I'm not saying it's a bad idea to know the source code. I'm just saying that wouldn't eliminate most of the problem.
Who can look at source code and certify that it cannot be hacked?
Even if (1) were possible, who can certify that the exact source code was (the only code) resident on every machine at the time of the voting?
Furthermore, because ballots are anonymous, what do we have to tie people to votes on a one-to-one basis? Granted, the tie-in is imperfect in the paper world, but the potential for abuse seems higher in the electronic world. As I think about how a "vote hacker" might operate, it seems pretty likely to me that such a person would be motivated to cover tracks. For instance s/he would replace the source code with the evil code before the voting but would also switch it back to the source code after the voting. That's a pretty simplistic scenario. I envision that "good" e-voting security would require polling stations to begin looking like secure server rooms. That would give civil libertarians (and maybe even the rest of us) the creeps, even if it were feasible to issue every voter a security badge, etc.
I'm no security expert, but is it not generally accepted that simple systems are easier to secure, all other things being equal? Pencil and paper are pretty simple, right?
Is the problem that people don't realize that they are about to click on a link to porn? ("Uh, honey, I was just searching for snow blowers and this page must have loaded by mistake... honest!") Is the problem that people just click on any links they see, without first having a reason to follow the link, like maybe the context of the page and the text of the link?
... Remember that the FBI (under DOJ) can't find it's ass with both hands when it concerns IT. Their pre-9/11 systems overhaul/upgrade is still a massive failure. Any reason to believe this will be different?
... but the overall judgment of the posts seems to be that Nixon was the only corrupt politician we've ever had... as if we never had corruption before Nixon and as if we wouldn't have had any if we had just prosecuted Nixon to the full extent of the law (which, btw, was/is far from settled, since we've never criminally prosecuted a president; impeachment is all we've got, and, fortunately, it has been invoked sparingly).
The pardon wasn't an easy call, meaning that it had an upside and a downside. Given the significance of the first presidency to be politically terminated, the magnitude of both upside and downside was bound to be large. But it cannot possibly be true that "if only we had prosecuted him fully", we would not have corruption today. Did Abscam stop the Keating Five? If Clinton had been conviceted for lying (essentially the charge), would that have stopped future presidents from lying?
I'm actually not so cynical that I don't think prosecuting crimes is worthwhile, but I just think the overall reaction on this topic is incredibly naive, both about how much benefit would have come from prosecuting Nixon, and about how easy or simple that might have been.
I obviously don't "get" hunting. I thought the enjoyment came from tracking the prey, i.e., generally from the "hunt". I don't see how a blind person enjoys anything but the kill in this scenario. I'm not anti-hunting, but this doesn't really make a great case for it, either.
It's "far" as in "45% of the population away from the median", as in "far from the experience of most of us". It would only be equal to the median in a distribution where 90% of the population had the same income, in the middle of the distribution, or where at least 5% of the population had the same income at the maximum of the distribution, or some combination of those extraordinarily unrealistic distributions. It would only be below the mean in a situation where the distribution skew had an upper tail that was many times longer than the tail we have in our currently skewed distribution. In other words, it would only be below the mean in a situation where the 95th percentile was even more "far" from the rest of the population than it is in our current distribution. And it would very likely (as if one could project likeliness onto a completely unrealistic scenario) only be equal to the median in a situation where we wouldn't bother discussing the GP's point.
So, by definition here on earth, it's far from average.
I would add only one minor drawback. I don't want to give them my debit card, so I "top up" every three months. For some reason, their web site doesn't allow me to set a reminder for them to email me a week or so before I need to top up. So, even though I have a cash balance, my phone gets temporarily shut off if I don't add $20 every 90 days. Needless to say, I'm at a usage level where I don't use that much, so my cost is also $20... every ninety-__one__ days. Still much preferable to going over the minute limit on my old "emergency use" plan, which I would do every 18 months or so. I've finally learned (hey, I'm not an idiot... wait...) to set myself a reminder so that I buy the top up cards early enough to avoid temporary shut-off.
