“Reality is that which continues to exist even when you stop believing in it.” ~ Philip K. Dick

Why Is Scientific Illiteracy So Acceptable?
Lawrence M. Krauss

In the mid-1980s, when I taught a Physics for Poets class at Yale University, I was dumbstruck when I gave the students a quiz problem to estimate the total amount of water flushed in all the toilets in the US in one 24-hour period and I started to grade the quiz. In order to estimate this, you have to first estimate the population of the US. I discovered that 35 percent of my Yale students, many of whom were history or American studies majors, thought the population of the US was less than 10 million! I went around campus interrogating students I met, asking them what they thought the population of the US was. Again, about one-third of the students thought it was less than 10 million and a few even thought it was greater than a few billion.

How was such ignorance so common in a community commonly felt to contain the cream of the crop of young US college students?

Then it dawned on me. It wasn’t that these students were ignorant about US society. It was that they were rather “innumerate,” as the mathematician John Allen Paulos had labeled it in a book he wrote in the 1980s. They had no concept whatsoever of what a million actually represented. For them, a million and a billion were merely both too large to comprehend.

It remains a badge of honor for many who like to describe themselves as highly cultured or artistic to describe themselves as mathematically challenged, or to say that their brains aren’t wired for mathematics. Because many of those they hold in high esteem have made similar claims, there is no real social penalty to them for doing so.

When it comes to science rather than mathematics, it isn’t so simple. Proudly proclaiming scientific illiteracy is not de rigueur. Instead another refrain has recently become popular among politicians and public figures: “I am not a scientist, but…” Equally prominent, is the statement “I believe in science” (as if there is a choice) which is then followed by some scientific gibberish.

Science fiction writer Philip K. Dick once said, “Reality is that which continues to exist even when you stop believing in it.” The line between being scientifically or empirically controversial vs being politically controversial has been blurred to the point of erasure. In Washington, and many other seats of government throughout the world, belief trumps reality.

Different aspects of the problem were on display recently during the confirmation hearings of Amy Coney Barrett. When asked by Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy about her views on climate change, she said: “You know, I’m certainly not a scientist,” and added, “I have read things about climate change—I would not say I have firm views on it.” Later, following questions from Kamala Harris about whether she acknowledged a relationship between smoking and cancer, and whether the coronavirus is infectious, both of which she answered in the affirmative, she was asked, “And do you believe that climate change is happening and is threatening the air we breathe and the water we drink?” Coney Barrett responded, “I will not do that. I will not express a view on a matter of public policy, especially one that is politically controversial…”

It would have been appropriate for Justice Coney Barrett to argue in both cases that ...

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anti-intellectualism has been a strain in American politics for at least half a century.

I'm going to crosspost this link in the Coronavirus thread since it fits there as well.

The Religious Right’s Hostility to Science Is Crippling Our Coronavirus Response
Trump’s response to the pandemic has been haunted by the science denialism of his ultraconservative religious allies.
By Katherine Stewart

Donald Trump rose to power with the determined assistance of a movement that denies science, bashes government and prioritized loyalty over professional expertise. In the current crisis, we are all reaping what that movement has sown.

At least since the 19th century, when the proslavery theologian Robert Lewis Dabney attacked the physical sciences as “theories of unbelief,” hostility to science has characterized the more extreme forms of religious nationalism in the United States. Today, the hard core of climate deniers is concentrated among people who identify as religiously conservative Republicans. And some leaders of the Christian nationalist movement, like those allied with the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, which has denounced environmental science as a “Cult of the Green Dragon,” cast environmentalism as an alternative — and false — theology.

This denial of science and critical thinking among religious ultraconservatives now haunts the American response to the coronavirus crisis. On March 15, Guillermo Maldonado, who calls himself an “apostle” and hosted Mr. Trump earlier this year at a campaign event at his Miami megachurch, urged his congregants to show up for worship services in person. “Do you believe God would bring his people to his house to be contagious with the virus? Of course not,” he said.

Rodney Howard-Browne of The River at Tampa Bay Church in Florida mocked people concerned about the disease as “pansies” and insisted he would only shutter the doors to his packed church “when the rapture is taking place.” In a sermon that was live-streamed on Facebook, Tony Spell, a pastor in Louisiana, said, “We’re also going to pass out anointed handkerchiefs to people who may have a fear, who may have a sickness and we believe that when those anointed handkerchiefs go, that healing virtue is going to go on them as well.”

When Rev. Spell in Louisiana defied an order from Gov. John Bel Edwards and hosted in-person services for over 1,000 congregants, he asserted the ban was “politically motivated.” Figures like the anti-L.G.B.T. activist Steve Hotze added to the chorus, denouncing the concern as — you guessed it — “fake news.”

