Ok, how's this? Scientist tells people complaining about "wind turbine syndrome" that 'it's all in your head'
A scientist is human. A scientist can make a mistake, have an ego, falsify data, or be a dick, but that doesn't mean scientific principles should be ignored as a result. Again, there is no one scientist whose word is too be taken as canon. We test and retest theories in hopes to gain a better understanding of the data.
The data tells us that climate change is real. The data also shows a direct correlation between man and rapid climate change. My personal feelings on the matter are that regardless of whether man is responsible or not we need to see if we can stale or reverse the change to help maintain the best possible environment for our species to thrive. If man is not responsible, then it's likely going to be harder to stale or reverse, than if we are directly responsible. Either way, we should be doing whatever we can to prevent the desalination go the oceans which affects the abundance of fish, the melting of polar ice which helps reflect light, the raising of ocean levels which will destroy shorelines and increase storms.
Clair Patterson went against the consensus when he created a hypothesis that we were poisoning the environment with lead-based fuel. He had a series of scientists tell him he was wrong and society wanted him to be wrong because we relied so heavily on the fuels. Eventually truth prevailed, we removed lead from fuels, and lead in the environment.
The problem is, data means nothing.
Interpretation is everything. We have data coming out of our ears, and yet even what we have is still only a tiny amount. We have only been collecting climate data for a very short time. It's quite impossible to assert that climate change, global warming or whatever else you want to call it, is as a result of human activity. We can only make guesses. There isn't even any consensus on whether warming is a bad thing. And yes, scientists are constantly changing their minds about data, about facts. Just a few decades ago, the status quo was that we were entering a global ice age. Then it changed to global warming. Now it's climate change, which means nothing. There has probably been no time in earth's history when the climate hasn't changed.
The only thing we can guarantee with certainty is that scientists will change their minds completely about the climate in the near future.
Now I'm going to have to put you on my block list. /s
Just kidding I'm an Angel/Dodger fan, but I used to like the Yankees when I lived there.
I don't hate the Yankees as much as my best friend does (he can't watch them win without getting slightly nauseous; or maybe that's just the beer we drank while watching the game ). But I'm no fan. I'm a Tigers fan -- was born one and will die one.
I worry a lot about civil liberties. And what I see is the rise of a new McCarthyism, complete with Hollywood blacklists and public denouncing of heretics. "Are you now or have you ever been a member of a church that preaches against sex except between a man and a woman who are married to each other?" Joe would be proud. Heck, Mole from Pogo would be proud.
The thread is getting awfully repetitive. What do you think of the LGBT:Mormon compromise in Utah? Granted, no one there is 100% happy with it. But it does show compromise is possible. The main points are this:
1) Same sex marriage will be allowed in Utah.
2) Discrimination in housing or in the workplace on the basis of gender orientation or religious belief is specifically prohibited.
3) Churches will not be forced to perform same sex marriages if they do not want to.
The law does not address the issue of photographers or bakers who do not want to work at same sex wedding celebrations. My belief is that photographers, at least, are protected by First Amendment guarantees of freedom of expression.
I think the term marriage should only apply to Christian marriage. To allow anyone other than a man and a woman to marry makes a mockery of marriage, and thereby Christianity and all religion.
That's correct Foggy... Scientists once believed and preached the earth was flat, the earth revolved around the sun, that if you were sick then bloodletting would cure you, that processed foods were ok for human consumption, and as recently as the 1960s, Thalidomide was a real excellent cure for morning sickness in pregnant women. LOL.
And we all know what the Nazi German scientists believed about race.
Today we've got pseudo-scientists like Al Gore and David Suziki living in colossal mansions and flying on private jets to influence government policy, taxation and spending to the tune of BILLIONS OF DOLLARS in order to "help save the planet", all the while with major stock holdings in companies that profit from "green energy" and you NEVER hear a left winger discussing their hypocrisy or blatant bias. We just have to assume it's all true because it's the politically correct thing to believe and because the propaganda states that anyone who loves freedom and less government must be a "psychopathic privleged white male homophobic global warming denier neo-republican tea bagger white heterosexual privileged nutbar"... All that love and tolerance, right?
Science has given a lot of great benefits to humanity but it's not infallible, it's still subject to crowd psychology and Social Mood just like any institution.
And Science has now been elevated to the status of RELIGION, in the sense that if you as a civilian won't toe the party line, you're deemed a heretic know-nothing, or worse, driven from political office or your job. High Priests in lab coats with clipboards holding special knowledge that must never be questioned because "after all, we have a CONSENSUS!".
I'm supposed to believe that I magically evolved from a soup of amoebas, today with color vision and the ability to argue with your liberal ass, and yet the amoeba are still there surviving just fine, and this magical event is without any intelligent cause, and no this is not a FAIRY TALE, this is PURE SCIENCE... and we are speculating about things that happened millions of years before humans were on the planet and so no one was there to record or test the theory... so much for the "scientific model" !
