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PostPosted: 05/16/19 5:43 pm • # 126 
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FLAT EARTHERS, AND THE RISE OF SCIENCE DENIAL IN AMERICA | OPINION
LEE MCINTYRE

Every day in the media we see once-unthinkable science headlines. More than seven hundred cases of measles across 22 states in the U.S., largely due to vaccine deniers. Climate change legislation stalled in the U.S. Senate—due mainly to partisan politicians who routinely confuse climate and weather—even as scientists tell us that we have only until 2030 to cut worldwide carbon emissions by half, then drop them to zero by 2050. And, in one of the most incredible developments of my lifetime, the Flat Earth movement is on the rise.

To make matters worse, scientists (and others who care about it) have not really found an effective way of fighting back against science denial. In this "post-truth" era—with headlines like "Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds"—it is an open question how to convince people who reject evidence, not just in science, but also on a host of other factual matters. In the empirical realm, scientists often choose to respond by presenting their evidence, then get upset and refuse to engage more when their data aren't accepted or their integrity is questioned. Perhaps this is understandable, but I also believe it is dangerous just to walk away and dismiss science deniers as irrational (even if they are.) Even worse is to react to their hectoring on the question of whether there is "100 percent consensus" on global warming, or whether we're "certain" that vaccines don't cause autism, by blustering about "proof," which only gives aid and comfort to one of the most damaging myths about science.

But we really can't afford to do this anymore, nor can we afford to defend science simply by talking about its successes. Climate change "skeptics" already know about the marvels of chemotherapy...but what does that have to do with the spike in global temperatures in 1998? And philosophers of science have spent the last hundred years looking in vain for some definitive logical "criterion of demarcation" between science and non-science.

A better way to respond is to stop talking about proof, certainty, and logic, and start talking more about scientific "values." In my book The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science From Denial, Fraud, And Pseudosience, I defend the idea that what is most distinctive about science is not its method but its "attitude": the idea that scientists care about evidence and are willing to change their views based on new evidence. This is what truly separates scientists from their deniers and imitators.

I had a chance to test this theory in person recently when I attended the Flat Earth International Conference (FEIC) in Denver, Colorado, in November 2018. There I found myself among six hundred cheering, clapping Flat Earth advocates in the main ballroom of the Crowne Royal Hotel and Convention Center, who were taking part in a two-day extravaganza of presentations, multimedia performances, and "evidence" that the "globalists" have been pulling the wool over our eyes for millennia.

First, let’s deal with the threshold question: yes, these people were serious. Believing the Earth is flat is not something one would come to lightly, for they are routinely persecuted for their views. Everyone I spoke to said that they used to believe in the global Earth but one day "woke up" and realized that there was a worldwide conspiracy of people who had been lying to them. "Trust your eyes," was their mantra. "Do your own experiments." "Water is level." "Space is fake." "A government that could lie to you about 9/11 and the Moon landing is one that could lie to you about Flat Earth."

Most Flat Earthers describe their conversion as a quasi-religious experience, where one day they "took the red pill" (and yes, they adore the movie The Matrix) and realized the truth that the rest of us have been blind to for our entire lives, as a result of our miseducation and indoctrination—the Earth is flat.

To state this immediately raises a series of questions:

What do they actually believe? (That the Earth is a disk, with the "mountains of Antarctica" spread out along the perimeter, and a dome over the top.)

Who could keep such a secret? (The government, NASA, airline pilots, and others.)

Who put them up to it? ("The adversary," one man told me. "The devil rewards them mightily for covering up God's truth.")

Why don't others realize the truth? (Because they've been fooled.)

What is the benefit of believing in Flat Earth? (Because it's the truth! And, for many, it is the only physical account that is consistent with the Bible.)

What about all of the scientific proofs of a round Earth? (All flawed...which is what the conference was about.)

To spend two days attending seminars with titles such as "Globebusters," "Flat Earth with the Scientific Method," "Flat Earth Activism," "NASA and other Space Lies," "14+ Ways the Bible say Flat Earth," and "Talking to your Family and Friends about Flat Earth," felt in some ways like spending two days on another planet. The arguments were absurd, but intricate and not easily run to ground, especially if one buys into the Flat Earthers' insistence on first-person proof. And the social reinforcement that participants seemed to feel in finally being "among their own" was palpable. Psychologists have long known that there is a social aspect to belief. FEIC 2018 was a lab experiment in peer pressure.

For the first day, I kept my mouth shut and just listened. I wore the conference badge and took notes. The second day, I came out hard as a philosopher of science. After numerous conversations, I came away with the conclusion that Flat Earth is a curious mixture of fundamentalist Christianity and conspiracy theory, where outsiders are distrusted and belief in Flat Earth is (for some) tantamount to religious faith. This is not to say that most Christians believe in Flat Earth, but almost all of the Flat Earthers I met (with a few notable exceptions) were Christians. While they claimed not to rely on faith as proof of their beliefs—and were anxious to present their own "scientific evidence"—most did seek empirical findings that would make all of their beliefs (both spiritual and worldly) consistent with one another. And once they started looking, the evidence was all around them.

Most of the presentations were designed to show that the "scientific" evidence for a global Earth was flawed, and that their own "evidence" for Flat Earth was solid. Virtually all of the standards of good empirical reasoning were violated. Cherry-picking evidence? Check. Fitting beliefs to ideology? Check. Confirmation bias? Check. How to convince anyone in this sort of environment? You don't convince someone who has already rejected thousands of years of scientific evidence by showing them more evidence. No matter what I presented, there was always some excuse: NASA had faked the pictures from space. Airline pilots were in on the conspiracy. Water can't adhere to a spinning ball.

So I tried a different tactic. Instead of talking about evidence, I went after their reasoning.

The problem with conspiracy theorists is that they hold themselves up as skeptics, but they are actually quite gullible. There is a rampant double standard for evidence: no evidence is good enough to convince them of something they do NOT want to believe, yet only the flimsiest evidence is required to get them to accept something they DO want to believe. Contrast this to the "scientific attitude," which is a mindset of flexibility toward changing one's beliefs based on new evidence.

This was my leverage.

Instead of saying "show me your evidence" (which they were only too happy to do) or "here's my evidence" (which they wouldn't believe anyway,) I asked "what would it take to convince you that you were wrong?" They seemed unprepared for this question.

The first time I asked it was to one of the main presenters after he had just walked off stage. Although he admitted that he didn't have any science background, he wore a white lab coat, which was all the authority he said he needed. I asked what evidence might convince him the Earth was round and he said "just give me proof." I asked what kind, and he referred me back to one of the pieces of "evidence" he had just presented from the stage: a picture of the Chicago skyline from 60 miles out in Lake Michigan. The problem was, if the Earth was curved, you shouldn't have been able to see any buildings.

"But wait," I said, "you just told us that every photo from NASA was Photoshopped....yet I'm supposed to believe this one?"

"Yes," he answered, "because I know the guy who took it—and I went out on Lake Michigan myself and recreated it from only 46 miles out."

During his talk I'd done a quick calculation to determine that you only had to go out 45 miles for the tallest building in Chicago to disappear below the skyline. (I'll say this for the Flat Earthers, they weren't incompetent mathematicians.) So was he right?

