When you say "science", you need to distinguish between science as philosophy vs. science as an institution. Science as philosophy is a way of thinking - an attempt to understand knowledge and reality. The science as an institution on the other hand has all the imperfections as any other institution, since the people in charge are driven by self interest and not just the search for the truth. So, when you say the people distrust science, it seems bizarre that they doubt science as philosophy, while in fact they doubt the institution. It's perfectly fine to mistrust the institution. If you want to consider a few failures, just in the recent years, I have some for you:
- Hungarian-born biochemist Katalin Karikó, who developed the key mRNA modification that enabled effective COVID-19 vaccines, was repeatedly denied grants and demoted during her career. She and her collaborator, Drew Weissman, struggled for years to gain recognition and funding for their work [1]
- On the other hand, the Wuhan Institute of Virology had no trouble getting grants from NIH [2]
- Surgeon General Jerome Adams was saying that masks are not effective against Covid [3]
- Social distancing was of supreme importance, until it turned out that it's fine not to distance if it's for a good cause [4]
> So, when you say the people distrust science, it seems bizarre that they doubt science as philosophy, while in fact they doubt the institution.
The vast, vast, vast majority of the Christian fundamentalists whom are the backbone of this movement and the subject of this discussion do not distinguish between these things. They do not distrust "big science," they distrust science, full stop. The fact that science as an institution is subject to the same corruptive forces as every other institution is a convenient post-hoc rationalization for the belief they already had and wanted to justify, just like a lot of other post-hoc rationalizations they have for other beliefs they have. They dislike science now because they are told to by their ministers, no more reason than that, and we know this because science and their religion coexisted peacefully and uneventfully for centuries until it become inconvenient for a segment of the church's politics. Excluding of course Gallileo, and for the same reasons.
Science (both as philosophy and institution) gets it wrong, but has built-in mechanisms that correct those issues. Eugenics was discredited by science. Andrew Wakefield's bullshit autism study was discredited by science. Religion gets it wrong and then calls it mystery.
It’s especially ironic to hear institutional corruption invoked as a critique of science, when many of the loudest voices in this conversation come from religious institutions that have spent decades shielding their own leadership from accountability for far more egregious abuses.
I am a bit of a checklist nerd, so I wrote a web app do to checklists: https://checkoff.ai
As it is fashionable these days, it can create checklists with AI ("Fun things to do in Pittsburg"), you can create checklists from templates (some stuff you do every day), etc.
I also have an MCP server that allows you to plug it into your favorite LLM.
Fun fact: you can visit his cave in Ward Pound Ridge Reservation, Westchester county. Interesting place. Not many people around. You can sit in the cave and try to imagine the life he lived.
"What I find funny about cos() and sin()— and also why I think there is confusion around them — is the many ways we can describe them. We don’t have to look too hard. A quick glance at this Wikipedia page has an eye-watering number of super nuanced definitions."
I don't even know how to begin parsing this sentence.
If, after Russia attacked Georgia and Ukraine in Crimea and Donbas, Germany has decided to team up and provide Russia with a steady stream of cash in exchange for gas, it's on Germany. It can't go all surprised Pickachu when the pipeline suddenly blows up.
"Georgia started war with Russia: EU-backed report.
An independent report blamed Georgia on Wednesday for starting last year's five-day war with Russia, but said Moscow's military response went beyond reasonable limits and violated international law." [0]
The Russian exercise was named Caucasus 2008 and units of the North Caucasus Military District, including the 58th Army, took part. The exercise included training to aid peacekeeping forces stationed in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.[135] During exercises, a pamphlet named "Soldier! Know your probable enemy!" was circulated among the Russian soldiers. The pamphlet described the Georgian Armed Forces.[136] Russian troops stayed near the border with Georgia after the end of their exercise on 2 August, instead of going back to their barracks.[113] Later, Dale Herspring, an expert on Russian military affairs at Kansas State University, described the Russian exercise as "exactly what they executed in Georgia just a few weeks later [...] a complete dress rehearsal."[134]
Ukraine indirectly funds Russia by buying diesel from India who bought it from Russia. Maybe they should start with cutting off themselves before going after allies.
Blowing up a pipeline in a war isn't violence, it's warfare, and thus IMHO Ukraine had every right to destroy a piece of infrastructure that could be used as political leverage and source of income for its invaders.
To be fair, non-Tesla networks are catching up. I moved from Tesla to BMW i4 (I had a quite significant disagreement with Elon when it comes to international politics), and I was worried about finding non-Tesla charges. I took a few long distance trips so far (US Northeast), and I had zero problems. Plus, if you are lucky, you get 2 year free charging from BMW, and they've enabled plug-and-charge recently. So, you just plugin, charge and drive away, mostly for free. Not bad.
It provides context. The post was a bare claim without context or evidence, But a poster without any history.
I'd say if you post an accusative claim on a controversial topic as your first post with a new account, it should probably include far more information.
I agree that the context is important. However, there is still a problem here:
- The user name already shows in green, which means a new account. Thus, your comment does not give any additional context.
- If your goal is to provide context, I'm sure you do not fail to provide it when an account with a long history and a tons of karma makes a comment that goes contrary to what you want to believe, right?
I didn't know that. The shade is so slight I couldn't tell.
> I'm sure you do not fail to provide it when an account with a long history and a tons of karma makes a comment that goes contrary to what you want to believe
Why would that be necessary? They wouldn't be "throwaway" in that case.
"While this may have been a motivating factor to some at Kodak, such concerns did not stop Kodak — or even Sasson — from further developing digital cameras and making several technical developments that led to Kodak's first publicly available digital camera in 1991, the Digital Camera System."
Funny thing is, the advisor started to tell me to sell last week, and so I did. Then last Friday happened. Interesting.