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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Oh my GOD you continue to miss the fucking point! You are at the North Pole, the point is in Antartica, that's how far away from the point you are.
We're not even saying things can't be criticized. We're saying that this continued denial of facts by politicians creates bad policies. Republicans aren't even criticizing, because that would require studying the issue and asking questions. They're just flat out in denial right now.
Thank you.
edited 19th Nov '12 2:24:10 PM by AceofSpades
Penn and Teller are performers, not scientists. I've disagreed with the points they make in some of their episodes, and in many cases they aren't even making a pretense of being scientific. Their episode on UFO enthusiasts was more about ridiculing them than any kind of factual analysis of their beliefs.
In any event, Trivialis, yes, we're talking about how belief affects public policy. Climate change is not a religious issue, it's a scientific one. Economic policy is not a religious issue, it's a scientific one (yes, science can inform ethics and morality, but economics is at its heart a scientific discipline despite being infested by faith-based thinking).
edited 19th Nov '12 2:27:29 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I mentioned Penn & Teller to show that denial of climate change theory (global warming) is not just for the "lunatics" trying to mess up oil, it's across the political spectrum. It's not just "another one of GOP lies". If you think denying climate change is just wrong, then you have to say the same for Penn & Teller here.
If someone asked me I'd answer that according to carbon-dating the Earth is less than 5 billion years old. I'd have no compunction saying that I question the efficacy of radiometric dating.
That would be pretty horrific. And that's why nobody would suggest such a facistic thing.
The point is that Republican lawmakers have no business deciding product safety, weather forecasting funding, road safety, etc. if they're basically arguing psuedo-science that stands on the same grounds as Humorism, Miasmaism, Dianetics, Astrology, Dowsing, and Korean Fan Death are legitimate theories.
0_0
Now knock off the Post-Modernist "Can't Prove That" Bill O'Reilly argument. It's annoying as shit.
edited 19th Nov '12 2:32:23 PM by PotatoesRock
There are a few climate change deniers among liberals. Not many, and we try to keep them in the attic along with the embarrassing photos of us as babies.
The science is the science. Denying it makes you look like an ideologue or a fool.
I don't know any personally, I just assume they exist as part of normal statistical deviation. Are Penn & Teller liberals or just douchebags who got a TV show?
edited 19th Nov '12 2:32:52 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I think it's interesting you mention evolution and climate change.
A lot of people, people who tend to be liberals (not all, just some), say "See we have PROOF." Um, not quite.
Much like the abortion and gay debates, people hold up some observances, and then they tout the conclusions they draw from those observances as fact, essentially conflating the two.
As Ace put it so well, some people question those conclusions drawn. Doesn't make them "stupid" or "liars".
Other than your annoyance, is there a reason this argument should be tabled?
edited 19th Nov '12 2:35:14 PM by TheStarshipMaxima
It was an honorThere's a reason it's called the House Sciences Committee, not the House Post-Modernist What Reality Might Be Committee, because it is science that determines what gets Pentagon funding, how FEMA responds to cataclysmic weather events, how national health organizations prepare for epidemics, how intelligence and national security services prepare their computer systems and human personell against attack, what federal regulations apply to power plants, and a gazillion other things that rely on decision making informed ONLY by what we we can observe and NEVER by what we assume. Historically, the U.S. Government has been ill-served when Post-Modernist What Reality Might Be studies supplanted science in this role.
EDIT: Wow. First time I've been so ninja'd, and yet, my post ends up arriving right after a post to which it could serve as a suitable reply.
edited 19th Nov '12 2:37:53 PM by RadicalTaoist
Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.Starship, once again you confuse the normal process of scientific inquiry with conventional concepts of uncertainty.
If I told you there's a 99.5 percent chance that your house would sink into the ground tomorrow, would you bring up that 0.5 percent uncertainty factor as proof that the theory is contested and therefore unreliable? Or would you pack up and leave?
edited 19th Nov '12 2:36:15 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"In any event, Trivialis, yes, we're talking about how belief affects public policy. Climate change is not a religious issue, it's a scientific one. Economic policy is not a religious issue, it's a scientific one (yes, science can inform ethics and morality, but economics is at its heart a scientific discipline despite being infested by faith-based thinking).
I agree with you to some extent. If a scientific policy for climate/economy is directly applicable to solve a problem, it's no brainer to use it.
