401. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172305 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 1:00 pm

Mphil

Here

http://richarddawkins.net/articleComments,2511,Does-science-make-belief-in-God-obsolete,Hitchens-Pinker-Stenger-Schermer-others,page5#171453

402. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172299 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 12:56 pm

Oh, those, it is on a recent thread though I cannot remember what it is called just now. I will try to post it later.

403. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172293 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 12:52 pm

Which comment?

404. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #172292 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 12:51 pm

Is Kyrie a member of that Mormon compound? I am beginning to wonder.

405. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172287 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 12:44 pm

Karda

here is nothing specific that you can do to promote God's plan. In general, love God (or the world, if you like), love your neighbors, love yourself. Try to be fair and just. Promote peace, but defend your rights. Seek knowledge, and help others to learn. Be good. That will all help.

Yesterday on another thread "flying goose" a moderate Christian minister who visits this site now and then told us that he was actually moving towards atheism, or "non theism " even thoughb he still believed in "the sacred".

He made an interesting point. He said even if there is a God, perhaps it is still necessary for humanity to take a default atheistic position in order to become truly mature, and become what God has wanted us to become all along. That would be consistent with the kind of God he believed in before.I am paraphrasing here, but it seems to have some relevance to what you say here.

406. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172274 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 12:21 pm

Quine,

I have the feeling that Karda knew all these already. From what he told us about himself and what he wrote I think he is a very intelligent and scientifically informed person, probably knows more physics than anyone here (regurgitating pop literature is common on internet forums but to my mind that is not an indication of in depth knowledge)

But very bright people often have very wild ideas. Somehow genius and "craziness" are only separated by a very thin line. If you 'cure' the "craziness" you kill the genius and originality as well.

Why do I say that? On reading Karda I am reminded of a friend of mine. A truly brilliant guy I knew as a physics undergraduate. Very bright and full of ideas, then something happened and he lost his mind and became an ultra orthodox Jew. I still talk to him from time to time.His "ultra orthodox Judaism" turns out to be actually very unorthodox, with a lot of Karda-ish speculations mixed in it. Even though I am not convinced, but it is clever to put that thing together.

Karda, please don't be offended, I am not suggesting you are crazy in the literal sense, though my friend was at one point,

EDIT: I did tell my friend about Ramachandran and also Michael A. Persinger's experiments. He has his ways to get around them, at least for himself. Basically even if you can show a causes c it is not the a proof that god cannot cause c through others means or cannot be causing c through a.
Not a very scientific argument for sure, but good enough for him.

407. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172263 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 12:07 pm

karda,

Since I have been clear in noting where I am speculating, the only assertions I have made are about the nature of the experience that I consider to be evidence. You can mock those, if you like... but you can't accuse me of asserting that God has a plan, because I have not done so.

That is fair enough, I also don't have any desire to dissuade you from your speculations. It is personal and you do have some interesting ideas.

408. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #172254 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 11:46 am

Mphil,

Are you talking to yourself now? Solipsism must have gotten to you. :)

409. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172227 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 11:09 am

Karda,

Let's say you are right that god has this plan of trying to "fine tune" the universe "retroactively", what can we do to assist him anyway? It seems rather irrelevant for practical purposes, don't you think?

410. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172218 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 10:58 am

Karda

Consider the spectrum of the hydrogen atom. The bound states are the time averaged sum over all of the classical paths that the electron could take in its orbit around the proton, considered for all time (-infinity to infinity). In the case of the hydrogen atom, both the classical and quantum dynamics are linear equations, because it is such a simple problem. One can calculate the spectrum exactly because of the simplicity of the sum of the orbits. Transients are just a superposition of those states, and represent classical solutions that are none-the-less predictable for all times.

But now consider the helium atom. The third body makes the classical dynamics non-linear, so that the phase space is chaotic. At certain energies it is hard chaos (resembling a Bernoulli system, like a coin toss). Calculating the solution to the (linear) Schroedinger equation is now considerably more difficult, as we must sum over all of the orbits at a given energy (from t=-infinity to t=infinity), and they are often not even classically deterministic. As such, approximate methods are used to solve for the helium spectrum.

