What will future generations find weird or bad about us?

[Barb_]

38 minutes ago, EmseB said:

Okay, that's what I was discussing, but I guess I appreciate the condescension? You asked for examples and I gave a couple. Knee-jerk suspicion of science and lack of regard for anything except the "correct" view is what got Copernicus ignored, Gallileo suppressed by the church, and Avogadro passed by.

Have a nice evening.

I didn’t mean to condescend, you were admittedly responding with a rabbit trail and I was trying to get the conversation back on track. 

I said, “You’ll have to give me some examples of people who changed our understanding of science who were regarded as untrained by their contemporaries” but you responded by giving me examples of highly educated divergent thinkers whose ideas were ridiculed by some (and also hailed by many) instead, which isn’t really what I asked for.

I agree with you that Galieo narrowly escaped the rack because of knee-jerk suspicion of science. Copernicus only published after he was dying anyway because he knew he’d be put to death. The “correct” view of the day wasn’t informed by science, but by superstition and trusting one’s own eyes above the knowledge of someone who had devoted his life to understanding and communicating the true phenomena. That seems to be what you are saying, correct?

Edited August 8, 2018 by Barb_

[Barb_]

“The sun moves in the sky—I see it with my own eyes” resembles the discussion upthread about sand, TBH

In the Middle Ages, fear of science prevented western civilization from understanding the human body or discovering germ theory which led to a decimation of the population by the plague and other diseases. I’m afraid we’re standing on a similar precipice because we have failed to heed the lesson. We fear and devaluate what we don’t understand. We may not survive this second go-round at all;  there may be no future generations.

Edited August 8, 2018 by Barb_

[Bluegoat]

7 hours ago, Barb_ said:

That’s just it, most of us on this board don’t have the background knowledge to reject the assertions of respected scientific and journalistic institutions, but you see it happen daily.  I’m pointing out that untrained people, including many politicians and people in business with the power and the money actively dismiss science as trickery, which is arrogant, disrespectful and dangerous.

Science is never actually settled; it always evolving and deepening. 

You’ll have to give me some examples of people who changed our understanding of science who were regarded as untrained by their contemporaries. Unorthodox, sure. Uneducated? No.

As I said above, skepticism is good. Skepticism causes us to question, to work through problems, to experiment and invent. But the suspicion that science is somehow out to fool us is something new.

Our country didn’t used to be like this. We watch movies like Hidden Figures or Apollo 13 and feel proud to be part of a country that produces such incredible minds. The hard work, the talent, the perseverance—we have our kids watch because we want them to see those people as role models. Well guess what? There are people out there right now who are just as talented, hard working, and passionate but we no longer give them the funds or the respect they need to do their jobs. We used to approach novel ideas with curiosity and excitement and national pride.  We have very little to take pride in anymore.

 

I think the problem is that the confidence that people used to have about science has been punctured.  Early science had a lot of questions around how it could be trusted, and for a while there was a real sense that it had triumphed and come out on top.  That kind of very idealized 19th century view that still gets pushed to some extent by people like Pinker or Dawkins.  But it failed so spectacularly in various public instances (thalidomide being one of the early very public ones, or something like collars of the cod fishery in my part of the world), and then showed itself to be as prone to corruption as other systems of examination of reality, as tied to personal defects and prone to institutional capture.  The intrinsic limits of that kind of knowing became more and more visible to average persons.  I think a huge element is that people have come to realize that even well meaning scientists aren't necessarily particularly good at understanding social or ethical implications of what they are doing - maybe sometimes they are least able to see those things.

It creates a real problem of trust of the experts.  The 50's and 60's I think still had a lot of that trust in the integrity of the institution and the wonders science created.  It just doesn't work to tell people they need to trust experts when they see with their own eyes that there is so much less surety in the institution than they had thought.

 

 

 

[elegantlion]

7 hours ago, EmseB said:

I guess I feel like this is a bit of a semantics argument. If a theory presented is regarded as quackery or not worth listening to according to the experts of the day, then I'm not sure how the person presenting it isn't considered, in some form or fashion uneducated. And if they are regarded as educated that isn't worth very much if no one thinks they are correct until long after they are dead.

