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jakee

Palin on fruit flies - why does she hate science?

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You asked a fucking question, i gave you a fucking answer.



An answer to a very small portion of the question, and one which I was well aware of. (i.e. massively religious people are idiots)

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If you are going to fucking bitch about any fucking answer some fucker gives you



I'm bitching about you going on and on and on in a vein of conversation that exists only inside your head, and responding to my posts as if I was talking about that one particular aspect of things when in fact I simply haven't mentioned it.

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If you don't know why some people don't share your point of view then who the fuck do you think can tell you?



If not you then obviously no-one, oh great one!
Do you want to have an ideagasm?

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"An answer to a very small portion of the question, and one which I was well aware of. (i.e. massively religious people are idiots) "

Tread carefully there, lad. Many people who were/are much wiser and intelligent than you and I put together will ever be were/are massively religious.
If they are idiots, where does that place us?

As for me, I lose no sleep at night worrying about whether any particular group of people likes me or not.
HAMMER:
Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a
kind of divining rod to locate the most expensive parts adjacent the
object we are trying to hit.

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Filtering through the bullshit on this thread gives a pretty good example of the attitudes toward science and research that have been growing for the last 8 years. You can argue about the ivory tower and the revenge of the nerds, but the real danger is the general lack of education and understanding of science and its importance.

For example, we have Rush Limbaugh and his crew self-righteously taking on global warming as if they are experts and the scientists are fools, GWB killing funding on stem cell research, ALL of the politicians under-funding and ignoring alternate energy research for 40 years that the US could have been leading the world, and on-and-on.

If you need an example of how dangerous this can be, go read up on Lysenko and the history of winter wheat in the Soviet Union. Stalin's politicizing of genetics put back their agriculture 50 years. We do not need to follow in their footsteps, but we have been. Fortunately, we do not have dictators with lifetime power.

The discussion of dark matter just shows how anti-science the public is - even this guy who says he is an engineer (right!). The idea of dark matter has been around for almost 50 years. It is called dark because we can't see it. It is called matter because we know it is there and has mass. There are a lot of things we can't see, but physics deals with them just fine. There have been a lot of ideas of what this dark matter could be, but we are not sure. There are some things we know and some things we don't know. As time goes on, we learn more - that is how it works.

This is not voodoo or blind faith. Every scientist who works on dark matter knows about the arguments about how basic physics may change in faraway places. That is another discussion that has been going on for about 100 years. Physics evolves when old ideas are disproved. Even if some scientists resist new ideas, hard evidence always wins.

The public who thinks that professors and researchers are disconnected from reality and whose opinions are not valuable is misguided or ignorant. They love their iPhones and organ transplants, but hate the people who invent them. Makes no sense. Theories of dark matter may not be used to make a washing machine, but Einstein's relativity is built into every GPS, and y'all love yer GPS's.

Lastly, I was an astrophysicist at a university, and now I'm not. I've been in the ivory tower and I've been in the trenches. I'm not young and I'm not inexperienced and I don't care if you don't care. The number of people who flaunt their ignorance scares me, and when they are in power, we are in trouble.

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So just because I don't accept dark matter/energy as fact you disbelieve my education.
Fine. That makes you the same as those you condemn for not accepting what you believe.
It is that attitude that leads to much of the rift.
Like I said in my very first post, scientists are such hypocrits.
Including myself.
HAMMER:
Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a
kind of divining rod to locate the most expensive parts adjacent the
object we are trying to hit.

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Back on the subject of fruit flies.

This topic makes me laugh. My sister-in-law does genome research on fruit flies. My brother has a PhD in cell biology, and he studies geonomes of single-celled organisms, but he also did research on fruit flies. Part of that work was about trying to apply gene therapy to cure diabetes.

The funny part - my sister-in-law is voting for McCain/Palin :D

Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

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This is not voodoo or blind faith. Every scientist who works on dark matter knows about the arguments about how basic physics may change in faraway places. That is another discussion that has been going on for about 100 years. Physics evolves when old ideas are disproved. Even if some scientists resist new ideas, hard evidence always wins.



Except the hard evidence isn't there. As said in this thread, 'we know it exists, it definitely there, but we can't (yet) detect it or actually prove it. It's our best model; but I don't see how you can prove it's not "God."

Fruit flies, otoh, are very easy to repeat experiments on, and quickly get results. Nice short life cycles, and cheaply available.

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This is not voodoo or blind faith. Every scientist who works on dark matter knows about the arguments about how basic physics may change in faraway places. That is another discussion that has been going on for about 100 years. Physics evolves when old ideas are disproved. Even if some scientists resist new ideas, hard evidence always wins.



