With all the anti-science talk lately from the GOP candidates (save the only sane one, Jon Hunstman), I thought it appropriate to share this quote from one of my favorite authors.
"Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'" ---Isaac Asimov
Paging Thomas Sowell...
15 comments:
I think Asimov was right about that. So why would you post a quote that attacks you right where you live and work Mark?
I'd like to see a couple of examples of Mark where you think Mark is anti intellectual. Most of that voodoo worship is on the right, not the left.
C'mon mjh, you've been here long enough to see Mark routinely using logical fallacies and ignoring evidence he doesn't like. Pick any comment thread where there has been any debate at all.
Mark is more of a pseudo-intellectual. He mimics the forms, but doesn't really understand the why and wherefores. His science is of the cargo-cult variety. When pressed, rather than answer relevant questions, he dodges, deflects, throws up clouds of irrelevancies and disappears behind a cloud of squid-ink.
Yes, Larry, that's the way it has to be because he can't be right about anything. That would mean that you are wrong about something. And then what?
Disappears? Where, exactly? If anything he repeats the same facts over and over again and you ignore them. He falls on the intellectual side of most of the major issues of today. His economic theory is Keynesian, his foreign policy analysis is deep, his grasp of history is beyond mere facts and is evaluative, he acknowledges evolution as fact, he aligns himself with the overwhelming majority of scientists on climate change, his positions on education are intimate a deep intellect, and he demonstrates a profound sense of understanding of the human condition. He doesn't beat people over the head with his religious beliefs (unlike some here) and allow them to stray into his political analysis.
So, I don't see what you are talking about. The problem here is that he doesn't follow your edict and your imperatives about the world so he must be illogical and ignorant which brings us to:
3. Projection/Flipping. This one is frustrating for the viewer who is trying to actually follow the argument. It involves taking whatever underhanded tactic you're using and then accusing your opponent of doing it to you first. We see this frequently in the immigration discussion, where anti-racists are accused of racism, or in the climate change debate, where those who argue for human causes of the phenomenon are accused of not having science or facts on their side. It's often called upon when the media host finds themselves on the ropes in the debate.
Explain to me how you are on the intellectual side of the issues I have mentioned above and Mark is not. This ought to be good.
mjh,
Let's take the "voices in his head" theme. What do you think it describes? Why does it keep coming up All. The. Time.?
Here's a hint:
Straw Man Fallacy
Explain to me how you are on the intellectual side of the issues I have mentioned above and Mark is not.
How do you explain color to a blind man? Just the fact that you pulled out that "projection" thing which makes charges based on cherry picking or otherwise ignoring evidence demonstrates that you don't understand the tools of reason any better than Mark does. How can we explain the absence of valid reasoning to someone who doesn't recognize valid reasoning, especially when that is what is necessary for such an explanation?
Except that they are not voices in his head so it's not a straw men fallacy. People on the right actually say these things. Do you have trouble perceiving reality or are you just fucking with me? If you aren't, what a case of denial.
Demonstrate to me how not believing in evolution or completely dismissing climate science research is intellectual. "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge" is the rallying cry for all righties everywhere. This is the defense that Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin use all the time when they say something completely wrong. As a woman, I'm insulted nearly every time they open their mouths.
You're joking, right, mjh? Do you need to take break after giving Mark that extensive tongue-bath?
You think Mark's rampant overgeneralizing is good? Well, maybe what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. There are more than a few liberals who believe in alien abduction, who believe in the magic of organic foods and diet to eliminate the need for vaccinating their children, that believe that genetic engineering is a crime against nature, reliably Democratic-voting inner-city blacks that believe AIDS was created in a government lab to hurt blacks, that believe fire doesn't melt steel and that the Bush Administration engineered 9/11.
What does all that mean? Does it mean that the whole liberal, proggy, Democrat association is rotten to the core with anti-intellectualism, when really it just means that there are morons everywhere. But if those clowns were conservative, libertarian, or Republican, you can bet your ass Mark would be the first one out there decrying how this is just symptomatic of a Republican gone bonkers.
The difference being is that I don't overgeneralize nor do I set up strawman arguments in virtually every other post. Honestly, Mark, I'm half-surprised the fire department hasn't issued citations for being a fire hazard lugging all those strawmen about for you to demolish, set ablaze and declare victory against.
Oh looky, a new exhibit of straw-men. Marky's latest "Two Voices" post.