But if you measure the spectrum of helium atoms, they always come out the same. Each helium atom is a little, exact solution to this intractable problem of solving for the steady state solutions over infinite times. The reality that underlies the theory of quantum mechanics seems to be able to sample the arbitrary future an past, and come up with an instant solution. It's bizarre. Quantum mechanics seems to say that, while time is a variable of the dynamics, nothing happens without being affected by the entire future and the entire past.

High energy physicists don't like to think about bound states. I had the privilege of taking quantum field theory from a gentleman that insisted on beginning the class with a three week treatment of QFT using a Hamiltonian formulation that dealt with bound states, prior to moving on to the Lagrangian formulation and the more typical calculations used to explain the products of collisions in particle accelerators. As such, I got the notion that QM samples all time drilled into my head.

Are you basically saying that time should be treated like another dynamical variable so the action integral involves summing over all paths in some configuration space witch includes time as a dimension? (instead of just a parameter to parametrize the paths to be summed)

411. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171961 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 3:31 am

Brian

.. the one that evolved the more efficient pattern would be the more fit because they'd need less energy to perform the same reproductive function.

How do you predict the exact arrangement from this fertility mumbo jumbo without knowledge of physics? And if you already know the physics what does this bit of "vitalism" add to the explanation?

Do you also think water droplets curl into little balls in order to better procreate? Well I suppose it is a very poetic image like saying God's invisible hand is everywhere..

412. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171958 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 3:25 am

QED what? Mathematics is not natural selection.

413. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171955 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 3:22 am

Yes. It is a minimum energy configuration. Requires less resources than others.

Yes, but that is a physical property which has nothing to do with biology or selection. It is like a water droplet having a spherical shape, some kind of "least action principle" at work. The Sun flower thing has been modeled in an experiment using magnetic field and small metal shavings in a liquid, nothing biological or even organic was involved.

414. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171952 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 3:15 am

Goldy, one last note

I'm guessing there's a lot of compromising to animal gaits in order to fit other components in, like carrying organs and such, that get in the way of perfect physical locomotion phenotypes...

Yes, but the beauty of their model is that they made only one assumption, which is that the movement of the animals is controlled by a "central pattern generator",--which is a schematic caricature,-- other than that they made no biological and mechanical assumption whatsoever, the whole thing was derived just from symmetry,--mathematical constraint which is not even physics or chemistry. They didn't even write down any differential equation.

415. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171947 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 3:03 am

Brain

What we see as beautiful is an evolved trait.

Well you can strike out the adjective "beautiful". Why such patterns? What selection purpose do they serve? Why does the sun flower's head have spirals that roughly follow the Fibonaci sequence? Is that selection?

Well really have to sleep.

Good night or good morning everyone, and steve too.

416. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171943 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 2:59 am

I am off to bed too, It is 6am my time.

417. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171941 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 2:56 am

Brain

To say otherwise is to say that animals fly inspite of the laws of physics.

Of course, that would be a trivial kind of constraint, But I am talking about the growth and development of forms and patterns. For example, why does a tiger have stripes? If it is just because of natural selection you can imagine other possibilities. How about the beautiful colour and patterns of shells that live in the mud? There seems to be no selection reasons for them to develop such patterns.

418. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171936 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 2:47 am

Goldy

Asymmetric bipedalism? ..

Have you ever observed the gaits of animals with four legs such as horses or dogs? Why do they move the way they do? There are some papers written by Ian Stewart and Martin Golubitsky which derive a model of animal gait patterns by using nothing but the mathematics of symmetry (group theory).It has some interesting prediction that the authors were not aware of until they observed that in a rodeo,

419. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171927 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 2:39 am

Goldy 1691,

I know. We are arguing on a philosophical point.

420. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171925 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 2:37 am

Yes, it is. But that does not make it false.

A tautology is always true, so of course it is not false.

