Aya

[Doktor Howl]

Only tangentially related, but I was just making spaghetti and musing about another thing that happens a lot in woo fart-huffing chambers; the practice of believing that knowledge has not changed beyond the last they read about a subject. You see prime examples of this in Discordians who believe that scientists have no idea what the pineal gland really does, because they read it in a book that was written sixty-five years ago. Kind of a lot has happened, scientifically-speaking, since then.

Knowledge changes. I would bet that a ton of the "the mechanism is unknown" statement in my textbooks are out of date, let alone any statement of ignorance from decades ago. Science and the advancement of knowledge is moving at an astonishingly rapid pace -- if there's anything you assume we don't know, because you read somewhere that we don't know, you have to ask yourself when the last time you touched base with the research was. If it was more than six months ago, time to re-check before you back yourself into a corner by making unequivocal statements. If you can't verify, then it is wise to proceed with caution, so you'll be less likely to have your pride injured when someone fact-checks you.

More to the point, "Mechanism not known" does not imply that you can just fill the void up with your turds and call it "science".

Right? It's like a puzzle... you can't just jam ANY piece in, whether it came out of the same puzzle box or not. It has to be the right piece, that is contiguous with the others, fits the space, and makes up a part of the whole picture.

One problem that has arisen with the Internet is the ability of hucksters to lie to a larger audience; there is exactly nothing stopping anyone from making shit up and calling it science. I don't really know how to address this problem, because I believe firmly in freedom of speech, but it has made me wonder whether there should be some kind of licensing system such as exists with doctors and lawyers.

Of course, with doctors we have that whole naturopathy thing totally undermining the MD system. I imagine something similar would happen if we started licensing scientists.

We made it through the 1800s, which was the golden age of hucksterism (and for the same reason: the average man knew very little of cause and effect, and nothing of science).

We'll make it through this.

[hooplala]

Only tangentially related, but I was just making spaghetti and musing about another thing that happens a lot in woo fart-huffing chambers; the practice of believing that knowledge has not changed beyond the last they read about a subject. You see prime examples of this in Discordians who believe that scientists have no idea what the pineal gland really does, because they read it in a book that was written sixty-five years ago. Kind of a lot has happened, scientifically-speaking, since then.

Knowledge changes. I would bet that a ton of the "the mechanism is unknown" statement in my textbooks are out of date, let alone any statement of ignorance from decades ago. Science and the advancement of knowledge is moving at an astonishingly rapid pace -- if there's anything you assume we don't know, because you read somewhere that we don't know, you have to ask yourself when the last time you touched base with the research was. If it was more than six months ago, time to re-check before you back yourself into a corner by making unequivocal statements. If you can't verify, then it is wise to proceed with caution, so you'll be less likely to have your pride injured when someone fact-checks you.

More to the point, "Mechanism not known" does not imply that you can just fill the void up with your turds and call it "science".

Right? It's like a puzzle... you can't just jam ANY piece in, whether it came out of the same puzzle box or not. It has to be the right piece, that is contiguous with the others, fits the space, and makes up a part of the whole picture.

One problem that has arisen with the Internet is the ability of hucksters to lie to a larger audience; there is exactly nothing stopping anyone from making shit up and calling it science. I don't really know how to address this problem, because I believe firmly in freedom of speech, but it has made me wonder whether there should be some kind of licensing system such as exists with doctors and lawyers.

Of course, with doctors we have that whole naturopathy thing totally undermining the MD system. I imagine something similar would happen if we started licensing scientists.

Well, even psychics and horoscopes have to label themselves as "for entertainment only". Seems reasonable that these other ones should too.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Only tangentially related, but I was just making spaghetti and musing about another thing that happens a lot in woo fart-huffing chambers; the practice of believing that knowledge has not changed beyond the last they read about a subject. You see prime examples of this in Discordians who believe that scientists have no idea what the pineal gland really does, because they read it in a book that was written sixty-five years ago. Kind of a lot has happened, scientifically-speaking, since then.