No, due to something called the "Superior Mirage Effect," which is a familiar physical phenomenon whereby—depending on the temperature of the surface of the water relative to the temperature of the air on any given day—what you saw in the photo was NOT actually the city of Chicago, but its super position as a mirage in the sky. It was an optical illusion. (We've all seen a similar illusion of the "Inferior Mirage Effect" when, on a hot day, there seems to be water on the pavement.) Light doesn't always travel in straight lines.

He laughed.

"I dealt with that in my talk," he said. "It's made up."

"You didn't deal with it in your talk," I said. "You just said you didn't believe it."

"Well I don't," he said.

A crowd of his admirers was pushing close and he began to get antsy, but I had one final question.

"So why didn't you go out one hundred miles then?" I asked.

"What?"

"A hundred miles. If you'd gone out that far not only the city would've disappeared but also the mirage too. If it didn't, you'd have your proof."

He shook his head, "We couldn't get the captain of the boat to go out that far."

Now it was my turn to scoff.

"What? You've devoted your entire life to this work and you didn't go? You had the definitive experiment within reach and you couldn't go out an extra 55 miles?"

He turned his head and began to talk to someone else.

It is going to be a long process to talk to science deniers. They won't be convinced by evidence because their views are not based on a rational way of responding to evidence in the first place. Of course I didn't convince the speaker, or anyone else over my 48 hours at FEIC 2018. But I did do one important thing that might have affected their belief. I showed up.

Research has shown that people aren't convinced by data, but by having conversations with people they trust. I don't pretend that the speaker at FEIC trusted me, but I do think that I built up some credibility by not just doing a quick "hit and run" interview, then leaving. I stayed at the convention and had many more conversations. I even took another guest speaker out to dinner, where we had a two hour no-holds-barred talk about rocket travel and flights over Antarctica. He was intelligent, nimble, and an excellent debater. I even liked him. But we disagreed on almost everything.

When people feel threatened they retreat into their silos, and the Flat Earth community is no different. They do their "research" by viewing a spate of Flat Earth videos on Youtube and—now that a quorum has been reached—they go to conventions. There is even an upcoming Flat Earth cruise planned to "reach the ice wall" in 2020. They really do seem to want to pursue evidence. (My idea: how about a reality TV show that follows them on this cruise? Call it "Edge of the Earth.")

But the problem with Flat Earthers—and other science deniers—is not that they don't pursue evidence, but that they don't respond to it in a rational way. They lack the scientific attitude. So how should we respond?

I don't think it is wise just to dismiss them. This only creates more distrust and further polarization. Instead I think we need to engage. Scientists, after all, would never want to be accused of retreating into their own silos. (At the FEIC conference I heard a rumor—though never confirmed—that there was a scientific conference at the hotel up the street. But of course none of them bothered to show up and refute the Flat Earthers. Boy did they make hay out of that.)

Science denial is too dangerous to ignore. You might think that Flat Earth isn't harming anyone, but they had sessions on how to recruit new members, including children. And, by their own report, they are growing fast. They've recently recruited some prominent celebrities like Kyrie Irving (before he recanted) and Wilson Chandler. There are Flat Earth "meet up" groups in many cities, including Boston. Just before the convention in Denver, someone funded a billboard.

My other concern, based on my academic research, is that all science deniers use roughly the same reasoning strategy. Belief in conspiracy theories, cherry picking evidence, championing their own experts. These are also the tactics used by deniers of evolution, climate change, and the recent spate of anti-vaxx. How many more years before the Flat Earthers are running for school board, asking physics teachers to "teach the controversy," just as Intelligent Designers did not too many years back?

If we can understand science denial in its most elemental form, might we not be able to make progress against all of it at once? For those of us who care about science, it is important to fight back against science denial in whatever form it arises.

But we must do it in the right way.

As I argue in The Scientific Attitude, we need to stop merely pointing to the successes of science and reclaim the notion of uncertainty as a strength rather than a weakness of scientific reasoning. No matter how good the evidence, science cannot "prove" that climate change is real. Or that vaccines are safe. Or even that the Earth is round. That is just not how inductive reasoning works.

What scientists can do, however, is say much more than they do about the importance of likelihood and probability, to puncture the myth that until we have proof, any theory is just as good as any other. Scientific beliefs are not based on certainty but on "warrant"—on justification given the evidence. To say that the evidence for anthropogenic global warming has hit the "five-sigma" level, which means that there is only a one in a million chance of a false positive, is something less than certainty. But who could deny that this is enough for rational belief? When certainty is the standard, science deniers may feel justified in holding out for proof. So let's explain to them that this is not how science works. That certainty is an irrational standard for empirical belief.

When a scientist looks for evidence, and it shows that his or her theory is wrong, this cannot just be ignored. If the problem gets bad enough, the theory must be changed or perhaps even abandoned, else one is no longer really a scientist. Yet I do not believe that this is a matter of method or logic (as Karl Popper and other philosophers have long argued,) but of values. One of the reasons that science works as well as it does is that—as opposed to ideology—it does NOT pretend that it has all the answers. It is open to new ideas, but also insists that these must be rigorously tested. In science there is a community standard to enforce this, based on data sharing, peer review, and replication. The scientific attitude exists not just in the hearts of individual scientists, but as a group ethos that guides empirical inquiry in a rational way. But how many of the lay public know this?

I therefore think that the best way to defend science is to go out and have more conversations with science deniers. I am not talking here about those desultory TV debates of yore, where they used to put James Hansen (a NASA scientist and leading voice on climate change) on a split screen with some conspiracy theorist, and then give them equal time. There are obviously legitimate concerns about giving a platform for falsehood. I'm talking about getting more scientists in front of the media, to talk not just about their findings, but about the rigorous process by which scientific results are produced. And yes, I think it is reasonable to expect more interactions between scientists and science deniers, as is now happening with the measles outbreak in Washington state, where public health officials are holding workshops to talk with anti-vaxxers.

n scientific reasoning there's always a chance that your theory is wrong. What separates science deniers from actual scientists is how rigorously they pursue that possibility.

https://www.newsweek.com/flat-earth-sci ... ca-1421936


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PostPosted: 06/08/19 4:03 am • # 127 
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Just another example of this Administration suppressing science ....

Trump halts fetal tissue research by government scientists

ByRICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR AND LAURAN NEERGAARD

The Trump administration said Wednesday that it is ending medical research by government scientists that uses human fetal tissue.

The Health and Human Services Department said in a statement that government-funded research by universities that involves fetal tissue can continue for now, subject to additional scrutiny — although it also ended one major university project that used the tissue to test HIV treatments. That school — University of California, San Francisco — called the decision "politically motivated."

Administration officials said the federal policy changes will not affect privately funded research.

Ending the use of fetal tissue by the National Institutes of Health has been a priority for anti-abortion activists, a core element of President Donald Trump's political base. A senior administration official said it was the president's call. The official wasn't authorized to publicly discuss internal deliberations and spoke on condition of anonymity.

But research using fetal tissue has led to lifesaving advances , including development of vaccines for rubella and rabies and drugs to treat HIV. Scientists around the country denounced the decision, saying that fetal tissue was critically needed for research on HIV vaccines, treatments that harness the body's immune system to battle cancer, and other health threats, including some to fetuses themselves.