No, it is specific, as I explained.

Yes, and it is circular.

In actual applications you need to have an independent idea of assessing entropy in order to make meaningful predictions.

But its definition is always the same. Fitness has no meaning without an environment or natural selection for the fit becomes a tautology, true but circular.

421. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171913 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 2:28 am

They do explain how it happens. They discuss matters such as how certain kinds of relatedness (due to sharing fractions of genes) should lead to certain kinds of interactions. No mention of specifics is necessary.

Ok, I did say in this particular example you choose a phenomenological theory is probably sufficient.

But evolution is not just about counting offsprings, it has to explain growth and development and change of phenotypes.

I can't see how you can get away with physics and chemistry in growth and development processes.

Self organization occurs everywhere in nature without natural selection, are you saying that somehow the laws of physics and chemistry don't apply for biological pattern formations? I would like to hear a very good argument for that.If they do apply than they must in someway constrain or enhance the effects of natural selection, depending on the context,

You are confusing "how it works" with "how it is implemented".

The key question is always how it is implemented, it is the only way a theory can be tested. You can always come up with all sorts of Bs stories about "how it works" like in the humanities and social "sciences".

422. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171901 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 2:13 am

. The capability of a genotype to reproduce. It is measured by the frequency of genes in the next generation

So the fittest survive is just a tautology? The fit are those who survive, it sounds very Hegalianly circular to me.

In actual applications you need to have an independent idea of assessing fitness in order to make meaningful predictions.

That's why natural selection is not like the 2nd law of thermodynamics, it is a "paradigm" where "fitness" has a meaning depending on the context.

It this respect it is like Newton's second "law". F =ma is circular taken as a stand alone statement ( a fact that MPhil made a big deal about) In actual applications one always has to find an independent "force law" (such as F=-kx for the harmonic oscillator) Newton's second law asserts that a force function can always be found but doesn't tell you how to find it. But of course Newton's law is much more specific even with this ambiguity, we can still derive quite a bit without any knowledge of the force function, for example, conservation of energy and momentum.

But natural selection is even more ambiguous. So technically Newton's second law is a schema while natural selection is a "paradigm", these are my terminologies, I don't know what philosophers call them, I am sure they have some big words for that,

423. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171887 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 1:24 am

This kind of discussion is almost always sufficient. You need to come up with a counter-example, such as to explain how the principle of kin selection depends on the nature of gravity.

What about the patterns on sea shell, the stripes on tigers?

I don't know specifically what these papers say about kin selection. But to say that something happen is not the same as telling you how it happens.

No. There is nothing that says it has to be implemented through chemistry and physics. You are confusing that we see it implemented that way with that being the only way it can be implemented.

No, that is not the point, The point is that it has to be implemented somehow and by merely asserting it is natural selection gives you no clue of how it is implemented.

Again this is not like the second law. You can discuss in great details how the increase of entropy can come about without reference to any mechanism, provided you can define an entropy function and write down some very general differential equations (for example).

424. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171884 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 1:18 am

And how do you define "fitness" in a non circular way without reference to any particular context?

You can do this easily with entropy.

425. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171881 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 1:12 am

It is a general principle, and does not rely on the underlying physics and chemistry.

It is a schema, a paradigm that has to be implemented through chemistry and physics, Genes obey the law of chemistry and physics, as is the growth of forms,--I suggest you read Murray's mathematical biology I and II.

Papers on kin selection don't require a discussion of the strength of the weak force, or the chemical nature of transition metals.

That is because in this particular case a phenomenological discussion is sufficient. You probably don't need to talk about statistical mechanics if you are just interested in how your car engine works, engineering thermodynamics would be sufficient, but you can't assert as a general principle that thermodynamics has nothing to do with statistical mechanics.

426. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171874 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 1:02 am

No it doesn't. We can run models which exhibit natural selection in entirely virtual worlds.

Maybe in the virtual world, but I doubt that it is the case in the real world.

427. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171873 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 1:00 am

Darwin's theories made no reference to the underlying physics of chemistry.

