Bill Nye Disses "Regular" Software Writers' Science Knowledge 681
conoviator writes Bill Nye, one of the foremost science educators in the United States states that only the upper crust members of American science and technology (with degrees from top tier schools) understand science, particularly climate change. He opines that "regular software writers" dwell in the realm of the semi-science-literate. Nye rates science education in the U.S. an F. ("But if it makes you feel any better, you can say a B-minus.")
Good grief... (Score:5, Insightful)
Bill Nye, one of the foremost science educators in the United States...
I think that's overstating it a bit. I don't know what Nye's bona fides are (some: bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering in 1977), certainly he's a knowledgeable science guy who has done much to interest kids and young adults in science, and of course there is his Great Debate with the "Intelligent Design" idiots. But "one of the foremost science educators"? Hmmm.
states that only the upper crust members of American science and technology (with degrees from top tier schools) understand science, particularly climate change....
Well SNOOT SNOOT, my good mad! Not an MIT grad? Did'nt go to Stanford? Hit the bricks! You opinions, masters, PhD, or whatever? Not worth the paper your diploma was printed on.
Good grief.
Of course Nye is a Cornell University guy, so, you know, everyone not of the Ivy League is suspect. I wonder which secret society he is a member of...
Science in the US get's low grades? University in general in the US gets low grades. Why? It's not about education, it's all about money. And football, don't forget the football.
So let's just solve this by insulting everyone. Washington State University knows nothing about medical science. Oregon State University knows zilch about forestry (or is that not science?). There are many well known public and private universities that while not up to Bill Nye's Ivy Standard, do good and great science.
Nye is off the beam.
Re:Good grief... (Score:5, Funny)
Fifteen year old article on his death [theonion.com].
I was quite saddened when I thought that the United States had lost one of its premiere science guys...
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Re:Good grief... (Score:5, Insightful)
You missed an obvious joke? You should be sad, at your own idiocy.
Re:Good grief... (Score:5, Insightful)
I can tell you, I've given much, much stupider opinions of my own before.
Re:Good grief... (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone asked him his opinion, and he gave it.
A fairly accurate opinion, in my opinion. CS people are better educated than the average person, but many of them are still surprisingly ignorant about scientific topics.. Many of them don't even understand how computers actually work.
Re:Good grief... (Score:5, Insightful)
CS people are better educated than the average person, but many of them are still surprisingly ignorant about scientific topics.
And neither should we expect them to be experts outside their own field. I should have no reasonable expectation that a farmer (Nye wrote "regular software writers and farmers") would have expertise in astrophysics for example. And as science requires ever more specialisation, I should have no reasonable expectation either that an astrophysicist be an expert in pharmacology (just don't try telling any physicist that! ;)
The problem is not so much the lack of knowledge about "scientific topics," it the lack of humility in regard to those who have knowledge. You are free, of course, to contradict the orthodoxy in absolutely any field of science, but it is impertient to do so unless you have done the hard yards and made yourself an expert. The knowledge, the skill rather, that everyone ought to possess (and this IMO is more important than direct knowledge of "science topics") is the skill to assess the credibility and authoritativeness of sources of scientific "information." It is this skill, in light of the increasing supply of disinformation, that a science education ought to impart.
You may think that measles isn't that serious (you'd be wrong), but it could just as easily have been polio. The inability to sort out scientific information from scientific disinformation kills!
Re:Good grief... (Score:4, Insightful)
[A]s a college educated person, they should know the approximate age of the universe, that the universe is expanding, and that we know that because of the red shift. They should know, roughly, the scale of the earth, the solar system, the galaxy, etc
Why should a farmer, or a software writer, be able to put even an approximate number (OK, understanding red shift is pretty basic) to any of those factoids. Surely it is far more important to know that the effects of capsaicin are mediated by the TRPV1 receptor ... or am I naval gazing? ;) (Believe it or not, but that question was actually put to me over lunch this weekend.)
OK, any science graduate must have a working knowledge of the basics of physics, chemistry and maths (as these are the building blocks of the other sciences). Knowing that the universe's age is measured in billions rather than thousands of years doesn't hurt either, (but really, if you thought the universe was 5 billion years old that is not going to affect most of the work you do in biochemistry).