"Prohibiting valuable research that uses fetal tissue that is otherwise going to be discarded doesn't make any sense," said Dr. Lawrence Goldstein, a regenerative medicine specialist at the University of California, San Diego. "It blocks important future research vital to the development of new therapies."

The government's own top medical scientist, NIH Director Francis Collins, said as recently as last December that he believes "there's strong evidence that scientific benefits come from fetal tissue research ," and that fetal tissue, rather than any alternatives, would "continue to be the mainstay" for certain types of research for the foreseeable future.

"Today, fetal tissue is still making an impact, with clinical trials underway using cells from fetal tissue to treat conditions including Parkinson's disease, ALS, and spinal cord injury," said Doug Melton, co-director of Harvard's Stem Cell Institute and president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research.

Last year, the administration announced a review of whether taxpayer dollars were being properly spent on fetal tissue research. As a result, NIH froze procurement of new tissue. On Wednesday, the administration also said it is not renewing an expiring contract with the University of California, San Francisco, that used fetal tissue to create a human-like immune system in mice for HIV research.

University Chancellor Sam Hawgood said in a statement that the Trump administration action ended a 30-year partnership with NIH. "UCSF exercised appropriate oversight and complied with all state and federal laws," said Hawgood. "We believe this decision to be politically motivated, shortsighted and not based on sound science."

HHS says it is trying to balance "pro-life" and "pro-science" imperatives.

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, said in a statement that the Trump administration has "once again done the right thing in restoring a culture of life to our government."

The Susan B. Anthony List, a group that works to elect lawmakers opposed to abortion, said in a statement that taxpayer funding ought to go to promoting alternatives to using fetal tissue in medical research. The NIH is funding a $20 million program to "develop, demonstrate, and validate experimental models that do not rely on human fetal tissue from elective abortions."

That idea got strong support from a Republican senator who oversees NIH funding.

"Today's action is a significant pro-life victory," Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri said in a statement. NIH "has directed funding toward the development of alternative research methods that do not rely on human fetal tissue from elective abortions and I remain supportive of that effort."

But the scientific consensus is there is no adequate substitute for fetal tissues in some research areas. For example, to learn how the mosquito-borne Zika virus moves from a pregnant woman's bloodstream into her fetus and attacks the developing brain — and how to prevent that — requires studying fetal brain cells, neuroscientist Sally Temple of the Neural Stem Cell Institute in New York wrote in the journal Science this year.

"Despite the president's pledge to 'end the HIV epidemic,' today's announcement poses a direct threat to crucial research to find treatments for HIV and other health threats," Megan Donovan of the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights. "Ideologues should not be allowed to stand in for real doctors and scientists when the government is making decisions about lifesaving medicine."

The government has funded research using fetal tissue for decades, under administrations of both political parties.

Officials said there are currently at least three active federal research projects that involve human fetal tissue, and possibly as many as 12. Among university research projects funded by the government, officials said, fewer than 200 of 50,000 rely on human fetal tissue.

The International Society for Stem Cell Research questioned whether the new scrutiny that university projects will face will follow long-accepted ethical guidelines or instead block the research for ideological reasons.

Aside from the canceled UCSF contract, no university-led programs will be affected for the time being, the administration said. New projects that propose to use fetal tissue and current projects up for renewal will be subject to additional reviews.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory ... s-63506968


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PostPosted: 06/10/19 3:12 am • # 128 
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And it continues ...

White House Tried to Stop Climate Science Testimony, Documents Show

Lisa Friedman

The White House tried to stop a State Department senior intelligence analyst from discussing climate science in congressional testimony this week, internal emails and documents show.

The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research declined to make changes to the proposed testimony and the analyst, Rod Schoonover, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, was ultimately allowed to speak before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on Wednesday.

But in a highly unusual move, the White House refused to approve Dr. Schoonover’s written testimony for entry into the permanent Congressional Record. The reasoning, according to a June 4 email seen by The New York Times, was that the science did not match the Trump administration’s views.

Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative policy group, said that it was common for the White House to vet agency testimony to Congress to ensure it did not contradict administration policy.

But, he said, “I have never heard of basic facts being deleted from or blocked from testimony.” Mr. Ornstein said withholding the analyst’s written testimony was significant. A verbal presentation could be interpreted as an individual’s position, he said, but “the written testimony is a more formal expression of a department.”

A White House spokesman said the administration did not comment on internal policy reviews. The National Security Council did not respond to requests for comment, and a spokesman for the State Department referred questions to the White House.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/08/clim ... imony.html


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PostPosted: 09/24/19 8:54 am • # 129 
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White anti-vaxxers declare themselves to be the new ‘civil rights movement’
Sky Palma

It was a scene meant to be reminiscent of the Civil Rights era: chants of “No segregation, no discrimination,” T-shirts emblazoned with the moniker “Freedom Keepers,” the sounds of “We Shall Overcome” emanating from the California state Capitol in Sacramento — except the protest was led by mostly white people from affluent backgrounds who think vaccines are dangerous, POLITICO reports.



The protesters, who are adherents of the anti-vax movement, drew fire from lawmakers who represent minority communities. One lawmaker, Assemblywoman and Legislative Black Caucus member Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles), said the rally was “borderline racist” and ignorant of history.

“This is misappropriation of a movement that really is not over and proves to be challenging to overcome,” Kamlager-Dove said. “The whole conversation around vaccinations is actually one about privilege and opportunity. It’s a personal choice. It’s a luxury to be able to have a conversation about medical exemptions and about whether or not you think your child should be vaccinated.”

Four years ago, California eliminated personal belief exemptions for vaccines that were commonly utilized by anti-vaxxers. Now, new legislation in the state is taking aim at the last refuge for those opposed to vaccines: medical exemptions.

From POLITICO:

Quote:
According to the California Department of Public Health, the number of unvaccinated children in homeschooling has skyrocketed since the state banned personal belief and religious exemptions in 2015. Students with personal belief exemptions in California schools were predominantly white and wealthy, according to a study by the American Public Health Association in 2015. Medical exemptions, intended for children with weakened immune systems, have surged since then — and are disproportionately white.

Gov. Gavin Newsom gave the anti-vaccine movement a brief window of hope in the penultimate week of legislative session when he demanded late amendments to the main medical exemption crackdown bill, Senate Bill 276. But the governor ultimately signed two measures to implement the law, adding fuel to the anger of the anti-vaccine movement. Protests continued for four days after Newsom signed the bills, with rhetoric growing ever more extreme.


The new legislation doesn’t seek to eliminate medical exemptions all together; it only seeks to make the requirements for such exemptions stricter.

Making the civil rights era comparison all the more problematic are the demographics of anti-vaxxers, especially in Southern California. An analysis by POLITICO shows that while less than 25 percent of California public school students are white, an average of 55 percent of students are white in the state’s 50 least vaccinated schools.

According to Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego), there’s another difference between the anti-vax protesters and the Civil Rights movement, and that’s “privilege.”

“I just want to point out, if constituents from my district waged months-long social harassment campaigns against a member, threatened them with death, harassed and threatened their family … then came to the Capitol and disrupted session for hours… they would definitely be arrested,” she tweeted.

