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According to our dear friends over at Wired, we are losing the war on science. This interview with Shawn Otto, author of The War on Science [no-script hostile] ranges from the American presidential election to Albert Einstein:
His new book The War on Science explores ways that citizens can fight back against a creeping tide of anti-science nonsense promulgated by everyone from postmodern academics to greedy oil companies to nature-loving hippies. An important step is to make journalists understand that science and opinion should not be given equal weight.
"The purpose of a free press in a democracy is to hold the powerful accountable to the evidence," Otto says. "Journalists have really lost sight of that purpose, of their entire reason for being."
Fair enough. But things have gotten worse?
He fears that the war on science will only intensify once Donald Trump takes office in January. "I'm very concerned, as is the rest of the global scientific community," Otto says.
As a personal aside, I find it unlikely that the public, those who executed Socrates, burned the Library of Alexandria, and imprisoned Antoinio Gramsci, could fall for such a diaphanous fraud as the Republican attack on science! People back then were truly and profoundly stupid. But people today have the internet, and facebook, and a total misunderstanding of science, politics, ethics, and math. So, this will not end well? Help me, Soylentils, give me hope.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 08 2016, @10:51PM
Rita: You think Einstein walked around thinking everyone was a bunch of dumb-shits?
Joe: Yeah. Hadn't thought of that.
Rita: Now you know why he built that bomb.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Zz9zZ on Thursday December 08 2016, @11:42PM
A terrible quote that mischaracterizes Einstein. Usually its the mid-high intelligence types who fall back on cliches like "kill the dumbshits". They are smart enough to see the problems, but too dumb to see the bigger picture so they blame "those people" for their problems.
I like this one myself:
The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
We entered the atomic age with the average human stuck a hundred years back, and the outmoded processes we have are just starting to really reach the breaking point.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09 2016, @12:05AM
Einstein did not build the bomb. He signed a letter, against his pacificts principles, and he later regretted it.
So the characters are the ignorant, and that scene is not a mischaracterization but a damn lie. As false as saying Hitler was black or some other nonsense.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09 2016, @12:08AM
Meh, Hitler was irrelevant after the UN un-Nazied the world.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday December 09 2016, @01:04AM
The UN is all for Nazifying the world, just with a different kind of Nazi - Islamic immigrants.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday December 09 2016, @03:39AM
The UN isn't for or against anything, its member states have their own agendas. The fact that it is headquartered in New York and has a few permanent members of the security council does give some sense of who carries more weight in its decisions, but, all in all, its decisions do reflect the will of its member states.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09 2016, @02:03PM
The UN was created to install the New World Order. It is against nationalism. They allow you to call yourself 'nationalist' as long as it is functionally the same as 'globalist'. You get immigrants all over the place who are forced out of their homes by Khazar vermin.
The Khazars then use the MSM to blame someone and not report facts when needed. They are good at passing blame. X is to blame for Y. You are to blame for Z. We (excluding Khazars) are destroying the world, etc. All of that is nonsense. You and I aren't destroying the world, the Khazars are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09 2016, @05:20PM
Ah [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09 2016, @06:10PM
Ahh, jew created wikipedia page to show how much he cares about jews.
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Friday December 09 2016, @06:14PM
Oh, what a sad state of affairs when Anonymous Solylentils are arguing with characters in the movie "Idiocracy" as if "Idiocracy" was not fiction . . . Oh, crap! Be right back, I have to run down the street to see what the name of the burger place is. How long was I asleep?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 14 2016, @11:49PM
Is it still Fuddruckers?
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday December 15 2016, @12:01AM
So far! But I don't expect it will last. Just saw announcement of a new TV show: "Ow, my Trump!" The end is nigh!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15 2016, @12:45AM
He was a 'tard and now he's a president! He sure put the smackdown on Vince McMahon [youtube.com] at Wrestlemania 23!! He starred in an awesome porno. [nydailynews.com] Coolest president ever!!! Hi 5s bro!!!! 🙏🙏🙏🙏
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09 2016, @01:15AM
Usually its the mid-high intelligence types who fall back on cliches like "kill the dumbshits".
Usually people are not serious when they say that.
(Score: 2) by Bogsnoticus on Friday December 09 2016, @05:43AM
Exactly. Truly intelligent people realise we need dumbfucks to drive the garbage trucks or take our burrito orders.
Genius by birth. Evil by choice.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tftp on Friday December 09 2016, @06:40AM
Truly intelligent people realise we need dumbfucks to drive the garbage trucks or take our burrito orders.
