How intelligent are you people?

Discussion in 'Free Thoughts' started by Nathyn, Nov 29, 2007.

  1. Nathyn Registered Member

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    I'm somewhat of a forum junkie, as I love expressing my opinion. I like editing Wikipedia every now and then, and I like asking college professors tons of questions, unrelated to class curriculum.

    The problem is: There's hardly anyone worth expressing it to. The internet has improved the quantity of communication and the speed of communication, but it hasn't improved the quality of the communicators.

    I'm particularly interested in politics, which probably makes my situation even worse.

    Well, in the past few days, I've come across an abundance of cases where people are essentially anti-science. They think that their own common sense ought to bear more weight than the consensus of scientists based on research.

    Examples:
    • Conservatives tend to be openly hostile to Psychology, based upon the research which supports opposition to spanking, support for gay tolerance, and novel approaches to teaching like "Everyday Math."
    • Liberals tend to be openly hostile to Economics, based upon the research which supports opposition to the minimum wage, free trade, and (in many cases) deregulation.
    • Libertarians tend to be openly hostile to mainstream economics, based upon its support for fiat, fractional reserve banking, and Keynesianism, in general (instead retreating to pseudoeconomics, such as that of the Austrian school) and many other sciences. After all, if you believe in the methodological individualism of Austrian economics, you have to immediately reject every single social science, outright.

    Being disturbed by this trend, I turned to Google: "intellectual forum."

    The first link to pop up? A website called "New Intellectual forum."

    "Oh boy," I thought, only to click and find that it's a damned Objectivist forum.

    To get to the point, I'm asking all of this because I'd like to know: This is called sciforums.com. So, do you all tend to strongly believe in science -- no matter what conclusions it yields? And what is your opinion of the impact of political ideology on society's interpretation of science?

    Basically, I'd like to speak with people who are open-minded and intelligent, like me, and I'm curious if you fit the bill.
     
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  3. nietzschefan Thread Killer Valued Senior Member

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    Keep looking.
     
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  5. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, I strongly believe in the ability of science to discern the truth about nature. Republican political ideology is basically anti-science.
     
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  7. Donnal Registered Member

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    i was one of the kids many years ago in melbourne that was tested with maths in a room full of other kids same age we were all under 5
    we were shown adult maths once in front of witnesses i was the only one that got them right
    they were university maths
    but i dunno what happened to me now
     
  8. Nathyn Registered Member

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    12
    Haha.

    Really, though, this is depressing. As an example, I was discussing a proposed spanking ban in Massachusetts.

    After I laid out psychologists' argument against spanking, someone replied:

    I told him how he should know that one good piece of research is worth more than common sense or thousands of years of tradition, then pointed out how he was appealing to ridicule and tradition.

    He responds:
    You see, I don't care if I'm wrong about spanking. But just GIVE ME AN ARGUMENT.

    PLEASE, GIVE ME SOME EVIDENCE TO BACK UP YOUR STATEMENTS.

    By the way, I haven't posted on James Randi's forums in a while. I remember those used to be good, although I admit I had to be pretty careful with the stuff I said, or else some of the more knowledgeable posters would hand my ass to me, intellectually.

    The Republicans are a party, with a Conservative ideology.

    Also, as I said above, Liberal ideology is anti-science in many regards too.
     
  9. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Incorrect. Perhaps they used to be, Barry Goldwater and today Ron Paul are truly conservative, but on the whole Republicanism is not.

    Any ideology is anti-science, since it assumes complete knowledge of how things work.

    Well, that's nonsense, because THERE IS NO SCIENCE OF ECONOMICS.
     
    Last edited: Nov 29, 2007
  10. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    HAHAHAHAHA
    hey sam! fresh meat!

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  11. nietzschefan Thread Killer Valued Senior Member

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    Personally I think the actual science topics here are pretty good. I myself play mostly in History, Philosophy while dabbling Archaeology and others. Of course many participate in political threads - with the usual baggage in tow. Most talk here is random brain farts of "free thoughts".
     
  12. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

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    you're gonna love Tiassa.
     
  13. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    You seem a bit hypocritical when you make statements like this.
     