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/09/white- ... -movement/


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PostPosted: 09/24/19 9:04 am • # 130 
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the anti-vaxxers are actually the final straw between me and my fellow Americans.
I just can't stand that level of stupidity.


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PostPosted: 09/24/19 9:35 am • # 131 
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How anti-vaxxers target grieving moms and turn them into crusaders

She has become a champion of other anti-vaccination parents around the country.

But there's a problem with the story at the heart of this crusade, and with Clobes' new role as an anti-vaccine heroine. Her local medical examiner has ruled that the evidence — collected in an autopsy and by first responders — shows Evee accidentally suffocated while co-sleeping with her mother.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/how-anti-vaxxers-target-grieving-moms-turn-them-crusaders-n1057566


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PostPosted: 09/24/19 3:41 pm • # 132 
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Chop the damn country into 2... sciences and myths.


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PostPosted: 09/24/19 3:42 pm • # 133 
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send all the anti-vaxxers to Georgia.


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PostPosted: 09/24/19 3:44 pm • # 134 
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macroscopic wrote:
send all the anti-vaxxers to Georgia.


Not enough room...oh, wait... Darwinism will sort them out if they're packed together.


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PostPosted: 09/27/19 4:29 am • # 135 
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This belongs here ....

Image


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PostPosted: 11/14/19 4:27 pm • # 136 
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If you ever doubted that the conservative hatred of science is driven by religion ....

Ohio House passes bill allowing student answers to be scientifically wrong due to religion

by WKRC

Ohio lawmakers are weighing in on how public schools can teach things like evolution.

The Ohio House on Wednesday passed the "Student Religious Liberties Act." Under the law, students can't be penalized if their work is scientifically wrong as long as the reasoning is because of their religious beliefs.

Instead, students are graded on substance and relevance.

Every Republican in the House supported the bill. It now moves to the Republican-controlled Senate.

https://local12.com/news/local/ohio-hou ... o-religion

So ignorance is now acceptable ....


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PostPosted: 11/15/19 12:44 pm • # 137 
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This is getting so ridiculous. I don't understand at all how it is religious freedom to be rewarded by a secular institution for failing to understand the universe. I bet if you said Helios brought the sun to the sky pulled by his gold chariot everyday that would not be covered under the religious liberties act.


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PostPosted: 11/15/19 6:24 pm • # 138 
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What's the point in sending the kids to school or having any kind of education if there's no need for them to be right in their studies. Treating science as though it's some kind os poetry discussion is absolutely goofy. Someday a kid is going to be awarded a degree in biology based on his Christian principles.


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PostPosted: 12/25/19 7:32 pm • # 139 
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Amazing how poorly the US education system scores

China's schoolkids beat American students in all academic categories
The academic performance of American schoolchildren hasn't budged in two decades, despite billions of dollars in increased funding.

STEPHEN JOHNSON

- The results come from the PISA survey, OECD's triennial study of 15 year-old students across the world.

- Compared to other OECD member nations, American students performed especially poorly in math.

- Alarmingly, only 14 percent of American students were able to reliably distinguish fact from opinion in reading tests.

Chinese students far outperformed their international peers in a test of reading, math, and science skills, according to the 2018 results of the Program for International Student Assessment.

The test, administered by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), was given to 600,000 15-year-olds across 79 countries. It's intended to serve as a global measuring stick for education systems in different parts of the world, and within varying socioeconomic conditions.

The results showed that students from four provinces of China — Beijing, Shanghai, and the eastern provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang — earned the highest level 4 rating across all three categories. Students in the U.S. ranked level 3 in reading and science, and level 2 in math.

OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria said the current performance of a nation's students predicts future economic potential.

"The quality of their schools today will feed into the strength of their economies tomorrow."

Image

However, many developed nations haven't been able to improve education quality over the past two decades, even though "expenditure on schooling rose by more than 15% over the past decade alone," the report states.

"It is disappointing that most OECD countries saw virtually no improvement in the performance of their students since PISA was first conducted in 2000," Gurria said.

Socio-economic background did play a role in the test scores, accounting for 12 percent of the variation in reading performance in each country, on average. But the results also showed that the poorest 10 percent of students in China still outperformed the OECD average. That's perhaps surprising for a country with an average household net adjusted disposable income per capita that's about three times less than the OECD average of about $30,500.

A reading problem in the U.S.

The PISA results showed that 20 percent of American 15-year-olds don't read as well as they should by age 10. Also, the results showed American performance in reading and math has been flat since 2000. That suggests that federal initiatives like No Child Left Behind and Common Core — which have cost billions of federal and private dollars — haven't improved education quality in the U.S.

One of the most surprising findings was that only 14 percent of American students were able to reliably distinguish fact from opinion in reading tests. For example, one exercise asked students to read two pieces of writing: a news article covering scientific research on milk, and a report from the International Dairy Foods Association. The students were then presented various statements about milk, and asked to judge whether they're reading fact or opinion. For example:

"Drinking milk is the best way to lose weight."

Most American students were unable to tell that statements like this represent opinion, not fact. Why? One major factor is technology, the report said.

"In the past, students could find clear and singular answers to their questions in carefully curated and government-approved textbooks, and they could trust those answers to be true. Today, they will find hundreds of thousands of answers to their questions online, and it is up to them to figure out what is true and what is false, what is right and what is wrong," the report said. "Reading is no longer mainly about extracting information; it is about constructing knowledge, thinking critically and making well-founded judgements."

A former teacher, Elizabeth, from Portland, Maine, told the New York Times that she believed new technologies had shortened students' attention spans over the past couple of decades.

"My conclusion: technology is not always our friend," she wrote. "The newly arrived laptops in our schools were as much a distraction from learning as a tool for learning."

50 different American education systems

Of course, there are many factors that play into American students' relatively poor academic performance: socio-economic conditions, cultural differences, an overemphasis on standardized testing.

One of the reason it's difficult to tell why American students are falling behind is because, unlike many other nations, the U.S. no centralized education authority, meaning there are basically 50 different education systems. Inequalities among those systems will inevitably emerge, especially in underfunded areas, as Henry Braun, an education policy professor at Boston College, told Politifact.

"The reason we don't perform well overall is that we have more students in the lower strata that typically perform more poorly," Braun said. "That's more an indictment of the inequity in our social system than in our educational system."

https://bigthink.com/politics-current-a ... belltitem2


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PostPosted: 12/30/19 8:04 am • # 140 
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And the dumbing down of America continues ...

Science Under Attack: How Trump Is Sidelining Researchers and Their Work

Brad Plumer and Coral Davenport, The New York Times

In just three years, the Trump administration has diminished the role of science in federal policymaking while halting or disrupting research projects nationwide, marking a transformation of the federal government whose effects, experts said, could reverberate for years.

Political appointees have shut down government studies, reduced the influence of scientists over regulatory decisions and in some cases pressured researchers not to speak publicly. The administration has particularly challenged scientific findings related to the environment and public health opposed by industries such as oil drilling and coal mining. It has also impeded research around human-caused climate change, which President Donald Trump has dismissed despite a global scientific consensus.