 

I'll share an example from medicine that is very pertinent to my life.  I am a long-term cancer survivor, of a kind that normally hits children or young adults. In previous generations, my cancer had a much higher fatality rate. Now, you're getting 20 - 30 - 40 year survivors who were treated with various levels of chemo/radiation or just radiation (as in my case). Survivors are experiencing a multitude of issues that stem from long-term radiation and chemo, including secondary cancers, issues that decreasing quality of life, and ones that ultimately kill them. 

One doctor in particular started recognizing these issues as stemming from radiation. Many survivors travel across the county to be seen by him. Meanwhile, physicians who either don't believe or have not studied these long-term effects are treating their patients like radiation has nothing to do with their symptoms. There are limited peer-review articles at this point but they are out there. In the last 5 years, I've seen more acceptance of the theory that radiation is still damaging survivors long after their treatment. We have a large international Facebook page that helps keep the conversation among survivors open, it's great for sharing of sources. This one doctor will probably be remembered for leading the charge to treat long-term radiation treatment patients. Is he a quack? No. Do all of his peers believe him? No, but in time I think it will be recognized as truth. Is he undereducated? Hardly, he just is that one that started recognizing these trends in survivors. Part of it is that medical advances on the treatment have increased our longevity. In previous generations there were many fewer long-term survivors. 

[Bluegoat]

6 hours ago, Barb_ said:

“The sun moves in the sky—I see it with my own eyes” resembles the discussion upthread about sand, TBH

In the Middle Ages, fear of science prevented western civilization from understanding the human body or discovering germ theory which led to a decimation of the population by the plague and other diseases. I’m afraid we’re standing on a similar precipice because we have failed to heed the lesson. We fear and devaluate what we don’t understand. We may not survive this second go-round at all;  there may be no future generations.

 

This idea of the middle ages as scientifically backward is pretty much a myth of the modern period that's no longer accepted by contemporary historians.  It wasn't scientific in the technical sense because they had not yet developed the scientific method - they tended to be committed to the idea of working from first principles and the question of abandoning that was the first serious controversy of science, one that demanded a lot of attention, though we take it for granted today.  They also had only just begun to use mathematics in the study of nature.  But they laid all the foundations that allowed for these questions to be asked and the methods to come together.

The early moderns themselves had their blindspots - they tended to see the classical sources much less skeptically than the medievals did, and they became very interested in a lot of things the medievals saw as irrational and superstitious, like magic, fortune telling, and witches (and witch burning to go along with it.)  

As for germ theory, that came about because of the technology being far enough along to see small things.  The medievals had no real reason to make that leap.

[Barb_]

h

38 minutes ago, Bluegoat said:

 

I think the problem is that the confidence that people used to have about science has been punctured.  Early science had a lot of questions around how it could be trusted, and for a while there was a real sense that it had triumphed and come out on top.  That kind of very idealized 19th century view that still gets pushed to some extent by people like Pinker or Dawkins.  But it failed so spectacularly in various public instances (thalidomide being one of the early very public ones, or something like collars of the cod fishery in my part of the world), and then showed itself to be as prone to corruption as other systems of examination of reality, as tied to personal defects and prone to institutional capture.  The intrinsic limits of that kind of knowing became more and more visible to average persons.  I think a huge element is that people have come to realize that even well meaning scientists aren't necessarily particularly good at understanding social or ethical implications of what they are doing - maybe sometimes they are least able to see those things.

It creates a real problem of trust of the experts.  The 50's and 60's I think still had a lot of that trust in the integrity of the institution and the wonders science created.  It just doesn't work to tell people they need to trust experts when they see with their own eyes that there is so much less surety in the institution than they had though

Bliegoat, I think you may be right here. Science and scientists got arrogant. I said upthread that science has a PR problem and my does largely because science used to believe it was “settled.” There were to be no arguments against plastics or the right way to rear a child, processed food, which was obviously better than the old fashioned stuff that people eat right out of the ground, for goodness sake. They didn’t include women in medical experimentation. Because of that arrogance, the science community is loathe to make pronouncements about anything. They speak of confidence levels rather than giving advice for the most part. That can make them come off as wishy washy or not fully confident of their findings, but it’s an attempt to remain objective and open to continue leaening

  If anyone is to blame for breathless pronouncements that are later shifted or retracted, it’s certain media outlets who goniff half cocked without a complete understanding of the material. I realize that contradicts what I said earlier regarding the sand discussion. But the 24 hour news flood has forced writers to churn out filler and human interest stories. A careful reader will notice the caveats and warnings about confidence levels and sample sizes in most of these articles, but most of us are reading the news in great gulps and only process the pieces of the story designed to grab attention. That is why it is so striking when many pieces written by the most respected people in science and journalism are all sounding the same alarm in certainties and dire language. Science doesn’t usually present itself that way. That alone should make us sit up and take notice. The field has a a lot to atone for, as Bluegoat pointed out, but they are frightened for our future and they’re trying to help us.

