Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your comments come off as ridiculously condescending
It is meant to be. Stubborn ignorance deserves ridicule.
ugh, didn't really think the "tough guy i am very smart" thing was on HN
America's obsession with STEM education is dangerous
81–90 of 96 posts
Re: America's obsession with STEM education is dangerous
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Catholic doctrine for example is quite clear a belief in evolution does not contradict church doctrine. Of course they are, they have to adapt. Who would go to church if they still insisted that the sun revolves around the earth? Just goes to show that God begins where true knowledge ends.
You are aware the Big Bang and many other scientific principles/theories were brought about by Catholic priests right? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre Science and religion are not intrinsically at odds with each other please stop spreading that extreme non-sense
They absolutely are, and pretending otherwise doesn't make it so.
Scientific descriptions of reality are required to adhere to strong principles of information conservation. Religious beliefs are, both by definition and in practice, required to reject such principles. If that isn't 'incompatibility,' then the word is meaningless.
Re: America's obsession with STEM education is dangerous
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
And what, exactly, do you attribute the drop in infant mortality rates to, if not scientific/technological progress?
> you will probably live 30 years longer than if you were born 2 centuries ago. Is what the OP said, and it's false. I will not. The average may be 30 years longer, but that's a fairly meaningless statistic.
It seems quite correct to me.
The fact that you were born today means that you will be shielded, either fully or partially, from many of the factors that made the average lifespan 30 years shorter 2 centuries ago, infant mortality included. The lack of these factors would then lead to you "probably" having a 30 year longer lifespan ("probably" in the statistical sense).
You could argue that a more robust statistic like a median would provide a better representation of the expected lifespan less drastically affected by outliers, but calling the 30 year difference in average lifespan "meaningless" is disingenuous at best and could represent a fundamental denial of basic empirical evidence at worst (the latter of which seems more likely to me judging from some of your other replies so far on this subject).
Re: America's obsession with STEM education is dangerous
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. People who do not believe in evolution are holding back progress. They are making everyone's quality of life worse through their sheer ignorance. People who do not believe in global warming are even worse. I will literally suffocate in my lifetime because of these imbicils. I suppose in some philosophical sense, no we don't all need to agree, but in a practical sense if we want to survive and thrive as a species…
You're being a little dramatic. "People who do not believe in evolution are holding back progress" ... Honestly... The cool thing about science is that whether you think gravity is real or not you will still fall. Progress will always be made in due time..
The cool thing about politics is that failure will always be made in due time. That is, if you don't take great care to educate people.
Re: America's obsession with STEM education is dangerous
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's extremely hard for me to imagine how my quality of life would improve if my neighbor started believing in evolution. Perhaps you can provide an example?
You would be less likely to get an antibiotic-resistant infection in the future, because an understanding of evolution is necessary to understand how massive application of antibiotics can lead to more resistant bacteria in the future. You would be more likely to survive a pandemic in the future because there would be more public support for research into how diseases evolve. There would be less racial strife because…
What do you think of the evolutionary impact of pesticides on bacteria resistance?
Re: America's obsession with STEM education is dangerous
#86When: 43% of americans don't believe in evolution. (1) 53% don't believe in climate change (2) 15% don't think vaccination is safe. Then I don't think you don't hace a problem of obsession with STEM, bit with The lack of It. 1 http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_support_for_evolutio... (2) http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/26/poll-53-of-americans-dont-...
> When: 43% of americans don't believe in evolution. I don't "believe in" evolution and I'm not a creationist!
Evolution happens to be an observed natural law. Like gravity or heat dissipation.
If I said "I don't believe in heat dissipation" you'd think I was just as much a moron as I would be.
Re: America's obsession with STEM education is dangerous
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are essentially attacking the person instead of his argument. But, the article never claimed STEM was about memorization. Perhaps you should re-read more carefully.
People like him should be "attacked", if you want to dilute the meaning of "attacked" to include non-violent criticisms of character. If he's going to litter his article with first person pronouns and make it personal, then he's "fair game." I said the article conflated STEM with "Asian educational systems", which are conflated with memorization. Read: >But technical chops are just one ingredient needed for innovatio…
> People like him should be "attacked", if you want to dilute the meaning of "attacked" to include non-violent criticisms of character.
Attacking isn't purely about violence, it never was.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/attack
> to criticize (someone or something) in a very harsh and severe way
To be honest, you are a prime example of the article's point. There is more to education than just STEM. The fact you failed to realize the person you were replying to used the word "attacked" correctly, for instance, can lead to a failure of communication. Failures of communication lead to things like this:
http://www.wired.com/2010/11/1110mars-climate-observer-repor...
Perhaps you shouldn't be so quick to dismiss something purely due to your own arrogance.
Additionally:
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem
> Ironically the author has none of these skills, and the best thing for him to do would be to avoid the humanities and take several rigorous math courses -- maybe then he will learn how to define his terms and stop writing things that mean essentially nothing.
Yet another flaw in your style of argument that could have been corrected with classes in the humanities.
