How To Make Science Popular Again? 899
Ars Technica has an interesting look at the recent book Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, a collaboration between Chris Mooney, writer and author of The Republican War on Science, and scientist Sheril Kirshenbaum. While it seems the book's substance is somewhat lacking it raises an interesting point; how can science be better integrated with mainstream culture for greater understanding and acceptance? "We must all rally toward a single goal: without sacrificing the growth of knowledge or scientific innovation, we must invest in a sweeping project to make science relevant to the whole of America's citizenry. We recognize there are many heroes out there already toiling toward this end and launching promising initiatives, ranging from the Year of Science to the World Science Festival to ScienceDebate. But what we need — and currently lack — is the systematic acceptance of the idea that these actions are integral parts of the job description of scientists themselves. Not just their delegates, or surrogates, in the media or the classrooms."
Science =! Public Policy (Score:3, Insightful)
As much as many people would like to think otherwise, public policy is set by elected officials who may take science into consideration, but also must consider economic trade offs and cultural issues. Throw in the usual paranoid claptrap about corporations if you want, it doesn't change the facts.
Just because the Republicans did not rush headlong and unquestionably into the public policy positions championed by the James Hansons and Al Gores of the world doesn't mean they were conducting a war on science.
If science is unpopular today it is because of the arrogant, dogmatic and privileged folks who stand at its door. Add to that the people who embark on regular crusades, telling people they are stupid and ignorant for not listening to them, it's no wonder students shy away from science.
Popular, or useful? (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
From quotes on websites to a joke by Stephen Colbert, they offer anecdotes about how the public was against the IAUâ(TM)s (International Astronomical Union) decision to remove Pluto from the list of planets, leading the authors to call the situation a âoeplanetary crack-upâ and then ask, âoeDidnâ(TM)t the scientists involved foresee such a public outcry?â Well, if the scientists did foresee an outcry, then what? Should they conduct a public vote next time?
Mooney and Kirshenbaum barely mention any of the scientific bases for the IAUâ(TM)s decision. Instead, they present the case as if the astronomers chose to reclassify Pluto on an inexplicable whim, and it makes one question whether or not the authors looked into any of the actual science for themselves.
I think it's pretty well established that the goal should not be to fit science into pop-culture, at least not if we want it to remain correct and relevent. Your average citizen doesn't care that pluto is only the first discovered Kuiper Belt object, they care that they learned it was a planet when they were a kid. That isn't thinking scientifically. There is no way to make the decision popular without compromising on proper science.
It's not an easy problem to fix. It seems to me like it requires you to teach people to care about science, rather than making science into something people care about. It wasn't that long ago when Bill Nye was getting kids interested in more pure science. Now about the best we have is Mythbusters, which certainly piques curiosity, although it has to resort to explosions and skipping most of the steps in the scientific method to make it palatable. They even have a "warning" for science content, which is a bad sign (tongue-in-cheek or not). Maybe we could get back to that, but it seems the prevailing momentum is toward smaller tidbits and shallower topics.
Anonymous Coward (Score:1, Insightful)
To stop teaching kids that religion is an alternate view to science. Religion should be taught nowhere near science, they are two distinct subjects. Oh yea and get rid of the crazies that bash science.. do these people not realize that pretty much everything they use in their life was adapted using the scientific method?
What's in it for me? (Score:5, Insightful)
Science's irrelevance is some of the long-time-in-coming consequences of a society that emphasizes short-term, extremely self-interested value system with a repudiation of the notion of social plurality.
Unless they adapt by supporting cavemen and women riding dinosaurs or hitching a ride on some other demagogue, Science remains irrelevant.
After all, I don't benefit from science in any special way. Where's my flying car so I (alone) can leave the unwashed masses on the ground. How about my super-smart pill so only my children and I don't have to work very hard?
I mean c'mon... This science thing is bunk unless I alone profit at the expense of everyone else.
Easy solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Naked girls. Guys would flock to science if there wers lots of naked girls.
It's all in the educational system (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking as a European, actually science is pretty popular in the USA, globally (except for the mad handful who think science is the sworn enemy of their faith). Actually, I quite like to think of the USA as the country of nerds. Case in point, that's where all the Europeans nerds want to go cause since some time around the 1930s that's where all the big science and engineering are. In Europe (UK excluded, too much of an American satellite to be representative) we don't make offerings to the holy ghost of Charles Darwin, and we couldn't care less about science fiction (seriously, we care nowhere near as much as people in the USA do). But we're better at mathematics, physics, chemistry or biology, because secondary education didn't fail us. It's not a cultural problem, it's all an educational one.
The problem is not how "popular" or "cool" it is, the problem is with education. To put it simply and bluntly, your educational system sucks, particularly when it comes to science. Reform it. Education is pretty much the same problem for anyone, you're doing it wrong, look at how others are doing it right.
An obvious rift exists between many religious and scientific communities.
Yep, and there shouldn't be one. Science and faith aren't incompatible, some great men of science were also men of faith. But in America more than anywhere else it was turned into an epic science vs faith war where everybody picks a side and the battlefronts are shit that no one would normally care about, like biology and genetics or palaeontology or even palaeoclimatology.
Also, why the hell can't I post this comment? It says "There was an unknown error in the submission.". It seems Slashdot is crumbling to pieces day after day.
Making Science and *Engineering* Relevant (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're truly trying to integrate science with "mainstream culture", a big part of the overlap is in engineering. Science for the sake of scientific knowledge is great, but we've found that it's often easier to connect to people by looking at how science connects with their lives, which often falls into the realm of engineering (or medicine). We have tried to do that with our free educational electronics videos [nerdkits.com].
Even as science and medicine and gadgetry continue to advance, it's important to make it accessible and exciting to those outside the field. But while the original book being reviewed argues that "the scientists themslves" must take up the lead in educating the public, the fact is that making these subjects accessible has its own set of required skills that are not necessarily the same as those needed for being an excellent scientist. Some will be able to do both, but it's not for everyone.
Easy! (Score:4, Insightful)
For public school situations take that damn football money and use it for science classes.
2nd Hire decent teachers that actually enjoy learning and teaching.
3rd Encourage questions. Ask the students questions, and then wait for a response. Let them actually think! Have some actual communication.
Optional: go places! Take students to new environments to get them to think outside of the box. Science is awesome, you don't have to dress it up to make it fun!
All else fails: Blow shit up! Then explain why it blew up!
scientists have to do the job correctly, though (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're going to be an evangelist for science, there are a lot of potential pitfalls. I personally was almost turned off science by the half-assed philosophy that many scientists seem to implicitly hold.
For people on the borderline---who might've accepted a scientific worldview but ultimately rejected it---anecdotally the biggest factor I've found is a feeling that accepting the scientific worldview is nihilistic. Usually this seems (again, anecdotally), to be a result of some particularly overreaching attempts to use science as a sort of naive-reductionist philosophy, where every discovery of mechanisms delegitimizes higher-level things, because now they're "only X", and in some sense don't "really" exist anymore. People particularly object to this with humans. Arguments like "X is just brain chemicals" or "Y is just evolved behavior" get thrown around, and you ultimately end up at claims like: "You don't really love her; that's just brain chemicals". "There isn't really any such thing as morality; that's just evolved group behavior". And people generally recoil at and reject that view, if you're implying that actually nothing about human existence is "real".
Of course, nothing in science actually demands that sort of explanation at a philosophical level. Nobody argues that since chemistry is "just physics", it's therefore in any sense not real or illegitimate. It's a perfectly correct way of explaining, at a particular level of description, how the universe works, and chemical properties are real properties, that really do exist. The fact that chemical properties are due to lower-level interactions doesn't change that. Daniel Dennett even coined a term for some of these kinds of philosophical misuse of science: greedy reductionism [wikipedia.org].
Fortunately, I was saved from that by some more philosophically sophisticated scientists who pointed out to me that the views held by people who study physicalist [wikipedia.org] explanations of the world are much better thought out. And on, say, what the mind "really" is, fully defended physicalist accounts of mind [amazon.com] don't have the same greedy-reductionism that characterizes the rather questionable [slashdot.org] comments of a lot of neuroscientists.
