear inhuman is because the concept of "people" is inherently dehumanizing. It typically involves generalizing large numbers of people and only looking at a few variables you're interested in which boils lots of people you know nothing about down to a few numbers. Which is of course inhuman but that is not because they are inhuman but because your analysis dehumanized them.
This is just so fundamentally fucked up I don't know where to start with it.
I think you confused yourself.
If you honestly don't have a single scientific opinion that isn't political then you don't give a shit about science in the first place and shouldn't even be having this conversation.
I don't have a problem with flu vaccines. They're great. You can take them six times a day from now until the sun burns out.
I wish you well with them. But I do not see why every person in society must take them when only a very small portion of the population is actually at risk from the flu.
If you are in that group, then take the vaccine. I am not.
Here you're going to get silly, so let me hammer home why what you're saying makes no sense.
The "flu" is not one disease. It is possibly hundreds of related diseases that rise and fall from one year to the next. You cannot vaccinate against them all. It isn't possible. It is like trying to get vaccinated for the cold. It doesn't work.
Now, you can get vaccinated for ONE year of the flu. And even that is a GUESS as to what will be going around this season.
Now, let us compare that to the measles or polio... I can get one vaccine with some boosters now and again and I'm good for life. Why? Because there aren't 10,000 fucking versions of those going around.
You get me one vaccine I can take that will last decades at a minimum against the flu and I'll consider it. Short of that, observe some basic fucking hygiene you filthy fucking animals. This issue is mostly an issue because people have bad hygiene. in the same way that washing your hands avoids a lot of medical problems... simply not touching things and then pushing your finger into your eye will also avoid most issues as well.
I don't do that. I don't touch public restroom doors then tough my eyes. Nearly all infections of the flu come in through the eye. Not the nose or the mouth. The eye. Tell people that. Tell them to avoid touching their eyes during flu season after touching public objects. Everything form money to door knobs. Just don't. Wipe your eye with your elbow or your wrist or anything but the finger that just touched whatever.
End of discussion. I'm sure you have a stupid rebuttal... I don't care. Stop wasting my time with this idiocy.
This thing has to be built. And there is a district somewhere that would have it. Put it in Alaska if you really want to put it out in the middle of no where. Possibly on the Aleutian islands if you really need to go nuts with it. There are islands out there that no one lives on. We have many places in the US where no one lives that could host a storage facility. We have nuclear weapons test sites for example that could be used. Might they be as ideal as the yucca mountain site? Possibly not but no one can claim they're going to make once pristine land a nuclear waste dump if the site was literally nuked... repeatedly.
Wrong. The study is purporting to be a study about science when it is in fact focused on politically charged science issues.
It is therefore a study about politically charged science issues and and not simple scientific literacy.
Ask some physics questions. Ask some chemistry questions. Ask some biology questions.
The questions in this "study" are the sorts of questions politicians ask and campaign upon. That renders them inherently political.
I am quite tired of political ploys masquerading as science.
Wrong and illogical.
First, if you are measuring knowledge, the question is whether people are AWARE of the subject and the relevant variables.
Second, ignoring what you know to and instead holding to ideological positions even though they are in opposition to what you know about science is not evidence of ignorance of science but rather evidence of a strong ideological association.
Third, as to your final statement that being invested in something fallacious doesn't make you more scientifically literate then a nutcase... this is irrelevant. The question is not whether they are nutcases or not but rather whether they are ignorant of the science. If I know everything you know about science but conclude instead that the world is 6000 years old then I might be a nutcase. However, I would not be ignorant of the science. I would quite clearly and by definition know everything you know. I simply would be choosing to believe something different DESPITE knowing the science.
The problem with the study is that it is looking politically charged science issues as being the most important questions about science that someone should know. That is clearly nonsense. Newton's laws of motion for example are a great deal more important for scientific literacy then whether or not you believe in global warming for example. The only entities that regard global warming as the most relevant are the political entities that are fighting political fights over those issues.
This study is survey of public opinion about politically charged science issues. It is NOT a science literacy survey. Remove the political issues and ask uncharged scientific questions. Ask physics questions. Ask chemistry questions. Ask biology questions. Ask mathematical questions.
THEN you'll be conducting a scientific survey. Just asking as bunch of questions about issues that are ideologically charged simply gives the false impression that people that believe in ideology X are smarter then people that believe in ideology Y. When in reality, the knowledge of both X and Y is probably about the same. The difference would be that X or Y has different conclusions or interests in the issues which leads to differing conclusions and arguments. However, that doesn't mean either X or Y has superior knowledge.
Then don't claim your study is measuring anything about science.
Admit it is a political survey. Then that is also fine. But issuing a political survey under the pretense of science demeans both the people issuing it and science itself by associating it with politics.
