Posted on 11/30/2017 7:43:57 PM PST by MtnClimber
Suppose a scientist makes a bold claim that turns out to be true. How confident are you that this claim would become widely accepted?
extraordinary evidence. Still, the indirect evidence is mounting and most cosmologists now believe that dark matter exists. To the extent that non-scientists think about this issue at all, we tend to defer to experts in the field and move on with our lives.
But what about politically contentious topics? Does it work the same way? Suppose we have evidence for the truth of a hypothesis the consequences of which many people fear. For example, suppose we have reasonably strong evidence to believe there are average biological differences between men and women, or between different ethnic or racial groups. Would most people defer to the evidence and move on with their lives?............
There are many forms of pluralistic ignorance, and some of them are deeply important for how science works. Consider the science of sex differences as a case in point. Earlier in the year James Damore was fired from Google for circulating an internal memo that questioned the dominant view of Google’s diversity team. The view he questioned is that men and women are identical in both abilities and interests, and that sexism alone can explain why Google hires more men than women. He laid out a litany of evidence suggesting that even if average biological differences between men and women are small, these differences will tend to manifest themselves in occupations that select for people who exhibit qualities at the extreme ends of a bell curve that plots a distribution of abilities and interests.
(Excerpt) Read more at quillette.com ...
But short of that, pick up a contemporary book on human sexuality and that will show the the pretended autonomy of theoretical thought.
When that passion is overtaken by an unceasing desire for scientific truth to replace transcendent Truth,
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That’s another thing I’ve noticed. The scientific method is sufficient to power a civilization, cure diseases, put landers on another planet. But when it bumps up against the teachings of ancient desert dwellers, science has to give way. Sorry, no sale.
An experiment was done in the late sixties where a subject was hooked up to a monitor. Then the subject was given a trigger which stopped a clock when pressed. He was instructed to pull the trigger on the spur of the moment, then record the time when the clock stopped.
I can’t remember all the details, but what they found was that seconds before the subject reported making a conscious decision to stop the clock, signals were already building up in the muscles that controlled the trigger.
IOW, the little guy sitting in our heads who makes conscious decisions is really under the influence of something happening at a deeper level and the notion of free will needs tempering.
ancient dessert dwellers—we love them! They have happy nookie with animals, OK! Baby animals!
“Steven Weinberg is an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in Physics for his contributions with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow to the unification of the weak force and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles.”
LOL Desert and dessert gets me every time.
I’ll take scientism over whatever is in second place.
Read The Bell Curve by Dr. Charles Murray. Then consider the courage it took to write it.
Yeah, you’d probably confess Marx and Comte, too.
that’s the Post of the Day.
I read and believed the Bell Curve.
Makes me a racist, I guess.
Heh. I’m a libertarian, if that helps.
Ballotechnics is a branch of chemistry concerning a class of materials, which when initiated by a shock wave, produces extreme heat rather than an explosion. Generally there is little to no gas production, thus no pressure pulse originating from the chemicals. Think in terms of Thermite.
Most of this work has been carried out at Sandia NL and the Georgia Institute of Technology. Internet fiction scripted around the concept resulted in “Red Mercury” as a distraction.
A class of chemical reactions with an outcome similar to Ballotechnics, one which may be initiated by an electrical high current discharge rather than a pressure shock, results in the production of extremely energetic light. The radiation produced is of the extreme ultraviolet class, possessing a strongly ionizing character. Fully ionized plasma from a chemical reaction is one possible outcome. Detractors suggest only a nuclear process could be so vigorous, though no radioactive signatures are presented.
The evidence gathered during research of this phenomenon does not agree with the established narrative. Only an in-your-face overwhelming demonstration of irrefutable proof, will circumvent this entrenchment of self interest. A work-in-progress.
That’s fine, be a libertarian. Just don’t let it be an excuse for you errors.
Fascinating. thanks for that.
My friend, I am too long in the tooth to be concerned about my errors, both ontological and existential.
You are not my friend.
No, but you are mine. It’s too late.
LOL
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