And if a governor signs a law that states you can't sue a baker for refusing to celebrate a homosexual marriage based on his religious beliefs, watch out! The economic and political fury from the militant left will rain down hellfire on anyone daring to question this militancy, under the Orwellian horseshit meme of "tolerance" and "respect". I don't think even Orwell could write such compelling dark satire as this.
Your post is a textbook example of anti-science rhetoric.
Quote:
Anti-science proponents often attack science through:
And you say I'm not listening. That comment is almost as bad as calling someone racist or a bigot in an attempt to delegitimize their opinion on this topic. That's what happens in these threads, when someone can't truly defend their argument or they try to put you out of the debate the racist and bigot comments start flying. I assume your comment was sarcasm but just read through this thread racist and bigot start to come up more and more as the posts move on.
Like I said in a previous posts it always strikes me as interesting when a group wants to preach tolerance yet are the ones that throw the biggest stones. By the way thank you for the link to the page with Tim Cooks message I have never seen that before and I stand corrected.
I started to post in this thread because I felt it might not be a good idea for Tim Cook to be such a vocal activist when he is the CEO of Apple because that can come across as him trying to push his agenda using the power of Apple. I'm also not sure why people are so upset with the word agenda.
I'm also not sure why Apple or Cook need to keep pointing out how diverse they are, when running a company it should be really simple the best person get the job. While liberals love this does this mean the best person isn't getting the job so Apple can tout diversity? No one should be discriminated against on the flip side no one should be given a job to meet a quota.
What's truly sad and pathetic even with all this self promotion Apple still gets attacked for trying to make diverse Emojis. Too many people are looking for a reason to be offended.
One last note while it's great to have a page about Inclusion inspires innovation lets take a look at this page.
I'm late to the party to point out that your post clearly indicates that you have little or no understanding of science. Firstly, there is no place for beliefs in science, since that would go entirely against the fundamental scientific principle (observe, hypothesize, test, refine).
You make it sound as if humans are like the Star Trek Borg mind. Belief systems have a MASSIVE effect on scientific inquiry. As just one example out of thousands, aeronautical science really took off after the Wright Brothers were able to disprove the common belief that human flight was either impossible or way too dangerous to ever be practical. Until then, no one really did much study or inquiry into it, because of the belief that it was impossible.
Steve Jobs' beliefs that certain technical challenges could be overcome, and his cajoling and sometimes threatening the engineers under his watch, led to some amazing products that supposedly "couldn't be done". These were trained engineers and developers, computer scientists in a sense, who wouldn't have got it done without Jobs because they didn't believe certain things were possible.
So today scientists are smart but "back then" they were stupid and "unscientific", right? Lets see:
Looking back and laughing at the flat earth model and bloodletting simply shows that you are unable to distinguish science from non-science. The flat earth concept did not arise from anything resembling science - it was an archaic, ignorant assumption.
If we look at the night sky we see the Moon, and lots of little points of light. Mostly these keep the same positions relative to each other, simply circling the North pole (or South pole if you’re south of the equator). They behave as though they’re attached to a rigid sphere, making them all rotate together. That was called the sphere of the fixed stars, and was thought of as the outermost part of the universe.
A few of them, though, seem not to be attached to it. They move around according to rules of their own, and were given spheres of their own to move them. But apart from that—and from not twinkling—they look pretty much the same as the other points of light. They just happen to be attached to their own spheres instead of the outer one.
How far away were the fixed stars? Nobody knew, but they couldn’t really be much further away than the moving ones or they’d be too dim to see.
So far so good. But why can’t the Sun be at the centre instead of us? What difference would it make, apart from a little bit of wounded pride?
Putting the Sun at the centre of this picture creates a huge, glaring problem.
The closer you are to something, the bigger it looks. If the Earth went round the Sun, then any given constellation would change size in the sky as we moved towards and away from it. This would be clearly visible. Yet we don’t see it. And that, surely, proves that the Earth isn’t moving. It must be the Sun which moves around the Earth.
So, they had a theory, which according to the scientific method, could accurately predict the position of celestial bodies according to an almanac. And it did so.
The problem wasn't that humans were less evolved or stupid at that time. The problem was our understanding was incomplete, we didn't have the correct PERSPECTIVE. There was more to be seen and observed than human awareness allowed for at that time.
You further wrote:
Pointing to more recent assertions, such as in regard to the safety of processed food or harmful drugs, simply conflates science with business self-interest.
Right, but this bears on my point. Why should I NOT be cynical when Al Gore when he quotes studies that, if accurate, benefit the stocks he owns? If David Suzuki REALLY believes fossil fuels cause global warming, then how the hell is he flying in a private jet to attend conferences and convince people of these things?
Here's the problem with the scientific method and Thalidomide:
Observation: This drug seems to reduce morning sickness in pregnant women
Hypothesis: There may be an active ingredient that reduces morning sickness
Testing: Confirms
Refinement: Any side effects in women?
Conclusion: Benefits seem to outweigh any downsides to the female taking it.
Then some years go by, and a new observation is made. Deformed babies seem to be occurring more frequently.
Testing: Confirms that the drug causes birth defects.
