Actually I think that the enlightenment is a critical part of scientific history and I also believe that the history of a particular subject should not be extracted into a separate disconnected class. Science (or any subject for that matter) is much easier to comprehend if you know it's history. It's one thing to know the speed of light, it's an entirely different thing know how we know that fact. Science does not operate in a social vacuum, so why do we all defer to religious sensitivities and act like it does?
Really, why do we pander to them? - To paraphrase someone else I heard; If I claim Elvis is my God, a stack of pancakes is his body, a jug of maple syrup is his blood, then breakfast is my holy sacrament. The difference between that activity and what a Catholic does with crackers and wine is virtually nil. The reaction from society to the two activities are virtually polar opposites.
And like it or not, Science is a philosophy class, Newton was never called a scientist by his contemporaries, he was a "Natural Philosopher". Ignoring the creation myth and hoping it goes away is what people have been doing for the last 500yrs, what makes you think it will work now? I'm firmly in the Sagan/Tyson camp and have been for at least half a century, I refuse to conform to the religious stereotype of an Atheist/scientists. Demonstrate to kids that Science is the only philosophy that has ever informed us about the real world. Don't pretend religion doesn't exist, get the kids to do an experiment that tests the scientific claims of other philosophies. For example, treat Genesis as a serious hypothesis for how the world works and let the kids pull it apart themselves.
Once the kids are scientifically literate and have been formally "indoctrinated" with the simply philosophy behind the unrivaled utility of Science (ie: first year HS), then you can send 'em to a philosophy class to learn how politicians and priests think (or don't, as the case may be).
"Forget the kids, fix the adults and the kids will be fine". - N dG Tyson.
Thanks for the link, I know SFA about this machine but I think the last bit in your link is well worth repeating...
"The D-Wave computer is the first quantum computer to be marketed by a private company. Why haven’t scientists working in this field in state-funded research labs succeeded in doing this yet?
The company needed more than USD 100 million to build this machine. An academic research group can’t muster this kind of money. When we write research proposals, our projects must be easier to predict in terms of potential success and not exposed to such a high level of risk. D-Wave built this machine although the outcome of the project was uncertain. As a researcher, you wouldn’t take that risk. But if it works, there are tremendous ramifications. It would be a huge breakthrough."
But the makers of the computer can't find a single problem it solves well. Why is that?
Aside from profit, why is that question even relevant? It took a century for the geocentric model to give more accurate results than the old heliocentric model. Here we appear to have quite a few independent observers who know quantum annealing when they see it, I am not one of them. Sure it could be a scam but so far I have seen zero evidence supporting that hypothesis.
If you measure the worth of public transport solely by the profit from ticket sales, it will never be "economically sensible". Public transport and roads are both key infrastructures for a modern nation's economy, the nation as a whole is poorer if either mode of transport is allowed to become too expensive for the common man to use.
Australia is similar to NZ wrt to petrol tax, most nations deliberately bumped up the tax during the 1970's oil crisis to reduce demand, the US did not. This is why small economical cars have been so popular in just about every western nation that is not the US. And yes, everything in Australia is bigger than it is in Texas, except for the hats.
A "good" lawyer/politician is not looking for the truth, they are trained to debate either side and "win". Their job is to obscure the evidence that supports their opponents view and to do that they must know the subject. In such a system it is up to the jury/voters to judge their arguments, unfortunately they often do not have the ability to research an answer for themselves, nor do they have the training to see through the deliberate distractions and half truths of the debating process.Add to that the tribal nature of party politics and the subjective qualities of "good policy" and it's easy to see why decisions appear to be random.
It's damned hard work to understand every issue, so the whole thing devolves into rhetoric and propaganda, normal people who try to understand the big issues simply become frustrated and lose interest in the political process (but not the issue itself). At that point they tend to lose track of who is arguing for what and simply vote against the most appalling soundbite they've heard lately.
Yes, you could teach it in a balanced way by looking at several creation myths from various religions, include it in a discussion of the enlightenment and maybe more people will leave HS understanding that religion and science split because blind faith and reason are fundamentally incompatible.