One of the first casualties of fact-free hyper-partisanship is competence in government. The incompetence of the Trump administration in grappling with this crisis is by now well known, at least among those who receive actual news. February 2020 will go down in history as the month in which the United States, in painful contrast with countries like ...

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live links at source

I say we let them go at it. Jam 'em into their churches and Christmas celebrations. No masks. Pray the virus away. Thin the herd.

I'd agree if they were only endangering themselves. They're putting everyone they come into contact with at risk. That includes children who have no say in the matter. Add in the fact that many of them are going to be anti-vaxxers and it's going to be a big problem. A really big problem.

yeah, that really is the problem.

Nuttin' worse den edjikated cole minors.

Chaos333 wrote:

Somehow I suspect that when Sen. Terry Roberts needs a doctor or a lawyer he WANTS to see a diploma on the wall.

That may be, but an educated person wouldn't vote for him.

if that is what it takes to save America, she is not worth saving.

We can laugh all we want but, it appears from who Tennessee sends to Washington, that it's a long time policy in that state.

higher education at public universities used to be free in the US.

reflect on that for a moment.

higher education at public universities used to be free in the US.


But that's soshulism!! Real patriots who love America graduate from religious universities with a lifetime worth of debt and none of this leftist everlution stuff in their heads.

it was mostly free.
my mom went to Berkeley for free in the 50's:

https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/201 ... -happened/

The Importance of Masks

A Republican state lawmaker in Arizona proved why they just don’t get it.

Trying desperately to make the point that mask are not needed, Joseph Chaplik said on the floor of the legislature —

“The HIV that was going to [lead to] the global destruction of human bodies with AIDS, we heard about that in the ’80s,” he said. “Yet no masks were required.”
The Importance of Masks
March 05, 2021 By: Juanita Jean Herownself Category: Uncategorized

A Republican state lawmaker in Arizona proved why they just don’t get it.

Trying desperately to make the point that mask are not needed, Joseph Chaplik said on the floor of the legislature —

“The HIV that was going to [lead to] the global destruction of human bodies with AIDS, we heard about that in the ’80s,” he said. “Yet no masks were required.”

I guess I’m wondering where he thinks we want him to wear a mask.

Clueless. Just clueless. (Video at link)

https://juanitajean.com/the-importance-of-masks/

This may explain why I see many men wearing their masks below their noses. They think it's their dick and are waiting for their next sexual encounter to use a condom!

community colleges in CA were still free when I was a teen.

Probably longer - remember the Scopes trial?

agree, John. I don't really know much US history in the minutiae prior to the Cold War. clearly it is older than stated, as you pointed out. Prohibition is another fine example.

Probably longer - remember the Scopes trial?

I don't think that is a good example, John. First, the thinking that generated the Scopes trial wasn't just American. It was world wide. Secondly, the Scopes trial reflected the first serious assault by science on a two thousand year or more belief system. The people challenging Darwin had no reference point to be able to judge why science could be different from the Bible teaching without jeopardizing their belief system. For thousands of years the word of God or Gods was the law. There was no celebration or deliberate choice of ignorance. God created, carried the world in on the back of a turtle or spit it out from the bill of a raven. It just was that way and every bit as valid as a Phd. today.

What is happening today is entirely different. The body of science has grown to overwhelm the simple beliefs of yesteryear to the point where those beliefs simply can't stand-up. And yet there are those who want to cling to them - often for financial reasons - regardless of how ridiculous.

Much the same thing applies to those who disparage education. It complicates what they believe should be a simple world. That the world is highly nuanced and what seems like a "common sense" solution doesn't always fit confuses and angers them. This is far different than what drove the Scopes trial.

Tyson's little rant is just as arrogant and wrong as some Sunday morning money sucking radio preacher's sermons. Science being able to explain something does no more to negate the existence of a God than knowing how a car works means the creator of the machine invented the laws of physics. If the Chinese reverse engineer an American gadget does that mean the Americans don't exist?

I don't read it that way. He did not say that science negates god - he says that if you want to define god as "the stuff we don't know" then god is an ever receding pocket of ignorance.

Basically he's refuting the "god of the gaps" fallacy.

and I agree with him.

there are certain things that science will likely NEVER explain. like the existence and origin of matter. or the beginning of time. or the essence of spirit. not that they won't try to figure it out. is the nature of scientific inquiry to investigate all things. but when we still can't fully comprehend something as basic as the cohesion of matter and the basis for gravity (the WHY, if you will), I entertain serious doubts about us being able to breach that divide.

I think DeGrasse is making a basic point, and it is one that I have often made about religion, and it is basically correct. to one ignorant of science, all things look miraculous.