Lots of American multinationals pay taxes to foreign governments. In fact, the system of international taxation is mind-numbing. Although I think it might be shooting itself in the balls (by making Indian call centers more expensive), it's not surprising to see a government try to tax economic activity. To steal from Willie Sutton (an irony he certainly would have appreciated), "that's where the money is".
Although the article was written in a foreign language (English with Indian TLAs), I gather that domestic ISPs and telcos are subject to these taxes, so I'm sure that's part of the motivation. I didn't get far enough to see whether anyone considered just allowing the foreign invaders to play by the same tax rules.
Well, I think it's based on households, so it's 5 million households out of 20 million households, I think. The survey indicated that about a quarter of the world's wealthiest 10% are Americans, so that seems consistent (good enough for/., anyway).
I'm surprised more by the share of U.S. GDP that makes it to household income -- significantly less than half, if I calculated correctly. GDP is about $13 Trillion, or $130,000 per household. Average household income is about $46,000. I'm too lazy to research whether this is high or low relative to the rest of the world and relative to the rest of the high-income world.
Well, by definition, the 95th percentile is far from average, so you're actually in agreement with what you claim to distrust. Moreover, you seem to distrust the census because of what politicians did with the results, not because of what the surveys and analyses found.
News flash: politicians do bad things with (or without) the results of lots of studies (or not).
And where did I miss the TV Guide issue that says shows try to mirror real life?
I guess "requirements" is a fuzzy enough concept, and even fuzzier with shrink-wrap, since the software company has to serve as proxy for the future users when developing. Before anyone says "but a good software company would engage end-users up front", I agree. But the software company still has to decide which future users to bring into that process (assuming they even bother), and ends up prioritizing the requirements, anyway. I guess it was just too obvious to specify a requirement for a word-processor along the lines of "don't allow the software to be used to trash the computer that I had to buy to run the software".
I guess it doesn't matter who came first. But, we do have
Chickens, who have been actively trying to discredit most of science in general (evolution, cosmology, climatology, economics... pretty much all that book-learnin')
Eggheads, who have often been waaaaaay too defensive and/or ideological in their reactions and unwilling to acknowledge that all sciences have margins of error (some more than others in practical terms)
I'm discouraged about the prospects for reconciling the two entrenched camps, and I don't think discussion of claims and counter-claims is likely to bring any resolution. Each side sees either conspiracy or stupidity (or both) in the other. But maybe we can acknowledge that both the claims and the counter-claims are relatively inexact, compared with, say, predicting the effects of gravity on a falling mass at sea level.
Of course, the BBC will find evidence of "stifling". That's what mainstream science does. It stifles theories that aren't convincing to enough experts to make them "accepted". While the evidence for climate change may not be as cohesive as we might want, it seems fair to say that the counter-claims are mostly that there isn't enough evidence to conclude with certainty that we're experiencing global warming. But, you don't see too many counter claims arguing that this is global cooling.
If this issue didn't have such potentially enormous economic effects (another inexact science), maybe we'd get more rational discussion. But that's not going to happen (except on/., of course).
Let's face it, e-voting is a dumb idea. It's bad solution to a host of problems that never existed outside media and lobbyist FUD and creates more problems than it will ever be worth. "Fixes" to it will make it worse. Want a paper trail? Use paper ballots.
Megamods; and even if blind voters can't use the same paper ballots as sight-advantaged (is that PC enough?) voters, wtf cares? Braille isn't the same "mechanism" as print, so why don't we re-invent the book in order to enable blind readers to read using the same "mechanism" as sight-advantaged readers? OK, I guess I just opened a can of worms.
