Debasing Science

[Derideo_Te]

In today's hyper-connected mass-culture there's tremendous downward pressure on ideas. Nothing exists in isolation. Is it more difficult than ever for new scientific ideas to survive?

Not in the least. If anything we are enjoying a scientific renaissance because of the hyperconnectivity.

There is more and more cross pollination between disciplines that are leading to some fascinating discoveries. Scientists who trained in one discipline working in another are bringing new insights and approaches.

Now is a good time to be a scientist IMO.

Sure is. One of my professors deals with quantum mechanics and started attending cosmology and astrophysics conferences once he realized that they are all tackling the same problems but from opposite ends of the size of the universe. It must have been a real game changing moment the first time some cosmologist realized that the answer to why galaxies behave in a certain way might be fund in a Feynman Diagram.

The scientists of yesteryear tended to be Renaissance men in the sense that they had a broad range of interests.

The term polymath predates renaissance man and is from the Greek polymathes. To thinking men like Plato, and then Aristotle, the idea of “having learned much,” the literal translation of the Greek word, was extremely important. Aristotle, in his diverse writings, strongly advocated that people who would choose to study rhetoric should be well versed in a variety of fields, since this gave them the opportunity to comment on a variety of situations, and develop “commonplaces

You can go all the way back to Pythagoras and his love of different maths, astronomy, natural history, philosophy, music, poetry and religion.

Collaboration is tremendously beneficial. The other side of the coin, opposite of collaboration, is groupthink. The other side of cross-pollination is eventual uniformity.

Individuation is a good word, reaching your unique potential. The space to think our own thoughts is shrinking. Pretty soon all of our brains will be linked up to the Matrix.

There are benefits to monocultures. There are benefits to quilts of diverse patches.

Yes, there is always a danger of group think but that has always been the case. The benefit of science being self correcting is that it exposes the fallacy of group think.

 

[Treeshepherd]

Niels Bohr, that old sage of a physicist, once observed “Physics advances – funeral by funeral.” Any fundamental change meets resistance. It triumphs less by winning hearts and minds than by outwaiting them.

[Upcoming UN climate conference in Copenhagen] “is about raw politics, not about the politics of science. […] It is possible that climate science has become too partisan, too centralized. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organization within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science. It is also possible that the institutional innovation that has been the I.P.C.C. has run its course. Yes, there will be an AR5 but for what purpose? The I.P.C.C. itself, through its structural tendency to politicize climate change science, has perhaps helped to foster a more authoritarian and exclusive form of knowledge production – just at a time when a globalizing and wired cosmopolitan culture is demanding of science something much more open and inclusive.

- second quote from Professor Mike Hulme, College of East Anglia

 

[Old Rocks]

Antonio Gramsci, Italian Marxist theoretician and founding member and one-time leader of the Communist Party of Italy. Gramschi’s motto is that of liberals today: “that all life is "political."
The dude knew whereof he spoke.


The trouble with thinking that the personal is political, as late-1960s feminists taught American radicals to say, ...This fundamental tenet of identity politics, a shorthand way of saying that your personal unhappiness stems from larger political forces—anything from the suffocating nuclear family, the institutionalized oppression of women, or the supposedly ineradicable racism of American society—and that only vast political change can solve your individual problems

Which brings us to what is laughingly referred to as 'science.'

From the time that Franklin Roosevelt saw to it that communism had a comfortable home in America, everything.....everything.....has had to be viewed through the prism of politics....and Leftist politics, at that!


The two most prominent topics considered to be the purview of science....aren't.

Both Darwinian evolution and global warming are political entities.





1. Ottmar Georg Edenhofer(born 8 July 1961 in Gangkofen, Lower Bavaria, Germany) is a German economist dealing with climate change policy, environmental and energy policy as well as energy economics. Edenhofer currently holds the professorship of Economics of Climate Change at the Technical University of Berlin was appointed one of the co-chairs of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)Working Group III "Mitigation of Climate Change".
Ottmar Edenhofer - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia




2. Communism is international socialism. And that's why Edenhofer holds the position at the UN, and the view of global warming. Get this:
(EDENHOFER): "First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy.

Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole."
UN IPCC Official Admits We Redistribute World s Wealth By Climate Policy




3. In a profile published in Nature in 2013, Edenhofer says that his interest in philosophy and economics was influenced by his readings of the works of Karl Marx,Max Weber,Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Dewey. Regarding climate change he says: ”Denying out and out that climate change is a problem for humanity, as some cynics do, is an unethical, unacceptable position.”
Ottmar Edenhofer - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia


a. "The sole reason for the theory that man-made global warming exists at all is to help its proponents gain political and financial power over the money generated by capitalist economics."
Savage, "Stop The Coming Civil War," p. 182.