The entire debacle was "scientific", but it did help lead to another refinement of the drug approval process, which is you have to be very, very careful about unanticipated consequences and not just look at the patient in isolation.
According to science you are not supposed to believe anything, whether it be the theory of evolution, AGW or the existence of God. The scientific method is to look at the evidence, develop the least complex hypotheses to explain the evidence, and try to break those hypotheses by testing. If you can't break them then eventually you elevate them to the status of working theory. If you start to become invested in a particular hypothesis then you are a poor scientist and, while those certainly exist, they do not represent science.
There is absolutely no comparison to the arbitrary and belief-based thinking that underpins all religion, which immediately fails every logical test that the scientific method imposes. The inability to understand that distinction itself underpins the widespread inability to understand science. Religious beliefs, while perhaps comforting, are entirely illogical for as many reasons as there are different religions, each of them the only real truth according to their proponents, and each of them completely devoid of any supporting evidence.
You were doing fine on socio-encomics. On this subject you are, unfortunately, clueless.
Yeah I disagree with you on this one. There are plenty of scientists who believe that the existence of Intelligent Design is just as likely as a theory as cognizant humans emerging out of primordial soup. The theory is we should see evidence of logic, structure, balance, planning, and design. And the more scientists observe microscopically and macroscopically, the more evidence there is of design.
There are religious nuts and there are scientific nutcases too. The delivery of the atom bomb on to Hiroshima was based on scientific principles but now we're discovering that what we used to consider "spiritual" or "religious" practices, like meditation or prayer, acts of charity, and so on, have definitive neuropsychological effects on the practitioner. These can be observed by measuring heart rate, brain activity, cortisol levels in the blood stream and so on.
So a common religious practice being meditation, you can't claim to be scientific and not recognize the physical and psychological benefits of the practice.
How might global warming alarmists be wrong? There's a lot of circumstantial evidence, to me and a growing number of people, that they at least MIGHT be wrong:
1. Scientists have been wrong before about many things. The consensus view was Geocentrism, as per the article I quote above. These weren't stupid cavemen or Republicans, they were scientists of the day, going on the models and mathematics that they had at that time. In a narrow perspective, they were "correct" because they could accurately predict future positioning of celestial bodies, but they did not have the whole perspective.
2. Scientists have shown evidence of past ice ages and global warming in the past. But the industrial revolution really didn't get rolling until the 1800s. I bet though that there were Al Gores running around in the time of Dinosaurs blaming the human activities of the time for the rise in temperatures or impending ice age or whatever it was. People see a CORRELATION, and then they ask the smartest guys they know what it's supposed to mean. And snakes like Gore position themselves accordingly to profit.
3. The argument "is it riskier to ignore global warming and do nothing, than to spend a lot of money on mitigation?" That's a tough one to answer. Let's say global warming is real and we really need to do something about it quickly. So a majority vote in politicians who implement carbon taxes, punish coal burning power, massive taxes on transportation and fuel, and so on. ... but then we discover it's too late, warming is happening too fast, and now we need to evacuate the state of Florida (by the way, it was predicted by scientists that Florida should already be underwater). But oh no! We've spent all the money, we're tapped out, we fucked up!
Whenever I ask a global warming alarmist what should be done, they'll tell me it's carbon taxes and investing in wind farms, things like that. And then millions of people are thrown out of work and wind farms kill thousands of birds and make people sick.
So even if you're right about GW, none of your 97% consensus agree on a scientific solution to the problem at hand. People MIGHT be in favour of higher taxation if someone could explain logically how it's not financial rape and how we get from A-B.
Thanks for the compliment on Socionomics. Socionomics turned the "dismal science" on its head. Economists saw the correlation between a contracting money supply and depressions and assumed that the Federal Reserve was to blame for the size and scope of the Great Depression. But they clearly misplaced the cause and effect of the phenomenon. Today the 10 year US bond is at its lowest point in 50 years, perhaps the lowest it's ever been in the history of the republic! And I just read a report that said that the VELOCITY OF MONEY is rapidly decelerating.
In Switzerland now we actually have negative interest rates. How can this be – don't low interest rates stimulate the economy? No, low interest rates are an EFFECT of decelerating inflation and negative interest rates means that the hive mind perceives Deflation, i.e., tomorrow's dollars will have more purchasing power than they do today, therefore slightly less would need to be paid back for the lender to receive a return on investment. It also shows, perhaps, the scary onset of a deflationary spiral, which is a social MOOD marked by fear and a belief that things will be cheaper tomorrow than they are today.
For centuries economists (the science of economics) believed that low interest rates caused inflation. In fact, low interest rates mean inflation has been decelerating and, when they reverse, that's the nadir. Very few times has real deflation occurred but when it does, it's nasty, in particular when you look at our current debt to GDP ratios. The BELIEF that the Fed can cure all problems has been sorely tested already. It is BELIEFS that drive EVERYTHING, even science.
I worry a lot about civil liberties. And what I see is the rise of a new McCarthyism, complete with Hollywood blacklists and public denouncing of heretics. "Are you now or have you ever been a member of a church that preaches against sex except between a man and a woman who are married to each other?" Joe would be proud. Heck, Mole from Pogo would be proud.