Science is inherently apolitical. Any political faction that presumes to claim to be the party of science is both wrong and effectively attacking science at the same time. Science does not ally with factions. Science is science.
Science is the autistic kid that is great at math. That kid doesn't take sides. That kid isn't even aware of the sides. Saying he is with you is like one kid or another grabbing the autistic kid and CLAIMING he is on their side.
Now can any given political faction probably cite one thing or another that science agrees with more then their rivals? Sure. But by the same token, the opposition probably has more then a few things going for them as well.
You can't claim science is on your side unless the opposing faction really is just anti science in general. And there is no major political faction in western civilization that is generally against science. You'll find factions that are against some concepts or theories or even just hypothesis in science but not an actual opposition to science itself.
So long as we agree that contamination and claiming ownership of fields due to contamination is unacceptable, I will consider we are in agreement.
The only issue there is that if pollen blows into my field, I don't think it is reasonable that I have to pay you a licensing fee.
Take for example a bull that breaks through a fence and breeds with some of my cattle. Do I have to pay a breeding fee for you bull's "service" to my herd? No.
And the thing is that Monsanto has done that in the past. What is more, they'll have funny genes that will not only not fertilize my crops but will literally make them sterile. There are terminator genes that won't breed true. And so that bull that hopped the fence not only bred with my cattle but effectively implanted defective genetic material that will miscarry.
In regards to corn specifically, the GMO corn should probably not produce pollen. Or if it does, that pollen has to not screw up non-GMO corn and has to not incur any fee to Monsanto etc.
If a farmer is just trying to grow his crops and wants nothing to do with the whole thing, these GMO crops often make that very difficult. If the GMO crops don't spread their DNA to non-GMO crops then they're fine. I really don't have a problem with GMO in theory. The issue is that in practice it tends to have a lot of problems that are not okay.
If all you're concerned with is not damaging the biosphere so that life can continue on earth... yep. We could kill all of them and the biosphere would survive.
Really, all it needs is bacteria, insects that are useful to plants, and plants.
Here you'll likely point out some unusual situation where mosquitos pollinate or something. That isn't vital. Worms serve a much larger role. Even bees could be done without if you had to... keep in mind that plants were sexually reproducing long before bees or similar insects.
That said, I'm not talking about killing everything that isn't vital. I am merely pointing out that we can kill them without damaging the food web significantly.
This notion that the balance of nature is precarious and unstable and always on the brink of collapse is ignorant. Nature is extremely stable. In fact, you'd have to work intentionally to destabilize it and even then it would find a new equilibrium very quickly.
Every mosquito on earth could die tomorrow... and life would go on with not a lot of disruption. There are some fish that eat a lot of mosquitoes but most of what feeds mosquitoes is not blood. Keep in mind that only the breeding female drinks blood. The larva, males, and females not about to breed do not drink blood. If mosquitoes did not exist then another insect likely already in those rivers, lakes, and marshes would fill the niche absent the blood sucking part. And those insects would feed the fish likely as they already are and have been for ages untold.
Mosquitoes are not a vital species. They're merely extremely annoying, a massive viral infection vector, and probably one of the largest killers of human beings in the history of ever. Fuck em'.
The survey is tainted by asking a lot of politically charged questions.
Yes, they're science questions as well but if you're looking for science literacy rather then political factionalism you'll ask questions that don't have political connotations.
The reality is that given poltical factions are going to have ideological positions on some of these things and people that ascribe to them are going to be inclined to say they believe or do not believe something on that basis. That does not mean for example that they are not aware of global warming theory or how it is supposed to work at least to the same level as people that say they do believe in it. The difference rather is that one faction is politically invested in one conclusion and the other is invested in the other.
If you are ACTUALLY interested in scientific literacy, then ask questions on which no major political faction has any stake.
For example, ask some physics questions. Ask some chemistry questions. Ask some biology questions. As them about mitochondria and the speed of light. THEN you'll be asking science questions.
Absent that, this survey reads more like a political ploy to embarrass a political faction that is at odds with their political rivals on a few issues. Which has basically nothing to do with science.
Here various political asshats will chime in with the comment that "but that political faction is full of dummies because they don't believe X or Y or Z"... Well, not believing something is not the same thing as not being aware of it. If you're testing for knowledge then simply knowing about it passes that standard. And if they're mostly disagreeing with the point not because of science but because of politics then their position is not one of scientific ignorance but rather a political disagreement. Which means your citation basically boils down to "ha ha they disagree with me about some political points, what a bunch of idiots"... which is actually a pretty stupid comment.
Look, if you care more about science then your petty political rivalries, then just talk about the scientific issues that are not political. If you can't find any interest in yourself for that sort of discussion... then have the honesty to admit that science doesn't actually interest you and your primary interest is using science as a pretext/weapon to piss all over you political enemies. Doubt that will happen... but the honesty would be refreshing.