231–240 of 380 posts
Uh, although 'crowded' is leading the witness, "The earth is like a crowded spaceship with limited room and resources" IS an observable fact.
I once sat in on an academic research meeting where the PI of the group stated "If there are any Republicans in the room, leave, you are fired." They felt comfortable enough saying this even though there were obviously people there from outside the group and nothing like that could be kept secret.
So, did you get up and leave out of solidarity with the Republicans? If someone pulled that stunt here I'd be out of there. Politics are people's private business (unless they hold a very visible function, then it becomes relevant again but for folks just doing a job somewhere politics should be a non issue).
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Judging one's work by anything other than the work itself is unscientific.
The purpose of science is to generate correct beliefs about the world. If you believe in nonsense, that's very poor scientific work.
Non sequitur. What you believe is separated from your work. Just like when you were a kid and your math homework had nothing to do with the fact that you believed wrestling was real.
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There's nothing new about this. Some people stopped associating with you because they didn't like your opinions, a story as old as humanity itself.
No. The new part is that even people I didn't offend with my sensibilities are not associating with me on an automated basis.
I offer as a hypothesis the belief that graduate study programs, even in hard sciences such as physics, aren't looking for scholars, but disciples.
my supervisor let me do anything I want as long as there were a few publications at the end (graduation requirement, and in academia the only way to get jobs), other supervisors just look for cheap work for their own project (~robots). I have a friend from the US who worked full-time for 7 years on her PhD and published only one paper! The rest was work on the supervisor's stuff. I would've switched supervisor after 2 years at the latest (but hindsight, 20/20, yaddayadda)
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I think you can dismiss them as less sane, however. You don't have to treat wacky beliefs as equally valid alternative viewpoints. There's a lot of totally supernatural stuff religious people believe that didn't / doesn't happen. The moral and community aspects are generally okay.
My sanity is perfectly fine, thanks, and my beliefs are not beholden to the standard you define as "wacky."
I agree with his other points though: liberal bias in science is a great danger and needs to be removed.
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Being brilliant doesn't necessarily make you a good scientist. Skepticism is a core quality of being a scientist. Believing in something without proof is contrary to being skeptical. Thus, believing in god or Elvis are anti-scientific beliefs.
> Believing in something without proof is contrary to being skeptical. You underestimate the number of scientists with absurd beliefs. There are people who believe in parallel universes, dark matter, spooky action at a distance, wormholes, time travel, simulating the human brain in silico, more than 3 spatial dimensions, strong artificial intelligence, aliens, etc. Dealing with the absurd is a fundamental part of the…
Scientists do not believe in parallel universes, dark matter and all the other stuff you mentioned. They hypothesize about them, then they try to formulate theories and then they try to test these theories, by means of experiments.
When they do get to perform comprehensive experiments then, depending on the results, finally know what the truth is.
Not so much the same as with the beardy invisible man living in the sky now is it?
Well, at least they weren't being politically correct, right? Personally, I look down on people who are members of any political party. I truly try not to be biased, but it's pretty hard not to generalize. People who seek out association with amorphous groups just seem intellectually weak, lazy, or worse. The irony is that I'll probably be down-voted for stating my opinion (the way things are these days). Edit: Actua…
Way to have a holier-than-though attitude right off the bat. "Oh, look at me, I am so misunderstood for having OPINIONS" Your opinions are that it's OK to casually look down on people for having political views. I think that's a legit reason for someone to think that your opinions are full of it and are worth downvoting.
Look, you have to understand that I grew up in the 80s and 90s. Having an opinion and expressing it was a big thing, back then. But, these days, it's all about conformity (or seems so, to these eyes).
As someone who grew up in a strongly red area and with beliefs in that vein, I know EXACTLY the kind of exclusion that the author is talking about to a painful degree. For anyone who wants to experience it, walk into any Reddit discussion and tell everyone you're a devout Christian and watch the pseudo intellectuals exercise their "openness." And yes it's true I'm far from the most religious person there is, and I st…
Ditto. The left made the personal political, not the right. They're the ones who say we're not allowed to have jobs if we think the wrong thoughts or have the wrong opinions. Even the worst bible-thumping rednecks I know (many, many cousins of both sides of the family) will agree to disagree and behave in a civil manner in the presence of those with whom they disagree. When I was living in San Francisco, I've been li…
Yeah, like that crazy leftist Joe McCarthy, and his modern-day ilk that try to get teachers fired for being gay or atheist.
No party has a monopoly on nutbags; it just seems that way because of selection bias.