Sure, there are all sorts of other problems, like fundamentalist Christians who won't ever accept any explanation not derived from the Bible. But as a scientist, I tend to think some outreach is better than just attacking them: there's plenty I might change about their organizations, but I can't, so what can I change about mine? Simply being more accurate about the philosophical implications of science, I find, helps to dispel a lot of unnecessary worries, while having the added benefit of actually being, well, more accurate.
Mo' Money! (Score:2, Insightful)
More media attention for Academic Decathlon (Score:5, Insightful)
If each schools Academic Decathlon team got the same amount of exposure as the high school football team did then you would see a lot more interest in academics from the general population.
My senior year our Academic Decathlon team made it to the national conference in Chicago. I heard that we placed in the top 10 in each category, but I never did see a single thing about it in our local paper. And this was a small rural school.
3 steps (Score:2, Insightful)
1. Teach critical thinking - Kids need to learn at an early age how to figure things out for themselves. This goes from how do I turn the TV on to Why is the sky blue. Self exploration of knowledge leads to a door that's hard to close. Starting at an early age, this could be enough on its own
2. Teach humility - We've all ran into ridiculous theories and misconceptions perpetuated by someones unwillingness to admit error. Before any progress can be done to foster a world driven by scientific process people need to be willing to say "I was wrong".
3. Say goodbye to religion - I have no problem with any specific ideology but an organization whose very approach means ignoring point number 1 and some amount of point number 2 will have no place in a scientific society. Sorry.
A New Mission Statement Isn't Going to Do It (Score:3, Insightful)
We must all rally toward a single goal: without sacrificing the growth of knowledge or scientific innovation, we must invest in a sweeping project to make science relevant to the whole of America's citizenry. We recognize there are many heroes out there already toiling toward this end and launching promising initiatives, ranging from the Year of Science to the World Science Festival to ScienceDebate. But what we need--and currently lack--is the systematic acceptance of the idea that these actions are integral parts of the job description of scientists themselves. Not just their delegates, or surrogates, in the media or the classrooms.
They briefly touch on this when discussing movies but somehow everyone is forgetting that the problem isn't in science or scientists, it's in what motivates us. Our capitalistic society is simply getting better at convincing us that research and experimentation aren't rewarding. Making money is. A 9 to 5 job coding Jakarta Struts will net me more cash than working on my doctorate regarding AI or NLP ever will. Sure I could hit on something big and then put in 80 hours a week and try to launch a start up but that's like playing the lottery.
... that's not the answer. The answer is to increase monetary rewards for scientists. We can rip on intellectual property and intellectual property law but that's one of the few examples where our capitalistic system ties inventions and discoveries monetarily to their originators. And when that's in place we'll ask why it matters that those "scientific" progresses were made since we can't readily access them in a cheap manner?
We don't need to destroy the whole system, just make it monetarily worth while to devote your life to science and the scientific process. This mission statement seems to just make scientists more popular or more prestigious
Right now, you'll make more money as a surgeon doing gastrointestinal bypasses than you will experimenting in surgery and medicine. Because GI bypasses are a surefire bet in America. And one person doing them will help individual people but not really society unless you look at GI bypasses on the whole. The same can be said in so many other fields.
The funny thing is that the general populace isn't really interested in science, they're interested in how science can provide them cheaper things, better health, easier money, naturally selfish goals. Look at the quest for knowledge, it's only worth pursuing if it has very practical uses that are often tied to money. In short, you're not going to change this because capitalism's been so successful and changes to how it works now are going to make people unhappy. The discussion is worthless unless you're willing to change how the system rewards scientists across the gamut--not just special institutions or foundations but from the single scientist up to the largest corporation.
Re:Science =! Public Policy (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, the James Hansons and Al Gores of the world are (and let's be brutally honest here) as far from "scientific" as you can get.
People are tired of being told that something is "scientific" or "scientifically proven" because those words have become synonymous with snake oil. Separating the things that are actually rigorously tested, from the ones that had a cherry-picked study that then massaged the numbers and employed lying with statistics [wikipedia.org] for their sales pitch, has become an art in itself.
If science is unpopular today, it's not because of "arrogant, dogmatic and privileged folks" standing at the door. Rather it's unpopular because for every honest scientist out there, there's a hundred James Hanson or Al Gore types shouting about the end of the world, or a new way to "cure" male pattern baldness, or herbally make erections larger or breasts bigger, or a thousand other things that turn out later to be absolute bullshit.
Wrong question (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're a troll, but I'll bite anyway. As someone who is fascinated with all things science related, I bemoan the total apathy towards science within the community. However, I feel that it is important to point out that it is not just science that is being neglected by the community; politics, philosophy, social conscience and other highly important fields have also been totally lost to the common mind.
It's not just discussing the latest article in Nature magazine or Scientific American that results in dumb stares, but also trying to discuss things like the relative merits of current geopolitical policies of various nations, how and why the legal system has gotten to its current state, even this very subject, the apathy of the common person, is not the sort of thing that most people are able to discuss in any depth.
This may all sound very high-horsey, however, I challenge anyone to go to a party, bring up a discussion about the question of whether mathematics is invented or discovered, and see how long you can keep it up. I'm likely to get laughed at for the mere suggestion of this, someone will call me a dork or similar.
The thing is, I actually get out a lot. I travel several times a year, and spent a lot of time meeting new people. It's something that I really enjoy. I'm not a dork. I think.
So, how do we make science (and other "intelligent" subjects) popular again? I dunno, how about priming children in an environment that's a bit more stimulating than the modern day care facility. How about teaching them the basics in an environment that's a bit more positive than the jokes that are primary schools where teachers' hearts are rarely in the job. Don't even let me get started on the barbaric mass-cagefight that is high school.
You want to know why science is not popular in the first place? Because we (as a society, we can't just blame the "education system", after all, parents, they're YOUR kids) as a society are teaching our kids to be consumerist, apathetic, self-centered brats. We need a whole new social order, including a new social mindset that teaches people a proper set of values. Science and all the higher arts won't be popular again until people learn to value them.
Thus, asking how to make science popular I feel is the wrong question. The correct question is how to teach people it's value.
Re:Make up your minds... (Score:2, Insightful)
Basically, the default stance is, "There probably isn't a god because of the lack of evidence supporting the hypothesis." Creationists use, "all things designed that we know of have designers, therefore we have been designed by a designer." Dawkins and Hawkings embraced random chance in the ability to make things that appear designed, effectively shooting down that argument as evidence to support the existence of a designer.
I think Kurt Vonnegut said it best (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Popular, or useful? (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree... strongly... From my experience with the public one of the biggest problems facing the public's understanding and scientific interest lie in the poor teaching methods used to educate them in the sciences. Everyone is taught about science in a very similar way, as if doing so makes sense... I've got news for you- not everyone relates to the sciences in the same way and the monolithic teaching methods used in their education are largely to blame. Worse yet, the educational system discourages experimentation, working at your own pace and independent learning styles. THe teaching of science is like a chore to most peopel because it is taught in such a way as to be a chore. It is no wonder then why there is little interest in science by the public; the learning of proper science is discouraged, the independent thinking that underlies good science eroded away and the entire concept treated as boring and monotonous.
Re:Popular, or useful? (Score:2, Insightful)
This guy is part of the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
The argument this clown is using is exactly WHY so many distrust science. Because the scientists are so obviously political these days. Now this wouldn't be bad if they were political scientists (i.e. the fuzzy social sciences) but it has no place in physics or chemistry.
You can't have it both way folks, which view of a scientist do you want the masses to have?
1. The scientist as the almost monastic searcher for facts, discovering new wonders by relentlessly collecting facts in the field, doing careful experiments in labs full of shiny equipment, publishing carefully reasoned papers which are mercilessly peer reviewed and basically being devoted to following the facts wherever they lead. But in the end, scientists tell us how the universe works and what is possible. Engineers use that knowledge to build things after the marketing dept identifies a customer for it and then the politicians decide how to regulate and tax it.
2. Philosopher Kings. Politicians with PhDs. Victims of several bad ideas, namely that a) expertise in one narrow area implies a general wisdom; b) that rule by a technocratic elite is 'better' than rule by the consent of the governed; c) that just because science says something is possible means we must do it, because morals aren't scientific after all.