Darwin also didn't know genes. So what is your point?

428. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171868 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 12:54 am

how the second law of thermodynamics relates to the the underlying physics or chemistry. It doesn't. It is a general principle.

Natural selection has to work through chemical and physical processes where the laws of physics and chemistry apply. The second law doesn't have to be implemented through other laws of physics. As long as you can define an entropy function it holds.

P.S. How does natural selection explain the patterns on a shell whose natural habitat is under the mud, or the arrangement of the sun flower's head?

429. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171865 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 12:47 am

You may call Natural Selection just philosophy, but Dawkins calls it science. I'll go with Dawkins. I know this is argument from authority but what an authority!. I call it "appropriate authority".

I didn't call natural selection a philosophy, I said it is a "paradigm". I said your quote from Dawkins above about natural selection is philosophy.

I don't need to quote any authority, just my reading comprehension teacher is sufficient.

430. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171863 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 12:38 am

Natural selection is the the same. All it needs to deal with is reliably replicated information that occasionally experiences copying faults, with the the copying process for information being resource-limited. It does not matter what the underlying substrate is.

Not the same,

In thermodynamics entropy has a very specific, well defined meaning and the second law has a very precise mathematical form depending on the assumptions involved. You can write solid papers on the second law without reference to any particular process, it is like a mathematical theorem in some sense (for example, how to define an entropy function which increases montonically in time and serves as an attractor to a certain class of dynamical systems etc)

Natural selection is a "paradigm", it only asserts the existence of some mechanisms which together has a certain effect. But beyond which nothing much quantitative can be said without reference to a particular context. Your quote from Dawkins above is exactly that, just an affirmation of natural selection as a universal paradigm without any specifics. It is philosophy.

431. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171859 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 12:24 am

Then you are going to call thermodynamics philosophy.

I don't see the analogy.

EDIT A lot of active research is being done to clarify and understand the meaning of entropy and the second law. It is quantitative work. Natural selection in the disembodied way that is cited above is a lot more vague.

432. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171856 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 12:19 am

As Dawkins writes, natural selection is a general principle. It is likely to be the mechanism for the development of complex life of any form. It won't depend on the chemical nature of the organism. It would work just as well on, say, silicon-based life in ammonia or whatever. It would just as well if gravity was a billion times stronger.

That is philosophy, not science.

433. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171852 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 12:14 am

I suggest you read The Extended Phenotype.

Yeah well I did.Are you being a bit presumptuous? I am just wondering how can you suppose to tell me what I should feel intuitively obvious and what I should not? I don't find QM obvious at all, it doesn't mean I disagree with it

t is nothing to do with them.

I suggest you read Stuart Kauffman..

434. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171839 by Bonzai on April 28, 2008 at 11:00 pm

We are talking here about complexity associated with features that are very difficult to obtain by chance, such as a key which fits a lock.

I didn't say they come about by chance,

I was saying that the bald statement "biological forms are the result of natural selection acting on mutations" is not intuitively obvious to me because it doesn't convey enough details of how selection actually acts. I mean, how does selection work with or against the underlying physics and chemistry, how does statistics fit in? What can you say about the rate and tempo, what kind of complexity would one expect given a model environment and selection mechanism etc,.These are quantitative questions which require nathematical models to answer.

I think in those terms. Just by saying if the time is very long selection can produce such and such is probably good enough to communicate the main idea , but for myself it is too vague, I need to know the details to some extent to feel I have a good grapse of the idea.

435. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171816 by Bonzai on April 28, 2008 at 9:19 pm

some mutations neither confer nor take advantage, that is, they are neutral. And these too can spread through a population

Sure.

436. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171800 by Bonzai on April 28, 2008 at 8:51 pm

TrueID

Would not every random mutation between the first and the final need to be advantageous in itself in order for natural selection to continue in that direction. How would the first mutation leading to a hand offer a beneficial advantage for natural selection to continue in that direction?

This is a fallacy.