  14. Nathyn Registered Member

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    I think the left\right, liberal\conservative distinction is simplistic. Modern Republican ideology has changed, but it still did draw influence from Goldwater. If you disagree with me, we can debate that in politics. The same goes for whether or not economics is a science.

    I agree with you on ideology.

    I hope not. So I don't sound arrogant:

    I admit that I'm sometimes pretty intellectually lazy myself.

    When I argue, I tend to do a lot of searching on google and wikipedia, which is admittedly pretty pathetic.

    EDIT:

    Oh, and some other examples... I'm absolutely amazed at how many people actually believe:
    *Global warming is a myth and\or isn't caused by humans
    *Hussein harbored Al-Qaeda and kept WMD stockpiles
     
    Last edited: Nov 29, 2007
  15. domesticated om Stickler for details Valued Senior Member

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    Welcome to the forums!

    I've never been comfortable with the concept of "believing in science". IMO - Science itself is more of a method/discipline of finding proof as opposed to a body of information that lends itself to belief.
    I believe in individual conclusions based on the evidence, or perhaps belief in certain specific hypothesis - but not belief in science as a whole.

    It's sort of like saying "do I believe in skiing". I can disbelieve in the concept of performing certain airborn somersaults, but disbelieving in skiing is absurd.
     
  16. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Economics deals with things like the stock market, which is based on hope, optimism, pessimism, and a spectrum of human emotions. Thus it's silly to say that studying economics will lead to verifiable conclusions like there shouldn't be a minimum wage, or there should be deregulation.

    If you want to know which side believes in science, look at the Republican debate where several of the candidates DON'T EVEN BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION!
     
  17. nietzschefan Thread Killer Valued Senior Member

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    "I believe in Science..."
     
  18. maxg Registered Senior Member

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    I think this forum is better than most in this regard (at least based on my limited experience of other forums and similar sites like Gather). In the "Science" forums at least people expect posters to provide evidence to support their claims and to have some respect for scientific method. Thinks are a bit looser in the other forums.

    As for the influence of political ideology on science, I would start other thread on the topic. I will say that as someone who works with a number of Federal agencies I don't believe that any administration has meddled as much in the gov't presention of scientific information as much as the current one but that's old news (e.g., see the Union of Concerned Scientists report http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/RSI_final_fullreport.pdf)
     
  19. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    As an IT professional, I'd be alarmed if internet users weren't a representative cross-section of the population. Our goal is for it ultimately to be available to everyone (not to mention understandable and reliable, which means we absolutely have to dump Windows before it destroys civilization): to be the next evolution of language after spoken and written language. So hopefully you will encounter exactly the same mix of people as you do in "real life." Most people aren't intellectually oriented and a lot of them (perhaps the majority) aren't especially rational. "The best disinfectant is sunshine," to quote Brandeis, or as I put it, "We need to keep the cockroaches on top of the linoleum." If the internet is the new linoleum then we'd better not create an underclass of people who don't use it.
    Politics evokes a lot of emotion so you're hardly going to find the greatest representation of rational discussion there.
    Science is all about rationality, so it stands to reason that people who don't give rationality a lot of priority won't like science.
    You're using contemporary American definitions of "conservative" and "liberal." Both rightists and leftists in America fail to satisfy the classic definition of "liberal," which is basically to trust people enough to give them freedom. Both American liberals and conservatives demand that the government step in to enforce their own agenda. We classic liberals or "libertarians" don't perceive any meaningful difference between them.
    That's a trite dismissal of libertarianism. It's a small movement (so small that nobody was creative enough to think of a better name than "libertarian") so a few really articulate people like Rand and von Mises have become heroes, but that doesn't mean that all of us, or even most of us, actually agree with them. I've written extensively on SciForums of my own logical deduction that the very concept of the corporation is a holdover from the days of aristocracy and has no place in a free economy.

    As for the social sciences, they are "soft" sciences because their hypotheses are extremely difficult to test. The essence of the scientific test is to "hold all other variables constant," and you can't do that with economics, psychology or sociology.
    I certainly do and I manifest that belief in my moderating. The scientific method must be respected--or at least not flouted--on SciForums, even in discussions of music, current events and advice for the lovelorn. Every response to a post is part of a peer review process. If an assertion is judged to be extraordinary, the asserter must provide extraordinary substantiation for it and stop pursuing his argument until it passes that step in the peer review. (No, nobody here but me probably looks at it that way, but that is what is going on, at least under my moderation.)