 

Edited August 8, 2018 by Barb_

[livetoread]

I think our society doesn’t understand the scientific method enough to know what to trust and how to be properly skeptical. They get it wrong both ways. We do need to hold some things loosely, recognizing that scientific findings are affected by what gets funded, what advances careers, how findings are reported to the general public, the limitations placed by our technology, what resources are working against the findings, whose sacred cow is gored by the findings, etc.

But the scientific method is the best resource we have for learning about the natural world. It’s messy and imperfect, but there isn’t anything better. Experts are experts for a reason, and almost always, when they talk about their knowledge, they are more right about it than we are. They are probably wrong about certain aspects, but they are still more right than we are. What sounds silly or strange to you and me as uneducated or “educated enough to be dangerous” in the field, is no match for expertise. So humility and curiosity is in order when we criticize. Instead of scoffing at something that challenges our preconceived notions, we can ask, “Why do they think that?” and learn why, always keeping in mind that a few hours of research is no match for a lifetime of education and work in the field.

That expertise doesn’t mean that silly or strange findings are correct (see first paragraph), but it does mean they are way more likely to be correct than we are!

[Barb_]

 

22 minutes ago, Bluegoat said:

 

This idea of the middle ages as scientifically backward is pretty much a myth of the modern period that's no longer accepted by contemporary historians.  It wasn't scientific in the technical sense because they had not yet developed the scientific method - they tended to be committed to the idea of working from first principles and the question of abandoning that was the first serious controversy of science, one that demanded a lot of attention, though we take it for granted today.  They also had only just begun to use mathematics in the study of nature.  But they laid all the foundations that allowed for these questions to be asked and the methods to come together.

The early moderns themselves had their blindspots - they tended to see the classical sources much less skeptically than the medievals did, and they became very interested in a lot of things the medievals saw as irrational and superstitious, like magic, fortune telling, and witches (and witch burning to go along with it.)  

As for germ theory, that came about because of the technology being far enough along to see small things.  The medievals had no real reason to make that leap.

Middle eastern science was far advanced compared to west. The church put a prohibition on autopsy and actively suppressed scientific discovery when they believed it contradicted church doctrine. Still, as you point out science found a way, often illicitly, to advance itself in spite of the public attribution of natural phenomena to god’s will or to magic. 

[Barb_]

Also, historically when we fund science with our taxes we cure diseases and learn to build rockets. Leaving funding to business will support discoveries that enrich business.We have to pay them to work for us rather than for corporations

Edited August 8, 2018 by Barb_

[Barb_]

Well this topic has me worked up. One of my girls went back to school for comp sci after earning a degree in Neuroscience because of the thankless hours and pay as well as the constant fights in funding she was looking forward to. She had a great passion her whole life to learn about the brain, but came away completely disillusioned that she was going to be able to have a life in the field if she was going to also have children. My oldest is doing a PhD in science and policy. I see how incredibly hard she is working and how devoted she and her peers are to trying to interrupt the path we’re on. 

Could it be fear on the part of people who refuse to believe the evidence that we’re destroying ourselves? Stick our finger in our ears and say, “lalala can’t hear you.” If we believe we’re smarter than the people who are warning us then we’ll be ok. 

Anyway, I didn’t sleep well and worked myself up unto a mini panic attack at 3am. I feel as if we’re in one of those old movies where we’re in the wagon careening toward a cliff, but we’ve decided we’re just going to stay put and believe really hard there’s  really no canyon down there. This topic makes me scared and sad and I’d better step away and silence the thread for a while.

Hugs, everyone.

Edited August 8, 2018 by Barb_

[Lady Florida.]

8 hours ago, Barb_ said:

 

I agree with you that Galieo narrowly escaped the rack because of knee-jerk suspicion of science. Copernicus only published after he was dying anyway because he knew he’d be put to death. The “correct” view of the day wasn’t informed by science, but by superstition and trusting one’s own eyes above the knowledge of someone who had devoted his life to understanding and communicating the true phenomena. That seems to be what you are saying, correct?