Knowledge changes. I would bet that a ton of the "the mechanism is unknown" statement in my textbooks are out of date, let alone any statement of ignorance from decades ago. Science and the advancement of knowledge is moving at an astonishingly rapid pace -- if there's anything you assume we don't know, because you read somewhere that we don't know, you have to ask yourself when the last time you touched base with the research was. If it was more than six months ago, time to re-check before you back yourself into a corner by making unequivocal statements. If you can't verify, then it is wise to proceed with caution, so you'll be less likely to have your pride injured when someone fact-checks you.

More to the point, "Mechanism not known" does not imply that you can just fill the void up with your turds and call it "science".

Right? It's like a puzzle... you can't just jam ANY piece in, whether it came out of the same puzzle box or not. It has to be the right piece, that is contiguous with the others, fits the space, and makes up a part of the whole picture.

One problem that has arisen with the Internet is the ability of hucksters to lie to a larger audience; there is exactly nothing stopping anyone from making shit up and calling it science. I don't really know how to address this problem, because I believe firmly in freedom of speech, but it has made me wonder whether there should be some kind of licensing system such as exists with doctors and lawyers.

Of course, with doctors we have that whole naturopathy thing totally undermining the MD system. I imagine something similar would happen if we started licensing scientists.

Well, even psychics and horoscopes have to label themselves as "for entertainment only". Seems reasonable that these other ones should too.

The interesting thing about that is that a lot of those laws stemmed from anti-witchcraft sentiment, which makes me wonder whether anti-witchcraft sentiment arose as an attempt to protect people from getting huckstered.

I'm curious about the whole "practicing medicine/giving medical advice without a license" thing, because that no longer seems to be a problem, based on sites like NaturalNews.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Only tangentially related, but I was just making spaghetti and musing about another thing that happens a lot in woo fart-huffing chambers; the practice of believing that knowledge has not changed beyond the last they read about a subject. You see prime examples of this in Discordians who believe that scientists have no idea what the pineal gland really does, because they read it in a book that was written sixty-five years ago. Kind of a lot has happened, scientifically-speaking, since then.

Knowledge changes. I would bet that a ton of the "the mechanism is unknown" statement in my textbooks are out of date, let alone any statement of ignorance from decades ago. Science and the advancement of knowledge is moving at an astonishingly rapid pace -- if there's anything you assume we don't know, because you read somewhere that we don't know, you have to ask yourself when the last time you touched base with the research was. If it was more than six months ago, time to re-check before you back yourself into a corner by making unequivocal statements. If you can't verify, then it is wise to proceed with caution, so you'll be less likely to have your pride injured when someone fact-checks you.

More to the point, "Mechanism not known" does not imply that you can just fill the void up with your turds and call it "science".

Right? It's like a puzzle... you can't just jam ANY piece in, whether it came out of the same puzzle box or not. It has to be the right piece, that is contiguous with the others, fits the space, and makes up a part of the whole picture.

One problem that has arisen with the Internet is the ability of hucksters to lie to a larger audience; there is exactly nothing stopping anyone from making shit up and calling it science. I don't really know how to address this problem, because I believe firmly in freedom of speech, but it has made me wonder whether there should be some kind of licensing system such as exists with doctors and lawyers.

Of course, with doctors we have that whole naturopathy thing totally undermining the MD system. I imagine something similar would happen if we started licensing scientists.

We made it through the 1800s, which was the golden age of hucksterism (and for the same reason: the average man knew very little of cause and effect, and nothing of science).

We'll make it through this.

I'm not entirely convinced we will, but for different reasons that don't have so much to do with the anti-science hucksters as the big money consumerism mainstream western society is built on.

[hooplala]

Only tangentially related, but I was just making spaghetti and musing about another thing that happens a lot in woo fart-huffing chambers; the practice of believing that knowledge has not changed beyond the last they read about a subject. You see prime examples of this in Discordians who believe that scientists have no idea what the pineal gland really does, because they read it in a book that was written sixty-five years ago. Kind of a lot has happened, scientifically-speaking, since then.