However increasingly when "facts" are only a few keystrokes away memorising them becomes less important, while recognising fact vs non-fact becomes more so.
Bill Nye is ... saying that too many people lack basic scientific literacy.
I can read what Bill Nye is saying. What I'm saying is that, in the context in which he answered that question, his diagnosis is wrong. It's not so much a database that is required, as a bullshit detector.
I'm not sure, perhaps your knowledge of immunology is so good as to be comparable to amount to a knowledge of "age of the universe ... the scale of the earth, the solar system, the galaxy, etc." But even if your work in science has never brought you into contact with CST, you ought to be able to assess the credibility of evidence led by anti-vaxxers for example.
Re:Good grief... (Score:5, Funny)
In germany you learn stuff like the doppler shift in ordinary school, around seventh grade depending on what kind of school you went.
So basically if you did not forget it, everyone should know about it.
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They actually cover that stuff in American junior high schools as well - but I do think people who aren't interested in science tend to forget it again, once they don't need to remember it for a test anymore.
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The nuts and bolts of computer architecture isn't in the scope of computer science. Sure, you might want to know a little about how things work from an abstract level, but let's be clear; Computer science and electrical engineering are two different disciplines. As a comp sci grad, a lot of the nitty gritty details of the computer are irrelevant to my study.
An astronomer might know a little about the optics inside his/her telescope, but the level of understanding that a physicist would have is simply not in
Understanding Essential (Score:4, Informative)
An astronomer might know a little about the optics inside his/her telescope, but the level of understanding that a physicist would have is simply not in scope.
Actually I would expect an astronomer to have a level of understanding of the optics in their telescope comparable to that of a physicist's understanding of their own experimental apparatus. If you don't understand the apparatus you use to collect the data then that data is useless because you won't know whether some interesting feature of the data is due to some new phenomena never before observed [wikipedia.org] or because you forgot to plug in your GPS cable properly [livescience.com].
Re:Good grief... (Score:5, Insightful)
You're paraphrasing Dijkstra, but missing his point. Astronomers, in general, know a heck of a lot about optics. His point wasn't to excuse ignorance of how computers work (he worked on the design of the STANTEC ZEBRA and wrote an incredibly scathing review of the IBM1620, for example, so clearly knew his way around the design process), it was to point out that this is a building block.
I'd consider any computer science curriculum that doesn't cover logic gates up to building adders, the basics of pipelining, the memory hierarchy and virtual memory translation at a minimum to have seriously skimped over computer architecture. The better ones will include design and simulation (on FPGA if budgets permit) of a simple pipelined processor.
If you want to work on compilers or operating systems, to give just two examples, then you need a solid grasp of computer architecture.
Not this shit again (Score:5, Informative)
You're paraphrasing Dijkstra, but missing his point. Astronomers, in general, know a heck of a lot about optics. His point wasn't to excuse ignorance of how computers work (he worked on the design of the STANTEC ZEBRA and wrote an incredibly scathing review of the IBM1620, for example, so clearly knew his way around the design process), it was to point out that this is a building block.
I'd consider any computer science curriculum that doesn't cover logic gates up to building adders, the basics of pipelining, the memory hierarchy and virtual memory translation at a minimum to have seriously skimped over computer architecture. The better ones will include design and simulation (on FPGA if budgets permit) of a simple pipelined processor.
I would challenge anyone to show me a CS degree that doesn't have any of what you mentioned. This meme/fad/bullshit has been running for a long time among hardware degrees, that we CS grads never see such things (and I love their faces when I show them otherwise.)
The thing is, and this is what I've personally observed, that CS detractors claim we do not know those things listed above because we do not know the basics of electrical engineering. For example, knowing the exact working of a capacitor by reciting the laws of physics (and interactions) that make its work possible. Or reciting what a Thevenin's equivalent is.
Of course we do not fucking know (nor should we need to). And then we spend most of our careers working at higher levels of abstractions, so we won't recite out of heads how to construct a digital adder with a carry bit, nor remember how we built a basic ALU in our undergrad studies 10, 15, 20+ years ago.
But that does not constitute any evidence that we never see anything regarding computer organization and architecture (a fundamental subject that all CS students must pass to graduate.) And making assumptions like that can only to "conclusions" that are not only stupid, but malevolent.