I do not address how serious or sarcastic this statement is. I will address just the statement itself. The saddest fact here is that it's false. It's false for quite a while, and it is getting falser with every passing year. Intelligent people do not need peons to drive trucks or make burritos. Intelligent people can make robots to do that for them - and they do. They start with the easier challenges, of course, like automatic telephone switches or electronic mail (compared to paper mail.) But this process is spreading. Soon there will be no job for anyone who is not very smart. Soon after that the society -- namely, the people who matter -- will be asking themselves what to do with "useless eaters". But no matter what you decide in the end, people cannot remain humans without psychological comfort of being needed, wanted, useful. You can throw basic income at them, but what will happen then? How many will be able to find themselves in arts? Very few, arts are not for everyone. Even literacy will decline - it is already declining. You will have a large percentage of uneducated, unemployable, idle hands who are itching for something.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 09 2016, @08:32AM
But no matter what you decide in the end, people cannot remain humans without psychological comfort of being needed, wanted, useful.
By whom? I doubt there's many people out there who need to be needed by me. You speak of problems that could be solved by fellow people with the problems.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Saturday December 10 2016, @07:41AM
By whom?
On a blog - by anyone who reads the blog. This is why we communicate. There is no other reason to participate in discussions; we aren't paid per post. Actually, it's the other way around. Perhaps, true hermits exist - but by definition we wouldn't know anything about them.
You speak of problems that could be solved by fellow people with the problems.
Curiously, that's how street gangs get started by multiple people "with problems" seeking mutual confirmation.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 10 2016, @07:39PM
You speak of problems that could be solved by fellow people with the problems.
Curiously, that's how street gangs get started by multiple people "with problems" seeking mutual confirmation.
I'll note two things. First, I don't have a problem with the idea of gangs. The problem comes in that they are ostracized and illegitimate which I believe we probably agree on. Thus, they have nothing to lose or to gain by playing nice with society.
But I think that has to do more with the political marginalization of alternatives to official government law enforcement. A lot of people have problems with vigilantism, for example. But what happens when you live in an area that has grossly inadequate or corrupt police? Who enforces laws then? Gang formation is a logical consequence both for mutual defense and exploitation of the situation.
Second, gangs often have to work around the very laws that supposedly help us. For example, there was a study done some point in the 80s or 90s on the economics of what I believe is a Chicago gang [uchicago.edu] (the authors are deliberately vague on any characteristics that could be used to identify the gang) over a four year period. At the beginning the pay for most of the gang members was well below minimum wage and most of the young adults (the neighborhood in question was almost exclusively African American). And obviously with the law breaking (they were dealing crack cocaine) and violent and often lethal conflicts with nearby rival gangs, they were definitely not following OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) regulations.
The official unemployment for the census area was 35% for males (half that for females). So it appears this gang was a major employer, particularly of young black males aged 16-22 (they apparently were employing 80% of all such over the full period of time).
My point behind this is that we had this very situation in the past, and they resolved it by outright ignoring a lot of laws including a variety of laws meant to help workers. This is the sort of thing that informed my attitudes towards labor policy. For example, if minimum wage laws (a particular peeve of mine) were so important to a working economy, then why did we have so many poor black males flock to gang activity which paid under the table less than minimum wage (for the first couple of years of the study, pay improved by the end of the study as the gang's status and earning potential improved) and involved a huge amount of risk both legal and health-wise far beyond anything a legit minimum wage job would offer?
Perhaps many of these people would be better off working a job below current minimum wage which gave them real work skills and experience rather than prison time or death?
So anyway, my overall thinking is would we see all this insistence on removing humans from tasks that they're well suited for, if we weren't trying so hard to make employing people costly and risky to employers in the first place? I think a telling sign is that when people organize in gangs, one of the first things they do is outright ignore regulations even as guidance for their own policies.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday December 11 2016, @08:24AM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by quintessence on Friday December 09 2016, @09:16AM
Even in an age of 3D printing and the like, there is still a demand for handmade items, several of which command a better price than the best of the best from automation. Those jobs, although limited, are never going away.
In fact (or at least as the theory goes), those very same people should have a life of relative luxury when the price of items drops below the floor due to efficiencies, and as long as the have some reasonable subsistence like BI, they should be able to supplement their incomes with even greater ease. I mean fuck, making Youtube videos is a career choice now. You can't tell me they are all hyperintelligent.
You can't address psychosocial needs at the expense of physiological needs (well, you can, but we call those people addicts). Especially now, there are more opportunities to be needed than ever before, and with the ease of not wondering where your next meal will come from.
If people can't take that as a starting point towards a freedom most have only dreamed about; there's no helping them. Self-actualization requires effort, not just waiting around for enlightenment in-between rounds of Call of Duty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @02:46PM
So let them play video games, read books, watch movies, play sports, go for walks, etc, etc. People dare to call themselves smarter than them but they cant find at least a hundred things to occupy their time.
PS: Buy shares in a condom manufacturer.