Yep; we're in violent agreement on this; I wouldn't reject an argument a priori, but I do filter out noise. In this case, I'm familiar enough with other positions of Falwell that I don't think it's exactly rejection a priori. It might (p=.00000000000000000....1) be the case that the Falwell Commission would come up with a scientific theory worth consideration. But I would prioritize that pretty far down on my list of "things I should consider today because they might turn out to be true/interesting/etc.". In the rare event that Falwell came up with a truly new perspective, it would constitute a (tragic?) a priori forfeit.
More on trust: If you didn't know anything about anthropology (except that it's a science) and didn't even know the names of anyone connected to anthropology, wouldn't you have a more receptive attitude toward a Hawking-appointed commission than toward, say, a Falwell-appointed commission? I'm sure we agree that it would be worth the slight effort needed to identify more appropriate subject matter experts. But even on that dimension, I think I'd trust Hawking to make that effort. I'd probably follow the Reagan doctrine of "trust but verify" with respect to Hawking's selections (as opposed to the substance of the commission's ideas, for which I probably wouldn't have time), but that's still a reasonable degree of trust.
Also, when I talk about trusting the work/conclusions of experts, I think it's fair to say that my degree of trust extends only as far as my level of interest. For issues where my interest is higher, I tend to do more independent investigation than I do where my interest is lower. I guess trust has the same lower case t as truth.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "coherent". If you just mean "hangs together logically", does that mean you "believe" non-Euclidean geometry? I'm not quite sure how "coherent" provides a guiding principle in the face of competing and self-consistent logics.
I didn't mean to imply otherwise. And "heuristic" is an excellent description of what I was trying to describe. The only proof is proof itself, freely available for all to judge for themselves, but I usually know when I'm not smart enough to understand the proof.
you've GOT to apply some kind of additional filter to try and detect ideology or authority
I was short-handing when I said I'd just follow the Hawking Commission. I was going for a different point, namely about trust. In order to accept something, we either need to experience it directly for ourselves (in this case, becoming climatologists) or trust the interpretation of someone else, at least to the extent that we don't have personal knowledge. (In reality, we do a little bit of both on most things.) I was contrasting my level of trust in Hawking as an exemplar of brilliant scientist with Falwell as an exemplar of someone I don't trust on the truth of anything. Yes, I'd look at the composition of the Hawking Commission, and I'd look at what the dissenters had to say. But I wouldn't even bother with a panel of experts appointed by Falwell. In fact, I'd reexamine my level of trust in anyone who agreed to serve on the Falwell Commission. That's the nature of human trust.
I definitely agree with the mods for you, but I think you've also overlooked some important aspects of science.
The trouble is: how do we make up our minds about the issue if we reject scientific consensus as proof?
I think that, for better and/or worse, consensus typically IS proof in science. The best perspective I can offer on this is from a book I read over 20 years ago, called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn. Someone else has paraphrased it much better than I could. If enough scientists accept a particular perspective (a "paradigm" in Kuhn's terminology), then that's how science will view whatever problem that perspective addresses -- at least until a revolution comes along and changes the dominant paradigm. (BTW, I don't think we'd have the "priesthood" danger that you fear if enough people would "get" Kuhn's perspective on this.)
The only thing I can think of is to understand as much of the issue as we can for ourselves
If a panel of 10 experts selected by Stephen Hawking reached a consensus of 8 or higher, I think I'd go along with them, regardless of my understanding of the details. That doesn't mean I wouldn't want to understand more detail, of course, but it would certainly affect my interpretation of them. If a panel of 10 experts selected by Jerry Falwell reached... well, I wouldn't even be listening...
I share your desire to understand more for ourselves, but doesn't science as an institution depend on some level of trust in the "experts"? That is a troubling concept but an accurate description of what we need to do to "believe" anything. In the case of science, I rely on the advice of Henri Theil: "models are to be used, not believed". To make an analogy from another "controversial" science: do we need to believe in the theory of evolution? Well, it's pretty dang practical (antibiotics, to name just one application that couldn't go far on creationism). To make a more absurd analogy: do we need to "believe" in Newtonian mechanics? After all, didn't Einstein and others demonstrate that Newton was wrong? I think Newton and Darwin are incredibly useful, even though I don't have an in-depth understanding of their models (beyond high school science).