There is a degree of truth that many CS degrees have lowered the requirements and put too much emphasis on higher-level programming languages to the detriment of lower level ones. But that is not the state of the field in general, nor a characterization of all who work in the profession with that degree.
YMMV, but people who make that kind of ridiculous assumptions are just carrying a big chip on their shoulders and need to make shit out to feel good about their career choices. It is not just ignorance, but arrogance.
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If you want to work on compilers or operating systems, to give just two examples, then you need a solid grasp of computer architecture.
Your view of computer science - as well as that of most universities - is seriously outdated. After 15 years of business, I've had some university experience again last year, and I feel pity for the students who go there.
That's mostly because computer "science" actually isn't. We're a long way from science, with much of the teaching revolving around best practice and "we think this is how it should be". Computer languages taught in university are subject to fashion, not to any empirical evidence of which la
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Re:Good grief... (Score:4, Interesting)
Many of them don't even understand how computers actually work.
Now that's actually depressing. If you get through a CS program without learning how a computer works, then your CS program failed you.
It kind of depends on the goal of the program. If you are aiming to turn out academics and truly excellent researchers and thought-leaders in industry, then yes, you should know how the computer works. If you are aiming to turn out decent programmers, you might not need to know, for example, how to do VLSI design.
(Although it's fun.)
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If you are aiming to turn out decent programmers
This is surely a valid goal, but it doesn't require a four year degree, it requires a two-year trade school (or less). If your CS program acted like a trade school while pretending to be a CS program, then they failed you.
Re:Good grief... (Score:4, Insightful)
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I would go further. Unless you understand how floating point numbers work then you should stay away from doing anything with them; period. Even then doing anything mathematical without a good grounding in numerical analysis is a none starter.
Unfortunately most CS graduates don't have the faintest clue about numerical analysis.
Re:Good grief... (Score:4, Interesting)
I recon, your hard earned knowledge is only valid for current breed of CPUs. I am fairly certain that with a new CPU design, even if you know the exact ins and outs you would not know what actually is optimal code for that machine.
The interesting part of CPU design is that it is a self reinforcing pattern. CPU designers saw common patterns and started to optimize these. Programmers learned that certain patterns are more performant and started using them more. CPU designers optimized the "common case" further.
The current state of CPUs is so complicated that you can't hardly know all the ramifications of the design. Small changes can bring the entire performance characteristics out of whack. (Like hyper-threading making certain numerical applications slower...)
I am fairly certain that you can not explain why a certain instruction stalls the pipeline. But then you don't need to know, the interesting information is that it does.
Re:Good grief... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Good grief... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Computer Systems Engineering" covers it pretty well -- it's a mix of EE and CS so you end up with a ground-up understanding from transistor to circuit to chipset to architecture to OS to software. Of course, these days there are so many competing standards/products that all do the same thing but differently and so many layers of bloat, it's not humanly possible to know every detail, and the more actual work you do the further you fall behind in "knowlege" compared to someone who manages to find a way to just read books/code for a living and never has to put shoulder to wheel (not that we don't need those sorts of people, as they can see the forest rather than the trees.)
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Re:Good grief... (Score:4, Interesting)
In my third year we had a 'digital computer architectures' course, which should be compulsory at every uni for every CS/IT student, regardless whether they just want to become coder monkeys or sw engineers, etc.
Actually my first M degree was called 'IT engineering', which was hard to explain to a lot of people, so I always told I had a CS degree. However, when I started to move more around internationally, and I learned what a CS degree in the U.S. means, I stopped doing that. My opinion is (and not just mine), that any degree that has CS or IT in its name has to include courses about computer architectures, electrical engineering, math&algorithms&numerical methods to some extent, simply to provide a basic background knowledge, so the graduates will have something to build upon later, having a better understanding of how things work.
In the extent of relevant background knowledge, U.S. CS/IT master level university programs still fall very much behind in what central/eastern European universities can provide (despite the huge financial differences), and with a strong background knowledge and understanding it's always easier to go forward professionally.
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True, but do you have a couple of square miles of space to build it on?
Re:Good grief... (Score:5, Insightful)
Understanding how a transistor works requires quantum mechanics, but 'transistors are tiny magical switches' is enough to be able to understand how to build them up into gates, how to assemble gates into arithmetic, logic, and memory circuits, how to assemble those into pipelines, and so on.