The last century has shown a marked shift in the public's idea of the word 'scientist' from the first to the second. This explains their change in attitude. In other words if Hansen and his ilk stopped the politicking and went back to their lab and produced some results that didn't get shredded people might start readjusting their views again. Even better would be if the other so called 'real scientists' policed their own a little, forcing the ones who want to take up a new career in politics to LEAVE science first. Because it should now be clear that attempts to lend the good name of science to a political argument doesn't actually work, that instead the bad name of politics attached to science.
And here is another good example of the problem. Carl Sagan's _Cosmos_. It is a wonderful introduction to science in many ways yet terribly flawed by Bad Idea A from above in that Sagan mistakenly believed himself an expert in Foreign Relations apparently for no other reason than he was a smart fellow. But the series is full of the most naive useful idiot twaddle of the sort that, with the Cold War ended, few would dispute. When the grandkids are older I plan on showing them the series and use it as an example of the problem of scientists trying to become political leaders without first investing the effort to actually become an expert.
Re:Easy solution (Score:5, Insightful)
So how do you get the girls to flock to science?
The problem isn't with a lack of people entering the field; it's that the fields aren't seen as exciting. (Others might note that you can make more money in other fields; for example, I'd be making at least 2x what I make now if I was an electrician instead.)
You then have people who aren't interested in excitement getting into or getting pigeonholed into those fields. "Oh, Beardo is kind of quiet and smart. Perhaps he'll be a good scientist, sitting alone in a lab all day."
That's the problem. Science is exciting, no matter what branch you're getting into. I'm an Engineer -- an applied scientist. I'd like to think that I'm a reasonably exciting guy.
I bike around, I make speeches, I SCUBA dive, I have a house / car / family, I can build a radio with scrap, I've saved thousands of lives, and right now I'm working on a series of billion-dollar vehicles.
There are MILLIONS of people like me, but we don't sell magazines. It's not a matter of comprehension -- I have been able to adequately explain my job to my 5-year-old daughter -- but a matter of the stereotype of the scientist being a dork like Frink or evil like Baltar.
Nobody without decent charisma can do a good job. You have to be able to sell what you do and sell your opinions to you colleagues and supervisors.
Our education system strives to not offend (Score:1, Insightful)
which means neither the parents, teachers, students, or politicians, are allowed to be offended by the results. The results are that we are not all created equal and testing can show it. Hence we dumb it down dragging some of the brightest down with us and discouraging some who may have had a chance to some of the brightest from ever showing it.
Throw in the self destructive behavior of certain cultural elements and the high minded liberal mindset where these self ascribed people with all the knowledge deem what each "group" can do and how best to "level the playing field" and we end up with a system which essentially declares one race inferior to another and backs it with claims that the test/course/etc is racially biased - as if information can be such.
Top it off with a system designed to keep bad teachers in the due paying roles and to lard up the administration with every family member a local politician knows of who needs a job and is it any wonder we fail our kids?
I do know one thing, it certainly wasn't religion that dragged down our education system, we did our best to drive that out of our schools we forgot to watch was being done by other means.
Re:It's all in the educational system (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the absolute truth.
students at a majority of US colleges and universities are there simply because they are told they need to to succeed in life.
Then they get there and basically waste an average of 5 years to get their 4 year degree.
universities do not care, because they have gone to a billing system where you pay the same to take the maximum credit hours possible, and the minimum to be considered full time. so they obviously push students to go for the minimum and thus allow the themselves (the universities) to make more money off the student.
Universities have become as bad (or worse) than any corporation in the world.
They routinely waste money in prolific ways, take every politically correct doctrine to the nth degree, will not fire people who obviously deserve to be, etc.
They will also pretty much allow anyone with the money waving in their hands to enroll. so much for being the intelligent ones if you're attending a university.
you want a microcosm view of everything wrong in america today? go to a university (public or private) and do a bit of snooping, you'll find every sordid tale imaginable.
now through in that "the gubment" thinks that all you have to do to increase education is throw more money at it, and you have the perfect recipe for the epic failure of education in america.
You want to bring back real education?
get rid of the teachers unions, get rid of tenure systems in ALL facets of education, PAY the teachers to be educators, force parents to police thier own children and kick out of school the children of the ones too fucking stupid to so, make kids actually prove proficiency for more than 1 week when "teaching them something", and finally stop telling us everything is "for the children" when it's not. It's for you and your political brethren.
It's all about the money, honey (Score:4, Insightful)
The outcome of a science and/or engineering degree at this point is competition with millions of people making $8/hr.
.
Seriously, in a self-interested, capitalist society what could POSSIBLY motivate a young person to expend limited educational resources on something that resulted in that?
.
Any rational person would go for medicine, law or finance or any other field with higher pay with less chance of outsourcing.
.
Whine and hand-wring all you want. We did this to ourselves when we started giving away the store to save a few bucks for next quarter. We'll never win another war because of superior technology. Any technology we *do* create will be outsourced in seconds, so why please explain to me why I would ever bother?
.
Hope you're all enjoying the global marketplace.
Re:Science =! Public Policy (Score:5, Insightful)
Look,
International capital interests are banking against a US role in the future. They own the casino, and you are a fool to bet against this house.
There is an active effort to dumb-down America in particular, and to lose the capability for sound argument in the roar of mindless accusation and countercharges.
There is a reason that Fox News and the like are funded to billions of dollars, every year. These are investments in an outcome, not wild and speculative spending.
So.
Don't get your hopes up, Eloi. You ar ein a Morlock zone - and all your cleverness and intelligence will not change the decisions that have been made for you. Enjoy fighting the school board brownshirts over "Creation Science".
Re:Science =! Public Policy (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say science is not popular because ignorance is easy and science can be inconvenient. It's hard to actually learn things; people are lazy, no doubt. And when those things to learn aren't what you want to hear, that makes it *that* much harder to like.
Re:It's all in the educational system (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wrong question (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe that Science (like many other things) has been hi-jacked by politics. And since it's a given that people hate discussing politics they now hate discussing science too. The only way to make it popular again is to get politicians to stop hoarding it. Science should be for scientists and academia
Re:Popular, or useful? (Score:5, Insightful)
the goal should not be to fit science into pop-culture [...] It wasn't that long ago when Bill Nye was getting kids interested in more pure science. Now about the best we have is Mythbusters
So.. we shouldn't be trying to fit science into popular culture, but the problem is that there is no science in popular culture?
I'd say one of the problems is that modern popular culture regards science as evil. Look at Spider Man. In the 60's, Peter Parker was a science student who built his own tracking devices and formulated his own "web" and "web shooters" in order to fight crime. Science was a tool - used by good and evil alike.
Contrast that with the recent movies.. Peter never does any science, or uses his intelligence to solve problems. The webbing and shooters are now part of his "mutation" (regardless that if that were the case, it should come out of his ass, rather than his wrists), and science is merely an evil corrupting influence on good, honest men like Norman Osborn or Otto Octavius.
Hollywood needs to stop portraying science as evil.
Re:Popular, or useful? (Score:3, Insightful)
From TFA:
Now about the best we have is Mythbusters, which certainly piques curiosity, although it has to resort to explosions and skipping most of the steps in the scientific method to make it palatable. They even have a "warning" for science content, which is a bad sign (tongue-in-cheek or not). Maybe we could get back to that, but it seems the prevailing momentum is toward smaller tidbits and shallower topics.
I think you are mistaken on the scientic method issue. Granted, Mythbusters does do a lot of bangs and whatnot (which I admit to finding cool), but usually they do it after exhausting the possibility that the myth is confirmed or plausible. The format they use in my mind is the essence of the scientic method:
1) Hypothesis = Myth is true.
2) Experimentation = Test if myth could happen in real life
3) Evaluation and improvement = If testing fails, re-evaluate how it could happen/how to improve the test method and do more experiments
4) Conclusion = Confirmed, Plausible, or Busted
I read somewhere that teaching is 1/4 knowledge and 3/4 theatrics. If you can hook people into having a thirst for knowledge, science will be OK.
Re:Republicans? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Make up your minds... (Score:3, Insightful)
Dawkins' point is an epistemological one. We have a perfectly good explanation for how the life that we see on earth today evolved, through (internally) random processes, from more primitive ancestors. Thus, it is not rational to introduce a new agent, God, to our concepts of the universe to explain what we can already explain without him.