Unfortunately, right-wing ideologues have done a masterful job of impugning the credibility of science in general and have at least temporarily succeeded in convincing a significant number of people that scientists are liberal activists, thereby implying that any scientific consensus is actually just a liberal agenda. (How they have done this by skillfully manipulating the "liberal media" is a problem for their paradigm.) I think science can and will "win" in this war, but I don't see how anyone can describe the current situation as "game over" in favor of science on the subject of global warming or evolution or whatever the next battlefield will be.
In the field of climate science, I don't even have a toe-hold on the "state of the science", quite apart from the issue of global warming. This makes it difficult to know whether the theory of man-made global warming is "normal science" or a "scientific revolution". However, I do know this about the opponents of the theory: in general, they are not scientists, unless you define creationism or "intelligent design" as science (which I do not).
As you might imagine, one of my (minor) problems with Gore's perspective is his title. "Truth" has no place in science, at least not the kind of truth that needs to be believed, rather than used. Galileo's truth was pretty dang inconvenient (more so for him during his difficult life than for Gore), but eventually it became just too useful to be rejected.
I think you're interpreting DocRuby a little too literally, Watts. You're focused on news-as-facts, while DocRuby seems to be more focused on news-as-what-we-care-about, i.e., the editorial side of things. The distinction is a bit blurry, but if you apply what DocRuby said to the specific area of the op-ed page, I think he might even have you convinced.
Consider the case of/. itself. You focus on the fact that it's all about stories reported elsewhere first. But that's not really the point of/. or most blogs, is it? It's about discussing what's news, not about just what's news. And, as my idol, Stephen Colbert, would say, truthiness is more important than newsiness. Especially if it's my truthiness about your newsiness.
The load of previous comments about naivete don't require much more than a Homer Simpson "Doh!". Blogging has always been about trust. Lots of people are naive. Therefore, all men are Socrates. Wait, that's a different syllogism... all men are naive (about something, anyway).
It's not so much that we don't want to be our own managing editors; it's that we want to find better managing editors than the one-size-fits-all of the "old days". The web makes that possible, but the downside of "we don't have to rely on (trust) XXX to filter our content" is "we can't rely on (trust) XXX to filter our content".
... and not just because of the re-release of all the SW episodes this past week on cable.
Good insights on both "sides", but ultimately, I think you need to decide where your passions are, while also remembering that your degree is only one factor (sometimes a big one) in determining your career options. It's a factor that diminishes with each career move you'll make, too.
I'm definitely old school in my philosophy: follow the path that gives you the most depth in the tools you think you really want to use, but remember that they are just tools, and you'll have to figure out how to apply your knowledge to something completely different in 5/10/20 years, anyway. If you have a chance to give yourself just as good an edge for gaming companies with whatever jobs you'll have while getting the degree, I'd weigh the specific gaming degree a little less, accordingly.
Since this is a Masters program you're deliberating, pay lots of attention to the specifics of both faculty and student body composition. You're going to spend a lot of time with these people; make sure they are the right ones. (If your only objective in getting the degree is career advancement, "right ones" probably means faculty most tightly connected with your dream company/ies. But your criteria should vary with the complexity of your objectives.) Can you interview other students as well as faculty? I don't mean suit-and-tie interview; I mean have lunch or a beer (or both).
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not saying it's a bad idea to know the source code. I'm just saying that wouldn't eliminate most of the problem.
- Who can look at source code and certify that it cannot be hacked?
- Even if (1) were possible, who can certify that the exact source code was (the only code) resident on every machine at the time of the voting?
