51–60 of 132 posts
According this administration forever chemicals are good but vaccines for deadly diseases are bad.
Any position you take that gets people to argue with you. Engagement is the currency of politics, today more than ever.
Why do problems caused by anti scientific behavior occur in a country like the United States, which has so many outstanding scientists? From a third party perspective, I wonder if it's because, as stratification has progressed in the US, distrust of the social class that scientists belong to has led people to deny even their achievements. Why does distrust arise toward the institutions and hierarchies that speak for…
My parents have been religiously listening to the likes of Rush Limbaugh since the early 90's on a daily basis. I recall listening to it on our drive into work together. 30+ years of hearing whatever the tv/radio host du jour says, without critical thinking, taking it at face value, 8+ hours every day. In the car to work, radio on while working, drive home, and then turn the TV on till bed time. Then take a drive thr…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree with Isaac Asimov on that point. The reason is that professors and universities have failed to communicate that knowledge persuasively to the public. In other words, it's establishment science. They ignore opinions that oppose corporations, and they give grants to research that suits corporate tastes. This pattern keeps appearing in the United States. So it seems that public experience and word of mouth ha…
Nah, I don't agree. I don't see how the US is special in this regard, yet anti-vaxers, flat earthers, fundies, conspiracy nutjobs, sovereign citizens, and every other flavor of anti-intellectual crank are a distinctly US phenomenon.
“What did children do before vaccines!?” They died, Kayleigh. There were just 9 other siblings to see who survived
Why do problems caused by anti scientific behavior occur in a country like the United States, which has so many outstanding scientists? From a third party perspective, I wonder if it's because, as stratification has progressed in the US, distrust of the social class that scientists belong to has led people to deny even their achievements. Why does distrust arise toward the institutions and hierarchies that speak for…
The GOP has fully adopted the alt-right playbook. Here's how it works:
1. Publicly announce that you hold an overtly bad position.
2. Reasonable people begin to argue with you.
3. Bicker with them about it instead of arguing.
4. Illustrate that your in-group is divided from their out-group along the axis of this position.
5. Profit from the increased engagement.
First, the politicians and talking heads start the cycle. Everyone who considers themselves part of that in-group copies the behavior. Because engagement drives voting, people in power hold overtly bad positions; guaranteeing that people from the out-group will argue with them. The cycle cannot be stopped.
Why do problems caused by anti scientific behavior occur in a country like the United States, which has so many outstanding scientists? From a third party perspective, I wonder if it's because, as stratification has progressed in the US, distrust of the social class that scientists belong to has led people to deny even their achievements. Why does distrust arise toward the institutions and hierarchies that speak for…
Biology in particular but also chemistry is often taught with rote memorization at its heart, and it’s easy to lose sight while getting the current thinking jammed into working memory that in the bigger picture, science is a process. Fast forward to various stages of adulthood, and when ‘science’ (not actually a thing as a whole but presented as such in the media), in light of new information, changes course or updates its priors on something you’d accepted as fact, and you might perceive scientists, a group of whom you may know none, as condescending and overconfident. In fact scientists disagree over everything and doubt way more than the public would believe but that’s often a footnote to the way the story of the scientific process is presented.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any position you take that gets people to argue with you. Engagement is the currency of politics, today more than ever.
I never saw it through this lens before but you might be right.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJA_jUddXvY7v0VkYRbAN...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any position you take that gets people to argue with you. Engagement is the currency of politics, today more than ever.
I never saw it through this lens before but you might be right.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems like there’s a pretty strong parallel with the failure of the screw worm eradication programme. It just became a thing we did, rather than the absolute miracle it was - like vaccination - and then from complacency grows suspicion, for again, as you say, few people alive remember how it was.
Well the screw worm thing happened because Elon Musk hired a bunch of twitter nazis to put the government through a wood chipper. This is the end result of decades snake oil moguls empowered by orin hatch and then turbo charged by people being furious that they weren't allowed to go to TGI Fridays for six months.
What did Hatch do (I mostly know him as the paid servant of the copyright industry)?