But the erosion of science reaches well beyond the environment and climate: In San Francisco, a study of the effects of chemicals on pregnant women has stalled after federal funding abruptly ended. In Washington, D.C., a scientific committee that provided expertise in defending against invasive insects has been disbanded. In Kansas City, Missouri, the hasty relocation of two agricultural agencies that fund crop science and study the economics of farming has led to an exodus of employees and delayed hundreds of millions of dollars in research.

“The disregard for expertise in the federal government is worse than it’s ever been,” said Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, which has tracked more than 200 reports of Trump administration efforts to restrict or misuse science since 2017. “It’s pervasive.”

Hundreds of scientists, many of whom said they are dismayed at seeing their work undone, are departing.

Among them is Matthew Davis, a biologist whose research on the health risks of mercury to children underpinned the first rules cutting mercury emissions from coal power plants. But last year, with a new baby of his own, he was asked to help support a rollback of those same rules. “I am now part of defending this darker, dirtier future,” he said.

This year, after a decade at the Environmental Protection Agency, Davis left.

“Regulations come and go, but the thinning out of scientific capacity in the government will take a long time to get back,” said Joel Clement, a former top climate policy expert at the Interior Department who quit in 2017 after being reassigned to a job collecting oil and gas royalties. He is now at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group.

Trump has consistently said that government regulations have stifled businesses and thwarted some of the administration’s core goals, such as increasing fossil fuel production. Many of the starkest confrontations with federal scientists have involved issues like environmental oversight and energy extraction — areas where industry groups have argued that regulators have gone too far in the past.

“Businesses are finally being freed of Washington’s overreach, and the American economy is flourishing as a result,” a White House statement said last year. Asked about the role of science in policymaking, officials from the White House declined to comment on the record.

The administration’s efforts to cut certain research projects also reflect a long-standing conservative position that some scientific work can be performed cost-effectively by the private sector, and taxpayers shouldn’t be asked to foot the bill. “Eliminating wasteful spending, some of which has nothing to do with studying the science at all, is smart management, not an attack on science,” two analysts at the conservative Heritage Foundation wrote in 2017 of the administration’s proposals to cut various climate change and clean energy programs.

Industry groups have expressed support for some of the moves, including a contentious EPA proposal to put new constraints on the use of scientific studies in the name of transparency. The American Chemistry Council, a chemical trade group, praised the proposal by saying, “The goal of providing more transparency in government and using the best available science in the regulatory process should be ideals we all embrace.”

In some cases, the administration’s efforts to roll back government science have been thwarted. Each year, Trump has proposed sweeping budget cuts at a variety of federal agencies like the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. But Congress has the final say over budget levels, and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have rejected the cuts.

For instance, in supporting funding for the Department of Energy’s national laboratories, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., recently said, “It allows us to take advantage of the United States’ secret weapon, our extraordinary capacity for basic research.”

As a result, many science programs continue to thrive, including space exploration at NASA and medical research at the National Institutes of Health, where the budget has increased more than 12% since Trump took office and where researchers continue to make advances in areas like molecular biology and genetics.

Nevertheless, in other areas, the administration has managed to chip away at federal science.

At the EPA, for instance, staffing has fallen to its lowest levels in at least a decade. More than two-thirds of respondents to a survey of federal scientists across 16 agencies said that hiring freezes and departures made it harder to conduct scientific work. And in June, the White House ordered agencies to cut by one-third the number of federal advisory boards that provide technical advice.

The White House said it aimed to eliminate committees that were no longer necessary. Panels cut so far had focused on issues including invasive species and electric grid innovation.

At a time when the United States is pulling back from world leadership in other areas like human rights or diplomatic accords, experts warn that the retreat from science is no less significant. Many of the achievements of the past century that helped make the United States an envied global power — including gains in life expectancy, lowered air pollution and increased farm productivity — are the result of the kinds of government research now under pressure.

“When we decapitate the government’s ability to use science in a professional way, that increases the risk that we start making bad decisions, that we start missing new public health risks,” said Wendy Wagner, a professor of law at the University of Texas at Austin who studies the use of science by policymakers.

Skirmishes over the use of science in making policy occur in all administrations: Industries routinely push back against health studies that could justify stricter pollution rules, for example. And scientists often gripe about inadequate budgets for their work. But many experts said that current efforts to challenge research findings go well beyond what has been done previously.

In an article published in the journal Science last year, Wagner wrote that some of the Trump administration’s moves, like a policy to restrict certain academics from the EPA’s Science Advisory Board or the proposal to limit the types of research that can be considered by environmental regulators, “mark a sharp departure with the past.” Rather than isolated battles between political officials and career experts, she said, these moves are an attempt to legally constrain how federal agencies use science in the first place.

Some clashes with scientists have sparked public backlash, as when Trump officials pressured the nation’s weather forecasting agency to support the president’s erroneous assertion this year that Hurricane Dorian threatened Alabama.

But others have garnered little notice despite their significance.

This year, for instance, the National Park Service’s principal climate change scientist, Patrick Gonzalez, received a “cease and desist” letter from supervisors after testifying to Congress about the risks that global warming posed to national parks.

“I saw it as attempted intimidation,” said Gonzalez, who added that he was speaking in his capacity as an associate adjunct professor at the University California, Berkeley, a position he also holds. “It’s interference with science and hinders our work.”

Cutting Scientific Programs

Even though Congress hasn’t gone along with Trump’s proposals for budget cuts at scientific agencies, the administration has still found ways to advance its goals.

One strategy: eliminate individual research projects not explicitly protected by Congress.

For example, just months after Trump’s election, the Commerce Department disbanded a 15-person scientific committee that had explored how to make National Climate Assessments, the congressionally mandated studies of the risks of climate change, more useful to local officials. It also closed its Office of the Chief Economist, which for decades had conducted wide-ranging research on topics like the economic effects of natural disasters. Similarly, the Interior Department has withdrawn funding for its Landscape Conservation Cooperatives, 22 regional research centers that tackled issues like habitat loss and wildfire management. While California and Alaska used state money to keep their centers open, 16 of 22 remain in limbo.

A Commerce Department official said the climate committee it discontinued had not produced a report, and highlighted other efforts to promote science, such as a major upgrade of the nation’s weather models.

An Interior Department official said the agency’s decisions “are solely based on the facts and grounded in the law” and that the agency would continue to pursue other partnerships to advance conservation science.

Research that potentially posed an obstacle to Trump’s promise to expand fossil fuel production was halted, too. In 2017, Interior officials canceled a $1 million study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on the health risks of “mountaintop removal” coal mining in places like West Virginia.

Mountaintop removal is as dramatic as it sounds — a hillside is blasted with explosives, and the remains are excavated — but the health consequences still aren’t fully understood. The process can kick up coal dust and send heavy metals into waterways, and a number of studies have suggested links to health problems like kidney disease and birth defects.

“The industry was pushing back on these studies,” said Joseph Pizarchik, an Obama-era mining regulator who commissioned the now-defunct study. “We didn’t know what the answer would be,” he said, “but we needed to know: Was the government permitting coal mining that was poisoning people, or not?”