Furthermore, because ballots are anonymous, what do we have to tie people to votes on a one-to-one basis? Granted, the tie-in is imperfect in the paper world, but the potential for abuse seems higher in the electronic world. As I think about how a "vote hacker" might operate, it seems pretty likely to me that such a person would be motivated to cover tracks. For instance s/he would replace the source code with the evil code before the voting but would also switch it back to the source code after the voting. That's a pretty simplistic scenario. I envision that "good" e-voting security would require polling stations to begin looking like secure server rooms. That would give civil libertarians (and maybe even the rest of us) the creeps, even if it were feasible to issue every voter a security badge, etc.I'm no security expert, but is it not generally accepted that simple systems are easier to secure, all other things being equal? Pencil and paper are pretty simple, right?
I meant that I didn't think it would get off the ground, so there won't be anything to hack, at least not for a long while.
Is the problem that people don't realize that they are about to click on a link to porn? ("Uh, honey, I was just searching for snow blowers and this page must have loaded by mistake ... honest!") Is the problem that people just click on any links they see, without first having a reason to follow the link, like maybe the context of the page and the text of the link?
... Remember that the FBI (under DOJ) can't find it's ass with both hands when it concerns IT. Their pre-9/11 systems overhaul/upgrade is still a massive failure. Any reason to believe this will be different?
... but the overall judgment of the posts seems to be that Nixon was the only corrupt politician we've ever had ... as if we never had corruption before Nixon and as if we wouldn't have had any if we had just prosecuted Nixon to the full extent of the law (which, btw, was/is far from settled, since we've never criminally prosecuted a president; impeachment is all we've got, and, fortunately, it has been invoked sparingly).
The pardon wasn't an easy call, meaning that it had an upside and a downside. Given the significance of the first presidency to be politically terminated, the magnitude of both upside and downside was bound to be large. But it cannot possibly be true that "if only we had prosecuted him fully", we would not have corruption today. Did Abscam stop the Keating Five? If Clinton had been conviceted for lying (essentially the charge), would that have stopped future presidents from lying?
I'm actually not so cynical that I don't think prosecuting crimes is worthwhile, but I just think the overall reaction on this topic is incredibly naive, both about how much benefit would have come from prosecuting Nixon, and about how easy or simple that might have been.
I obviously don't "get" hunting. I thought the enjoyment came from tracking the prey, i.e., generally from the "hunt". I don't see how a blind person enjoys anything but the kill in this scenario. I'm not anti-hunting, but this doesn't really make a great case for it, either.
*crickets*
...
Is this thing on? Testing, one, two
It's "far" as in "45% of the population away from the median", as in "far from the experience of most of us". It would only be equal to the median in a distribution where 90% of the population had the same income, in the middle of the distribution, or where at least 5% of the population had the same income at the maximum of the distribution, or some combination of those extraordinarily unrealistic distributions. It would only be below the mean in a situation where the distribution skew had an upper tail that was many times longer than the tail we have in our currently skewed distribution. In other words, it would only be below the mean in a situation where the 95th percentile was even more "far" from the rest of the population than it is in our current distribution. And it would very likely (as if one could project likeliness onto a completely unrealistic scenario) only be equal to the median in a situation where we wouldn't bother discussing the GP's point.
So, by definition here on earth, it's far from average.
I would add only one minor drawback. I don't want to give them my debit card, so I "top up" every three months. For some reason, their web site doesn't allow me to set a reminder for them to email me a week or so before I need to top up. So, even though I have a cash balance, my phone gets temporarily shut off if I don't add $20 every 90 days. Needless to say, I'm at a usage level where I don't use that much, so my cost is also $20 ... every ninety-__one__ days. Still much preferable to going over the minute limit on my old "emergency use" plan, which I would do every 18 months or so. I've finally learned (hey, I'm not an idiot ... wait ...) to set myself a reminder so that I buy the top up cards early enough to avoid temporary shut-off.
Lots of American multinationals pay taxes to foreign governments. In fact, the system of international taxation is mind-numbing. Although I think it might be shooting itself in the balls (by making Indian call centers more expensive), it's not surprising to see a government try to tax economic activity. To steal from Willie Sutton (an irony he certainly would have appreciated), "that's where the money is".