Right, and science as we know it didn't exist. Knowledge in those times was not based on scientific understanding (with a few exceptions). The scientific method did not exist yet. We can't compare skepticism of knowledge in the Middle Ages to skepticism of knowledge and science today. 

[Lady Florida.]

56 minutes ago, Barb_ said:

 

  If anyone is to blame for breathless pronouncements that are later shifted or retracted, it’s certain media outlets who goniff half cocked without a complete understanding of the material. I realize that contradicts what I said earlier regarding the sand discussion. But the 24 hour news flood has forced writers to churn out filler and human interest stories. A careful reader will notice the caveats and warnings about confidence levels and sample sizes in most of these articles, but most of us are reading the news in great gulps and only process the pieces of the story designed to grab attention. That is why it is so striking when many pieces written by the most respected people in science and journalism are all sounding the same alarm in certainties and dire language. Science doesn’t usually present itself that way. That alone should make us sit up and take notice. The field has a a lot to atone for, as Bluegoat pointed out, but they are frightened for our future and they’re trying to help us.

 

It's a big PR problem no matter how it's handled. If scientists keep the findings to themselves, and even those who review findings keep quiet about their attempts to replicate results, scientists get accused of hiding information from the public. If every little new piece of information is released and the media jumps on it, then it's later shown to be not what it was, science gets "Look! Scientists were wrong again!" 

Yes, the media needs to be responsible. Yes, science has a PR problem it needs to fix. But don't we, the average folks, also have a responsibility? Those of us who trust scientists to get it right need refrain from pointing to the latest scientific study reported in the media as gospel truth. Those who tend to mistrust science all the time need to weed out the newest discoveries which can and should be seen with healthy skepticism, and those that have been settled for some time and are currently being tweaked for better understanding but are unlikely to ever be retracted (evolution comes to mind here).

[SKL]

As far as science, I think a big red flag for BS is if belief in "fact xyz" is essentially divided on political lines.  Whether people want to admit it or not, there are smart people in every party.  Also, if people actually wanted folks to be more open-minded / intellectual about "fact xyz," they would avoid making it a political issue.

I remember lots of environmental pushes when I was a kid, but I don't remember them being a major part of any party's platform.

[Barb_]

7 minutes ago, SKL said:

As far as science, I think a big red flag for BS is if belief in "fact xyz" is essentially divided on political lines.  Whether people want to admit it or not, there are smart people in every party.  Also, if people actually wanted folks to be more open-minded / intellectual about "fact xyz," they would avoid making it a political issue.

I remember lots of environmental pushes when I was a kid, but I don't remember them being a major part of any party's platform.

In the 70s, environmental concern and protection was something everyone could agree to work together on. It wasn’t until some people began making the denial of science a platform that science was seen as a partisan issue. 

[Lang Syne Boardie]

32 minutes ago, Barb_ said:

In the 70s, environmental concern and protection was something everyone could agree to work together on. It wasn’t until some people began making the denial of science a platform that science was seen as a partisan issue. 

 

That's how I remember it, too.

"Use it up, burn it down, God's in control," was not something people used to say to each other. Even growing up in a very fundamentalist church in the 80s, I distinctly remember the people in our farming community and church being very proud of frugality, stewardship, and conservation.

[Wheres Toto]

This discussing is reminding me of a meme I saw:

"At the start of every disaster movie is a scientist who is being ignored".

And we all know how that goes.

[barnwife]

Barb, I can't think of any uneducated people who have changed our view of science, and I'm not ashamed of that at the moment.  Henry Ford and Bill Gates are two who come to mind who have changed our views of technology who were not thought of as educated when they did their work.  Einstein could be regarded as an outsider in many ways, he dropped out of school at one point, failed an admissions test and came up with his theory while working as a patent examiner. 

Barb, do you blame me for your children not having an easy career and life promised to them? 