Following your logic leads directly to absurdity, we don't throw away laws against murder and rape just because some portion of rapists and murderers are never caught. The new rule enables WP to expel paid propagandists when they are caught breaking the new rule. Besides the absurdity of your argument, you're also creating a strawman since nobody is claiming the new rule will catch everyone who breaks it.
you could say it's among the most expensive and least reliable ways to collect information.
You could, but it would make you sound foolish to anyone born before 1990. Public information is messy, uncertain, and contradictory no matter what the format, sorting the shit from the clay is a teachable skill. Bitching about a search engine not handing you the answer you want on a silver platter won't improve your skills, it just gives you an excuse to wallow in your ignorance.
Perhaps a dire warning should appear in banner form at the top of any article about a company that pays shills to edit Wikipedia
Excellent idea, it's not enough to punish dishonest shills, their paymaster can always hire a new shill. Kill the profit and commercial entities will cease this practice.
I know it's a joke but whenever I hear people rag on "burger flippers" I'm reminded that the CEO of McDonalds is a former burger flipper. Personally I'd much rather hire a kid who wasn't afraid to scrub toilets to pay for an education, than some upper class ponce breezing through life on their parents dime.
Don't forget that the people who invented the MRI, CAT-Scan, etc. are motivated by profits.
You and I have no idea what these people were motivated by, the fact they were paid does not imply that money was their motivation. Making a profit and being motivated by profit are two completely different things to a non-sociopathic capitalist. And yes it is possible to be motivated by profit and accidently do something useful for society.
AFAIK, IBM has only just started leasing instances of watson to "development partners" earlier this year. A single instance of Watson can now run on a bar-fridge server, I doubt they come cheap and I doubt IBM will simply allow people to access/deploy the technology without IBM's "help". They have a clear market advantage and a keen interest from the big end of town, they are not going to throw that away to compete with a MS gimmick.
You have it backwards, the media spins the results of science for percieved political gain, not the other way around. There is absolutely nothing political about the claim that other factors may have played a part in their extinction.
As to the organic food study: Nutrition may not be "the point" in your mind, but there were certainly plenty of charlatans promoting it, there's even a 1970's clip on YT somewhere with Feynman himself having a go at the 'unscientific' claims of better nutrition from organically grow crops. The nutritional study injected facts into a factual vacum, even if nobody was interested in the study it is still worthy of publication. Nobody denies the health benfits of washing the copper-sulphate off your industrially grown tomatos before eating them (except maybe the pesticide company), but the study presented strong evidence that a tomato is a tomato no matter where it obtains the atoms that constitute it's genetically programmed flesh.
If you're finding politics and ideology in evidence based statement like either of those studies, it's not because the scientists put it there, you did that yourself while you were looking for reasons to reject the findings.
Disclaimer: I've been a "greenie" since the 70's, if the above findings are somehow an inconviennce to green politics then so be it, I want my government to formulate laws and policies that respect evidence, and adapt when contrary evidence is found. I want our politicins to be more like our scientists and engineers, get off their ideological high horses and get on with the job.
Where do you people get the idea that unions rae rich? Go to the US dept of labour site, you will find unions listed by gross revenue. The average revenue is far less than the average CEO remuneration package of $4M, in fact there are only a handfull that exceed $1M. The richest union is the actors union that is way out in front with ~$200M in revenue, $200M sounds a lot but it's verging on "penny stock" status in the business world.
I agree unions should pay tax, however union officials already pay income tax, the union itself does not pay company tax, but even if it was obliged to do so the "company" itself does not make a profit so it won't owe any company tax anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right, don't take those antibiotics, go to a priest and have him cast out the demon, it's a win-win solution.
Actually I think that the enlightenment is a critical part of scientific history and I also believe that the history of a particular subject should not be extracted into a separate disconnected class. Science (or any subject for that matter) is much easier to comprehend if you know it's history. It's one thing to know the speed of light, it's an entirely different thing know how we know that fact. Science does not operate in a social vacuum, so why do we all defer to religious sensitivities and act like it does?