Eventually you need quantum mechanics (or relativity, or both) to understand how anything works, but understanding the electron transfer involved in combustion is not essential to understanding how a car works. Computer science is all about building abstractions.
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A good CS program usually requires a good STEM course load. You have to take classes like Physics, Chemistry, Numerical Analysis, etc.. So a CS educated developer should have some understanding of science, but of course in day to day life he probably won't be doing
Re:Good grief... (Score:5, Informative)
Considering the way he and Al Gore were savaged for blatant scientific fraud over at WUTWT in Al Gore and Bill Nye FAIL at doing a simple CO2 experiment [wattsupwiththat.com], his opinion doesn't carry much weigjht. If somebody is going to tell us we are scientifically illiterate, at least find somebody with more chops than Science Fair Baking Soda Vulcanoes.
Horribly misleading summary (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, holy crap is this article being intentionally bad at characterizing what Nye said in the article. The "F" rating was for overall population in the USA (based on the high level of climate denial).
His comment about him writing that you need to be from a top-tier school is wrong, as well - he was taking about how we have top-tier scientists in the US (and gave a few schools as examples) and compared them not to non-ivy schools, but to farmers and CS majors who talk about climate change as if they're experts.
Read the linked article - Nye intimated nothing that the summary does.
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Missing footnote after Posted by timothy*
*Not checked for factual accuracy.
Re:Horribly misleading summary (Score:4, Insightful)
We're talking about analyzing a few sentences that were jotted down by an interviewer, but still, Mr. Nye's attitude is not so impressive.
He suggests that one's view on climate change is sufficient to determine one's abilities to understand science. Mr. Nye must have been speaking passionately and not intelligently because that assertion is easy to refute by almost any measure of science understanding. What he probably meant to say was climate change is a very important issue and if you disagree with my ideas, then you are don't understand this important topic. Instead, he said, if you disagree with me on this narrow topic, you don't understand anything about any part of science.
Then he continues with his "passion" to suggest that regular software writers are not scientifically literate. Maybe he wasn't referring to the software writers at Google because they are in the top tier and therefore not regular. Unless they don't agree with his views, in which case, they're stupid.
Look, climate change is real and important. Bill Nye may be an intelligent guy, but unfortunately too many smart guys are bigoted and dismissive of others and as a result actually damage the causes that they claim to champion.
Re:Horribly misleading summary (Score:4, Insightful)
Classic, 'I know you are, but what am I' response'
Aside from the well written post above by GP (The Rizz), which outlines how horrible the summary of the article was, I think that the very heart of the matter is that the F- minus crowd relies almost entirely on emotional response and belief when faced with a situation that requires scientific analysis
You are exacerbating the errors of your beliefs by refusing to look into what he actually said (much less the actions that he has demonstrated) and blindly accusing Nye of acting on emotions
If there is a single lesson to the American public it is to adopt scientific methods, turn down the volume on your beliefs when the facts in front of your negate them, and learn to handle your emotions when faced with the possibility that you are wrong
Cognitive dissonance can be a very painful feeling, and learning how to handle it can lead to an increased capability in dealing with the facts that life will present to you
Re:Horribly misleading summary (Score:5, Informative)
He suggests that one's view on climate change is sufficient to determine one's abilities to understand science [...] if you disagree with me on this narrow topic, you don't understand anything about any part of science.
Exactly where does he say that? He doesn't say that or even intimate it. He's using climate change as an example to demonstrate his point. (A near-unanimous consensus among scientists maintain that climate change is happening and is a serious problem; over 50% of the US population disagrees. This demonstrates that the US population is largely science-illiterate or science-hostile.) It does not follow from this that everyone who disagrees with him on this point is bad at science, but when 50+% of the population disagrees with scientists for non-science reasons (politics, propaganda, FUD) it is a very real indicator that there is a problem with basic understanding of science.
He's not saying "scientists researching this who don't agree with me are bad scientists". He's saying "non-scientists saying the bulk of scientists are liars because they don't want to believe them is a problem".
Re:Horribly misleading summary (Score:4, Interesting)
That's funny - I removed your Google Search's wsj.com requirement [google.com] and the next several results were all rebuttals from much more trustworthy sources.