Knowledge changes. I would bet that a ton of the "the mechanism is unknown" statement in my textbooks are out of date, let alone any statement of ignorance from decades ago. Science and the advancement of knowledge is moving at an astonishingly rapid pace -- if there's anything you assume we don't know, because you read somewhere that we don't know, you have to ask yourself when the last time you touched base with the research was. If it was more than six months ago, time to re-check before you back yourself into a corner by making unequivocal statements. If you can't verify, then it is wise to proceed with caution, so you'll be less likely to have your pride injured when someone fact-checks you.

More to the point, "Mechanism not known" does not imply that you can just fill the void up with your turds and call it "science".

Right? It's like a puzzle... you can't just jam ANY piece in, whether it came out of the same puzzle box or not. It has to be the right piece, that is contiguous with the others, fits the space, and makes up a part of the whole picture.

One problem that has arisen with the Internet is the ability of hucksters to lie to a larger audience; there is exactly nothing stopping anyone from making shit up and calling it science. I don't really know how to address this problem, because I believe firmly in freedom of speech, but it has made me wonder whether there should be some kind of licensing system such as exists with doctors and lawyers.

Of course, with doctors we have that whole naturopathy thing totally undermining the MD system. I imagine something similar would happen if we started licensing scientists.

We made it through the 1800s, which was the golden age of hucksterism (and for the same reason: the average man knew very little of cause and effect, and nothing of science).

We'll make it through this.

I'm not entirely convinced we will, but for different reasons that don't have so much to do with the anti-science hucksters as the big money consumerism mainstream western society is built on.

In a society where sitting around for justice is bad, but sitting around for a cheap television is good... What could possibly go wrong?

[Doktor Howl]

.
In a society where sitting around for justice is bad, but sitting around for a cheap television is good... What could possibly go wrong?

Well, the oceans could turn to acid.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

.
In a society where sitting around for justice is bad, but sitting around for a cheap television is good... What could possibly go wrong?

Well, the oceans could turn to acid.

That's pretty much where my mind was at. And it's the scariest thing I've thought of in a long, long time.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/07/great-american-oyster-collapse-2014720132433957401.html

[hooplala]

.
In a society where sitting around for justice is bad, but sitting around for a cheap television is good... What could possibly go wrong?

Well, the oceans could turn to acid.

Optimist.

[Doktor Howl]

.
In a society where sitting around for justice is bad, but sitting around for a cheap television is good... What could possibly go wrong?

Well, the oceans could turn to acid.

That's pretty much where my mind was at. And it's the scariest thing I've thought of in a long, long time.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/07/great-american-oyster-collapse-2014720132433957401.html

As best as I can figure - bear in mind that I am not a climatologist - we're in a race between acid oceans or salvation via ice age.

[hooplala]

.
In a society where sitting around for justice is bad, but sitting around for a cheap television is good... What could possibly go wrong?

Well, the oceans could turn to acid.

That's pretty much where my mind was at. And it's the scariest thing I've thought of in a long, long time.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/07/great-american-oyster-collapse-2014720132433957401.html

As best as I can figure - bear in mind that I am not a climatologist - we're in a race between acid oceans or salvation via ice age.

At least we have Taylor Swift.

[xXRon_Paul_42016Xxx(weed)]

Only tangentially related, but I was just making spaghetti and musing about another thing that happens a lot in woo fart-huffing chambers; the practice of believing that knowledge has not changed beyond the last they read about a subject. You see prime examples of this in Discordians who believe that scientists have no idea what the pineal gland really does, because they read it in a book that was written sixty-five years ago. Kind of a lot has happened, scientifically-speaking, since then.

Knowledge changes. I would bet that a ton of the "the mechanism is unknown" statement in my textbooks are out of date, let alone any statement of ignorance from decades ago. Science and the advancement of knowledge is moving at an astonishingly rapid pace -- if there's anything you assume we don't know, because you read somewhere that we don't know, you have to ask yourself when the last time you touched base with the research was. If it was more than six months ago, time to re-check before you back yourself into a corner by making unequivocal statements. If you can't verify, then it is wise to proceed with caution, so you'll be less likely to have your pride injured when someone fact-checks you.

More to the point, "Mechanism not known" does not imply that you can just fill the void up with your turds and call it "science".