Your post is a textbook example of anti-science rhetoric.
Question is: are you intellectually honest enough to admit your rhetorical argument, or do you really believe what you wrote?
Can you show where I specifically employed even one of those rhetorical devices? My "anti-science" argument, if you want to call it that, boils down to two basic points:
– Because of shifting beliefs and perspectives, scientists have been wrong before. Not always, not even usually, but SOMETIMES. Key turning points in history have shown this to be the case.
– Logical fallacies like "everyone knows this" and "science says" and resorting to ad hominem attacks of skeptics; plus the perception of "specialized knowledge" that a layperson can't really get their head around, and "peer approval" and the excoriation of dissidents puts it on a plane of religion.
"Science says" is especially disturbing because we are talking about epochal global warming, something that has happened before without industrialization. I have seen no explanation for why in the past warming occurred because of non man-made factors but now it must be man made factors. Scientists can't even predict the weather a full week in advance! But we're supposed to trust these theories when deciding on allocating billions of dollars to economic manipulations?
It would seem to me there is a small chance that correlation is being mistaken for causation, which would not be the first time that's happened. And these conclusions will entail policy decisions that have massive social and economic consequences and there are obviously people who stand to get VERY RICH depending on how those policy decisions unfold one way or the other.
I'm late to the party to point out that your post clearly indicates that you have little or no understanding of science. Firstly, there is no place for beliefs in science, since that would go entirely against the fundamental scientific principle (observe, hypothesize, test, refine).
You make it sound as if humans are like the Star Trek Borg mind. Belief systems have a MASSIVE effect on scientific inquiry. As just one example out of thousands, aeronautical science really took off after the Wright Brothers were able to disprove the common belief that human flight was either impossible or way too dangerous to ever be practical. Until then, no one really did much study or inquiry into it, because of the belief that it was impossible.
Steve Jobs' beliefs that certain technical challenges could be overcome, and his cajoling and sometimes threatening the engineers under his watch, led to some amazing products that supposedly "couldn't be done". These were trained engineers and developers, computer scientists in a sense, who wouldn't have got it done without Jobs because they didn't believe certain things were possible.
So today scientists are smart but "back then" they were stupid and "unscientific", right? Lets see:
Looking back and laughing at the flat earth model and bloodletting simply shows that you are unable to distinguish science from non-science. The flat earth concept did not arise from anything resembling science - it was an archaic, ignorant assumption.
If we look at the night sky we see the Moon, and lots of little points of light. Mostly these keep the same positions relative to each other, simply circling the North pole (or South pole if you’re south of the equator). They behave as though they’re attached to a rigid sphere, making them all rotate together. That was called the sphere of the fixed stars, and was thought of as the outermost part of the universe.
A few of them, though, seem not to be attached to it. They move around according to rules of their own, and were given spheres of their own to move them. But apart from that—and from not twinkling—they look pretty much the same as the other points of light. They just happen to be attached to their own spheres instead of the outer one.
How far away were the fixed stars? Nobody knew, but they couldn’t really be much further away than the moving ones or they’d be too dim to see.
So far so good. But why can’t the Sun be at the centre instead of us? What difference would it make, apart from a little bit of wounded pride?
Putting the Sun at the centre of this picture creates a huge, glaring problem.
The closer you are to something, the bigger it looks. If the Earth went round the Sun, then any given constellation would change size in the sky as we moved towards and away from it. This would be clearly visible. Yet we don’t see it. And that, surely, proves that the Earth isn’t moving. It must be the Sun which moves around the Earth.
So, they had a theory, which according to the scientific method, could accurately predict the position of celestial bodies according to an almanac. And it did so.
The problem wasn't that humans were less evolved or stupid at that time. The problem was our understanding was incomplete, we didn't have the correct PERSPECTIVE. There was more to be seen and observed than human awareness allowed for at that time.
You further wrote:
Pointing to more recent assertions, such as in regard to the safety of processed food or harmful drugs, simply conflates science with business self-interest.
Right, but this bears on my point. Why should I NOT be cynical when Al Gore when he quotes studies that, if accurate, benefit the stocks he owns? If David Suzuki REALLY believes fossil fuels cause global warming, then how the hell is he flying in a private jet to attend conferences and convince people of these things?
Here's the problem with the scientific method and Thalidomide:
Observation: This drug seems to reduce morning sickness in pregnant women
Hypothesis: There may be an active ingredient that reduces morning sickness
Testing: Confirms
Refinement: Any side effects in women?
Conclusion: Benefits seem to outweigh any downsides to the female taking it.
Then some years go by, and a new observation is made. Deformed babies seem to be occurring more frequently.
Testing: Confirms that the drug causes birth defects.
The entire debacle was "scientific", but it did help lead to another refinement of the drug approval process, which is you have to be very, very careful about unanticipated consequences and not just look at the patient in isolation.
