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Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

theatlantic.com

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Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#131

Post by justinlaster »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #106
virmundi wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know the science of genetics (as well as a layman should). I read Super Pigs and Wonder Corn as child. I'm actually pro-genetic engineering. What I don't know, because I don't have source data, is what will spliced in gene based foods (that's what I mean by GMO, not the equivocation straw man people throw up in the Mendel sense) do to both the human GI tract and to the environment at a macro level. Until then, I'd…

You last paragraph, but for a few words would be the exact same thing I expect to hear from a climate change "skeptic"

No it isn't. He's advocating for publication of data. No where does that align with a climate change "skeptic"

Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#132

Post by EdHominem »

hueving wrote: post #59
jackmott wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The republican party is simply unacceptable on many levels for any intelligent, honest person. I realize that you, like many people, simply do not see it that way, and imagine that there is some kind of equivalence or near equivalence in how corrupt and crazy both parties are, but most of us don't. What we are seeing is horrific, a party that is against reason and goodness and civility at almost every step. They pick…

>The republican party is simply unacceptable on many levels for any intelligent, honest person. Anyone who would say this with a straight face isn't intelligent or isn't honest, so they can't speak for intelligent honest people. >but most of us don't. Who exactly do you think you are speaking for? Identity politics and strong liberal populations in universities has made it social suicide for anyone to admit they have…

Sorry, but this Trump thing really demonstrated the lie behind all that. His race-baiting and so forth make him unfit as a person let alone a leader. His lies and crimes were clear before he got elected and yet pretty much every republican obediently fell in line behind him.

Obviously their personal power was worth more than whatever platform they ran on originally. The entire party has no integrity.

> Anyone who would say this with a straight face isn't intelligent or isn't honest, so they can't speak for intelligent honest people.

Oh yeah? How many people were at the inauguration? Trump/Sean/Kelly's words are direct and obvious lies that contradict video of the event from multiple sources.

How's that a party for intelligent honest people?

> Identity politics and strong liberal populations in universities has made it social suicide for anyone to admit they have any doubts about the Democratic party.

Says the non-liberal who isn't at university and read it from a Facebook-linked news article. Alternate facts from an alternate universe.

I know you didn't pay any attention to the Democratic primaries but nobody holds the democratic party to be sacred. Nobody calls it the Grand Old Party or in any other way reveres the institution. That hero worship of the past is a Republican thing.

Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#133

Post by EdHominem »

curun1r wrote: post #119
croon wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all for changing parties from within, but with: * Life starts at inception * Man-made climate change * Evolution (taught in school) * Not a single payer healthcare system when comparing to any industrialized country on earth * Anti-consumer ethics in FCC, compared to any other industrialized country on earth * Tax policies clearly aimed at keeping money flowing upwards, only very slightly veiled, yet again compar…

Don't lump abortion in with those other issues that involve denial of either rational thought or scientific evidence. It's an issue where rational people can disagree. The only way that it verges on that is in the fact that people will try to do it anyways, in ways that are historically very dangerous. In that way, it becomes like prohibition of drugs and legalization becomes a harm-reduction strategy. But, like drug…

The "but then I wouldn't have been born" argument misses that you have billions of potential first-cousins who never were born.

Your grandmother would have had a less assuredly bad life (no idea if it would have been better, but we can only hope...) and someone else would be having this anthropic discussion.

> But it really bothers me when people like you who've likely never had any personal connection to the issue

Cough.

> imply that only one side of the debate is rational.

Well, look around at those who believe what you do. Most of them do so because of religion, which by definition is irrational.

As an opinion, you're welcome to yours. As policy, it comes with all the rest of the baggage of the religious.

> But, like drugs, that doesn't mean that it's a fundamentally good thing.

But, like TV, that doesn't mean we should ban it. Control, control, control. Why the need to control?

Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#134

Post by virmundi »

tyleraldrich wrote: post #127
virmundi wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't guarantee you that. I can't promise every person you pass on the street won't kill you by stabbing you in the eye with a pencil. I can't promise that no one will throw you into an oncoming bus. As to fear about planes or fear in general, the foundation of fear, especially such that motivates policy, should be based on odds. I am terrified when I fly. I still fly. I know, deep down, that I have a higher chance…

"the foundation of fear, especially such that motivates policy, should be based on odds." That is a fair point and a rational reason. However, it's convenient to say "We've always had guns, the chance of randomly getting shot in the street is low, therefore we should keep them." What is the chance of randomly getting shot if guns were never legal in the first place (e.g. an American in which no 2nd amendment was pres…

Eye-balling the chart, I think the answer is that the EU vs USA is pretty even (maybe the EU being more) and they have stricter gun laws. I did that by guessing percentages for all the EU countries in the first graph. So based on my interpretation of your statistics, the an answer is it legality does not appear to make a difference.

I do believe that splitting the EU into constituent parts for the purposes of statistics comparing the US is disingenuous. The EU has the same issues that the US has. It has multiple countries with different policy just as the US has different states.

Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#135

Post by EdHominem »

tyleraldrich wrote: post #115
virmundi wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There fear is unfounded. None of them have been attacked, accidentally shot or harmed by guns directly. Their fear goes so far as to them becoming hostile at the thought of them or myself carrying. They don't want anyone own this tool. Guns, like all other power tools, should be respected. I carry daily. I respect the responsibility I bring on myself in doing so. I respect what the tool can do. Many weekend I use 1-5…

Guns should be respected, and thank you for respecting yours. Now, can you guarantee that every person I pass on the street respects their gun as much as you do, and they won't misuse this "power tool" they have the right to own? If you cannot guarantee that, I don't think you can say anybodies fear is unfounded. What you just said is like saying a fear of airplanes is unfounded because all pilots respect their aircr…

> I don't think you can say anybodies fear is unfounded.