The entire point of both statements is that Limbaugh and Palin are making fun of you!
The entire point of both statements is that Limbaugh and Palin are making fun of you!
Obviously, he didn't get that. :)
Here are more scientific results, the kind of thing Mark has been working so hard to deny:
The science is now all-but-settled on global warming, convincing new evidence demonstrates, but Al Gore, the IPCC and other global warming doomsayers won’t be celebrating. The new findings point to cosmic rays and the sun — not human activities — as the dominant controller of climate on Earth.
The research, published with little fanfare this week in the prestigious journal Nature, comes from über-prestigious CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, one of the world’s largest centres for scientific research involving 60 countries and 8,000 scientists at more than 600 universities and national laboratories. CERN is the organization that invented the World Wide Web, that built the multi-billion dollar Large Hadron Collider, and that has now built a pristinely clean stainless steel chamber that precisely recreated the Earth’s atmosphere.
In this chamber, 63 CERN scientists from 17 European and American institutes have done what global warming doomsayers said could never be done — demonstrate that cosmic rays promote the formation of molecules that in Earth’s atmosphere can grow and seed clouds, the cloudier and thus cooler it will be. Because the sun’s magnetic field controls how many cosmic rays reach Earth’s atmosphere (the stronger the sun’s magnetic field, the more it shields Earth from incoming cosmic rays from space), the sun determines the temperature on Earth.
Lawrence Solomon: Science getting settled
I look forward to your attempts to deny argue against actual research like this without demonstrating that you're the ones Asimov was talking about. (The same way you demonstrated your anti-intellectualism over the NASA satellite data.)
I've got another climate change post going up soon but for now, let's take a look at this theory.
To begin with, Larry Solomon is a writer and an environmentalist. He is not a scientist. So, if we are to accept his opinion piece here as science, than Thomas Friedman is also a climate change expert.
Second, I see no links in Solomon's piece anywhere that provide access to the data. Given his statements later in the piece, it's obvious he doesn't want anyone to read the article. A quick google search provided a couple of links which led to this.
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110824/full/news.2011.504.html
The first thing we discover is that the findings are preliminary. Next we find this line,
Scientists agree on these basic facts, but there is far less agreement on whether cosmic rays can have a large role in cloud formation and climate change. Since the late 1990s, some have suggested that when high solar activity lowers levels of cosmic rays, that in turn reduces cloud cover and warms the planet. Others say that there is no statistical evidence for such an effect.
No statistical evidence, hmmm? Interesting.
Next we have this:
People are far too polarized, and in my opinion there are huge, important areas where our understanding is poor at the moment," says Jasper Kirkby, a physicist at CERN. In particular, he says, little controlled research has been done on exactly what effect cosmic rays can have on atmospheric chemistry.
Solomon fops all this off in his piece with the usual climate change conspiracy garbage. To me, Kirby's statements sound reasonable.
Further,
But, Kirkby adds, those particles are far too small to serve as seeds for clouds. "At the moment, it actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it's a very important first step," he says.
Solomon also plays up antagonism yet we see this towards the end of the piece.
"I think it's an incredibly worthwhile and overdue experiment," says Piers Forster, a climatologist at the University of Leeds, UK, who studied the link between cosmic rays and climate for the latest scientific assessment by the International Panel on Climate Change. But for now at least, he says that the experiment "probably raises more questions than it answers".
Wow, he sounds like he's awfully scared and trying to repress information to me...NOT. I actually had no idea that the IPCC looked into this in their study. Hmmm...
I'm not sure what you hoping to accomplish here, A. Noni, but it seems to me that the anti intellectual one here is you (#3-Projection/Flipping for the 900th time). Did you even bother to try to find the actual article? Just accepting an opinion piece has solid evidence is pretty weak, dude. Tsk Tsk...thus, this leads us here:
A. Noni: "My (willful) ignorance on climate change is as good as your knowledge."
Second, I see no links in Solomon's piece anywhere that provide access to the data.
Look again. It's right at the bottom.
Markadelphia: Damn the evidence, full ideology ahead!
Hmm...I see a link for his email, his web site, and a downloadable graphic that links to here..
http://probeinternational.org/library/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/CERN-graph.doc
which is his site but not the original article itself. Where exactly are you looking? I'm talking about the original article with the FULL explanation and data.
Where are your responses to the information I listed above? Or do you think that Kirby is now part of the conspiracy?
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