See what I mean? : “ all life is "political."

Poor ol' PoliticalShit. Just cannot get it through her head that reality cares not one whit about her politics.

 

[Treeshepherd]

I believe that climate science will be self-correcting.

There's a large enough contingent of skeptics who are demanding (through the Freedom of Information Act and just in general, not to mention hacking into records) a more transparent process than we get with the I.P.C.C.. The I.P.C.C. model has run its course, as suggested by Mike Hulme (quote in post #42). "A globalizing and wired cosmopolitan culture is demanding of science something much more open and inclusive."

RSS temperature readings are only 35 years running, or so (?). Satellite altimeter readings for monitoring sea level are only 20 years running. The ARGO diving buoy system is new. In other words, some of the money pouring into climate science is buying equipment that provides objective data. The hope is that some day the public will have direct access to that data.

Slowly, more climate scientists will branch away from CO2 obsession and study Milankovich cycles, oceanic oscillations, insolation, albedo, chaos theory, etc., as these things relate to climate change.

 

[Thanatocoenosis]

Which brings us to what is laughingly referred to as 'science.'

You keep using that word "science". I do not think that word means what you think it means.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Which brings us to what is laughingly referred to as 'science.'

You keep using that word "science". I do not think that word means what you think it means.

Here is the operative portion of your post, and the only accurate one:
"... I do not think ..."

 

[Thanatocoenosis]

Which brings us to what is laughingly referred to as 'science.'

You keep using that word "science". I do not think that word means what you think it means.

Here is the operative portion of your post, and the only accurate one:
"... I do not think ..."

Since, I was trying to be generous, let me rephrase it: that words doesn't mean what you think it means. Have you even spent a day in a class of one of the sciences since high school? Even though you think that you are pretty smart, it is apparent to even the most casual observer that you have a profound ignorance of the subject.

Dunning-Kruger effect - RationalWiki

 

[PoliticalChic]

Which brings us to what is laughingly referred to as 'science.'

You keep using that word "science". I do not think that word means what you think it means.

Here is the operative portion of your post, and the only accurate one:
"... I do not think ..."

Since, I was trying to be generous, let me rephrase it: that words doesn't mean what you think it means. Have you even spent a day in a class of one of the sciences since high school? Even though you think that you are pretty smart, it is apparent to even the most casual observer that you have a profound ignorance of the subject.

Dunning-Kruger effect - RationalWiki

" Even though you think that you are pretty smart,..."

Guilty as charged.




".... even the most casual observer ..."

That would be you.

No doubt that would be an apt description of your educational career.


Your attempted critique of material that clearly you are unable to comprehend reeks of the same skills that ended the career of Milli Vanilli.

 

[Sidekick]

Which brings us to what is laughingly referred to as 'science.'

You keep using that word "science". I do not think that word means what you think it means.

To covert, all you need to do is say, "There is only one Sciencegod and Bill Nye is his prophet," and then go online and mock religious people five times each day.

 

[Thanatocoenosis]

Your attempted critique of material that clearly you are unable to comprehend reeks of the same skills that ended the career of Milli Vanilli.

lol... I didn't attempt any such thing; I merely was pointing out your profound ignorance of science, and the inadequacies of your thought processes.

To covert, all you need to do is say, "There is only one Sciencegod and Bill Nye is his prophet," and then go online and mock religious people five times each day.

Nye is an engineer and educator; not a scientist, but your attempt to portray science as dogmatic betrays a frustration with the absurd inconsistencies within your own religious creed.

 

[Old Rocks]

I believe that climate science will be self-correcting.

There's a large enough contingent of skeptics who are demanding (through the Freedom of Information Act and just in general, not to mention hacking into records) a more transparent process than we get with the I.P.C.C.. The I.P.C.C. model has run its course, as suggested by Mike Hulme (quote in post #42). "A globalizing and wired cosmopolitan culture is demanding of science something much more open and inclusive."

RSS temperature readings are only 35 years running, or so (?). Satellite altimeter readings for monitoring sea level are only 20 years running. The ARGO diving buoy system is new. In other words, some of the money pouring into climate science is buying equipment that provides objective data. The hope is that some day the public will have direct access to that data.

Slowly, more climate scientists will branch away from CO2 obsession and study Milankovich cycles, oceanic oscillations, insolation, albedo, chaos theory, etc., as these things relate to climate change.

Why Shepard, you do have a point. After the rapid swings in climate that was the Younger Dryas, the climate stabalized once again. Of course, for the mega fauna of North America, that was a little late. Most were extinct by then. And the Clovis Culture was no more.