I take it that you are arguing that, given what we know from computer science, the evolutionary process may well be designed by God. And this is true. But the point is that there is no positive reason to make this leap. Therefore you shouldn't make it. A standard for rational belief has to require a positive reason for the belief and not its mere compatibility with the observed evidence. If compatibility is all you require, then a whole flood of unverifiable propositions sneak in the back door. Suddenly you have reason to believe in invisible fairies, haecceities, ghosts, any force you can think of a name for (and then some) that has no observable effect on matter, etc.
Re:Science =! Public Policy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wrong question (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with science, though, is that it isn't sexy. By the time you're an elite scientist, you're old and grey whereas elite sportsmen are young and vigourous and all the things our hindbrains crave. And science is slow - you can't follow Fermilab like some do a baseball team. Let's face it: science is slow and tedious and not very exciting day-to-day.
We could give scientists better pay, but capitalism isn't set up to reward the scientist - just the person who exploits their work. The modern mindset is to make money at any cost, and the idea of paying scientists to learn about the fundamental nature of the universe is disruptively out of step with the cash-squeezing mentality of the world.
What are we left with? The fruits of their labour. Scientists discover things of beauty, magnificent vistas of science that are accessible to all. The fact is that most people are taught to shut up and pay attention to the TV, rather than think creatively or examine their lives.
The problem with science isn't science - perhaps it's the very nature of our culture that rejects learning and instead values money, simple ideas and sex appeal. Unless we instill principles early on that value science and learning, it will never happen.
Re:Popular, or useful? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think most people need to be educated against their will, in fact quite the opposite- the eucational system beats the curiosity out of them.
Simple, stop trying to replace religion (Score:2, Insightful)
Anti-intellectualism (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an old theme of American history, called anti-intellectualism [wikipedia.org]. The American public isn't so much "anti-science" as anti-intellectual.
I think that GP has a point about the proper relationship between science and policy; all too often people use the authority of science to sneak in policy and value judgements as science (for example, intelligence testing). We need to be critical of the people who insist that science should set policy, as GP recommends.
However, to do so successfully we can't be anti-intellectual, and that's where I part with GP. The Republicans are the party that panders to anti-intellectualism; their war on science was real. G.W. Bush is an anti-intellectual poster boy, too.
Invented, just like chess.
Re:Wrong question (Score:3, Insightful)
Science should be for scientists and academia ...
The reason science is largely unpopular in this country is because of a perceived elitism in the "process" of science. I'm not talking about the scientific method, I'm talking about peer review, university grants, and the esoteric publishing/journaling system that goes on with such a process. Language in scientific literature is purposefully obscure, not because of necessarily technical language, but because different scientific fields try to carve different niches and talk in their own languages to justify their own profession. "Science should be for scientists" or "physics should be for physicists", etc. Science should be for everybody, and the current system under which it operates does not allow that.
Re:Science =! Public Policy (Score:4, Insightful)
politicians also take into account... politics: what will benefit most MY home state, what will please MY core constituents most.
This is the entire purpose of politics. The alternative is who has the most/biggest guns.
Reid is able to keep the nuclear waste repository out of commission because of politics. While some (including me) do not agree with his position, it is his state and presumably, his position reflects the position of the citizens of the state (we'll find that out in 2010...not looking good).
The alternative to his use of the political/legislative process is for the feds to use force to open the repository. Or, for the citizens of the state to use armed force to prevent it.
Politics suck, but it's better than shooting someone.
Re:Science =! Public Policy (Score:2, Insightful)
You are an example of someone who has succumbed to the "lose the capability for sound argument in the roar of mindless accusation and countercharges" strategy.
I include CNN and MSNBC in my wide net, too. Fox just sets pace and tone in a race for the bottom, where EVERYONE is a loser, by a nose. Don't feel so smug, folks. NPR and the Wall Street Journal are equally co-opted.
All parties and ideologies are simply there to distract the marks, by political and media shills who work to pick your pocket and keep you "happy" at the same time.
They are all employed by the same bunch of cons. Figuring out who the cons are - and what is the ostensible business they run - I will leave as an exercise for you, the insightful and reasoned observer.
Oh, and welcome to Bush's 3rd term. By MY counting, it's actually Poppy's sixth or seventh. [tomdispatch.com]
Re:You're mistaken (Score:3, Insightful)
It's the fact that people consider what should be fascinating topics boring that is the problem
Thankyou for proving my point so perfectly. You did it so well that I think I may be lining myself up for a whoosh...
Re:Science =! Public Policy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wrong question (Score:2, Insightful)
The conclusions scientists make often cannot be watered down, or explained in simpler terms. In fact, the jargon you are describing is quite unified, since it mostly borrows from mathematics and other classical subjects.
IQ tests can never be culturally neutral (Score:5, Insightful)
Spatial cognition has been shown to be culturally variable; check out the work of Stephen Levinson on language and spatial cognition. It is possible to design spatial reasoning tests that are culturally biased in that regard; e.g., the Queensland Test was designed to raise the score of Australian Aborigines relative to Australian Whites.
In fact, there's just nothing culturally neutral about getting somebody to sit down to answer an intelligence test. Read the New Yorker's article on the controversy about the Pirahã [newyorker.com] and ask yourself, in the end: how would you administer an IQ test to this tribe, and would the results be more indicative of their "intelligence" or of their cultural differences to us?
To paraphrase William Labov [theatlantic.com]: if you want to figure out how intelligent somebody is, you have to enter the appropriate social relationship with that person. IQ tests simply fail this; they presuppose that everybody is a well-mannered urban European middle-class authority-fearing white-coat-deferring sit-downer, who is just delighted to sit down and perform decontextualized, pointless intellectual exercise on command.
Re:Make up your minds... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not so much is at its the solution that lacks utility.
Think of it this way. We have a murder suspect. We have a body with a knife in the back. The knife has his fingerprints. There's a trail of blood that leads to where his car his parked. The victim's blood is in the car. The victim's blood is found at the suspect's home and the knife is in the suspect's garbage can.
The most parsimonious explanation is, of course, that the suspect did it. It creates a testable hypothesis, has a logical series of events, each in and of itself testable.
Or we can say God did it. None of the evidence is incompatible with that claim. God's powers are unlimited. But the explanation lacks all utility. Nothing in claim can be meaningfully scrutinized. No test can be formulated, no observation is incompatible with the statement "God did it". It is the great irony of trying to use God to explain phenomena; God can explain everything, and thus explains nothing.
Re:Science =! Public Policy (Score:3, Insightful)
I can comment on the localized symptom in US and UK - where I reside.
I agree, that most western economies, based on fiat currencies and reserve banking are in the crosshairs.
The US has taken the bait deepest - and has had the most to lose.
After decades of Prole-papers and bad Labour/Tory politics, the UK still stays skeptical of the crap they are fed. SkyNews hardly dents - but we'll see what's up for the new generation.
Germany? They still actually manufacture high-quality industrial and engineering bits! Amazing! Try and build a VW CC or an Audi R6 in the states - or France, for that matter....
Re:Wrong question (Score:1, Insightful)
I am a chemical engineer and very engaged in the sciences. Naturally I try to pass on this enthusiasm to my sons who are in middle school. The elder is struggling with math - he is disinterested. He says he is not going to pursue a career in the sciences, so he need not know any math. He does not feel the need to understand how things work. There is no value in this intellectual effort. My neighbor, a music teacher, is disturbed that I spray weed killer on my lawn. In her eyes, the fact that I am a chemical engineer is a disqualification for making an informed decision on the matter.
This is very discouraging to me. Such a mass of people electing representatives is going to lead to poor public policy. For example, literally millions have died in Africa due to the banning of DDT. Sure, DDT has a downside, but not worse than dying of malaria.
Somewhere along the line, we lost our appetite for imposing ourselves on Nature, taking risks and making the the world a better place. This involves accepting that mistakes will be made, but that overall, in the long run, things will be better through human ingenuity. Now, there is such a fear of the unknown (= scientific ignorance) and the unforseen that we are becoming a paralyzed culture. Where previously we would glory in "taming" a river and building a Hoover dam, all we see now is the desecration of the noble earth. We are so scared that we cannot cope with the consequences of global warming that we are willing to reverse progress deliberately! This is unprecedented in history, and does not require scientific understanding.
Its time to send the telephone sanitizers on a quest.