Right? It's like a puzzle... you can't just jam ANY piece in, whether it came out of the same puzzle box or not. It has to be the right piece, that is contiguous with the others, fits the space, and makes up a part of the whole picture.

One problem that has arisen with the Internet is the ability of hucksters to lie to a larger audience; there is exactly nothing stopping anyone from making shit up and calling it science. I don't really know how to address this problem, because I believe firmly in freedom of speech, but it has made me wonder whether there should be some kind of licensing system such as exists with doctors and lawyers.

Of course, with doctors we have that whole naturopathy thing totally undermining the MD system. I imagine something similar would happen if we started licensing scientists.

Well, even psychics and horoscopes have to label themselves as "for entertainment only". Seems reasonable that these other ones should too.

The interesting thing about that is that a lot of those laws stemmed from anti-witchcraft sentiment, which makes me wonder whether anti-witchcraft sentiment arose as an attempt to protect people from getting huckstered.

Nope. The Anti-Witch scares wereare rooted in very literal fear of evil magic. For perspective, around the same time as the witch hunts there was less popular practice of putting animals on trial that were suspected of being possessed by Satan. Also, most anti-witch sentiment came from the Catholic Church, so I dont think protecting people from hucksters

Thats not to say that occultists didnt get conflated with scam artists a lot. Before the surge in nationalism caused by British Occupation led them to be idolized as paragons of Indian culture, the general Indian consensus was that Yogis were scumbag con artists. And Edward Kelly, an alchemist who had both his ears chopped off as punishment for fraud, and was still able to con the nobility into giving him shitloads of money and a knighthood on the promise of magically producing them Gold.

[hooplala]

Only tangentially related, but I was just making spaghetti and musing about another thing that happens a lot in woo fart-huffing chambers; the practice of believing that knowledge has not changed beyond the last they read about a subject. You see prime examples of this in Discordians who believe that scientists have no idea what the pineal gland really does, because they read it in a book that was written sixty-five years ago. Kind of a lot has happened, scientifically-speaking, since then.

Knowledge changes. I would bet that a ton of the "the mechanism is unknown" statement in my textbooks are out of date, let alone any statement of ignorance from decades ago. Science and the advancement of knowledge is moving at an astonishingly rapid pace -- if there's anything you assume we don't know, because you read somewhere that we don't know, you have to ask yourself when the last time you touched base with the research was. If it was more than six months ago, time to re-check before you back yourself into a corner by making unequivocal statements. If you can't verify, then it is wise to proceed with caution, so you'll be less likely to have your pride injured when someone fact-checks you.

More to the point, "Mechanism not known" does not imply that you can just fill the void up with your turds and call it "science".

Right? It's like a puzzle... you can't just jam ANY piece in, whether it came out of the same puzzle box or not. It has to be the right piece, that is contiguous with the others, fits the space, and makes up a part of the whole picture.

One problem that has arisen with the Internet is the ability of hucksters to lie to a larger audience; there is exactly nothing stopping anyone from making shit up and calling it science. I don't really know how to address this problem, because I believe firmly in freedom of speech, but it has made me wonder whether there should be some kind of licensing system such as exists with doctors and lawyers.

Of course, with doctors we have that whole naturopathy thing totally undermining the MD system. I imagine something similar would happen if we started licensing scientists.

Well, even psychics and horoscopes have to label themselves as "for entertainment only". Seems reasonable that these other ones should too.

The interesting thing about that is that a lot of those laws stemmed from anti-witchcraft sentiment, which makes me wonder whether anti-witchcraft sentiment arose as an attempt to protect people from getting huckstered.

Nope. The Anti-Witch scares wereare rooted in very literal fear of evil magic. For perspective, around the same time as the witch hunts there was less popular practice of putting animals on trial that were suspected of being possessed by Satan. Also, most anti-witch sentiment came from the Catholic Church, so I dont think protecting people from hucksters

Thats not to say that occultists didnt get conflated with scam artists a lot. Before the surge in nationalism caused by British Occupation led them to be idolized as paragons of Indian culture, the general Indian consensus was that Yogis were scumbag con artists. And Edward Kelly, an alchemist who had both his ears chopped off as punishment for fraud, and was still able to con the nobility into giving him shitloads of money and a knighthood on the promise of magically producing them Gold.