According to science you are not supposed to believe anything, whether it be the theory of evolution, AGW or the existence of God. The scientific method is to look at the evidence, develop the least complex hypotheses to explain the evidence, and try to break those hypotheses by testing. If you can't break them then eventually you elevate them to the status of working theory. If you start to become invested in a particular hypothesis then you are a poor scientist and, while those certainly exist, they do not represent science.
There is absolutely no comparison to the arbitrary and belief-based thinking that underpins all religion, which immediately fails every logical test that the scientific method imposes. The inability to understand that distinction itself underpins the widespread inability to understand science. Religious beliefs, while perhaps comforting, are entirely illogical for as many reasons as there are different religions, each of them the only real truth according to their proponents, and each of them completely devoid of any supporting evidence.
You were doing fine on socio-encomics. On this subject you are, unfortunately, clueless.
Yeah I disagree with you on this one. There are plenty of scientists who believe that the existence of Intelligent Design is just as likely as a theory as cognizant humans emerging out of primordial soup. The theory is we should see evidence of logic, structure, balance, planning, and design. And the more scientists observe microscopically and macroscopically, the more evidence there is of design.
There are religious nuts and there are scientific nutcases too. The delivery of the atom bomb on to Hiroshima was based on scientific principles but now we're discovering that what we used to consider "spiritual" or "religious" practices, like meditation or prayer, acts of charity, and so on, have definitive neuropsychological effects on the practitioner. These can be observed by measuring heart rate, brain activity, cortisol levels in the blood stream and so on.
So a common religious practice being meditation, you can't claim to be scientific and not recognize the physical and psychological benefits of the practice.
How might global warming alarmists be wrong? There's a lot of circumstantial evidence, to me and a growing number of people, that they at least MIGHT be wrong:
1. Scientists have been wrong before about many things. The consensus view was Geocentrism, as per the article I quote above. These weren't stupid cavemen or Republicans, they were scientists of the day, going on the models and mathematics that they had at that time. In a narrow perspective, they were "correct" because they could accurately predict future positioning of celestial bodies, but they did not have the whole perspective.
2. Scientists have shown evidence of past ice ages and global warming in the past. But the industrial revolution really didn't get rolling until the 1800s. I bet though that there were Al Gores running around in the time of Dinosaurs blaming the human activities of the time for the rise in temperatures or impending ice age or whatever it was. People see a CORRELATION, and then they ask the smartest guys they know what it's supposed to mean. And snakes like Gore position themselves accordingly to profit.
3. The argument "is it riskier to ignore global warming and do nothing, than to spend a lot of money on mitigation?" That's a tough one to answer. Let's say global warming is real and we really need to do something about it quickly. So a majority vote in politicians who implement carbon taxes, punish coal burning power, massive taxes on transportation and fuel, and so on. ... but then we discover it's too late, warming is happening too fast, and now we need to evacuate the state of Florida (by the way, it was predicted by scientists that Florida should already be underwater). But oh no! We've spent all the money, we're tapped out, we fucked up!
Whenever I ask a global warming alarmist what should be done, they'll tell me it's carbon taxes and investing in wind farms, things like that. And then millions of people are thrown out of work and wind farms kill thousands of birds and make people sick.
So even if you're right about GW, none of your 97% consensus agree on a scientific solution to the problem at hand. People MIGHT be in favour of higher taxation if someone could explain logically how it's not financial rape and how we get from A-B.
Thanks for the compliment on Socionomics. Socionomics turned the "dismal science" on its head. Economists saw the correlation between a contracting money supply and depressions and assumed that the Federal Reserve was to blame for the size and scope of the Great Depression. But they clearly misplaced the cause and effect of the phenomenon. Today the 10 year US bond is at its lowest point in 50 years, perhaps the lowest it's ever been in the history of the republic! And I just read a report that said that the VELOCITY OF MONEY is rapidly decelerating.
In Switzerland now we actually have negative interest rates. How can this be – don't low interest rates stimulate the economy? No, low interest rates are an EFFECT of decelerating inflation and negative interest rates means that the hive mind perceives Deflation, i.e., tomorrow's dollars will have more purchasing power than they do today, therefore slightly less would need to be paid back for the lender to receive a return on investment. It also shows, perhaps, the scary onset of a deflationary spiral, which is a social MOOD marked by fear and a belief that things will be cheaper tomorrow than they are today.
For centuries economists (the science of economics) believed that low interest rates caused inflation. In fact, low interest rates mean inflation has been decelerating and, when they reverse, that's the nadir. Very few times has real deflation occurred but when it does, it's nasty, in particular when you look at our current debt to GDP ratios. The BELIEF that the Fed can cure all problems has been sorely tested already. It is BELIEFS that drive EVERYTHING, even science.
I noted in my post that I assumed you were being sarcastic. That doesn't take away form the fact that it was an idiotic comment.
What exactly was idiotic about it? I'm guessing you were just offending by my reveal of the people that use terms like "those people" and "it's not me, it's the bible" instead of actually stating what they mean they talk of Christian marriage and social morality.