While coal mining has declined in recent years, satellite data shows that at least 60 square miles in Appalachia have been newly mined since 2016. “The study is still as important today as it was five years ago,” Pizarchik said.

The Cost of Lost Research

The cuts can add up to significant research setbacks.

For years, the EPA and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences had jointly funded 13 children’s health centers nationwide that studied, among other things, the effects of pollution on children’s development. This year, the EPA ended its funding.

At the University of California, San Francisco, one such center has been studying how industrial chemicals such as flame retardants in furniture could affect placenta and fetal development. Key aspects of the research have now stopped.

“The longer we go without funding, the harder it is to start that research back up,” said Tracey Woodruff, who directs the center.

In a statement, the EPA said it anticipated future opportunities to fund children’s health research.

At the Department of Agriculture, Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced in June he would relocate two key research agencies to Kansas City, Missouri, from Washington: The National Institute of Food and Agriculture, a scientific agency that funds university research on topics like how to breed cattle and corn that can better tolerate drought conditions, and the Economic Research Service, whose economists produce studies for policymakers on farming trends, trade and rural America.

Nearly 600 employees had less than four months to decide whether to uproot and move. Most couldn’t or wouldn’t, and two-thirds of those facing transfer left their jobs.

In August, Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, appeared to celebrate the departures.

“It’s nearly impossible to fire a federal worker,” he said in videotaped remarks at a Republican Party gala in South Carolina. “But by simply saying to people, ‘You know what, we’re going to take you outside the bubble, outside the Beltway, outside this liberal haven of Washington, D.C., and move you out in the real part of the country,’ and they quit. What a wonderful way to sort of streamline government and do what we haven’t been able to do for a long time.”

The White House declined to comment on Mulvaney’s speech.

The exodus has led to upheaval.

At the Economic Research Service, dozens of planned studies into topics like dairy industry consolidation and pesticide use have been delayed or disrupted. “You can name any topic in agriculture, and we’ve lost an expert,” said Laura Dodson, an economist and acting vice president of the union representing agency employees.

The National Institute of Food and Agriculture manages $1.7 billion in grants that fund research on issues like food safety or techniques that help farmers improve their productivity. The staff loss, employees said, has held up hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, such as planned research into pests and diseases afflicting grapes, sweet potatoes and fruit trees.

Former employees say they remain skeptical that the agencies could be repaired quickly. “It will take 5 to 10 years to rebuild,” said Sonny Ramaswamy, who until 2018 directed the National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

Perdue said the moves would save money and put the offices closer to farmers. “We did not undertake these relocations lightly,” he said in a statement. A Department of Agriculture official added that both agencies were pushing to continue their work but acknowledged that some grants could be delayed by months.

Questioning the Science Itself

In addition to shutting down some programs, there have been notable instances where the administration has challenged established scientific research. Early on, as it started rolling back regulations on industry, administration officials began questioning research findings underpinning those regulations.

In 2017, aides to Scott Pruitt, the EPA administrator at the time, told the agency’s economists to redo an analysis of wetlands protections that had been used to help defend an Obama-era clean-water rule. Instead of concluding that the protections would provide more than $500 million in economic benefits, they were told to list the benefits as unquantifiable, according to Elizabeth Southerland, who retired in 2017 from a 30-year career at the EPA, finishing as a senior official in its water office.

“It’s not unusual for a new administration to come in and change policy direction,” Southerland said. “But typically you would look for new studies and carefully redo the analysis. Instead they were sending a message that all the economists, scientists, career staff in the agency were irrelevant.”

Internal documents show that political officials at the EPA have overruled the agency’s career experts on several occasions, including in a move to regulate asbestos more lightly, in a decision not to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos and in a determination that parts of Wisconsin were in compliance with smog standards. The Interior Department sidelined its own legal and environmental analyses in advancing a proposal to raise the Shasta Dam in California.

Michael Abboud, an EPA spokesman, disputed Southerland’s account in an email, saying, “It is not true.”

The EPA is now finalizing a narrower version of the Obama-era water rule, which in its earlier form had prompted outrage from thousands of farmers and ranchers across the country who saw it as overly restrictive.

“EPA under President Trump has worked to put forward the strongest regulations to protect human health and the environment,” Abboud said, noting that several Obama administration rules had been held up in court and needed revision. “As required by law, EPA has always and will continue to use the best available science when developing rules, regardless of the claims of a few federal employees.”

Past administrations have, to varying degrees, disregarded scientific findings that conflicted with their priorities. In 2011, President Barack Obama’s top health official overruled experts at the Food and Drug Administration who had concluded that over-the-counter emergency contraceptives were safe for minors.

But in the Trump administration, the scope is wider. Many top government positions, including at the EPA and the Interior Department, are now occupied by former lobbyists connected to the industries that those agencies oversee.

Scientists and health experts have singled out two moves they find particularly concerning. Since 2017, the EPA has moved to restrict certain academics from sitting on its Science Advisory Board, which provides scrutiny of agency science, and has instead increased the number of appointees connected with industry.

And, in a potentially far-reaching move, the EPA has proposed a rule to limit regulators from using scientific research unless the underlying raw data can be made public. Industry groups like the Chamber of Commerce have argued that some agency rules are based on science that can’t be fully scrutinized by outsiders. But dozens of scientific organizations have warned that the proposal in its current form could prevent the EPA from considering a vast array of research on issues like the dangers of air pollution if, for instance, they are based on confidential health data.

“The problem is that rather than allowing agency scientists to use their judgment and weigh the best available evidence, this could put political constraints on how science enters the decision-making process in the first place,” said Wagner, the University of Texas law professor.

The EPA said its proposed rule is intended to make the science that underpins potentially costly regulations more transparent. “By requiring transparency,” said Abboud, the agency spokesman, “scientists will be required to publish hypothesis and experimental data for other scientists to review and discuss, requiring the science to withstand skepticism and peer review.”

An Exodus of Expertise

“In the past, when we had an administration that was not very pro-environment, we could still just lay low and do our work,” said Betsy Smith, a climate scientist with more than 20 years of experience at the EPA who in 2017 saw her long-running study of the effects of climate change on major ports get canceled.

“Now we feel like the EPA is being run by the fossil fuel industry,” she said. “It feels like a wholesale attack.”

After her project was killed, Smith resigned.

The loss of experienced scientists can erase years or decades of “institutional memory,” said Robert Kavlock, a toxicologist who retired in October 2017 after working at the EPA for 40 years, most recently as acting assistant administrator for the agency’s Office of Research and Development.

His former office, which researches topics like air pollution and chemical testing, has lost 250 scientists and technical staff members since Trump came to office, while hiring 124. Those who have remained in the office of roughly 1,500 people continue to do their work, Kavlock said, but are not going out of their way to promote findings on lightning-rod topics like climate change.

“You can see that they’re trying not to ruffle any feathers,” Kavlock said.

The same can’t be said of Gonzalez, the National Park Service climate change scientist, whose work involves helping national parks protect against damage from rising temperatures.

In February, Gonzalez testified before Congress about the risks of global warming, saying he was speaking in his capacity as an associate adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also using his Berkeley affiliation to participate as a co-author on a coming report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body that synthesizes climate science for world leaders.

