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