P.S. Let me guess you are a male or female between the age of 5-100 and you weigh between 100 and 250lbs and are between 3' and 6'.9"
Way to use them reasoning skills, Cumberbatch. (Note: I'm being sarcastic.)
But much more slowly in the organized version of it (which is really what we're talking about).
In some regard, yes, but in others it happens quite rapidly. I would argue that most forks in religion are the result of societal changes causing the religion to have to adapt for a new generation of followers.
I can think of at least twenty Bible verses regarding marriage that predate Christianity.
Nope, only Christian marriage. Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and anyone else that believes they are married are just ignorant savages that don't derives to walk the same Earth as BF¡
What exactly was idiotic about it? I'm guessing you were just offending by my reveal of the people that use terms like "those people" and "it's not me, it's the bible" instead of actually stating what they mean they talk of Christian marriage and social morality.
Way to use them reasoning skills, Cumberbatch. (Note: I'm being sarcastic.)
I've never used religion to prove a point or to justify my opinion. I know others do and thats fine with me if that is what they use to justify their opinion or belief. When I started to post in this thread I started out with one point and that point was I didn't feel it was a good idea for Tim Cook to be a vocal activist while being CEO of Apple.
I feel it's dangerous to the company when a CEO starts to take sides on a heated issue because there is always the chance you are going to offend the other side of that debate or argument. If Tim Cook wants to support gay rights thats fine he should just do it as part of his life and not comment about it on social media. He can make the company as diverse as he wants, just do it and shut up about it.
I'm not a big Steve Jobs vs Tim Cook person however I liked the fact that Steve Jobs was all about the product and you didn't know anything else about him, the product was everything.
I feel like Apple has botched product announcements under Cook, the iMac being a good example and honestly the Apple Watch being the other. I can't remember a time when Apple announced a product and either didn't or couldn't bring it to market until 7 months later.
In spite of what Cooks says about leaks, all the leaks have been pretty damn close to being accurate since he became CEO.
Comments
The problem is, data means nothing.
Interpretation is everything. We have data coming out of our ears, and yet even what we have is still only a tiny amount. We have only been collecting climate data for a very short time. It's quite impossible to assert that climate change, global warming or whatever else you want to call it, is as a result of human activity. We can only make guesses. There isn't even any consensus on whether warming is a bad thing. And yes, scientists are constantly changing their minds about data, about facts. Just a few decades ago, the status quo was that we were entering a global ice age. Then it changed to global warming. Now it's climate change, which means nothing. There has probably been no time in earth's history when the climate hasn't changed.
The only thing we can guarantee with certainty is that scientists will change their minds completely about the climate in the near future.
Stick to the topic, please.
Thanks.
I worry a lot about civil liberties. And what I see is the rise of a new McCarthyism, complete with Hollywood blacklists and public denouncing of heretics. "Are you now or have you ever been a member of a church that preaches against sex except between a man and a woman who are married to each other?" Joe would be proud. Heck, Mole from Pogo would be proud.
I strongly disagree.
I think the term marriage should only apply to Christian marriage. To allow anyone other than a man and a woman to marry makes a mockery of marriage, and thereby Christianity and all religion.
No; he was being serious.
That's correct Foggy... Scientists once believed and preached the earth was flat, the earth revolved around the sun, that if you were sick then bloodletting would cure you, that processed foods were ok for human consumption, and as recently as the 1960s, Thalidomide was a real excellent cure for morning sickness in pregnant women. LOL.
And we all know what the Nazi German scientists believed about race.
Today we've got pseudo-scientists like Al Gore and David Suziki living in colossal mansions and flying on private jets to influence government policy, taxation and spending to the tune of BILLIONS OF DOLLARS in order to "help save the planet", all the while with major stock holdings in companies that profit from "green energy" and you NEVER hear a left winger discussing their hypocrisy or blatant bias. We just have to assume it's all true because it's the politically correct thing to believe and because the propaganda states that anyone who loves freedom and less government must be a "psychopathic privleged white male homophobic global warming denier neo-republican tea bagger white heterosexual privileged nutbar"... All that love and tolerance, right?
Science has given a lot of great benefits to humanity but it's not infallible, it's still subject to crowd psychology and Social Mood just like any institution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowd_psychology
And Science has now been elevated to the status of RELIGION, in the sense that if you as a civilian won't toe the party line, you're deemed a heretic know-nothing, or worse, driven from political office or your job. High Priests in lab coats with clipboards holding special knowledge that must never be questioned because "after all, we have a CONSENSUS!".
I'm supposed to believe that I magically evolved from a soup of amoebas, today with color vision and the ability to argue with your liberal ass, and yet the amoeba are still there surviving just fine, and this magical event is without any intelligent cause, and no this is not a FAIRY TALE, this is PURE SCIENCE... and we are speculating about things that happened millions of years before humans were on the planet and so no one was there to record or test the theory... so much for the "scientific model" !
And if a governor signs a law that states you can't sue a baker for refusing to celebrate a homosexual marriage based on his religious beliefs, watch out! The economic and political fury from the militant left will rain down hellfire on anyone daring to question this militancy, under the Orwellian horseshit meme of "tolerance" and "respect". I don't think even Orwell could write such compelling dark satire as this.