I also can't guarantee they won't get diabetes or heart disease, or fall off a ladder, or be hit by one of the passing cars. All of which are vastly more likely to happen than being shot, which itself is an order of magnitude more likely than an innocent person being shot. (ie, not robbing a drug dealer, etc)

Dead is dead, and a car gets you there just as quickly. Focusing on one is silly. (Unless you're a crossing-guard, for instance.)

I normally see the irrational fear (crypto-racism) argument from people who want to limit refugees. You've got a higher chance of dying from someone falling off a ladder onto you than being killed by a terrorist hiding as a refugee. I'm not saying you're a crypto-racist, I'm saying this sloppy thinking is used to support other nonsense arguments because it's so empty you can use it to support anything.

Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#136

Post by Pxtl »

maverick_iceman wrote: post #22
mkaziz wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how anti-science republicans tend to be, I'm not surprised.

You forget that Bernie Sanders wants mandatory labeling of GMO foods. That's also anti-science scaremongering.

Bernie Sanders is hardly the mainstream democratic party. He barely considers himself part of it. Anti-scientific attitudes on global warming are mainstream among Republican leadership, while fringe among Democrats.

Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#137

Post by tzs »

virmundi wrote: post #29
croon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When science is a partisan issue, what else can you do?

First, realize that science is not just a partisan issue. The liberals in the United States hate science just as much when it's not on their side. They don't reason things through. I can't find it but there was an NPR story about a teach whose black students performed worse than the white students. The school's response, "Racist test!" The teacher reviewed the test, found nothing racist and looked further. The school…

I'm pretty sure you cannot find that story about the lead poisoning because it predates the public internet. I recall reading it in the late 80's or early '90s in either a newspaper or a magazine.

Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#138

Post by nonbel »

redler wrote: post #109
hueving wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If "progressive causes" == science backed causes, then go right ahead. No, "progressive causes" will be whatever is in vogue in the party. So anti-GMO with labeling campaigns and leverage the scientists to cast doubt on their safety would be very possible. Perhaps it will be to convince people that science has shown that people with more money are evil and should be jailed based on the UC Berkley study with the BMWs…

Anti-vax lunacy trickles through both parties, and gets little mainstream traction (although that may change with Trump injecting oxygen into the movement). But if you're running as a pro-science Democrat who is not an anti-GMO bandwagoneer, you will generally not find yourself blackballed by the party or opposed on your flank by billionaire string-pullers obsessed with purity tests on this issue. The Democratic part…

>"Accordingly, if a Democrat is in power and the findings of a science-based agency contradict some policy desire, they would sigh and fret and perhaps try to initiate other studies to see if there's any other way to align their policy goals with reality. But you would not see scientists and entire agencies of thousands of workers gagged, studies removed, data destroyed, conclusions banned. You would not see them scrambling to align reality with their goals and literally banning facts. It's little exaggeration to say the Trump administration is now engaged in book-burning."

So if one political party is in power they will ensure BS results are generated to support whatever they wanted to do anyway, if the other is in power they get rid of any results they don't like?

Both strategies act to lower the signal/noise ratio, just by different means. One adds to the noise, the other removes the signal. Sounds like a great place to do research, the people funding it are actively creating obstacles for the scientist at every turn.

Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#139

Post by tyleraldrich »

virmundi wrote: post #134
tyleraldrich wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the foundation of fear, especially such that motivates policy, should be based on odds." That is a fair point and a rational reason. However, it's convenient to say "We've always had guns, the chance of randomly getting shot in the street is low, therefore we should keep them." What is the chance of randomly getting shot if guns were never legal in the first place (e.g. an American in which no 2nd amendment was pres…

Eye-balling the chart, I think the answer is that the EU vs USA is pretty even (maybe the EU being more) and they have stricter gun laws. I did that by guessing percentages for all the EU countries in the first graph. So based on my interpretation of your statistics, the an answer is it legality does not appear to make a difference. I do believe that splitting the EU into constituent parts for the purposes of statist…

What chart were you looking at? It seems like you might have been interpreting the statistics presented incorrectly. The first chart shows the US having ~3.5 deaths per 100k people from firearms.

Each other EU country has somewhere in the range of .5 deaths per 100k people. An eyeball average would be .5 deaths per 100k people throughout Europe. Are you trying to add the bars up? Because if that's the case, your interpretation of the statistics presented is wrong.

Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#140

Post by richmarr »

virmundi wrote: post #93
richmarr wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of their reason for hating guns fall on "they're scary". That's not scientific. Well, only if the fear was unfounded. Your analysis seems a little shallow there.

There fear is unfounded. None of them have been attacked, accidentally shot or harmed by guns directly. Their fear goes so far as to them becoming hostile at the thought of them or myself carrying. They don't want anyone own this tool. Guns, like all other power tools, should be respected. I carry daily. I respect the responsibility I bring on myself in doing so. I respect what the tool can do. Many weekend I use 1-5…

> None of them have been attacked...

Calling people's fear of guns "unscientific" based on them not having been personally a victim of gun violence is nonsense.

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