Re:Science =! Public Policy (Score:5, Insightful)
An interesting comment, but note that the Morlocks were the smart ones in control and the Eloi were ultimately the pretty, vacant types. Your analogy doesn't fit perfectly, but if it did, it would be the other way around.
Anyway, I can offer a simple cause for Science not being "popular" (whether this cause is deliberate or not, I'll leave open): science doesn't receive much reward. You look at what gets the hero's share in modern Western society - celebrity, fashion, football, whatever. People are frequently motivated by what gets them adulation or appears as if it might. They therefore desire to be like those people that get such adulation, not like those that don't. It's really, very, very simple. If society sees a celebration of people for their scientific ability, then you will get people wanting to be scientists. If its not celebrated, you will get fewer.
Re:Science =! Public Policy (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, the James Hansons and Al Gores of the world are (and let's be brutally honest here) as far from "scientific" as you can get.
Are they in your opinion really "as far from scientific as you can get" or do you just disagree with some of their interpretations of the data? I've criticisms of every study making any conclusions about climate change, and I've heard an argument that we don't have enough evidence to really justify policy change. But that's all disagreements about interpretation. Scientists always do that (well, they do that if they actually care about the data and aren't sleeping during presentations or thinking about their own research... or just sex...).
If James Hanson and Al Gore make their arguments based on faith or "I believe based on what God told me" then yes, they would be as far from scientific as you can get, but "This person interprets the data differently than I do" is not the same as "not scientific." Lumping them in with fake pharmacists is going way too far, and if you're going to go down that road, why don't you go for the full Godwin?
Re:Easy solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Because other men will pay ungodly amounts of money to watch slathering ape-beasts play a sport better than any other slathering ape-beasts, but nobody really wants to watch scientists do much of anything no matter how good they are at it.
Ignore nobel prize winning scientists agree w/Gore (Score:3, Insightful)
"...And the hundreds of Nobel Prize scientists who got involved with trying to communicate the dangers of global warming to the world long, long before Al Gore got involved in anything... Ignore them! Al Gore's special lethal uber-cooties makes what all those Nobel Prize winning scientists say irrelevant.
Re:Science =! Public Policy (Score:4, Insightful)
James Hansen is one of the most widely published, widely-cited climate-scientists in the world. (Consult scholar.google.com for more). Calling Hansen "unscientific" betrays a breathtaking ignorance in Earth-science/climate-science. The only thing Moryath's post proves is that many compsci students get a very poor education in the physical sciences.
Re:Wrong question (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Science =! Public Policy (Score:5, Insightful)
People have gotten used to not knowing anything about science because they don't know enough to understand what's going on. We all make fun of articles that try to dumb down the science to make it understandable to people, yet that's what's necessary for people to try to understand it. Right now, the average person doesn't know science because it's inaccessible to them, and because they don't know science they don't trust that they can tell the difference between a lie and good research (this is probably because they can't).
Thank you for identifying part of the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Al Gore and James Hansen aren't just making this stuff up. They're simply relaying what 90% of scientists in related fields and what 90% of all scientists agree with. This is what folks in the world of science call a "scientific consensus". Unfortunately, because this particular scientific consensus is ideologically inconvenient for you, you want us to believe that 90% of all scientists in the world are part of a massive international conspiracy run by Al Gore.
No offense, you are exactly the problem that is being discussed here.
Re:Science =! Public Policy (Score:2, Insightful)
You know you're a peasant when you worship the very people who are right now, this minute, conning you and taking your shit.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/21289 [smirkingchimp.com]
Re:Popular, or useful? (Score:2, Insightful)
xkcd [xkcd.com] as usual beats us all to the point.
The Mythbusters don't claim to be a scientifically rigorous research lab. They claim to try to replicate various hypotheses to the best of their ability to see if they're true.
And a very interesting thing is that they do go back and try to repeat their results when they're disputed. Again, a common part of the scientific process is that an experimental result must be repeatable.
Re:Science =! Public Policy (Score:3, Insightful)
If science is unpopular today it is because of the arrogant, dogmatic and privileged folks who stand at its door. Add to that the people who embark on regular crusades, telling people they are stupid and ignorant for not listening to them, it's no wonder students shy away from science.
Sounds like someone is a bitter creationist.
People are status-conscious, and they know the advantages intelligence provides, advantages they can't possibly acquire. They have been taught that it is correct to hate the intellectual, that their envy of the successful is justified, but that envy has been carefully directed away from the wealthy and onto the merely smart and well-educated. After all, you don't have to be smart to get rich.
The only thing standing in the way of anyone becoming a scientist is their innate intelligence and ability to afford the schooling.
How about decriminalizing home science? (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean, come on, people! In the days after 9-11, restrictions put forward governing certain incediary chemicals nearly killed the ability of model rocket hobbyists to purchase engines online or at distant hobby shops (due to proposed shipping restrictions). The model rocket and hobby industries had to lobby to make sure those changes didn't cripple a hobby that spurred the interest of many people in the fields of aerospace, aerodynamics, engineering, chemistry, and physics. Heck, let's get back to being able to order our own chemical supplies so we can make our own rocket engines!
It has even changed kitchens. My mother had a recipie that used baker's amonia as a primary ingredient (I'm assuming as a levening agent in conjunction with baking soda). As far back as the 1980s she could no longer buy it herself without registering with a pharmacist and having them order it for her (in limited quantities--you know how often cookie-bakers must have engaged in bomb-making activities). Recently, I went to a number of pharmacies, but none of them could get it for me.
recommended review (Score:3, Insightful)
I recommend Jerry Coyne's review of this book. It eviscerates it.
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/unscientific-unscientific-america-part-1/ [wordpress.com]
It's easy (Score:3, Insightful)
It's easy to make science-related careers more popular: pay scientists more than poverty-level. Having passion for a career is one thing, but at the end of the day, passion doesn't put food on the table. The paycheck does.
Re:Simple, stop trying to replace religion (Score:1, Insightful)
Dawkins is both an atheist and a biologist. As an atheist, he writes books like 'The God Delusion' and participates in programs like 'The Root of All Evil' (?). You might disagree with him, but how does that interfere with his work as a biologist? As a biologist he writes excellent explanations of the theory of evolution and entire books about why many of the arguments against it are fallacious, and generally spend plenty of time defending proper science.
Re:Anti-intellectualism (Score:3, Insightful)
Invented, just like chess.
No, no no. Getting OT here, but I disagree.
There are many aspects of mathematics that, for years, were purely intellectual pursuits. In many cases it was often much later when their relationships with nature was revealed.
Hyperbolic geometry, and the Mandelbrot set, for example, were always there in the math, long before their discovery.
The realm of math exists. It exists whether we choose to explore it or not.
Discovered, just like the "new world" and exo-planets.
Re:It's all in the educational system (Score:5, Insightful)
The part I agree with you is that it's the parents that are failing. They're teaching their kids that it's ok to be mediocre, that it's cool to not be smart. They'd rather have them play football or basketball, anything other than be smart. And the popular role models for kids? Fucking morons like Kanye West [reuters.com] straight-out saying that it's not cool to read. He gets his "information" from talking to people, apparently. Great way to learn anything scientific. Our culture is worshiping ignorance, putting appearance on a pedestal while banishing substance and intellect to the basement. Even the "geek chic" [wikipedia.org] look is just that... a look. You don't have to actually know anything to be part of it.
Re:3 steps (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Teach critical thinking - Kids need to learn at an early age how to figure things out for themselves. This goes from how do I turn the TV on to Why is the sky blue. Self exploration of knowledge leads to a door that's hard to close. Starting at an early age, this could be enough on its own
There are a lot of folks who don't want to do that. Parents often don't want to because it can make parenting more difficult ("Why do I have to do that? That's stupid!"). Many teachers don't want to, because it undermines their "teacher is always right" authority. Many religious authorities don't want to because critical thinking will eventually lead to "How do we know what some guy wrote down 1600 years ago is true?" and before you know it the kid stops being religious. Advertisers definitely don't want kids thinking critically, because then it's harder to fool kids into wanting whatever they're selling. Basically, kids who understand critical thinking are much harder to control, and become adults that are much harder to control, and for those who make their living controlling others this is thoroughly a bad idea.
3. Say goodbye to religion - I have no problem with any specific ideology but an organization whose very approach means ignoring point number 1 and some amount of point number 2 will have no place in a scientific society. Sorry.