Let's summarize:
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If you want an analysis of the latest IPCC report, you can look here [financialpost.com] (of course, if you want something technical you can read the actual report).
If you want to see an actual survey of climatologists, and not the 97% report based on dubious questions, you can look here [academia.edu].
The problem with that survey that reported 97% is that the questio
Fair is fair (Score:3)
He argues about climate denial, and resorts to insults attempting to make the point. Antagonizing people is probably the worst method of teaching them. Sure, he was answering questions but they were _his_answers. I never thought of him as a smart guy, but a decent entertainer. Entertainers need to make noise every now and then to stay relevant in that business. I know this as Sophistry, not Science.
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Fucking bottom feeders.
Re:Horribly misleading summary (Score:4, Informative)
I would probably trust a CS major to compile data that they are presented with and place it into a well formatted, easily accessible structure. I would even grant that they would be able to take the requirements given to them by scientists and build well structured programs to aid in the analysis of that data. I have seen this time and time again with demographic data, financial data, even behavioral data.
However, I would be a fool to leave the definition of those requirements in their hands
FWIW I have a CS major, and went back to gain an MBA in order to better understand the financial data that I work with
Re:Horribly misleading summary (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't need to have a degree in X from a "top-tier school" in order to understand it well enough to competently discuss the issues around it, and Nye is still implying that you do, and that's elitist.
He does no such thing. He says that scientists are good, and then starts listing a few colleges and naturally starts with the ones considered top-tier with the best programs. He stops after a few because otherwise, what, he lists several hundred colleges in this country that give science degrees?
If I were to say "companies that employ top programmers, like Microsoft, Sun, and Oracle, are ..." would you seriously say that I consider anyone working at Valve, Apple, or any other company to automatically not be top-tier just because I didn't happen to mention their company in the short list that first came to mind?
Re:CLimate "Deniers" actually more knowledgeable (Score:4, Interesting)
The abstract of the article you linked to ends with:
This result suggests that public divisions over climate change stem not from the public's incomprehension of science but from a distinctive conflict of interest: between the personal interest individuals have in forming beliefs in line with those held by others with whom they share close ties and the collective one they all share in making use of the best available science to promote common welfare.
FFS, how you can you interpret that in any other way than the failure of science education? The paper says the failure is not because people know too little science but because they don't believe in science because they are surrounded by people who don't believe in science.
How on earth can you interpret the abstract of that paper to be a vindication of science education and a justification of your disparaging comments about Bill Nye? If nearly half the population disbelieves in science and doesn't use science to form opinions on matters of vital importance and public welfare then how is that not a failure of science education? Did you even bother to read all of the abstract?
To make a car analogy, it's like you are saying an advertising campaign for car was a rip roaring success because it created a lot of brand recognition. But sales were dismal because even though many people knew the brand, they had very negative associations with it.
Re:Good grief... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Good grief... (Score:5, Informative)
He visited my university when I was still in school, and I had the opportunity to meet him. The man is an asshole.
He lived here in Seattle for many years before he became a Super Star, and many people here (including his ex-girlfriend) agree with your assesment.
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Re: Good grief... (Score:3)
I know a few people who have met him, and they all have told me the same.
I guess you don't get famous as a "personality" if you're not a self-aggrandizing Type-A schmuck.
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He visited my university when I was still in school, and I had the opportunity to meet him. The man is an asshole.
Eh, it goes both ways. I was volunteering at the ASME coffee shop at the Cornell Sibley School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering student lounge, when Bill Nye stopped by to say 'hi' on his way to give a talk in an auditorium.
Of course, we grew up in the Mr. Wizard generation, so the students studying in the lounge kinda glanced up at him, shrugged, and went back on to work with their problem sets.
I'm still sort of kicking myself for not trying to sell him a bagel or muffin, or even giving him one
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Hey man, he holds a patent on ballet shoes...are you gonna say that's snooty too? That's what I thought, buddy.
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Hey man, he holds a patent on ballet shoes...are you gonna say that's snooty too? That's what I thought, buddy.
You put me in my place, Guy Five.
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Just because you've self-taught science well doesn't mean every programmer has. He's right. Most programmers are just ordinary people, and most ordinary people aren't very science literate.