Except the hard evidence isn't there. As said in this thread, 'we know it exists, it definitely there, but we can't (yet) detect it or actually prove it. It's our best model; but I don't see how you can prove it's not "God."

Fruit flies, otoh, are very easy to repeat experiments on, and quickly get results. Nice short life cycles, and cheaply available.



Physicists sometimes give things catchy names like "Gluon" or "Neutrino". "Dark Matter" may sound like science fiction, but there is no doubt that it exists. We just can't tell exactly what it is. It could be dust, could be ice crystals, etc. We can rule out some things, and not others. Some day with better measurements, maybe we will know. This is not a 'god' question. There is hard evidence that it exists. We can detect it about as well as we can detect electrons. Maybe it should have been given a better name.

Astronomy experiments are a lot harder to do than fruit fly experiments, but that does not mean that we can't get answers. We understand a lot about our universe. We will understand more in the future.

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"Dark Matter" may sound like science fiction, but there is no doubt that it exists. We just can't tell exactly what it is. It could be dust, could be ice crystals, etc. We can rule out some things, and not others. Some day with better measurements, maybe we will know. This is not a 'god' question. There is hard evidence that it exists. We can detect it about as well as we can detect electrons. Maybe it should have been given a better name.



This sounds as convincing as the ID nuts. Some day we'll know if it's dust or ice or something else. But we know its there.

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My stand is that we know we can only observe enough matter to account for a fraction of what physics says there should be and can say, without doubt (since it is obvious), that something is causing the discrepancy. The idea of dark matter & energy fits, the numbers work out, so it is generally accepted. But since we don't know what else is out there, we can't rule out there being another explanation. Yet so many have and that bothers me. Science is supposed to keep an open mind but it seems that more and more the attitude is, "We know this for certain and the debate is closed." Once started down that path we become no different than the religious zealots. Hence my phrase, "Science: The New Religion".
HAMMER:
Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a
kind of divining rod to locate the most expensive parts adjacent the
object we are trying to hit.

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science and faith aren't mutually exclusive, IMHO. I wish people would stop trying to make them be.



Depends on what you include under the banner of faith. If it includes the dogmatic nonsense that IS organized religion - then science and faith are definitely mutually exclusive.

What do you include in faith?
" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

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When did it become so popular to bash science, and the "ivory tower elitists" who carry out the vital research that underpins the progress of modern medicine and new technologies? When did ignorance become so fashionable?



When science changed from things that any normal person could see, do, and confirm (rolling objects down an incline, measuring growth rates in crops, etc) to performing experiments that required training and, God forbid, a serious effort to educate oneself.

Palin's comments (and the comments of some of the posters here) put her thoroughly in the ignorance is bliss camp.

That is why a quality education in the scientific method, using simple experiments that can be seen and touched, is essential at an early age. The results of many modern experiments and discoveries would certainly spook anybody raised under the cloak of dogmatic beliefs.

Faith and science can easily mingle, but maybe not so easily for a person not educated early regarding the appropriate realm of each.
" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

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Faith and science can easily mingle, but maybe not so easily for a person not educated early regarding the appropriate realm of each.



Ah but they can't. You cannot perform any scientific work by the application of faith, likewise you cannot persue matters of faith by the application of science. Faith and science can only exist simultaneously if they are not allowed to come into contact with each other.

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When all these science nay sayers end up on the OR table and say ' Golly this science thing is just so iffy, better just let me ride this one out with a little prayer instead" But we all know that will never happen.
Science seems to work just fine for most folks until it conflicts with their long held and out dated superstitions.



Yes, it is amazing how quickly most people drop their neolithic beliefs when they need a little science to get them thru the day. (Though not quite as amazing as those that would allow their children to die rather than seek medical treatment).

The blind faithful. They remind me of the Planet X crowd that is totally convinced that a rougue something or another will slam into Earth on a specific day; but will not give me all their worldly possessions just before it happens. Blinded by ignorance; and afraid to admit it.
" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

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As for Palin, it really boggles the mind to think that someone that dumb could even be considered for VP. What does that say about America?



Nothing good, no matter what the explanation.

She is either, as someone else mentioned, playing to the LCD for the sake of getting elected; or she really is that uneducated.

We are gonna get fucked either way because the other party's platform is damn near communist.

The anomaly in all this is that the Repubs are taking us down the path to a centrally planned financial system. Maybe not such an anomaly if, similar to the war industries, it turns out all their close friends end up getting rich off of such a move.
" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

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You fail to try to understand, accept, respect, or otherwise concede that there are actually people out there that don't hold the same viewpoint as yourself.