Actually, a lot of religions (Judaism, Buddhism, and Unitarian Universalism to name a few) encourage critical thinking, particularly around philosophical and ethical questions. There's a lot more to religion than televangelist schlock, and I don't think you're thinking critically about the place of religion in society.
Re:Wrong question (Score:3, Insightful)
Gee, maybe we shouldn't have polluted the rivers until they caught on fire; and maybe we should have installed some safety measures in those fertilizer plants even though they'd only kill/maim poor brown people, when they happened to explode.
Who would have thought there would be a social cost to all of this further down the line...? Surely running industry as a terrifying dehumanized process is the right and sustainable thing to do!
Re:Science =! Public Policy (Score:4, Insightful)
science can be inconvenient.
I think that science isn't popular because all that we see of it is stuff that's depressing. Kids today are bombarded by the message that we've ruined the world, destroyed the planet, and can't do anything right. Why should they get motivated after hearing all of that?
If you want to see a contrast, find some of the old Mr. Wizard videos on youtube or wherever you can find them. The undercurrent that I see in those videos is that everything is knowable, all problems are solvable. That's the mantra that was taught to the generation that landed on the Moon.
The subsequent generation was very much a downer. Now, I'm not blind to the facts. I know that there is a lot of bad news out there. But it seems to me that what we tell kids today is simply, "omfg global warming!" "omfg extinction!" "omfg pacific garbage patch!" And that's all we tell them. We don't follow it up with optimism of any kind, so they come away with the attitude, "fuck this! what's the point of school when we're all going to die?"
Re:It will sort itself out (Score:3, Insightful)
As the world continues to make scientific progress (albiet more slowly than theoretically possible, but that is acceptable), it will slowly become increasingly difficult for the unintelligent and uneducated to survive.
All things and people being equal, your point might actually be true. However, with the way that western societies have been doing anything and everything to ensure the survival of the weakest, laziest, most unfit of it's citizens at the expense of the rest of the population, I doubt your premise will come true while those states continue on their march towards socialist, nanny state policies. While social welfare programs tend to give folks a big warm and fuzzy, in the long run, it squeezes any incentive for trying to get ahead in life out of all but the most motivated of individuals. While it is definitely admirable that some individuals will continue to excel regardless of the social structure they find themselves in, this policy will eventually lead to downfall of western civilization as it takes more than just a few girders to hold up an entire bridge.
One small problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Two things in our favour, though:
Like anything useful, critical thinking is best considered as a form of technology, and as such it will have benefits and detriments, usually not the same to a large, mixed, group of people. I like it because it's consonant with my values and because I believe that it improves our spiritual and material well-being, but I know that this might not apply to everyone. Oh, and great point about humility: I've often said that graduate study's best contribution to my education was schooling me in being very ready to be wrong .
*...which is, coincidentally, the name of my retained law firm
Re:Popular, or useful? (Score:5, Insightful)
Mythbusters is Pseudo-Science at its worst. They claim a veneer of authenticity, but make broad assumptions based on very limited and highly flawed experiments with no controls groups. It's an entertaining sideshow at best.
Zombie Richard Feynman would like to have a word with you [xkcd.com].
Seriously, the xkcd author has a huge point here. You want to improve understanding and respect for science in this country? Start with the basics. When the most common response to "why do you believe X?" is "because I performed/witnessed an experiment demonstrating it", then we can shift the discussion to proper experimental methods and bookkeeping. So what if the experiments are sketchy and their methods wouldn't pass muster in any journal, and as a result some people believe things that aren't true? By simply educating people as to the value of experiment, you've already won 90% of the battle.
Mythbusters is fighting the good fight for science and you should respect that.
Re:IQ tests can never be culturally neutral (Score:2, Insightful)
"everybody is a well-mannered urban European middle-class "
That explains why Asians average IQ is 106 compared to 100 for caucasians.
Some folks do belong to a culture that prevents them from taking an IQ test seriously. You are correct, but that same culture actively (and often violently) punishes those who show any signs of intellectual curiosity or any other form of ambition that would get them out of their failed culture and into one that has a future.
Re:Anti-Christian Zealot Wrong Yet Again (Score:1, Insightful)
Christianity demands reason being left at the door. There are some things you just don't question. Period. The bible is true - period. The world is 6000 years old - period.
And you're wrong. Period. The percentage of overall Christian sects which are biblical fundamentalists is small. And I'm not even including the non-fundie Roman Catholicism, which is the largest Christian denomination by far.
But don't let the truth stand in the way of your bigotry.
I fail to see what fundamentalists have to do with the Christian requirement to believe that the Bible is the true Word of God, but thanks for pointing out that most Christian religions aren't, technically, fundamentalist.
You still can't run away from the fact that every Christian sect requires the belief that the Bible is the Word of God. Some admit that it's the Word of God as seen by those who wrote it down - which means that it isn't 100% correct, because humans are not infallible.
So that gives enough wiggle-room to allow for statements like "it wasn't literally seven days, that's just a metaphor." Which are nice, but they still demonstrate the core problem: Christians cannot accept anything that cannot be logically jammed to mesh with their version of the Bible.
Want to believe in evolution? Then Genesis is just a metaphor, so it's still logically consistent with the Bible.
Even non-fundamentalists believe that the Bible is the True Word of God, and therefore, for anything to be true, you must be able to reconcile it with the Bible.
A paradox! (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is this. . .
You, (the elite managerial over-seer), wants all the little people to toil in order to provide you with food, shelter, safety, power and luxury. It takes back-breaking effort to provide these things to you and there is no good reason to do it. As with most people of your sort, you live with a constant shadow on your shoulder; you harbor a morbid fear that one day the flow of wealth and abundant resources (which you don't work for) will cease. Because you have never really worked at anything, you fear work; nothing is more terrifying than the thought of being reduced to the status of a common peon. And so in fear, you cast about with great concern! How is your fear most likely to manifest? Why a popular uprising! Any moment now, you will be discovered and the slaves will take back what they have given you and which you do not deserve to have.
Thus, population management becomes a great concern to you. An obsession.
So how do you make sure that the slaves never have enough energy or awareness to see who is making their lives miserable and come together to do something about it? Why you make damned sure they are stupid and distracted and constantly fighting amongst one another!
Thus enters the Paradox! --To have the most fashionable elitist lifestyle, you need to employ the Wonders of Science! However, to employ the Wonders of Science, you need thinking men and women capable of sharp awareness and bright imagination. --And yet thinking men and women of awareness and imagination are exactly the kind of people who are most likely to realize that they are slaves and that you are their bitter enemy. They are the ones you fear most!
If only there was some way. . . --A method to mind-program people so that they retain the brain power necessary to engage in research and experimentation and other skills required by the Wonders of Science, while ALSO being remaining stupid and distracted. Is such a thing possible?
Fortunately for you, the answer is YES!
Among the maneuvers used to create the perfect army of mindless scientists and engineers are. . .
-Age segregation in schools. (Humans are pack animals; in healthy communities children of many ages play together, and the older and more experienced ones naturally take on leader/protector roles. In the school system, there are no clear leaders established through age, leading to endless, un-resolvable competition, generally resulting in the most base physical attributes becoming the dominant deciding factors. Say hello to "Jocks v.s. Geeks" --Those who are strong thinkers tend to seek love and approval from the only authority figures who appear to value such attributes, the teachers. All you have to do is program the teachers according to your system and they will make sure that the students are similarly programmed.
-Media! --Children who have survived the school system are shell-shocked by that war zone social structure. Their brains have developed strong wiring as they grew up, programed to have low self-esteem, to fear above all things, ridicule. So all you have to do is create a popular media which tells the population what is being laughed at this week, and you can rest assured that even the most progressive thinkers will shudder and cringe as their deep-programming kicks in.
-Meaningless debate! --It is important to maintain and nourish two opposing camps of thought on any number of emotionally evocative subjects. The population will self-divide and spend all their free energy fighting and arguing and hating one-another, while you rest safely up in your ivory tower and collect taxes.
-False Money and False Economic Theory. My typing muscles are getting tired, so I won't bother going into this. Any smart person, (who hasn't been laughed at recently), is capable of working out how money and debt keeps everybody in check.
-War. Again, no real need to explain this one.