Although the article was written in a foreign language (English with Indian TLAs), I gather that domestic ISPs and telcos are subject to these taxes, so I'm sure that's part of the motivation. I didn't get far enough to see whether anyone considered just allowing the foreign invaders to play by the same tax rules.
Well, I think it's based on households, so it's 5 million households out of 20 million households, I think. The survey indicated that about a quarter of the world's wealthiest 10% are Americans, so that seems consistent (good enough for /., anyway).
I'm surprised more by the share of U.S. GDP that makes it to household income -- significantly less than half, if I calculated correctly. GDP is about $13 Trillion, or $130,000 per household. Average household income is about $46,000. I'm too lazy to research whether this is high or low relative to the rest of the world and relative to the rest of the high-income world.
Well, by definition, the 95th percentile is far from average, so you're actually in agreement with what you claim to distrust. Moreover, you seem to distrust the census because of what politicians did with the results, not because of what the surveys and analyses found.
News flash: politicians do bad things with (or without) the results of lots of studies (or not).
And where did I miss the TV Guide issue that says shows try to mirror real life?
Mod parent up.
I guess "requirements" is a fuzzy enough concept, and even fuzzier with shrink-wrap, since the software company has to serve as proxy for the future users when developing. Before anyone says "but a good software company would engage end-users up front", I agree. But the software company still has to decide which future users to bring into that process (assuming they even bother), and ends up prioritizing the requirements, anyway. I guess it was just too obvious to specify a requirement for a word-processor along the lines of "don't allow the software to be used to trash the computer that I had to buy to run the software".
Writing good, complete requirements is hard.
But I don't think this one was really that hard.
- Chickens, who have been actively trying to discredit most of science in general (evolution, cosmology, climatology, economics
... pretty much all that book-learnin')
- Eggheads, who have often been waaaaaay too defensive and/or ideological in their reactions and unwilling to acknowledge that all sciences have margins of error (some more than others in practical terms)
I'm discouraged about the prospects for reconciling the two entrenched camps, and I don't think discussion of claims and counter-claims is likely to bring any resolution. Each side sees either conspiracy or stupidity (or both) in the other. But maybe we can acknowledge that both the claims and the counter-claims are relatively inexact, compared with, say, predicting the effects of gravity on a falling mass at sea level.Of course, the BBC will find evidence of "stifling". That's what mainstream science does. It stifles theories that aren't convincing to enough experts to make them "accepted". While the evidence for climate change may not be as cohesive as we might want, it seems fair to say that the counter-claims are mostly that there isn't enough evidence to conclude with certainty that we're experiencing global warming. But, you don't see too many counter claims arguing that this is global cooling.
If this issue didn't have such potentially enormous economic effects (another inexact science), maybe we'd get more rational discussion. But that's not going to happen (except on
Let's face it, e-voting is a dumb idea. It's bad solution to a host of problems that never existed outside media and lobbyist FUD and creates more problems than it will ever be worth. "Fixes" to it will make it worse. Want a paper trail? Use paper ballots.
I was intending to post the same question/observation. My guess is that TFA just didn't write that passage very well.
a solution in search of a problem
Megamods; and even if blind voters can't use the same paper ballots as sight-advantaged (is that PC enough?) voters, wtf cares? Braille isn't the same "mechanism" as print, so why don't we re-invent the book in order to enable blind readers to read using the same "mechanism" as sight-advantaged readers? OK, I guess I just opened a can of worms.
Yep; we're in violent agreement on this; I wouldn't reject an argument a priori, but I do filter out noise. In this case, I'm familiar enough with other positions of Falwell that I don't think it's exactly rejection a priori. It might (p=.00000000000000000....1) be the case that the Falwell Commission would come up with a scientific theory worth consideration. But I would prioritize that pretty far down on my list of "things I should consider today because they might turn out to be true/interesting/etc.". In the rare event that Falwell came up with a truly new perspective, it would constitute a (tragic?) a priori forfeit.