Really, why do we pander to them? - To paraphrase someone else I heard; If I claim Elvis is my God, a stack of pancakes is his body, a jug of maple syrup is his blood, then breakfast is my holy sacrament. The difference between that activity and what a Catholic does with crackers and wine is virtually nil. The reaction from society to the two activities are virtually polar opposites.
And like it or not, Science is a philosophy class, Newton was never called a scientist by his contemporaries, he was a "Natural Philosopher". Ignoring the creation myth and hoping it goes away is what people have been doing for the last 500yrs, what makes you think it will work now? I'm firmly in the Sagan/Tyson camp and have been for at least half a century, I refuse to conform to the religious stereotype of an Atheist/scientists. Demonstrate to kids that Science is the only philosophy that has ever informed us about the real world. Don't pretend religion doesn't exist, get the kids to do an experiment that tests the scientific claims of other philosophies. For example, treat Genesis as a serious hypothesis for how the world works and let the kids pull it apart themselves.
Once the kids are scientifically literate and have been formally "indoctrinated" with the simply philosophy behind the unrivaled utility of Science (ie: first year HS), then you can send 'em to a philosophy class to learn how politicians and priests think (or don't, as the case may be).
"Forget the kids, fix the adults and the kids will be fine". - N dG Tyson.
Thanks for the link, I know SFA about this machine but I think the last bit in your link is well worth repeating...
"The D-Wave computer is the first quantum computer to be marketed by a private company. Why haven’t scientists working in this field in state-funded research labs succeeded in doing this yet?
The company needed more than USD 100 million to build this machine. An academic research group can’t muster this kind of money. When we write research proposals, our projects must be easier to predict in terms of potential success and not exposed to such a high level of risk. D-Wave built this machine although the outcome of the project was uncertain. As a researcher, you wouldn’t take that risk. But if it works, there are tremendous ramifications. It would be a huge breakthrough."
But the makers of the computer can't find a single problem it solves well. Why is that?
Aside from profit, why is that question even relevant? It took a century for the geocentric model to give more accurate results than the old heliocentric model. Here we appear to have quite a few independent observers who know quantum annealing when they see it, I am not one of them. Sure it could be a scam but so far I have seen zero evidence supporting that hypothesis.
Nonesense. Add $100M to a $13T debt and you still have a $13T debt, it's a rounding error, a one off payment of 33 cents for every American.
don't drive in the right lane where the trucks drive.
So your answer is, don't use half the road?
You're forgetting the Caspian sea. Every tin-pot dictator on the planet knows that you cannot have an effective military without access to oil.
If you measure the worth of public transport solely by the profit from ticket sales, it will never be "economically sensible". Public transport and roads are both key infrastructures for a modern nation's economy, the nation as a whole is poorer if either mode of transport is allowed to become too expensive for the common man to use.
Australia is similar to NZ wrt to petrol tax, most nations deliberately bumped up the tax during the 1970's oil crisis to reduce demand, the US did not. This is why small economical cars have been so popular in just about every western nation that is not the US. And yes, everything in Australia is bigger than it is in Texas, except for the hats.
I got a portable radio for christmas 1967, it had nine transistors. I took it apart and counted them just to be sure.
It would be a major step in Texas, in the UK it's merely enshrining the status quo.
A "good" lawyer/politician is not looking for the truth, they are trained to debate either side and "win". Their job is to obscure the evidence that supports their opponents view and to do that they must know the subject. In such a system it is up to the jury/voters to judge their arguments, unfortunately they often do not have the ability to research an answer for themselves, nor do they have the training to see through the deliberate distractions and half truths of the debating process.Add to that the tribal nature of party politics and the subjective qualities of "good policy" and it's easy to see why decisions appear to be random.
It's damned hard work to understand every issue, so the whole thing devolves into rhetoric and propaganda, normal people who try to understand the big issues simply become frustrated and lose interest in the political process (but not the issue itself). At that point they tend to lose track of who is arguing for what and simply vote against the most appalling soundbite they've heard lately.