But in March, shortly after testifying, Gonzalez’s supervisor at the National Park Service sent the cease-and-desist letter warning him that his Berkeley affiliation was not separate from his government work and that his actions were violating agency policy. Gonzalez said he viewed the letter as an attempt to deter him from speaking out.

The Interior Department said the letter did not indicate an intent to sanction Gonzalez and that he was free to speak as a private citizen.

Gonzalez, with the support of Berkeley, continues to warn about the dangers of climate change and work with the U.N. climate change panel using his vacation time, and he spoke again to Congress in June. “I’d like to provide a positive example for other scientists,” he said.

Still, he noted that not everyone may be in a position to be similarly outspoken. “How many others are not speaking up?” Gonzalez said.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/science-unde ... 29749.html


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PostPosted: 12/30/19 8:39 am • # 141 
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We had a Prime Minister who did that. We still haven't caught up.


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PostPosted: 12/30/19 9:21 am • # 142 
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yeah, this is a bad sign for the US.


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PostPosted: 02/09/20 7:48 am • # 143 
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Carl Sagan from 25 years ago

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PostPosted: 02/09/20 1:20 pm • # 144 
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brilliant, insightful man.


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PostPosted: 02/14/20 7:41 am • # 145 
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PostPosted: 02/14/20 11:17 am • # 146 
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macroscopic wrote:
brilliant, insightful man.


Yes, he was. I think it's time to get out our copy of "Cosmos" to watch again. We have the entire series.


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PostPosted: 02/14/20 2:12 pm • # 147 
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PostPosted: 02/27/20 11:30 am • # 148 
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This seems to belong here ....

The Rise (and Rise) of the Imbecile
Why the West is Drowning in a Tidal Wave of Ignorance, Demagoguery, and Self-Inflicted Catastrophe

umair haque

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When we look at the spectacular, astonishing, bizarre state of affairs that Anglo countries — meaning the US and UK are in — it’s hard not to see a truth emerge. Large segments of these societies have become imbeciles. I don’t mean that as an insult, a gibe, a taunt —not at all, I will always respect you, and the question I will ask is whether people respect themselves and the things that matter anymore — so I mean “imbecile” in a precise, an analytical way, a way that will yield , perhaps, some understanding. But you can be the judge of that.

Do you need examples? They surround us daily, in the mounting collapse of Anglo societies. Imbecility is rising like a massive tidal wave, crunching down everything in its path — from the rise of anti-vaxxers, to casual fascism, to lies that spread at light-speed, lies masquerading as unsullied truth, to the rise of superstition and the persistence of bigotry, a new wave of bellowing, enraged dunces who, quite naturally, have risen to the heights of Western power — because an imbecile loves nothing more than a bigger imbecile.
Can anyone really deny by now that Anglo societies are the world’s greatest hotbeds, breeding grounds, and maybe even industrial-scale laboratories of imbecility…by a very long way? Where else do you find gigantic, unbelievable spectacles like armed teachers, kids pretend dying, economic suicide, imploding middle classes voting for their own ruin, and people taking away their own healthcare and retirement (while people Facebook applause at Insta-celebrities while it all burns down)…not by mistake, but by design? Not by accident, but deliberately? If that’s not imbecility, my friends, what is?

What else do we call a person who burns down their garden just so that his neighbors don’t have flowers to see or smell anymore…but an imbecile? But isn’t that exactly what Anglo societies have degenerated into, “build that wall!” “Brexit means Brexit!” “Make us great again!”?
Let’s define imbecility a little more exactly, then, so we can get to the heart of this tidal wave of stupidity that has engulfed the West. An imbecile is a person who is three things. An idiot, a fool, and a dunce. Now, again, I don’t mean these as insults, but in a very precise way — so that we understand just what the problem in Anglo societies is, and how the rest of us can avoid it.

The ancients used the word idiot to mean “someone only concerned with their own self interest, not with the public interest.” And that is precisely what we see in the Anglo world. If I say to you, “democracy is you choosing what’s best for everyone, not just yourself,” I’m sure many of you will be thunderstruck. Literally no one in the lives of many Anglos has pointed this out.

In other words, one of the great, fatal failings of Anglo culture is the confusion, and conflation, of self-interest and shared interest, or the private and public interests. Anglos think of democracy as something like the sum of private interests — like a crude mathematical algorithm, that sums self interest: if I choose what’s best for me, and you choose what’s best for you, that’s all democracy is.

But democracy can be no such thing. If I am only concerned with myself, I have ruled out morality, ethics, virtue, principles, standards, codes, laws, institutions. In short, I have said to myself: “society does not exist. Nothing exists. Only I do. My desires and appetites.” That is the beating heart of imbecility.

It’s not too hard to see why Anglo cultures has bred the greatest and largest number of imbeciles in the world — no matter how rich and powerful it has gotten. This conflation of private and public interest is of course the foundational logic of capitalism, which became the fundamental principle of neoliberalism. And Anglo societies are founded, most fo all, much more so than others, on these two fatally flawed ideologies.

That brings me to the second element of imbecility, which is folly. An imbecile is a fool, but a fool is a word that means a specific thing. A person so badly deluded that they confuse their ignorance for wisdom. It’s one thing to be ignorant, and know it — very good, then it can be remedied. It’s another thing still to be ignorant and flaunt it — at least there is still a distinction between folly and intelligence, wisdom, truth, meaning. But it’s something else, and a very funny, dangerous, and tragic thing to be ignorant — and call it wisdom.

But that is precisely the position that the imbeciles of the Anglo world take. They don’t say: “we don’t vaccinate our kids because we’re ignorant and proud.” They don’t say: “we don’t believe in climate change because we would like to learn more about it first.” They don’t say: “we don’t believe people are born equal, and free, because we are terrible and selfish.” They say quite the opposite: “We believe these things because we are the smartest!”

Hence, the imbecile of the Anglo world will issue a bilious stream of racism and bigotry — and then justify it with all kinds of quack science, of the kinds famous professors in the Anglo world are now given million dollar book deals for. Hence, the Anglo imbecile will “debate” you on all the following things: whether climate change is real (even while his neighborhood sinks and burns), whether kids need to be vaccinated (even if his own kids are falling ill), whether people should have healthcare (even while he pays through the nose for falling life expectancy.” Do you see what I mean a little?

People in many countries know they are ignorant — and try desperately not to be. They educate themselves, as best they can, they read and learn and think and discuss. But the Anglo imbecile is different. Ignorance to him is wisdom. The highest form of truth for him is the opposite of knowledge, the certainty of ideology, the vacuity of pseudo-science, pseudo-philosophy, pseudo-thinking.

Is it any wonder the Anglo world is degenerating daily into more and more bizarre spectacle? A very large number of Anglos are now imbeciles, who don’t just flaunt their ignorance, but proudly call it the highest wisdom — racism, bigotry, hate, selfishness, greed, abuse, violence — and that, my friends, is the living definition of a fool.

But history has been full of foolish nations, which haven’t collapsed, but merely hundred on, stumbling drunkenly from one mishap to the next. What completes the cocktail of imbecility the Anglo world is poisoned by is stupidity. Very large portions of Anglos are dunces now, too stupid to function in the context of modern democracies — which is precisely why they reject them.

