381–390 of 883 posts
As academic world starts to act more like a religious church, and losing grip on being the good pastors of science, the actual scientific community will detach themselves and leave the academic dogmatists with a label of "scientism" at best.
The astrophysical sciences make me feel vulnerable, insignificant, insecure, and irrelevant relative to the vast expanse of the universe. I demand an end to this harm.
Telescopes evoke phallic associations and so promote the male dominance. The world demands female-friendly optics. #defundastronomy #cancelgalileo
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I never understood this perspective, that aborting fetuses whose prospects are guaranteed to be worse, is somehow wrong or even oppression, and somehow oppression of a whole group of other people completely unrelated to the family. If me and my wife are planning a baby, that's between us. There is no outside group that has a say or is somehow being oppressed when we decide that we do not want a child who is going to…
> There is no outside group that has a say or is somehow being oppressed when we decide that we do not want a child I guess you're counting the child him/herself as an "outside group" in this process too.
There's so much to learn. We don't even really understand simple lichens.
As such, "Science" has no overlap with concepts such as respect, dignity, or rights. Science exists outside of those concepts in, as my own definition above, it is a search for the truth of a situation without fear nor favour. Objectivity, as pure as possible.
Subjectivity; the interpretation of scientific results is where opportunists may see avenues for attacking their perceived enemies. This is outside of "science".
Having said all that, however, there may come a responsibility in the presentation of scientific results to curtail potential misinterpretations, but then also, science should not be delayed whilst considering the myriad creative forms of malevolence humanity may take lest nothing would ever be published. Stuck in the mud.
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It's interesting that the linked policy says almost the exact opposite of Fermi's statement, implying that ignorance is sometimes better than knowledge: "...considerations of harm can occasionally supersede the goal of seeking or sharing new knowledge, and a decision not to undertake or not to publish a project may be warranted."
Well, sometimes information can cause harm. For example, revealing a terminal diagnosis to a patient could lead to suicide. I don't think science should be censored, scientific inquiry should continue with integrity regardless of what people think. What I think is people who can't handle it should not have access to the truths revealed. I generally believe in unrestricted free information but I've been rethinking tha…
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> was immaculately conceived, walked on water, turned water into wine, all things that you and I know are inconsistent with reality. All those things are completely consistent with reality. Every year there are virgin births[0] (not immaculate conceptions[1], which is a term specific to the birth of the Virgin Mary herself), water turning into wine[2], and people walking on water[3]. I think what you mean is, the spe…
You're right. People forget things like: Jesus' disciples witnessed his miracles and wrote about them, other nonbiblical scholars wrote about Jesus and his miracles, there was recorded evidence to his death, there were witnesses to his ascension, 11 of the 12 apostles died for believing that Jesus was God (the 12th was Peter, marooned on Patmos, also for believing Jesus was God)
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I think your view on this is being influenced by the limitations of the language you're using. When a religious person says they "believe" something, it means they operate as if it were true even though they have no evidence to indicate it as such (a.k.a. the god of the gaps). When a scientist says they "believe" something, it means all evidence gathered so far indicates that it is true, but if more data comes in and…
Yet your opinion falls in the same criteria on limitations of the language you're confining it to. "believe in science" can mean what you said, i.e "it means all evidence gathered so far indicates that it is true, but if more data comes in and a different conclusion is drawn, then the belief should be abandoned"; however, it was also exemplified during COVID as "You're not allowed to question it no matter what merit…
Is this what happened, though? Outside of the politicization of COVID, the majority of the conversation that was anywhere near this was more simply "if you are going to question the people who are providing evidence, you must provide evidence to the contrary". It wasn't that science was untouchable and the change in guidance proves that not only was that not the case but it was shown that science was not untouchable and regularly changed with new information so long as that information was backed by evidence.
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> That there is a genetically distinct haplotype group that corresponds to many folk that share these traits with me, is sufficient This is what race means. You are taking the same referent and giving it a different designator.
If that's the case I'm sure you can provide a link to a dictionary stating as much. In reality, such haplotype groups, when they even exist, do not correlate with what people call "race".
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> What happens when we stop agreeing on what the “good” is? Did we ever agree? I always felt like Democracy is some kind of status quo between the incompatible.
In the 90s before mass internet adoption, it sure felt like it. We had disagreements, but nothing compared to what we see today.
In the past, people's resentment was mostly expressed in casual ways because a society tends to suppress crazy behaviour.
But the social media business profits from this social resentment.