Yes, you could teach it in a balanced way by looking at several creation myths from various religions, include it in a discussion of the enlightenment and maybe more people will leave HS understanding that religion and science split because blind faith and reason are fundamentally incompatible.
Actually most of my enemies moved to slashdot Beta, voluntarily!
So what do I do now? - All my friends (and enemies) are on slashdot....
As has often been said, Hitler fought the wrong war when he headed East, he had much more in common with Stalin than he did with Winston Churchill
Following your logic leads directly to absurdity, we don't throw away laws against murder and rape just because some portion of rapists and murderers are never caught. The new rule enables WP to expel paid propagandists when they are caught breaking the new rule. Besides the absurdity of your argument, you're also creating a strawman since nobody is claiming the new rule will catch everyone who breaks it.
you could say it's among the most expensive and least reliable ways to collect information.
You could, but it would make you sound foolish to anyone born before 1990. Public information is messy, uncertain, and contradictory no matter what the format, sorting the shit from the clay is a teachable skill. Bitching about a search engine not handing you the answer you want on a silver platter won't improve your skills, it just gives you an excuse to wallow in your ignorance.
Perhaps a dire warning should appear in banner form at the top of any article about a company that pays shills to edit Wikipedia
Excellent idea, it's not enough to punish dishonest shills, their paymaster can always hire a new shill. Kill the profit and commercial entities will cease this practice.
I know it's a joke but whenever I hear people rag on "burger flippers" I'm reminded that the CEO of McDonalds is a former burger flipper. Personally I'd much rather hire a kid who wasn't afraid to scrub toilets to pay for an education, than some upper class ponce breezing through life on their parents dime.
Don't forget that the people who invented the MRI, CAT-Scan, etc. are motivated by profits.
You and I have no idea what these people were motivated by, the fact they were paid does not imply that money was their motivation. Making a profit and being motivated by profit are two completely different things to a non-sociopathic capitalist. And yes it is possible to be motivated by profit and accidently do something useful for society.
AFAIK, IBM has only just started leasing instances of watson to "development partners" earlier this year. A single instance of Watson can now run on a bar-fridge server, I doubt they come cheap and I doubt IBM will simply allow people to access/deploy the technology without IBM's "help". They have a clear market advantage and a keen interest from the big end of town, they are not going to throw that away to compete with a MS gimmick.
You have it backwards, the media spins the results of science for percieved political gain, not the other way around. There is absolutely nothing political about the claim that other factors may have played a part in their extinction.
As to the organic food study: Nutrition may not be "the point" in your mind, but there were certainly plenty of charlatans promoting it, there's even a 1970's clip on YT somewhere with Feynman himself having a go at the 'unscientific' claims of better nutrition from organically grow crops. The nutritional study injected facts into a factual vacum, even if nobody was interested in the study it is still worthy of publication. Nobody denies the health benfits of washing the copper-sulphate off your industrially grown tomatos before eating them (except maybe the pesticide company), but the study presented strong evidence that a tomato is a tomato no matter where it obtains the atoms that constitute it's genetically programmed flesh.
If you're finding politics and ideology in evidence based statement like either of those studies, it's not because the scientists put it there, you did that yourself while you were looking for reasons to reject the findings.
Disclaimer: I've been a "greenie" since the 70's, if the above findings are somehow an inconviennce to green politics then so be it, I want my government to formulate laws and policies that respect evidence, and adapt when contrary evidence is found. I want our politicins to be more like our scientists and engineers, get off their ideological high horses and get on with the job.
I can assure you that pigeon crap is a lot easier to clean up than mammoth crap.
Where do you people get the idea that unions rae rich? Go to the US dept of labour site, you will find unions listed by gross revenue. The average revenue is far less than the average CEO remuneration package of $4M, in fact there are only a handfull that exceed $1M. The richest union is the actors union that is way out in front with ~$200M in revenue, $200M sounds a lot but it's verging on "penny stock" status in the business world.
I agree unions should pay tax, however union officials already pay income tax, the union itself does not pay company tax, but even if it was obliged to do so the "company" itself does not make a profit so it won't owe any company tax anyway.