    Science is the principle that the natural world can be understood and predicted by deriving logical theories from empirical observations of its past behavior. There is no place for illogic or the supernatural on SciForums except in specific subforums like Religion; and challenges to the validity of the scientific method itself belong in the Philosophy subforum where they will encounter strong debating skills.
    It sucks. I fear that the Religious Redneck Retard Revival will drag America down and I recommend that all young people prepare themselves for the possible necessity of emigration. (Yes I'm a decent sloganeer but nobody asked me to name the movement.

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    )
    We have to pass the same judgment on you. You're a bit conceited, but that's not uncommon here. It's hard not to feel superior to a population that elects a president who can't speak his own native language fluently.
     
  20. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    a/s/l?

    pstpxplskthxby
     
  21. RubiksMaster Real eyes realize real lies Registered Senior Member

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    This is a great analogy. I have had this same "discomfort" for quite a while now, and I think this is a good, succinct way of explaining this to people who don't feel the same way.

    Similarly, a lot of people see some natural event, and they say "that's science!", when really it's not. It may be predicted by science, but it's not science per se.
     
  22. Nathyn Registered Member

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    I said "I believe in science," because of the way I tend to approach figuring out what's true (the "pragmatic theory of truth").

    We can't be experts on everything, but when we engage in discussion in which we're ignorant of a lot of the facts surrounding them, it's appropriate to appeal to the mainstream consensus, or at least only side with arguments that are backed up by at least some research. It's appropriate because the scientific consensus has repeatedly been shown to be credible and reliable. If it wasn't, then science would never make any progress, because as soon as they gain a consensus around a true concept, they could just as easily gain consensus around a false concept or around the invalidation of a past concept that was justifiably held to be true.

    Science shouldn't be treated as a religious-like belief system, in the sense of yielding absolute truth, but what the consensus upholds is highly certain and should be practically regarded as true by laymen, unless they do the considerable research themselves and find some reason to believe, in the given literature, that the mainstream consensus is wrong.

    I agree that the modern definition of "liberal" is very different. However, I disagree that Libertarianism directly descended from classical liberalism in any way that was more unique, pure, or direct than the influence liberalism had on any other belief-system, save for radical authoritarian ideologies.

    Classical liberals had never actually had any experience with capitalism in practice and had a primitive, downright utopian understanding of economics (pure competition, perfect information, perfect equilibrium, etc), so they assumed that there could never be any conflict between economic freedom (property rights) and social freedom (opportunity, fairness, a relative amount of equality).

    Whereas most Libertarians today (save for a few, like Milton Friedman) generally don't give a damn about equality or poverty, seeing both as permissible if it's "voluntary," by their dubious definition of the word, classical liberals saw laissez-faire as contributing to EVERYONE'S prosperity and opportunity.

    This is evident, starting from Mill, who was born as an individualist with a strong passion for liberty and property, but died an avowed socialist. It wasn't because Mill had been brainwashed by Marx, but rather, Mill, just as with later Liberals like Rawls, had predicated economic intervention on the basis that it promoted true freedom.

    Furthermore, classical liberalism was so widely influential that even conservatives today owe credit to it. No matter what your ideology is, everyone invokes "freedom." What separates one person from another isn't whether they truly advocate freedom (as Libertarians would have us believe by claiming monopolism over "Liberty"), but their conception of it and the acceptable limitations of freedom.

    There are some independently thinking Libertarians that are rational, generally moderates like Nozick or Sowell, that follow Neoclassical economics. But they're few and far between, and whenever any so-called Libertarian proposes anything other than minarchism, they are ostracized by other Libertarians as Statists.
     
    Last edited: Nov 29, 2007
  23. Betrayer0fHope MY COHERENCE! IT'S GOING AWAYY Registered Senior Member

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    2,311
    Intelligence goes here: physicsforums.com

    Although, they do not have all the shitty sub forums we have, which some people (me) appreciate. They also do not have Enmos.
     

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