A comp sci degree, if you even have one as a programmer, doesn't ask very much in the way of physical sciences -- it's a math degree as much as it's anything besides plain programmer trainer, in my experience. Doesn't cover many of the skills needed for reading scientific literature or doing proper experimental design (wh
Re: Good grief... (Score:3, Interesting)
The summary was deliberately provocative. What the TV personality actually said was far less elitist.
The problem is that he is right, but he would disagree about the evidence. E.g. the fact that the US has spent millions giving dietary advice which is alleged to be science based, and which the medical industry and many others have taken as gosphel, when in fact it is all antiscience, is a great example. They jumped repeatedly from hypothesis to conclusion. Cholesterol correlates with heart disease, food has
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Giving the entire US an F in science reminds me of the Doomsday clock (a few minutes from the world's destruction!!). Making these sort of statements is just hyperbole intended to grab attention. Saying these sort of things immediately drops the speaker's credibility.
Re:Good grief... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's actually something he's spot-on about. Science knowledge in general in the US is absolutely dreadful.
If you don't believe me, try asking people some science questions and see how many of them even get it close. What is the chemical formula for water? How old is the Earth? What's the difference between a dominant and recessive trait? What does half-life mean? What is red shift? What is kinetic energy?
Re:Good grief... (Score:5, Funny)
Of course Nye is a Cornell University guy, so, you know, everyone not of the Ivy League is suspect.
I'd like to introduce him to my Uncle - doctorate in chemistry from Cornell, literally hundreds of publications and citations, and thinks global warming is bunk. Hee hee.
re: your uncle (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly? I probably have a whole list of people who it would be interesting to introduce to your uncle, then.
I've almost lost count of the number of times I've watched someone with no real scientific background in the field make a blanket statement declaring anyone who doesn't believe in climate change/global warming is clearly an idiot.
The fact is, things are much different than that. Quite a few folks who are FAR from being idiots think it's fear-mongering, misplaced nonsense. (I'm certainly no climate expert myself, but I think I fall someplace on the spectrum far from "clueless idiot" -- and I've read enough compelling information from both sides of the argument to feel like the "best stance" to take is one of questioning everything. If we're talking about pretty painless changes we can do, such as substitution of one chemical for another in a product, to reduce the ozone layer depletion - great. Why not? But demanding people spend billions of dollars to try to "fix" the whole climate situation? That just seems like a REALLY tall order for something that reeks of special interest agendas, right now, especially when we don't even have a consensus on a solution that would definitely reverse the claimed problem and revert it to "normal" in a useful time-frame.
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Note that these rankings are only good for the Anglo-american model of higher-education...
Isn't that obvious? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Isn't that obvious? (Score:4, Informative)
I've found this to be true also especially in Medical circles. I know a lot of doctors who have taken the fact that they are "Smart" aka studied intensely on a subject who then believe that they are world class economists, physicists, climatologists etc. When they are as much ideologues as your average indoctrinated grunt but have enough intelligence to frame their ignorance well.
It's not even limited to Climate Change. Look at almost any post:
"Scientists discover new form of metal."
"Pfffft, how did they overcome the ion bonding in the alloy. Can't be done."
No matter the subject there are a bunch of idiotic complaints about the quality of the research done.
What he really said (Score:5, Interesting)
"Scientists in America are really good, but average people need to understand science, too. Average people, including programmers."
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Whoa! Nothing like the summary, eh? Flamebait article looking for hits.
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Very much so... As my father would say, "please attack me for what I said, not something you made up"
Yeah, that's worth repeating. If people tried to understand what was being said before attacking........half the news stories on the internet would disappear.
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What worries me is that these people who think they are so educated are not really able to differentiate between what they know and what they don't know. I would say that a course in philosophy might fix this, but that would fix
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Because programmers are average people, but scientists? Fuck you for thinking there's anything average about them!
Well yeah, when it comes to science, scientists tend to be above average, by nature of their profession. It would be kind of worrisome if they weren't.
Says Howie. (Score:5, Funny)
Says the guy who doesn't even have a science degree. Just a masters in Engineering.
Hey "SCience GUy" I'll see your crappy Masters in Engineer and raise you a PhD in Mathematical Physics.
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Technically, an engineering degree is a "Degree in Science in Engineering." So there.