More on trust: If you didn't know anything about anthropology (except that it's a science) and didn't even know the names of anyone connected to anthropology, wouldn't you have a more receptive attitude toward a Hawking-appointed commission than toward, say, a Falwell-appointed commission? I'm sure we agree that it would be worth the slight effort needed to identify more appropriate subject matter experts. But even on that dimension, I think I'd trust Hawking to make that effort. I'd probably follow the Reagan doctrine of "trust but verify" with respect to Hawking's selections (as opposed to the substance of the commission's ideas, for which I probably wouldn't have time), but that's still a reasonable degree of trust.
Also, when I talk about trusting the work/conclusions of experts, I think it's fair to say that my degree of trust extends only as far as my level of interest. For issues where my interest is higher, I tend to do more independent investigation than I do where my interest is lower. I guess trust has the same lower case t as truth.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "coherent". If you just mean "hangs together logically", does that mean you "believe" non-Euclidean geometry? I'm not quite sure how "coherent" provides a guiding principle in the face of competing and self-consistent logics.
Consensus is not proof
I didn't mean to imply otherwise. And "heuristic" is an excellent description of what I was trying to describe. The only proof is proof itself, freely available for all to judge for themselves, but I usually know when I'm not smart enough to understand the proof.
you've GOT to apply some kind of additional filter to try and detect ideology or authority
I was short-handing when I said I'd just follow the Hawking Commission. I was going for a different point, namely about trust. In order to accept something, we either need to experience it directly for ourselves (in this case, becoming climatologists) or trust the interpretation of someone else, at least to the extent that we don't have personal knowledge. (In reality, we do a little bit of both on most things.) I was contrasting my level of trust in Hawking as an exemplar of brilliant scientist with Falwell as an exemplar of someone I don't trust on the truth of anything. Yes, I'd look at the composition of the Hawking Commission, and I'd look at what the dissenters had to say. But I wouldn't even bother with a panel of experts appointed by Falwell. In fact, I'd reexamine my level of trust in anyone who agreed to serve on the Falwell Commission. That's the nature of human trust.
I definitely agree with the mods for you, but I think you've also overlooked some important aspects of science.
... well, I wouldn't even be listening ...
The trouble is: how do we make up our minds about the issue if we reject scientific consensus as proof?
I think that, for better and/or worse, consensus typically IS proof in science. The best perspective I can offer on this is from a book I read over 20 years ago, called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn. Someone else has paraphrased it much better than I could. If enough scientists accept a particular perspective (a "paradigm" in Kuhn's terminology), then that's how science will view whatever problem that perspective addresses -- at least until a revolution comes along and changes the dominant paradigm. (BTW, I don't think we'd have the "priesthood" danger that you fear if enough people would "get" Kuhn's perspective on this.)
The only thing I can think of is to understand as much of the issue as we can for ourselves
If a panel of 10 experts selected by Stephen Hawking reached a consensus of 8 or higher, I think I'd go along with them, regardless of my understanding of the details. That doesn't mean I wouldn't want to understand more detail, of course, but it would certainly affect my interpretation of them. If a panel of 10 experts selected by Jerry Falwell reached
I share your desire to understand more for ourselves, but doesn't science as an institution depend on some level of trust in the "experts"? That is a troubling concept but an accurate description of what we need to do to "believe" anything. In the case of science, I rely on the advice of Henri Theil: "models are to be used, not believed". To make an analogy from another "controversial" science: do we need to believe in the theory of evolution? Well, it's pretty dang practical (antibiotics, to name just one application that couldn't go far on creationism). To make a more absurd analogy: do we need to "believe" in Newtonian mechanics? After all, didn't Einstein and others demonstrate that Newton was wrong? I think Newton and Darwin are incredibly useful, even though I don't have an in-depth understanding of their models (beyond high school science).