There are, of course, many other techniques available, but these three are the work-h
Re:scientists have to do the job correctly, though (Score:1, Insightful)
Physicalism in no way addresses the nihilism of purely rational thought. Purely rational thought does tell us that we are nothing more than sacs of chemicals, that there is no inherent meaning to the universe, and that all of these things we feel and experience really vividly are no more special than manure or viruses or inanimate rock. The only value in the universe is arbitrary and subjective.
However, there is no reason that one has to hold a purely rational worldview, even being a scientist.
This is justifiable for a few reasons. First of all, we're all hopelessly irrational anyways. If I was totally rational, I would be a nihilist, and if I were a consistent nihilist, I would either be a total hedonist or I'd commit suicide. The folks that actually adopt one of these options are a surprisingly small minority. So, that means that we're all irrational, because we either aren't nihilists or, if we are, we're hypocritical ones.
On that basis, if there's no (acceptable) way to be totally rational and consistent, it becomes ok to say "I support/believe in/follow this lifestyle because I want to", mostly because it's the only thing we ever can say if we're being honest with ourselves and the way we act. So, basically, I'm saying we can be hedonists, but we gain the option to affirm even an altruistic worldview, since it isn't any more ridiculous than our other options.
Re:Wrong question (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, now they've fixed things. This was in response to a counter-movement which is still slowing things down.
I don't have utopia in mind; I just see the irrational anti-science movement as a partially understandable response to some unnecessarily horrific stuff which science was firmly in bed with.
It's funny, you say that massive pollution was necessary, although there is certainly no proof. I mean, clearly we are capable of running regulated industries, and they are mostly capable of sustaining our life now. Why, exactly, was it not possible to do this back then? It's hard for me to believe that the technology didn't exist at all; it's more that "we" (that is, the leaders of industry) didn't care, and this precipitated something of an intellectual crisis. We could have short-circuited a lot of irrational protesting. I think we could be several years ahead of where we are now; and have not had various disasters.
The poor brown people in question were the inhabitants of Bhopal. My point was basically that, by way of the industry of the time, science became directly and strongly associated with economically-callous and implicitly-racist disregard for human life and limb. It didn't have to be that way, and this was at least partly responsible for an anti-science backlash at various intellectual levels.
Mod parent up! When was science *EVER* popular? (Score:5, Insightful)
It took long enough for me to find this response!
I'm sorry, I've been alive for twenty years shorter than the parent poster and I do not remember a time when science was ever "popular". Popularized, maybe, with the moon shots and all, but NEVER popular. If science was ever popular how would it ever lose popularity? Think about that for a moment. Science is a constantly changing beast, with something new emerging from an enormous variety of fields ... hourly! How could you ever get bored with science should it ever become popular?
I call shenanigans on the whole notion of science having been "popular" ... well, ever! Not even in Newton's time, and certainly not Galileo's when it wasn't even called science. Hell, it wasn't even called science until the last, what? 150 years of its existence. It was a branch of philosophy (natural philosophy) before that!
Science has never and probably will never be popular. Sorry to burst anyone's bubble, but use some scientific method and tell me when science was ever popular. I have no evidence to support the assertion and know of none to even test.
Re:Make up your minds... (Score:3, Insightful)
So if something is random, there is never any design behind it? It's always the case that when randomness is observed that it's unguided?
No. "Randomness does not imply a designer" is not the same as "Randomness implies no designer".
Re:Science =! Public Policy (Score:2, Insightful)
Thank you - I could hardly believe what I saw: Someone basically writes that there is a conspiracy to dumb down America.. and he gets firmly modded "insightful"! I think there may be economical interests that make it prefereable for companies to keep the public full of certain bullshit, something that we should be carefull with when we design laws. Then there is of course religious bullshit, a chapter on it's own. But I can't really bring myself to think that any (relevant) group of people would counsciously be trying to "dumb down" anyone, let alone an entire country. That'd be serious megalomania, for starters.
I think such ideas are shadows of the very dangerous thing that has caused so much trouble in the past: When there is some kind of trouble and we can't see an obvious cause, blame it on some foreigners! Are the Jews by any chance trying to dumb down America? Or maybe it is someone who has oil who is trying to dumb down America.
Re:How to make science popular? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Make up your minds... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure. But that's not the point. A random process is observed. Is it correct to therefore conclude that the process is unguided/blind?
It is the point in so much as contradictory statements by scientists was your point, since they were not contradictory.
But to answer your question, no it is not logically proper to conclude that the process is unguided. Scientifically speaking, though, if you were trying to create a model for that process, then in the absence of any evidence suggesting a designer, and without any need for a designer to explain the evidence you do have, it would be correct not to include one. In every case of a random process with a known designer, there is ample evidence of said designer. There is no scientific evidence of a designer behind 'natural' random processes. In fact, in the case of the most common and popular hypothetical designers, said hypothesis is untestable and thus improper to ever include in a scientific theory.
I think you may be confusing "a 'designer' is not necessary, ergo I choose not to believe in one" with "a 'designer' is not necessary, ergo we have proven that one does not exist."
You can't prove God doesn't exist. However you can disprove the argument by the IDers that He must exist.
Re:Science =! Public Policy (Score:3, Insightful)
Who cares if it's specific to America?
Every time that kids (i.e. age 16-30) get in trouble for setting off fireworks, building a potato cannon, trying to make flash powder, having LEDs on a shirt, or otherwise trying to be creative* and explore something that they think is awesome, we are dumbing down the country and gradually smothering the spark of excitement at making something that will impress other people --- i.e. the engineering spirit.
And no, I don't think that there is some "TPOB" that is actively trying to do this, I think it's a natural extension of a litigious society that favors "in loco parentis" by the school, the university, and the government. In an attempt to make the world safe, we make it too dangerous to explore.
* - These are just examples, I actually don't much care for pyrotechnics, being more impressed by colorful things myself. However, I can think of lots of people who's interest in chemistry, engineering, physics, etc was sparked by things that go "boom".
Re:Science =! Public Policy (Score:4, Insightful)
It is not a willful, powerful dedicated Calvinist Theocracy that holds power - but it is this cultural and historic tendency in American society that is being used to lead them, cynically to their own self-annihilation.
The bankers belong to a different tribe, than those ejected first by England, then by the Netherlands.
If there is money in war, money in construction, money in rail, money in oil - then it is financed money. Who does the financing? Hint: it is never a state actor! When the state appears to be the instrument of finance, it always extends a fiat currency - which is itself drawn from private central, reserve system banks. There is interest owed thereby, and that is funneled from the productive economy as income and value-add taxes - paid back to privately-owned banks.
Before 1911, the USA had no privately held central banking authority that controlled it's economy. Consequently, no need for income taxes.
When Ezra Pound began to write about this, he went from the most celebrated man of English letters in the 20th century - to being smeared as a fascist, and declared mentally ill. He was locked in a prison for the years of his seniority.
Now, the banking super-rich - with no national origin or allegience of any kind - have moved power through their surrogate personhood of the corporation, away from America. Operating there was necessary for a period of time, but the once enabling middle-class, became burdensome and unpredictably capable of independent action. The future is elsewhere. America can be abandoned to it's .5% super rich, and the rest to squabble for scraps.
That's why the political and social "culture wars" and rabid, frothing castigation of shadow-play "left vs. right" politics. The game keeps the rabble distracted. They think they are facing their enemy in each other... Moms in Dallas fear their "earnings" will go to unfairly teach "lazy meskins" to read, and take the jobs they don't want, anyway. All the while, the real earnings of the next 3 generations are safely entered in the ledgers, pre-ordained in confiscation through tax and duties: paid to the secret names of bankers, who are "The Fed".
Like I say. These guys are not theocratic Methodists. They will use that as the means of oppression, because it works fine, in this location. But theirs is a different tribe.
Re:Anti-intellectualism (Score:3, Insightful)
Physics Idol / Rock Star String Theory (Score:3, Insightful)
"People worship "American Idol" over Stephen Hawking, because they are SOLD and MANIPULATED these values"
I'd love to see a reality show about contestants developing their own Theory of Everything.
Geometrodynamics, I choose YOU!
(Actually I've still got a soft spot for Einstein's classical UFT.)
Re:Popular, or useful? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or something that only boring socially inept people are interested in.