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I would opine that anyone who refers to the field of software development as "software writing" hasn't had much to do with the development industry at any point in their life and wouldn't really know how science literate most developers are.
I have, and I'd agree with what he actually said. In my experience, programmers run the entire gamut from amazingly brilliant to drooling idiot - at about the same rate as most professions. But even there, their knowledge focuses much more upon the areas of science that intersect with computers and technology, and less into the areas of natural science. Likewise programmers are more likely to know about psychology and human nature that deal with aesthetics and information processing and natural interfaces,
I agree (Score:2)
Lots of climate change deniers, cornucopians and similar delusional folks in software development.
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Lots of climate change deniers, cornucopians and similar delusional folks in software development.
The same as there are in any other field. IT isn't full of science nerds. We have all sorts in this profession.
Example - when I started programming ages ago, one of my fellow programmers was working on an Astrological program. Another was developing something that would enable him to pick winners on the horse races. I suspect the latter was more scientifically based than the former.
Personally in my spare time I transmute base metals into gold. And vice versa.
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Personally in my spare time I transmute base metals into gold. And vice versa.
That's actually a thing, though.
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You mean a skeptic like Freeman Dyson? I don't think he's a developer though he is a premier physicist.
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The guy who invented the electric motor (Score:2)
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Does this guy read Slashdot? How does he know that people who are good with software could have such poorly informed and ridiculous opinions on matters of scientific interest? Makes me want to give the guy a high five! [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Amen to that.
And the mods on duty today are a particularly clueless.
Misleading Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Summary is misleading. Nye basically says US as a whole is failing when it comes to educating average people about science. He admits that, sure, we have top top-tier institutions and scientists, but we need to do a better job educating the average person.
Hardly the swipe aimed specifically at Slashdotters that TFS makes it out to be. Furthermore, if we use /. as a case study, given some of the gems I've seen here recently, I think "semi-science-literate" isn't a bad estimate of the average.
Re:Misleading Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Or it's just rabble rousing, hard to tell intent with so little of the submission.
The trouble with the Slashdot rabble is that we are all so jolly easy to rouse!
Seriously, we're total clickbait-whores, even if it only amounts to a "this crap insults my intelligence" or "what the hell is this doing on /." post. Trouble is, every time we do that, Dice wins at trolling Slashdot.
Yeah, I'm guilty too.
Mostly right. (Score:3, Interesting)
Look at how many people think they're scientifically literate because they think --
... and that's just the tip of the iceberg. You don't have to talk to flat earthers and antivaxxers to see profound science illiteracy; usually, the people condemning the science illiteracy are just as wrong, but about different things.
Re:Mostly right. (Score:5, Insightful)
What you're describing isn't scientific illiteracy; it's mere ignorance of certain specific scientific facts. Big deal. Nobody knows more than the tiniest fraction of true facts about the universe anyway. And unless you're an actual physicist or cosmologist, knowing that E^2=m^2c^4 + p^2c^2 isn't going to give you a leg up on some poor fool who only knows the standard coffee mug equation.
By way of comparison, not knowing what an Oxford comma is or how to define a subordinate clause doesn't make you illiterate. Not knowing how to read is what makes you illiterate. Similarly, people are scientifically illiterate because they don't know how to "science." They're clueless how to separate fact from propaganda, good science from mumbo jumbo.
Bill Nye, the Dogma Guy! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, this is the world’s most technically advanced society, and we have people denying climate change. These guys are still in deep denial, and future generations, what few of them will be alive, are just going to go, “What were you freaking people doing? What was wrong with you?”
No. This is why Nye, and people like him, are not "the foremost science educators" anywhere. This is not science. Science is not about being correct, science is not about deferring to authorities; science is a process for understanding our world, for explaining and predicting. It's a philosophy, not a set of facts. People in the future will be saying “What were you freaking people doing? What was wrong with you?”, but they won't be saying it to climate change "deniers" or "sceptics" - they will be saying it to the "science educators" who thought levelling charges of heresy was a better course than providing a reasoned, evidence based argument.
You see if you truly believe in the scientific method, and the wider philosophy of rationality, you provide a reasoned, evidence based defence of your position and attack on your opponents position. You don't tell them that they're not qualified to speak because they don't have a PhD from Harvard, or because they disagree with the "consensus". Science does not rely on qualification or authority or consensus and the myth that it does is the biggest threat to scientific literacy today.