Your post is a textbook example of anti-science rhetoric.
Anti-science proponents often attack science through:
Question is: are you intellectually honest enough to admit your rhetorical argument, or do you really believe what you wrote?
Y'know, that little symbol on the end of his unserious comment..."¡"? It means the same as "/s", both of which mean "sarcasm".
You make it sound as if humans are like the Star Trek Borg mind. Belief systems have a MASSIVE effect on scientific inquiry. As just one example out of thousands, aeronautical science really took off after the Wright Brothers were able to disprove the common belief that human flight was either impossible or way too dangerous to ever be practical. Until then, no one really did much study or inquiry into it, because of the belief that it was impossible.
Steve Jobs' beliefs that certain technical challenges could be overcome, and his cajoling and sometimes threatening the engineers under his watch, led to some amazing products that supposedly "couldn't be done". These were trained engineers and developers, computer scientists in a sense, who wouldn't have got it done without Jobs because they didn't believe certain things were possible.
So today scientists are smart but "back then" they were stupid and "unscientific", right? Lets see:
from this very cool article:
https://timtfj.wordpress.com/2010/04/18/earth-centred/
So, they had a theory, which according to the scientific method, could accurately predict the position of celestial bodies according to an almanac. And it did so.
The problem wasn't that humans were less evolved or stupid at that time. The problem was our understanding was incomplete, we didn't have the correct PERSPECTIVE. There was more to be seen and observed than human awareness allowed for at that time.
You further wrote:
Right, but this bears on my point. Why should I NOT be cynical when Al Gore when he quotes studies that, if accurate, benefit the stocks he owns? If David Suzuki REALLY believes fossil fuels cause global warming, then how the hell is he flying in a private jet to attend conferences and convince people of these things?
Here's the problem with the scientific method and Thalidomide:
Observation: This drug seems to reduce morning sickness in pregnant women
Hypothesis: There may be an active ingredient that reduces morning sickness
Testing: Confirms
Refinement: Any side effects in women?
Conclusion: Benefits seem to outweigh any downsides to the female taking it.
Then some years go by, and a new observation is made. Deformed babies seem to be occurring more frequently.
Testing: Confirms that the drug causes birth defects.
The entire debacle was "scientific", but it did help lead to another refinement of the drug approval process, which is you have to be very, very careful about unanticipated consequences and not just look at the patient in isolation.
Yeah I disagree with you on this one. There are plenty of scientists who believe that the existence of Intelligent Design is just as likely as a theory as cognizant humans emerging out of primordial soup. The theory is we should see evidence of logic, structure, balance, planning, and design. And the more scientists observe microscopically and macroscopically, the more evidence there is of design.
There are religious nuts and there are scientific nutcases too. The delivery of the atom bomb on to Hiroshima was based on scientific principles but now we're discovering that what we used to consider "spiritual" or "religious" practices, like meditation or prayer, acts of charity, and so on, have definitive neuropsychological effects on the practitioner. These can be observed by measuring heart rate, brain activity, cortisol levels in the blood stream and so on.
So a common religious practice being meditation, you can't claim to be scientific and not recognize the physical and psychological benefits of the practice.
How might global warming alarmists be wrong? There's a lot of circumstantial evidence, to me and a growing number of people, that they at least MIGHT be wrong:
1. Scientists have been wrong before about many things. The consensus view was Geocentrism, as per the article I quote above. These weren't stupid cavemen or Republicans, they were scientists of the day, going on the models and mathematics that they had at that time. In a narrow perspective, they were "correct" because they could accurately predict future positioning of celestial bodies, but they did not have the whole perspective.
2. Scientists have shown evidence of past ice ages and global warming in the past. But the industrial revolution really didn't get rolling until the 1800s. I bet though that there were Al Gores running around in the time of Dinosaurs blaming the human activities of the time for the rise in temperatures or impending ice age or whatever it was. People see a CORRELATION, and then they ask the smartest guys they know what it's supposed to mean. And snakes like Gore position themselves accordingly to profit.
3. The argument "is it riskier to ignore global warming and do nothing, than to spend a lot of money on mitigation?" That's a tough one to answer. Let's say global warming is real and we really need to do something about it quickly. So a majority vote in politicians who implement carbon taxes, punish coal burning power, massive taxes on transportation and fuel, and so on. ... but then we discover it's too late, warming is happening too fast, and now we need to evacuate the state of Florida (by the way, it was predicted by scientists that Florida should already be underwater). But oh no! We've spent all the money, we're tapped out, we fucked up!
Whenever I ask a global warming alarmist what should be done, they'll tell me it's carbon taxes and investing in wind farms, things like that. And then millions of people are thrown out of work and wind farms kill thousands of birds and make people sick.
So even if you're right about GW, none of your 97% consensus agree on a scientific solution to the problem at hand. People MIGHT be in favour of higher taxation if someone could explain logically how it's not financial rape and how we get from A-B.