@Potatoes Rock
I don't know why you call me a postmodernist. I agree that there is an absolute truth and an objective reality. It doesn't mean that people don't disagree on what they think is that truth and reality.
@R Taco: Ok, fair enough.
edited 19th Nov '12 2:48:22 PM by Trivialis
Permission granted, Commander Taoist.
You know Fighteer, you, Shima, and others constantly tell me that. Not so. If you said there was a 95.5% chance my house would sink into the ground, I wouldn't care about the 0.5% percent chance you're wrong.
I care about what methods you're using to ascertain that my house is in danger. If I trust the methods and yourself, then I'd go along with it if it was only 68% accuracy. If your methods basically involve saying "Well, everyone else agrees with it," then yes, I'm going to question it.
Wrong. You mean, "all the evidence we have says this is so. The people who disagree with us don't have any counter evidence." Not the same thing. But thanks for demonstrating what I was talking about.
edited 19th Nov '12 2:41:20 PM by TheStarshipMaxima
It was an honor@max: Astro physics is pretty easy to understand and if you can wrap your head around speed of light and measuring distance on that scale you can get a pretty good idea of just how old some of the older galaxies are. Sure it`s possible that God created an entire universe several billion years ago and just got around to us 6,000 years ago but that makes many more assumptions then our current model of how the earth got here.
Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?Carbon dating is not used to age anything that's billions of years old. Radiometric dating is used for that, but Carbon (or at least Carbon-14) are not used for that purpose. Carbon-14 is only used to measure things up to 60 000 years or so. Its half-life is too short to use it for anything older than that.
Also, the Earth is about 4½ billion years old, so "less than 5 billion" is correct but it's not very precise. A margin of "give or time 500 million years" means that you could ignore almost the entire history of multicellular life on Earth when stating the age of the Earth. Sure, complex life isn't very old, but it's not that young, either.
(Not intending to launch a derail; just dropping a little bit of info.)
edited 19th Nov '12 2:41:21 PM by BestOf
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.Ah, thanks Best Of. I honestly didn't know that.
Exactly. Heck maybe other galaxies are the old 'drafts' of ours
. Or you know what, maybe we're wrong and Bible is wrong. Or maybe we're understanding it wrong.
I'm just saying that short of meeting a 5 billion year old person who was there and can tell me how it all went down, then really we're just guessing, even if the guesses are spot on correct.
edited 19th Nov '12 2:44:47 PM by TheStarshipMaxima
It was an honorI don't want to continue a derail but I should point out that Penn later acknowledged that global warming is real, actually. There was a point in time where he wasn't sure where he stood on the issue, but has since realized the data didn't support his position.
That's, you know, a big part of science: knowing when you're wrong and learning from it.
There's no such thing as probability of a theory being right. Either it is right, or it isn't right. What we mean when we say we're 99.5% certain of something isn't that there's that much chance of it being right, it's that tests and evidence have suggested that If the theory weren't right, we'd see different evidence, barring a series of random events that are .5% likely.
Oh hey, good for him.
edited 19th Nov '12 2:44:37 PM by TheyCallMeTomu
When it comes to climate change, evolution, and the current astronomical and geological consensus on the formation of our star system and the planets within, yes, we have proof, and no, the alternatives don't. Again, requesting permission to edify over PM, Captain.
As a student of mathematics (queen of science
), I have to caution you about the notion of proof.
A proof is only a proof when you accept the assumptions behind it. The argument may say that if the universe started with a small singularity, then it evolved into the current universe with these "specifications" Now, you believe that God did not use the singularity. Can you accept the proof?
That's the thing. A scientific theory starts with some principles, and is valid only if those principles are true. Reality might not be according to those principles, though, but modeling is still useful. That's why I can accept this post
by Fighteer but not the subsequent post
by pagad.
edited 19th Nov '12 3:29:33 PM by Trivialis
Because he's Devil's Advocating for the "House Post-Modernist What Reality Might Be Committee" view Marco Rubio and other Republicans hold, and I can't tolerate wishy-washy bullshit trying to justify a bunch of quacks and snake oil salesmen having the right to decide Disaster Relief, Medical Funding for Serious Disease, Federal Funding for Power Plants. Etc.
I don't care about absolute truth or objective reality. The point is the GOP Lawmakers are a bunch of liars at best and at worst, uneducated loons. Neither should be allowed to decide some of the most fucking important funding in the country.
No wonder the rest of the world thinks America's a joke.

edited 19th Nov '12 2:21:40 PM by BestOf
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.