Re:Popular, or useful? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd say another problem is that modern government regards science as evil. You can't even buy yourself a decent home chemistry set like those popular 50 years ago. You might be "a terrorist". I'm sure it was bad enough when a nation full of overprotective mothers were worried that Johnny was going to blow himself up with that. Now we've got an overprotective nanny state worried that Johnny might blow up others with that.
Freedom encourages inquiry and discovery, and thereby encourages science. Is it any small wonder that limiting freedom limits scientific curiousity as well?
Re:Popular, or useful? (Score:3, Insightful)
Basically agree.
Its delusional to think you are going to get 90% of the people in the U.S. or the world to care about science beyond novelty news items.
The extremely important thing is you need to nurture the 5-10% who have a passion for science and math. You need to insure they get an abundance of educational opportunities when young, and funding for research and development when they are older.
Problem 1 is the "No Child Left Behind" education system is fixated on elevating low achievers to a minimally functional level with vast expenditure of resources and priorities, nearly to the exclusion of all else. Bad idea, really bad idea. For global competitiveness in science and engineering the REALLY important thing is to invest in the top 5% who are going to be making the breakthroughs. The current U.S. education system, unless you go to private schools, fails miserably nurturing the geeks and high achievers. There is a ray of hope because even if the educational system fails them, at least they have the Internet now so if they are self motivating they can self teach which was a LOT harder to do when I was young (pre Internet). Just hope they don't spend all their time on porn and WoW instead of becoming the next Feynman. Even harder you need to figure out a way for them to survive high school with their self esteem in tact, and still motivated for a career in science, in an educational and social system designed to destroy exactly that.
Problem 2, it is usually very financially unappealing to choose a career in hard science. Working in a lab or as a university professor pretty much sucks financially. Not sure there is hard data but I gather its widely thought the staggering increases in compensation for people on Wall Street over the last 30 years has caused a huge brain drain from many other more meaningful and useful professions to brokers, bankers, quants, etc. Its quite likely that the massive imbalance in compensation on Wall Street for doing nothing useful except gambling in a multi trillion dollar casino(Wall Street) may have severely hurt competitiveness in all the other career paths which actually count for something, like invention, theoretical and applied science. One of the talking heads on CNBC's early show started life as a biochemist but switched to Wall Street when he saw where all the money was.
Problem 3, the U.S. Congress, Presidency and political parties are completely dysfunctional. If private industry wont fund research which they do less and less, your only other hope is government. Unfortunately from everything I've seen in Congressional hearings in recent years most of our Congressmen are complete morons. Our financial system is in ruins partially because the Congressmen in our financial committees seem to either have no clue what they are doing, or if they do they've been bought out by corporate interests. I doubt its likely you will find any Congressmen who have even a passing clue about the importance of basic research or which programs are likely to pay off and which aren't. They mostly just seem to pour funds in to the coffers of which every big corporations did the best job buying them off with well placed, relatively tiny, campaign contributions. Killing the super conducting super collider in Texas is a case in point. It could have been built for what we blow in Iraq in a month and since we didn't the U.S. probably ceded leadership in physics to CERN. Our presidency isn't much better. It appears every time the Presidency changes hands he kills off all his predecessors programs, after sinking billions in them and before they yield any results. He then starts all his pet projects, all of which will be killed by his successor. This is a key reason our space program is a shambles. Kennedy did a smart thing throwing down a gauntlet on Apollo, Johnson and Nixon couldn't kill.
Re:3 steps (Score:2, Insightful)
That's one of the reasons why science is losing ground in parts of society. Why make enemies when you don't have to? Also, if you think about it, the time frame given in TFA when science was more popular was also when people where more religious. What's changed? IMHO, too many "science has all the answers, it shows blah..blah..blah, therefore God doesn't exist" types vs "science is a tool for exploring and explaining the world around us..it helps us figure out how God/Allah/whatever did it" - which is probably what TFA was alluding to in regards to the "New Atheists". There have been lots of religious scientists and I think Henry Eyring had a pretty good quote concerning science vs religion debate: "Is there any conflict between science and religion? There is no conflict in the mind of God, but often there is conflict in the minds of men."
Like Democrats are Pro Science... (Score:3, Insightful)
Anti-science indeed. Bitching that God made the earth is not nearly as damaging to society as the liberal penchant to remove freedom from people to actually do science.
You know why science isn't popular? Who can actually do it? It's because liberals and all their sissy crap made it off limits and useless to kids. Between the lawyers, consumer advocates, and all the other crap, liberals have successfully gotten rid of teaching electronics, teaching chemistry, having model rockets, building model aircraft, are trying to get rid of cars and would probably get rid of boats if they could, and people are expected to learn about science? Seriously. Show me the state park where you are allowed to launch a model rocket. Show me where you can fly a model airplane. God help you if you put a remote control boat in a pond. That would be some nature area for ducks and some endangered spore. Meanwhile, spores and mold have their own land but human kids have to sit in their rooms with nothing to do but play Wii and pump each other in the ass.
Liberalism and science are fundamentally at odds, even more so than creationism and science. Liberalism says that the earth should not be altered by man to save the spores. But you can't learn about something unless you play with it...
Re:Science =! Public Policy (Score:3, Insightful)
The gifted and capable should be educated differently than the mob and groomed for success. The general public don't need to learn more than job skills.
There's a problem with this sentiment: the "mob" controls the leadership through elections, and they don't like being told they're stupid and that "elites" should be treated better than them.
This is why China is probably going to overtake Western civilization before long, since they don't have that problem with their authoritarian government. It seems like democracies (or republics if you prefer) are simply destined to eventual failure through idiocracy, unless (as the USA started out) voting is restricted to only educated people with money.
Re:Science =! Public Policy (Score:2, Insightful)
The USSR did a lot of nasty shit, but I don't see a subcategory at your link for "people who disagreed with `approved' science" who were executed. Please give details.
Yep, pretty nasty. Of course, for a little context, let's consider the American projects in eugenics [usatoday.com] and other misapplications of Darwinism to social and political issues.
Stalinists, maybe; I can't imagine Kropotkinists [wikipedia.org] killing scientists. "Communists" are not a homogenous group.
Anyway, it's sure interesting that those science-killing Soviets somehow beat us into space. Maybe the truth is just a little more complicated that simplistic slogans like "Communists kill scientists"?
Re:Science =! Public Policy (Score:3, Insightful)
"Rather it's unpopular because for every honest scientist out there, there's a hundred James Hanson or Al Gore types shouting about the end of the world, or a new way to "cure" male pattern baldness, or herbally make erections larger or breasts bigger, or a thousand other things that turn out later to be absolute bullshit."
Your post demonstrates a peculiar problem in the US in that many people don't even recognise science when it's shoved under their nose, it's a political thing on both sides, the left have their 'truthers' and the right have their 'birthers' both as equally bat-shit crazy. Occasionally this culture of believing what suits you spills over into serious matters such as the right wing anti-environmental dogma getting in the way of rational discussions.
It seems to be a culturally acceptable thing in the US to ignore a mountain of data [ipcc-data.org] because you don't agree with the messenger's politics. Or perhaps a lack of scientific understanding leaves a vast audience susceptible to the misinformation of lobbyists from the heartland institute (amoung others) who supply an endless stream of irrelevant cherry-picks and red-herrings via their "front" sites such as iceap and WUWT. Either way calling Hansen's science "snake oil" only demonstrates the lack of basic scientific awareness TFA is banging on about.However as an adult you have nobody to blame for your ignorance except yourself, perhaps if you could stop taking pot shots at the messengers for a few moments and actually investigate the claims you might appreciate two world renowned geeks a bit more.
Re:Science =! Public Policy (Score:3, Insightful)
Aaaaand another guy who could have done something creative to help renew Western culture falls to conspiracy theory and Jew-blaming. Woops, try again.
Re:Science =! Public Policy (Score:3, Insightful)
Not saying that the GP is correct, but Jew != Israeli, despite what the Israeli lobby endlessly puts out. You can be Jewish and disapprove of Israeli government policy and you can criticize the Israeli government without having any negative feelings toward Jewish people in general. Note that the GP quite clearly "Israeli" and "Zionist", at no point referring to Jewish people in general. You, very ironically, have made a sweeping generalisation about Jewish people and actually one that many Jewish people that denounce what they see as the Israeli government's appalling behaviour, would be very put out by. There are few things more irritating that someone you disagree with speaking on your behalf.