Thanks for the compliment on Socionomics. Socionomics turned the "dismal science" on its head. Economists saw the correlation between a contracting money supply and depressions and assumed that the Federal Reserve was to blame for the size and scope of the Great Depression. But they clearly misplaced the cause and effect of the phenomenon. Today the 10 year US bond is at its lowest point in 50 years, perhaps the lowest it's ever been in the history of the republic! And I just read a report that said that the VELOCITY OF MONEY is rapidly decelerating.
In Switzerland now we actually have negative interest rates. How can this be – don't low interest rates stimulate the economy? No, low interest rates are an EFFECT of decelerating inflation and negative interest rates means that the hive mind perceives Deflation, i.e., tomorrow's dollars will have more purchasing power than they do today, therefore slightly less would need to be paid back for the lender to receive a return on investment. It also shows, perhaps, the scary onset of a deflationary spiral, which is a social MOOD marked by fear and a belief that things will be cheaper tomorrow than they are today.
For centuries economists (the science of economics) believed that low interest rates caused inflation. In fact, low interest rates mean inflation has been decelerating and, when they reverse, that's the nadir. Very few times has real deflation occurred but when it does, it's nasty, in particular when you look at our current debt to GDP ratios. The BELIEF that the Fed can cure all problems has been sorely tested already. It is BELIEFS that drive EVERYTHING, even science.
+ 1
Don't forget the very specific use of the word sarcasm to state that it was sarcastic.
Can you show where I specifically employed even one of those rhetorical devices? My "anti-science" argument, if you want to call it that, boils down to two basic points:
– Because of shifting beliefs and perspectives, scientists have been wrong before. Not always, not even usually, but SOMETIMES. Key turning points in history have shown this to be the case.
– Logical fallacies like "everyone knows this" and "science says" and resorting to ad hominem attacks of skeptics; plus the perception of "specialized knowledge" that a layperson can't really get their head around, and "peer approval" and the excoriation of dissidents puts it on a plane of religion.
"Science says" is especially disturbing because we are talking about epochal global warming, something that has happened before without industrialization. I have seen no explanation for why in the past warming occurred because of non man-made factors but now it must be man made factors. Scientists can't even predict the weather a full week in advance! But we're supposed to trust these theories when deciding on allocating billions of dollars to economic manipulations?
It would seem to me there is a small chance that correlation is being mistaken for causation, which would not be the first time that's happened. And these conclusions will entail policy decisions that have massive social and economic consequences and there are obviously people who stand to get VERY RICH depending on how those policy decisions unfold one way or the other.
Outstanding post.
Don't forget the very specific use of the word sarcasm to state that it was sarcastic.
I noted in my post that I assumed you were being sarcastic. That doesn't take away form the fact that it was an idiotic comment.
P.S. Let me guess you are a male or female between the age of 5-100 and you weigh between 100 and 250lbs and are between 3' and 6'.9"
It's not a stretch to think that religion affects...
Sure, but it's also affected by it.
Of course.
But much more slowly in the organized version of it (which is really what we're talking about).
What exactly was idiotic about it? I'm guessing you were just offending by my reveal of the people that use terms like "those people" and "it's not me, it's the bible" instead of actually stating what they mean they talk of Christian marriage and social morality.
Way to use them reasoning skills, Cumberbatch. (Note: I'm being sarcastic.)
I think the term marriage should only apply to Christian marriage.
I can think of at least twenty Bible verses regarding marriage that predate Christianity.
In some regard, yes, but in others it happens quite rapidly. I would argue that most forks in religion are the result of societal changes causing the religion to have to adapt for a new generation of followers.
Nope, only Christian marriage. Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and anyone else that believes they are married are just ignorant savages that don't derives to walk the same Earth as BF¡
What exactly was idiotic about it? I'm guessing you were just offending by my reveal of the people that use terms like "those people" and "it's not me, it's the bible" instead of actually stating what they mean they talk of Christian marriage and social morality.
Way to use them reasoning skills, Cumberbatch. (Note: I'm being sarcastic.)
I've never used religion to prove a point or to justify my opinion. I know others do and thats fine with me if that is what they use to justify their opinion or belief. When I started to post in this thread I started out with one point and that point was I didn't feel it was a good idea for Tim Cook to be a vocal activist while being CEO of Apple.
I feel it's dangerous to the company when a CEO starts to take sides on a heated issue because there is always the chance you are going to offend the other side of that debate or argument. If Tim Cook wants to support gay rights thats fine he should just do it as part of his life and not comment about it on social media. He can make the company as diverse as he wants, just do it and shut up about it.
I'm not a big Steve Jobs vs Tim Cook person however I liked the fact that Steve Jobs was all about the product and you didn't know anything else about him, the product was everything.
I feel like Apple has botched product announcements under Cook, the iMac being a good example and honestly the Apple Watch being the other. I can't remember a time when Apple announced a product and either didn't or couldn't bring it to market until 7 months later.
In spite of what Cooks says about leaks, all the leaks have been pretty damn close to being accurate since he became CEO.