Yeah but he talked to angels.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Only tangentially related, but I was just making spaghetti and musing about another thing that happens a lot in woo fart-huffing chambers; the practice of believing that knowledge has not changed beyond the last they read about a subject. You see prime examples of this in Discordians who believe that scientists have no idea what the pineal gland really does, because they read it in a book that was written sixty-five years ago. Kind of a lot has happened, scientifically-speaking, since then.

Knowledge changes. I would bet that a ton of the "the mechanism is unknown" statement in my textbooks are out of date, let alone any statement of ignorance from decades ago. Science and the advancement of knowledge is moving at an astonishingly rapid pace -- if there's anything you assume we don't know, because you read somewhere that we don't know, you have to ask yourself when the last time you touched base with the research was. If it was more than six months ago, time to re-check before you back yourself into a corner by making unequivocal statements. If you can't verify, then it is wise to proceed with caution, so you'll be less likely to have your pride injured when someone fact-checks you.

More to the point, "Mechanism not known" does not imply that you can just fill the void up with your turds and call it "science".

Right? It's like a puzzle... you can't just jam ANY piece in, whether it came out of the same puzzle box or not. It has to be the right piece, that is contiguous with the others, fits the space, and makes up a part of the whole picture.

One problem that has arisen with the Internet is the ability of hucksters to lie to a larger audience; there is exactly nothing stopping anyone from making shit up and calling it science. I don't really know how to address this problem, because I believe firmly in freedom of speech, but it has made me wonder whether there should be some kind of licensing system such as exists with doctors and lawyers.

Of course, with doctors we have that whole naturopathy thing totally undermining the MD system. I imagine something similar would happen if we started licensing scientists.

Well, even psychics and horoscopes have to label themselves as "for entertainment only". Seems reasonable that these other ones should too.

The interesting thing about that is that a lot of those laws stemmed from anti-witchcraft sentiment, which makes me wonder whether anti-witchcraft sentiment arose as an attempt to protect people from getting huckstered.

Nope. The Anti-Witch scares wereare rooted in very literal fear of evil magic. For perspective, around the same time as the witch hunts there was less popular practice of putting animals on trial that were suspected of being possessed by Satan. Also, most anti-witch sentiment came from the Catholic Church, so I dont think protecting people from hucksters

Thats not to say that occultists didnt get conflated with scam artists a lot. Before the surge in nationalism caused by British Occupation led them to be idolized as paragons of Indian culture, the general Indian consensus was that Yogis were scumbag con artists. And Edward Kelly, an alchemist who had both his ears chopped off as punishment for fraud, and was still able to con the nobility into giving him shitloads of money and a knighthood on the promise of magically producing them Gold.

Did you just bring the Inquisition into it?  OK... you took that in a very different direction than where I was coming from. I was thinking more like this: http://books.google.com/books?id=JwUdAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA268&lpg=PA268&dq=history+of+anti-divination+laws&source=bl&ots=OQe4huKnLB&sig=vvcZprWO1Y4q7fVbG0Cm1CfoX8E&hl=en&sa=X&ei=T_Z4VPvQNMf2iQKh0ICgDA&ved=0CEYQ6AEwBg

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

.
In a society where sitting around for justice is bad, but sitting around for a cheap television is good... What could possibly go wrong?

Well, the oceans could turn to acid.

That's pretty much where my mind was at. And it's the scariest thing I've thought of in a long, long time.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/07/great-american-oyster-collapse-2014720132433957401.html

As best as I can figure - bear in mind that I am not a climatologist - we're in a race between acid oceans or salvation via ice age.

Cold water sinks even more CO2.

[P3nT4gR4m]

I've heard a few people saying that we're past the tipping point now. Even if the whole planet quit burning fossil fuel and dumping shit in the ocean tomorrow, it'd be too late. Maybe science will save us

Part of me hopes it doesn't because the inevitable public consensus will then become "See - climate change was a myth after all"