Unfortunately, right-wing ideologues have done a masterful job of impugning the credibility of science in general and have at least temporarily succeeded in convincing a significant number of people that scientists are liberal activists, thereby implying that any scientific consensus is actually just a liberal agenda. (How they have done this by skillfully manipulating the "liberal media" is a problem for their paradigm.) I think science can and will "win" in this war, but I don't see how anyone can describe the current situation as "game over" in favor of science on the subject of global warming or evolution or whatever the next battlefield will be.
In the field of climate science, I don't even have a toe-hold on the "state of the science", quite apart from the issue of global warming. This makes it difficult to know whether the theory of man-made global warming is "normal science" or a "scientific revolution". However, I do know this about the opponents of the theory: in general, they are not scientists, unless you define creationism or "intelligent design" as science (which I do not).
As you might imagine, one of my (minor) problems with Gore's perspective is his title. "Truth" has no place in science, at least not the kind of truth that needs to be believed, rather than used. Galileo's truth was pretty dang inconvenient (more so for him during his difficult life than for Gore), but eventually it became just too useful to be rejected.
cause whatever moron cooked this up to lose his job
...
Have you ever worked for a large corporation? Those morons usually get promoted, not fired
Also, everything about evolution is controversial?
Not quite. Everything about science in general is "controversial".
Abridged Dictionary
Science - n.: Tool used by liberal activists to promote their radical agenda.
Controversial - adj.: Promoted by the liberal elite media.
Oh, but economics is not "controversial" when it's the right sort (tax cuts, eliminate government except where it helps your constituents).
Is it really that bad in America?
Yes. And the Democrats have had several weeks now and have not fixed it. Golly; I was sure they would make everything better.
I think you're interpreting DocRuby a little too literally, Watts. You're focused on news-as-facts, while DocRuby seems to be more focused on news-as-what-we-care-about, i.e., the editorial side of things. The distinction is a bit blurry, but if you apply what DocRuby said to the specific area of the op-ed page, I think he might even have you convinced.
/. itself. You focus on the fact that it's all about stories reported elsewhere first. But that's not really the point of /. or most blogs, is it? It's about discussing what's news, not about just what's news. And, as my idol, Stephen Colbert, would say, truthiness is more important than newsiness. Especially if it's my truthiness about your newsiness.
... all men are naive (about something, anyway).
Consider the case of
The load of previous comments about naivete don't require much more than a Homer Simpson "Doh!". Blogging has always been about trust. Lots of people are naive. Therefore, all men are Socrates. Wait, that's a different syllogism
It's not so much that we don't want to be our own managing editors; it's that we want to find better managing editors than the one-size-fits-all of the "old days". The web makes that possible, but the downside of "we don't have to rely on (trust) XXX to filter our content" is "we can't rely on (trust) XXX to filter our content".
... and not just because of the re-release of all the SW episodes this past week on cable.
Good insights on both "sides", but ultimately, I think you need to decide where your passions are, while also remembering that your degree is only one factor (sometimes a big one) in determining your career options. It's a factor that diminishes with each career move you'll make, too.
I'm definitely old school in my philosophy: follow the path that gives you the most depth in the tools you think you really want to use, but remember that they are just tools, and you'll have to figure out how to apply your knowledge to something completely different in 5/10/20 years, anyway. If you have a chance to give yourself just as good an edge for gaming companies with whatever jobs you'll have while getting the degree, I'd weigh the specific gaming degree a little less, accordingly.
Since this is a Masters program you're deliberating, pay lots of attention to the specifics of both faculty and student body composition. You're going to spend a lot of time with these people; make sure they are the right ones. (If your only objective in getting the degree is career advancement, "right ones" probably means faculty most tightly connected with your dream company/ies. But your criteria should vary with the complexity of your objectives.) Can you interview other students as well as faculty? I don't mean suit-and-tie interview; I mean have lunch or a beer (or both).