My observation, based on extensive post review, is that he does all of those things. He also knows, as does anyone who drops the ignorance of blind faith, that they are quite simply wrong.
" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

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My stand is that we know we can only observe enough matter to account for a fraction of what physics says there should be and can say, without doubt (since it is obvious), that something is causing the discrepancy. The idea of dark matter & energy fits, the numbers work out, so it is generally accepted. But since we don't know what else is out there, we can't rule out there being another explanation. Yet so many have and that bothers me. Science is supposed to keep an open mind but it seems that more and more the attitude is, "We know this for certain and the debate is closed." Once started down that path we become no different than the religious zealots. Hence my phrase, "Science: The New Religion".



Dark energy is a more recent and less understood concept and changes as information comes in. Dark matter is simpler. We just can't see it. If you look out into space, you see a lot of things, but only what creates or reflects light or radiation that you can detect. Darkness does not involve faith, just detectors.

I don't know any physicists who don't have open minds, but they have a short fuse with amateurs who don't know anything criticizing years of research. I used to get the quack mail in my department, and it is amazing how many people write elaborate papers or even books disproving relativity or quantum mechanics. They were all wrong. Not that relativity cannot be expanded or improved, but not by someone who doesn't have all the tools. Scientists love to come up with new or corrected theories. A lot of them result in Nobel prizes.

If you want to debunk Dark Matter, do the research, get the tools, don't just assume that it's wrong because it sounds weird. Aristotle was wrong, Newton was right. That one took a couple of thousand years. Time passes, people learn.

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We are gonna get fucked either way because the other party's platform is damn near communist.



:D:D:DIt's a LOOOONG ways from any form of communism. I'd suggest that both of your parties are so much further Right than the center of European politics. Saying that they are commies is scaremongery at it's best.

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

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We all seek answers to the great questions "Why am I here? Where did this all come from?"
For some the simple explanation put forth by religion is sufficient and those people live their lives quite content.



"Why am I here?" as in the purpose of my existence is a matter for faith (or religion for those so inclined). However, without a little more direction from the inquisitor, because your mother and father had sex is also an acceptable answer.

"Where did this all come from?" is a matter that has proven so far to be very assessible to scientific inquiry. Only a few hundred years of serious study has yielded far more incredibly vaster sums of information than 2K years of religious musings. Here too there is a however statement. Someday we will hit the limits of observation. Religions can them muse about what happens beyond those limits and what went on before those times.

p.s. - I wish all those content religious types were truly content. Unfortunately, a bunch of them keep trying to cram their faith into science programs. On the topic of the OP, we've got a VP candidate who very well may be one of those.
" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

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Once we accept things for what they seem to be we stop learning.



Might be your mode of operation. Bad assumption to think it is some sort of univeral trait. Or maybe that statement was just hijacked from one of those cutesy motivational posters?
" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

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>Ignorance is not fashionable and never has been.

It certainly has been. Some good treatments of this:

Anti-intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter
The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby



If nothing else, I'm always good for a recommend read:

The Closing of the American Mind

Ignorance and rebellion have always been fashionable. People tend to grow out of the latter whereas the former is a character trait that is highly resistant to change.
" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

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I can understand how someone might be proud of not having gone to college or university since there are an extraordinary number of young people coming out of these institutions who actually seem less intelligent than when they went in. Maybe these uneducated folk are proud not of their lack of education, but of their freedom from having been subjected to the very biased and unidirectional molding process that prevails on campus.
Maybe they are just sick and tired of those who have been to college looking down their noses at them.:o



Wrong again. Studies show students at the college level to be quite strong-willed and that the educational experience does not significantly alter their fundamental character traits or core beliefs.

For better or worse, that's the way it is. Timely article in NYT today on the topic.

Can you quantify that number of college grads that are less intelligent than when they went in. Even a rudimentary study? Or is that just some off-the-top-of-your-head BS that supports your anti-academic point of view?
" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

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Faith and science can easily mingle, but maybe not so easily for a person not educated early regarding the appropriate realm of each.



Ah but they can't. You cannot perform any scientific work by the application of faith, likewise you cannot persue matters of faith by the application of science. Faith and science can only exist simultaneously if they are not allowed to come into contact with each other.



By mingle, I meant co-exist together; not solve the same problems.
" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

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When did it become so popular to bash science, and the "ivory tower elitists" who carry out the vital research that underpins the progress of modern medicine and new technologies? When did ignorance become so fashionable?



All one has to do is read this thread and see all the posts by wanna-be scientists that condemn all those who think differently and you can find the reason why it has become popular to bash science. To find out when you merely have to go back to when this condemnation started.

I'm an engineer trying to engage in a civil discussion with others who share my interest and what happens? I get bashed for questioning a commonly held belief. When you treat people like that it hardly comes as a surprise that outsiders would mistrust those in the scientific world.
HAMMER:
Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a
kind of divining rod to locate the most expensive parts adjacent the
object we are trying to hit.

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