Evolution does not have an overall direction, that would be a teleological argument. It is not like the birds develop the wings knowing somehow that millions of years later it could be used for flying. The evolutionary process consists of a long series of small "local searches", if you like, Mutations that confer advantages for the local, immediate environment are preserved, those that become liability would be eliminated. In this way the genes kind of explore through the "state space" that is available, nudged by natural selection.

Unlike the biologists here, I actually don't find the statement that complex patterns arise as a result "natural selection acting on mutations" all that intuitively obvious, To have a genuine understanding of how complexity actually comes about and how it can be measured would require some kind of complicated mathematical modeling,--mathematical models do exist,-- at least to me.

Dawkins has a program in his book "the blind watch maker" which shows a caricature of how a natural selection like process creates stick figure patterns.Though vastly simplified, but I think it would be helpful in giving you a feel of natural selection. Maybe someone here knows where to get it,--hopeful free.

I try my best to answer your question but I am no biologist, The biologists here probably would be able to explain it less clumsily,

437. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #171787 by Bonzai on April 28, 2008 at 8:33 pm

I mean when they read Zeus myths do you suppose they fail to demur on his character?

Actually I think Zeus is a much nicer and laid back God than Yahweh, though as a god it seems strange that he would lust after human females.

438. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #171784 by Bonzai on April 28, 2008 at 8:27 pm

I disagree with MaxD that Kyrie's attempt to paint an equivalence between the treatment of women in the West and in the Muslim world is "pointless". It is worse, it is out to lunch and offensive, it is an insult to the intelligence.

439. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #171783 by Bonzai on April 28, 2008 at 8:23 pm

ZekeCDN

I find that argument extremely unconvincing, given that Saddam was accelerating his palace-building program during the same period. Was it really "the people in the free world" who killed those children? I think not.

There was a general embargo placed on Iraq, meaning that they couldn't get drugs and disinfectants even if they had the money.

But let's say you are right, let's suppose those children wouldn't have died if Saddam didn't build his palaces. Why did our government insist on strangling the Iraqi people even knowing that Saddam was having a good time building palaces?

I think the West did bear moral culpability by playing chicken with Saddam knowing full well that the sanctions was hurting the people more than Saddam. When asked about half a million of dead Iraqi children, Madeline Albright didn't dispute the number, she simply said "it was worth it". I think that was telling about how the politicians see Iraqi lives.

440. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #171714 by Bonzai on April 28, 2008 at 5:57 pm

Geoff

Do you see a difference between a lack of respect for the flag, and a lack of respect for pictures of Mohammed?

I guess showing disrespect to the flag wouldn't get you killed? :)

Mind you, did anyone notice the difference between Dick's early posts and his more recent ones? Perhaps it's more apparent reading them all at once, as I did?

Yeah, there is a big difference. At first he was just trolling and later he seemed to have calmed down and was open to genuine discussions, even humourous at time.

441. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #171537 by Bonzai on April 28, 2008 at 2:41 pm

beelzebub

"Honour killing, Mr Gidoomal continues, is not a religious issue.
None of the world's major religions condone honour-related crimes. But those who are guilty have sometimes tried to justify their actions on religious grounds.
"Honour crime happens across the board in the Asian community," insists Mr Gidoomal. "People try to blame Muslim, Hindus or Sikhs but it tends to happen in families where there are the strongest ties and expectations. It's a very strong cultural issue.""

It is true that mainstream Islamic scholars are against honour killing, but not for the reason that Mr. Godoomal may think. Honour killing is un-Islamic because it usurps the proper authority to hand down death sentences, not because it has a more tolerant attitude towards "crimes against honour", It would be wrong for a Muslim to kill his daughter who has an affair, she should be stoned on the order of a Sharia court.

442. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #171508 by Bonzai on April 28, 2008 at 2:27 pm

The RCC has more funding than any Ivy League school and they have many scholars researching scriptures and setting up conferences to determine what the texts mean.