What does “stupidity” mean? Again, I want to be precise, not just hurl insults. We’d say that someone was stupid, for example, if they reclined on their couch, and set fire to their home. If, after cracking open a beer, they chopped off their arm. If, for example, they happily sent their kids off to school, where they’d be traumatized by men in masks pretending to massacre them.

Wait — isn’t all that exactly what the Anglo world is doing? Perhaps you see my point. The Anglo seems never to have learned the most basic moral logic of all — two wrongs don’t make a right. The reason we should learn that moral logic as children isn’t just to protect our neighbors from our foolishness, though — as we often think. The reason is to protect ourselves from our own stupidity.

If we believe two wrongs make a right, we may well end up setting fire to our own homes, just to prove a point. We might happily sacrifice our kids — just for revenge. We might even wreck our own societies — and call it a job well done. And so on.

But this is precisely the plight the Anglo world is in? Consider Brexit. The driving sentiment isn’t that it won’t lead to ruin — it’s that it will. But that only causes the Brexiter to want it more. Why? The only possible reason can be that two wrongs make a right. Self-injury can at least be a form of martyrdom. Or consider the Trumpist, the one who voted for Trump, only to find himself out of a job, thanks to Trump’s absurd economics — yet still probably supports Trump. Two wrongs make a right, again.

Stupid, then, is a very specific kind of thinking. The idea that doing wrong and more wrong and more wrong can somehow, one day, add up to right. Let me translate that into plain English. Stupid is the idea that the negative can beget the positive. That the absence can create the presence. That violence and cruelty and hate can lead to justice, truth, and freedom.

None of these things are true. The negative cannot yield the positive, in the moral world. Violence and cruelty cannot lead to justice and freedom — only to despair and ruin.

And yet if we look closely at Anglo culture, we see that these ideas have always dominated it. Anglos alone, almost, in the world, believe — really believe — that mistreating people, abusing them, denying them, is the virtuous and right thing to do. That cruelty is kindness and compassion is something like kicking a person when they are down. Hence, Americans beg one another for healthcare online now — instead of simply giving it to one another, for all to enjoy.

In other words, Anglo culture has always been the world’s most individualistic, most materialistic, and most ruthless, by a very long way. Anglos genuinely believe, and have for a very long time, that to help a person up is to take away their “incentive” for ever becoming “self-reliant.” Hence, Europeans enjoy plentiful public goods — retirement, healthcare, education, and so on — but Anglos enjoy few, and dwindling amounts.

How else could it have ended up? Celebrating individualist materialist utilitarianism, Anglos could never have built enduring democracies. That is because a person who is not “useful” is a “liability” and a “burden.” But in a democracy, either we are all equals, or we are not. Democracy is not compatible with stupidity in this deep way. Stupidity says that wrong can lead to right — but if everyone in a society thinks that way, or enough people do, such illogic only leads to endless, deepening circles of wrongs, that go nowhere. A democracy never really develops. Something more like an arena for endless combat does — for the very rights that people could have just given one another.

Stupidity is just this, my friends. The perversion of right into wrong, and wrong into right. The upside-down transformation of virtue into vice. The idea that if I do violence to you, I am helping you, aiding you, making you a better person. When has violence ever made anyone better, wholer, truer, stronger? It hasn’t — and Anglo collapse is the simple proof of the matter.

Let me sum up a little. The Anglo world is now composed largely of imbeciles. Brexiters, Trumpists, extremists, nationalists, fascists, anti-vaxxers and plastic surgery addicts. Even its best and brightest are imbeciles — Ivy Leaguers who hope to become hedge funders, not to do anything of real worth or purpose with their lives. Anglos have become people the rest of the civilized world laughs at, entertained by such spectacular displays of self-destruction.

But an imbecile is three things. A fool, a dunce, and an idiot. Each one of these alone is not a very good things to be, but one can get by. But put all three together, and — bang! Something like an explosion is the result.

The idiot is one who believes he is all that matters. The fool is the one who believes ignorance is wisdom. And the dunce is the one who thinks wrong is right, and virtue is vice.

When these three forms of backwardness combine, my friends, the results are every bit as spectacular as Mount Vesuvius, because the perfect apex of human illogic and unreason has finally been reached. There is no further to go. Such a person, one who is an idiot, a fool, and a dunce all at once, is perfect in a way.

He is the perfect mark. The perfect rube. The perfect victim. He will fall for anything at all that tells him to do more violence, more harm, more abuse — so as to gain more for himself. Even if the thing he must do is to destroy himself first. I know that doesn’t make sense. But an imbecile does not think that far.

That is why he is happy to Brexit, even though it will cost him his future, happy to vote for Trump again, even thought has cost him his job, happy to see the planet burn, even as the wildfires scorch his neighborhood, delighted to go without healthcare or retirement, even though he is getting older and frailer. And so on.

A very significant percentage of the population in Anglo countries now rejects democracy and civilization, in their most basic forms. What’s more, they imagine that rejecting democracy and civilization are democracy and civilization. Adding insult to injury, they further imagine that the best thing they can do is spread the rejection of democracy and civilization throughout the world, proudly proclaim it, support it feverishly and vehemently.

The imbecile is the one who cannot think, reason, understand at all anymore. Regarding Anything. The world. Society. History. Himself. Cause and effect. Premise and conclusion. None of these things are real to the imbecile. The only things that matter are the trinity of folly, stupidity, and idiocy: to put himself first, above, beyond all else, to bellow that his ignorance is wisdom, and to do wrong until there is right. Nothing else can be, or ever was. So what can the imbecile understand? He already believes in a delusion. There is nothing to understand because the world does not exist.

So he doesn’t think even as far as the next logical step — what if the planet burns down? Am I not on it? What if the economy crashes? Am I not part of it? What if my society implodes? Am I not sitting atop it? — because the tools of reason cannot fit in his hands. All that he knows how to wield is the sledgehammer of stupidity, the gun of idiocy, and the fist of folly.

And he will use it on everything, if he is told just this much: “destroy this, and you will be the one who prevails!” He will obey — even if the target is his democracy, his future, his society, his life savings, his job, his income, himself. He doesn’t see the paradox, the problem, the issue. He cannot think that far, because he is not thinking at all to begin with. You can never make him see any problem with his illogic, because he is already looking, in awe, at a certain kind of heaven. A place where he will be a king, a saint, and a billionaire — even if he has to destroy himself to do it. Bang! Democracy is replaced by something like a mass system of willing suicide.

Why not destroy himself, anyways? What has capitalism left of him? It has all told him, all his life, that he is worth nothing at all — unless he is the strong one, the ruthless one, the most vicious one, the one who thinks the least, cares the least, sees the least. Who just obeys, destroys, and smiles. Why bother thinking, when capitalism has told you all there is is getting rich, so you can buy more pleasure? When your dying empire has told you all that matters is power and violence?

When all you’ve ever know is the law that the greatest imbecile is the one who wins the most?

Do you see why I say we are seeing the rise of the imbeciles, then?

SOURCE


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PostPosted: 02/27/20 1:08 pm • # 149 
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Idiocracy


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PostPosted: 02/27/20 2:44 pm • # 150 
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But just the odd over-generalisation or two wouldn't you say?


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