And show some f***ing consistency, please. If you're going to shout down "conservatives" for being unqualified to talk about climate change please shout down "liberals" and "greens" that talk about, and accept, climate change as being unqualified to talk about it too.
Evidence based, reasoned arguments don't work (Score:5, Insightful)
Except on people who are willing to listen to reason and accept evidence. Like for example, take the anti-vaccine crowd.
You show them studies that say that the risk of the vaccine is really tiny and there's no correlation of receiving vaccines with autism. They whip out Jenny McCarthy and other anecdotal evidence, and postulate vast conspiracies by Big Pharma to perpetuate the fantastically profitable vaccine industry even though vaccines are unbelievably dangerous. Fact is, Big Pharma makes its money on Viagra and pills for chronic diseases, not really on vaccines.
If someone wants to believe something, your reasoned arguments and evidence based defense of your facts will never persuade them otherwise. Instead, they just end up believing even harder in what you challenged them on.
--PeterM
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Vaccines have a non-zero risk. Not vaccinating one child has very little risk to that one child. The risk of not vaccinating is mostly in the aggregate, rather than the individual. I suspect that some fraction of the people not getting vaccines for their children are hoping to be free riders, trading one tiny risk for another.
I don't know how common it is, my point is just that not wanting your kids vaccinated isn't necessarily the same a
Re: (Score:3)
In the end, I think the real problem is that we have unions running our schools for the benefit of the union members, rather than for the children.
Well, Mr. Evidence Guy, does evidence change your opinion or not?
http://voices.washingtonpost.c... [washingtonpost.com]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ooo I'll do it:
Climate Change Deniers you're as wrong as anti-vaxxers and anti-nuclear power advocates.
As to science being about reasoned evidence defenses. The reasoned evidence defenses of climate change science have been made. The people who deny it don't use science they use a misrepresentation of science or no science at all "Well it was hot yesterday!"
So yes it's perfectly legitimate to slam conservatives who refuse to accept a reasoned well cited scientific paper on global warming and it's perfect
this doesn't help anyone out (Score:4, Informative)
Ok "regular software programmers." Go actually read the article, and then come back and read the summary again.
Now, Nye was trying to say that our technical work force is not trained in enough science. Maybe that's right, and maybe it's wrong, that would be a better discussion for Slashdot. Nye (or the reporter) obviously did a bad job here. At the same getting offended at being called less scientifically literate than the top tier of scientists doesn't help either.
What a coincidence (Score:5, Funny)
Synopsis (Score:5, Insightful)
Context matters (Score:5, Insightful)
Television entertainers know about as much about.. (Score:5, Insightful)
... Science as pop stars do about geopolitics. It is always painful to listen to some pop star lecture people about the middle east or the economic policy of the Fed. It is no less annoying when a television entertainer tries to browbeat basically everyone by suggesting that he's in some elite cliche of thinkers... when really he was paid to put on funny outfits and act WAY too excited about pouring baking soda into vinegar.
Bill Nye is a poor man's Mr Wizard. Anyone remember Mr Wizard? Way better. And everyone notice how Mr Wizard has spent years acting like the smartest man in the universe long after he stopped even doing his show? Me neither. Get over yourself, Bill. You're not half as smart as you think you are and if the software engineers don't get it then you don't either.
Re: (Score:2)
To claim as Bill Nye does that "skeptics of a science claim" are not scientists is absurd
Did he say that, or did he say that deniers are not scientists? There's a difference.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, it's just conoviator and timothy trolling now.
Re: (Score:2)
A regular garbage man is also one of the said "software writers and farmers and people".
Ahem. The term is "sanitation engineer."
Simpler version of Occam's Razor (Score:5, Funny)
1-800-scientist (Score:3)
With all the information that has come out about fraudulent studies on the so called global warming
I assume you're talking about this. [nytimes.com]
and the 1800 scientist who signed a partition saying that it was a fraud
That "petition" was a hoax. [jcmooreonline.com]
Re: (Score:3)
QFT. Consider how well the Ivy Leaguers mismanaging the executive branch of the government are doing as further proof of the uselessness of credentialism.