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posted by on Thursday December 08 2016, @10:33PM   Printer-friendly
from the more-like-a-massacre dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 08 2016, @11:07PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 08 2016, @11:07PM (#438913)

    Every person is a new save, they start with no knowledge, just a brain that is good at learning.

    This is why misinformation campaigns are so dangerous, kids can grow up believing in nonsense, or worse disregarding every authoritative source as part of "the system". The anti-intellectual campaign is pretty heavy, and people lose their faith in science credibility due to a lack of understanding paired with institutional lying.

    The solution is simple, create a robust education system that does not require the Department of Education. However, that is not what the powerful want, they want public education to produce "good enough" citizens and not truly inventive or creative thinkers.

    My dream is to have a system that all public education teachers contribute to and develop in a single year thousands and thousands of sample lessons. Pair that with a robust testing system that can scan handwritten text and we could soon have a system where students explore and learn on their own with teachers to help guide them. One size never fits all.

    Hope? Well, in the short term we will have to wait and see how crazy the corporatocracy really wants to get. Long term, unless we hit WW3 in a major way (nukes and bio weapons) then we will be alright. Eventually people see through the bullshit once it gets thick enough and the pendulum will swing.

    Personally I would be quite happy if we used our big brains to create a more equitable society. 90% of people are decent folks (in any given group) so there is really no big reason why a more utopian society can't be created. On a world scale we still have some major growing up to do, I guess 50+ years (if things go well) and we should be on a safer line.

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  • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday December 09 2016, @01:46AM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Friday December 09 2016, @01:46AM (#438962) Homepage

    Yeah, common-core horrifies the hell out of me too. It's not a bad idea in principle (industry standards and all) but in (deliberate) practice it's not only horrendous but creepy.

    Only a handful of years ago did I consider home-schooling parents lunatics...now, it would be what I would do if I had a kid and didn't have enough money to send them to a private school that avoided that bullshit. In fact, common-core is one of the reasons why I changed my mind about breeding, along with letting kids play alone outside being considered "child neglect."

    But let's discuss "fake news." The advent of "fake news" is deliberate. The establishment has failed at convincing the public that their way is the right way, so now they are resorting to a scorched-Earth tactic -- attempting to convince all that every way is the wrong way, and jamming the infosphere with increasing amounts of noise. If successful (whether or not it works follows a mind-by-mind basis), it will enable them to flood the infosphere with anything and then let them arbitrarily decide what is right and wrong.

    They're in an awkward spot because, since the loss of Hillary, they can't just run into the offices of Zerohedge and Drudgereport and gun everybody down like they did Vince Foster and also [...] and also [...] with suicides by 3 shots to the back of the head with a bolt-action rifle.

    The battle is not yet won. The lunatic bastards must be stopped.

       

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09 2016, @04:55AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09 2016, @04:55AM (#439022)

      common-core is one of the reasons why I changed my mind about breeding

      Damn, I guess every cloud does have a silver lining.

      Joking aside, I do agree with you.

      • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday December 09 2016, @06:43AM

        by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday December 09 2016, @06:43AM (#439047) Journal

        Modded +1 Funny because we've not got a "+1 Feckin' Savage, M8" mod yet :D

        --
        I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09 2016, @04:09AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09 2016, @04:09AM (#439011)

    I've been thinking that the only way forward is to hit WW3 in a major way. Cleanse the world with fire. Let people be horrified at the power man commands when left on its own to carelessly turn to destruction. In the confusion may come cooperation, united by rebuilding.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 09 2016, @08:06PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday December 09 2016, @08:06PM (#439364) Journal

      I've been thinking that the only way forward is to hit WW3 in a major way.

      Maybe there's something wrong with your thinking when it requires killing billions of people. Maybe we shouldn't do that, eh?