Re: America's obsession with STEM education is dangerous
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
People like him should be "attacked", if you want to dilute the meaning of "attacked" to include non-violent criticisms of character. If he's going to litter his article with first person pronouns and make it personal, then he's "fair game." I said the article conflated STEM with "Asian educational systems", which are conflated with memorization. Read: >But technical chops are just one ingredient needed for innovatio…
> People like him should be "attacked", if you want to dilute the meaning of "attacked" to include non-violent criticisms of character. Attacking isn't purely about violence, it never was. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/attack > to criticize (someone or something) in a very harsh and severe way To be honest, you are a prime example of the article's point. There is more to education than just STEM. The fact…
"Attack" has violent connotations; so does "harsh." There is more to language than prescriptive definitions. Have you heard of "meaning as use", Wittgenstein's "motto"? The first half of my college education was spent as a philosophy major, which I think was useless, both personally and economically.
Please don't call me arrogant. (However much you might dislike me I can assure you I dislike myself more.) I don't have any pretensions to being intelligent or having something worthwhile to say. What I wrote was a knee-jerk reaction to what I read, and I criticized his character because the idea of his existing as a person "made me angry", and because I could not fully articulate my problems with the content. Maybe someone else will be able to do that. Part of it is that I spent a portion of my life believing in things like "self enrichment through education" or "being a well rounded person" -- the general sentiments expressed in the article -- but now I think they're meaningless. I learned Homeric Greek and read parts of the Odyssey in it, but the idea of an engineer going home after a day of work and reading the Odyssey in Greek and thinking to himself, "boy, this really makes me think; I am a well-rounded person. Maybe tomorrow I will start Gravity's Rainbow" strikes me as ridiculous and makes me laugh, again for a reason I can't fully articulate, probably because I once had thoughts like that and I no longer do.
There is nothing wrong with that last quote about his writing style. It is vague to the point of meaninglessness. My experience with the humanities has taught me to reject most writing. In fact I have "unlearned" most of my writing style and now try to be as honest as possible. Many people assume I am uneducated, so I guess it's worked.
Re: America's obsession with STEM education is dangerous
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People like him should be "attacked", if you want to dilute the meaning of "attacked" to include non-violent criticisms of character. Attacking isn't purely about violence, it never was. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/attack > to criticize (someone or something) in a very harsh and severe way To be honest, you are a prime example of the article's point. There is more to education than just STEM. The fact…
"Attack" has violent connotations; so does "harsh." There is more to language than prescriptive definitions. Have you heard of "meaning as use", Wittgenstein's "motto"? The first half of my college education was spent as a philosophy major, which I think was useless, both personally and economically. Please don't call me arrogant. (However much you might dislike me I can assure you I dislike myself more.) I don't hav…
> "Attack" has violent connotations; so does "harsh." There is more to language than prescriptive definitions.
He communicated clearly and you are simply being picky because you believe restricting the word to its more violent connotations is "superior".
The belief that a person is "wrong" because they do not meet your subjective expectation is a conceit. Sorry, you can't simply expect the rest of the world to bow to your subjective expectations.
> (However much you might dislike me I can assure you I dislike myself more.)
I don't dislike you or have any opinion of you beyond the assumption you don't seem to realize how you come across and that word relayed that message. The fact you would complain about a person's diction when they are literally correct is precisely in line with that behavior.
> There is nothing wrong with that last quote about his writing style. It is vague to the point of meaninglessness. My experience with the humanities has taught me to reject most writing. In fact I have "unlearned" most of my writing style and now try to be as honest as possible. Many people assume I am uneducated, so I guess it's worked.
> Consider the same pattern in two other highly innovative countries, Sweden and Israel. Israel ranks first in the world in venture-capital investments as a percentage of GDP; the United States ranks second, and Sweden is sixth, ahead of Great Britain and Germany. These nations do well by most measures of innovation, such as research and development spending and the number of high-tech companies as a share of all public companies. Yet all three countries fare surprisingly poorly in the OECD test rankings. Sweden and Israel performed even worse than the United States on the 2012 assessment, landing overall at 28th and 29th, respectively, among the 34 most-developed economies.
That is pretty direct.
I'm dropping this mainly because at this point I am leaning towards this being another troll account, honestly.
Re: America's obsession with STEM education is dangerous
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Attack" has violent connotations; so does "harsh." There is more to language than prescriptive definitions. Have you heard of "meaning as use", Wittgenstein's "motto"? The first half of my college education was spent as a philosophy major, which I think was useless, both personally and economically. Please don't call me arrogant. (However much you might dislike me I can assure you I dislike myself more.) I don't hav…
> "Attack" has violent connotations; so does "harsh." There is more to language than prescriptive definitions. He communicated clearly and you are simply being picky because you believe restricting the word to its more violent connotations is "superior". The belief that a person is "wrong" because they do not meet your subjective expectation is a conceit. Sorry, you can't simply expect the rest of the world to bow to…
>I'm dropping this mainly because at this point I am leaning towards this being another troll account, honestly.
How much longer are you guys going to keep doing this? The only reason the dissent seems to come only from trolls is because you find yourself in echo chambers. People who disagree get shadowbanned or removed, and eventually, they get tired of re-registering just because someone can't get over their feelings being hurt.
In the thread above, we went from "you are attacking the poster" to "attacks are not necessarily violent" to an argument over definitions. Along the way there's a strawmen that people equate STEM with all of education, when the entire point is that STEM is far more than just the purely technical skills. Engineers will have courses in communication, in expression, in writing, and in fact, the person you just accused and projected of being a "perfect example" directly contradicts you by explaining they took philosophy as a major.
Guess what: you are the troll, you are the one being dishonest, you are the one only interested in looking good and feeling superior here.