The process consists of adding layers of opinions upon the opinions of others so it becomes an industry unto itself. It is like having a well funded formal bs fest. Bs is still bs, even though you have to go to school to learn how to do it within their protocol.

443. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #171498 by Bonzai on April 28, 2008 at 2:23 pm

Phil Rimmer,

Sorry, didn't read the whole thing.

444. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #171495 by Bonzai on April 28, 2008 at 2:22 pm

Dick and Elli

Rabbi and Priests made up a lot of shit through out the ages. It is an industry that keep them employed.

Most of the Kosher law were invented by Medival Rabbis.

445. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #171488 by Bonzai on April 28, 2008 at 2:17 pm

I don't know if this is a typical honour killing case though, Iraq is under occupation.Depending on religion and tribes, the British might be seen as the enemy. Imagine a French woman who had an affair with a German soldier during WWII.

446. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #171443 by Bonzai on April 28, 2008 at 1:46 pm

This is apparently pretty common for those who are repressed homosexuals.

Ahhhh.. I don't know about that.

447. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #171425 by Bonzai on April 28, 2008 at 1:35 pm

I don't think epeeist looks like Stalin even though he has a mustache.

Am I missing something here?

448. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #171416 by Bonzai on April 28, 2008 at 1:31 pm

The glamorization you speak of is not what sparked my interests in science, at least. This is of course purely speculation. My comments can probably be duly ignored.

I am only saying that this is the kind of crap they sell to the public, I am not suggesting many people actually fall for it to the extent of actually getting a science degree.However it does create a wrong impression to the general public about what science is and its role in society.

449. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #171383 by Bonzai on April 28, 2008 at 1:15 pm

Anna

I would venture to say that perhaps you are speaking from an anecdotal point of view. Simply because you did not learn to properly balance school/work and your personal life doesn't mean that plenty of others haven't been successful at it. Forgive me if you think I am being cruel. I would think that you would have been grateful for the opportunities you had rather than the injustices that you suffered.

I think Karda does have a point about false advertising.

In the U.S. the situation is probably somewhat different, but in Canada many highly trained scientists are underemployed or have to seek employment elsewhere, usually the U.S.

Now I understand your point that people should go into science because of the desire to know and discover and so on, and this is probably the reason for those who stay on to go to graduate school.

But this is not how the government and the media "sell" science to the public. It is all about glamorous jobs and future economical prosperity.It is all about crass utilitarianism.

Aside from being a very philistine reason to do science, the sales pitch is simply misleading.

Our great country probably needs more cab drivers and telemarketers than scientists based on employment stats. The government is short sighted and has no incentive to invest in science. We can buy everything from the U.S. and sell them resources, so why bother investing in our own R&D? Our private sectors are American branch plants and again there is no incentive to do R&D here.

The people in charge of the education "industry"(I mean high school) are themselves ignoramuses when it comes to science and math. All they care about are window dressing and pr and that mentality is reflected in their priorities.

One of the thing that I had a problem with is the promotion of "role models". So women should see other women scientists, ditto visible minorities.This is a mixture of identity politics and celebrity worship, the dual obsession of North American culture, Science should not be about personality.

When I was in school, my scientific heros were people like Riemann, Einstein and Newton', none of them were "like me" ethnically and that fact didn't even occur to me. I was impressed because of their ideas, not because of their personalities.

But even if I accept the premise that kids need someone "like" themselves to look up to, the role models they actually promote are very poor choices IMO. For example, who do they use as a role model for woman scientist? For many years it has been some Canadian astronaut, I figure it is sexy to promote an astronaut but space exploration is the work of a whole team. The astronaut is probably the least important person in the whole undertaking, They could have put a chimp up there. I was talking to some high school teacher, I told her there are some truly remarkable woman scientists, for example, Emmy Noether. She asked "Emmy who? "

450. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #171237 by Bonzai on April 28, 2008 at 11:39 am

Karda

This is what we call damnation by faint praise.

No, it is not that. I just think people are wasting their time with Dick and try to draw their attentions to something more interesting, that's all.