I disagree that skepticism of experts is new or unprecedented.  What time period was the height of VALID trust in science?  Different time periods have been brought up, was the 50's the time we should all go back to and believe what science said then?   The 1890's?  Also, we remember Galileo and Copernicus, but I'd imagine there were lots of voices claiming to be science at any time, WE have defined what was scientifically valid then from the benefit of time.  It seems there is a cycle similar to population swings at play with the reputation of science, maybe journalism too.  A new species comes into a habitat, few predators or parasites are looking for it, it's population explodes, suddenly there's a fat and lazy population with little hardiness when the predators and parasites figure out how to find them, the population crashes.  Or STD rates, there's a decade with lots of warnings about STD's, a new generation grows up with lower rates, unsafe behaviors proliferate with few consequences, eventually there's an explosion in rates of new cases, then there's a decade of warnings about STD's.  

I have every right to be skeptical of scientists, authorities, and ESPECIALLY journalists.  You can ridicule me, that says as much about you as it does about me.  Here's a few more things you can ridicule. Of course the climate is changing, if we believe the science, then 10-20,000 years ago much of my neighborhood was under a mile of ice.  However, science says that there is much more carbon dioxide released from the soil than all other human activities, and what releases carbon from the soil, nitrogen does, and how often do I hear a breathless reporter/journalist/activist mention nitrogen?  I've never heard it mentioned.  I've found only the briefest mention in online searches.  So I'm skeptical of computer models that leave out soil nitrogen, I'm skeptical of computer models made up from past data more than if Paul Erlich had published his model and bet that it would be more true than another model, and won.  And when I heard a fluff reporter interviewing a wildlife biologist about an unusually large urban mob of crows, and asked if it was caused by climate change, I bust up laughing. 

Similarly, I've heard recently the idea that Obama's "if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon"  contributed to the Trump election victory.  Maybe?  I will say I was surprised to hear a reporter refer to police shooting victim as an "unarmed black man" when I remembered the story as the victim running from a traffic stop, turning and firing at the officer (LGBTQP of color), dropping the weapon and then getting hit with the fatal shot.  Of course I understand that if you're young, poor, male, black (or most of those) then you'll be suspicious of the police and doubt the police story.  So was the journalist advocating for a cause by referring to him as an unarmed black man?  Same with Ferguson, in light of the convenience store footage, reports of a "gentle giant" seem like advocacy, not journalism. 

I don't remember the era of Nixons EPA.  In my memory, environmentalism became more contentious when it was no longer cleaning up highways and burning rivers, and became stopping logging because of spotted owls, federal judges in distant cities deciding wolves can't be controlled, and yes, carbon dioxide being labeled as a pollutant. 

So go back to the 1920's, the very end of the manifest destiny mindset when the last wild areas of the US were being settled, actually the peak of population across vast areas of the country.  Looking back with the dustbowl in hindsite, of course the mindset of the day was incorrect, it's crazy to think you can grow wheat consistently where and how they tried.  At the time it was logical according to the experience and mindset of the day.  Or look at flight 93, the gospel truth from authorities had always been don't oppose hijackers, at the time that made sense according to the experience and mindset of the day. That mindset was wrong, and contributed to the lethality of the attacks.  So yes, I am skeptical and proud of it.  I'm willing to argue any specific point, but with regard to this thread, I don't think the pendulum swing of trust or skepticism of science will be noteworthy, just the position of that swing.

(and I could be way off on where that swing is in the bigger picture, politically especially, time will tell.  I'm comfortable with my access to sand though)

[EmseB]

I don't know if it's comforting or not, but every era and culture (religious and non-religious), have had their doomsday predictions. We look back on all of them and scoff a little, but are also convinced that *this time* we really are going to see the end of the world as we know it and we must panic accordingly. I think it is a lot of hubris to look back at allthe of human history and, think, but this time we really know we're all going to die.

I think any end of the world predictions should be viewed with a lot of skepticism, especially when large sums of money via taxation or state control of natural resources is proposed as the only viable solution and any skepticism of said solution is seen as devastatingly anti-science, so much so that govt officials want to criminalize dissent from the said theory. This is doubly true if said end of the world theory is non-falsifiable and unpredictable by any measure.

[ChocolateReignRemix]

19 minutes ago, EmseB said:

I don't know if it's comforting or not, but every era and culture (religious and non-religious), have had their doomsday predictions. We look back on all of them and scoff a little, but are also convinced that *this time* we really are going to see the end of the world as we know it and we must panic accordingly. I think it is a lot of hubris to look back at allthe of human history and, think, but this time we really know we're all going to die.

I think any end of the world predictions should be viewed with a lot of skepticism, especially when large sums of money via taxation or state control of natural resources is proposed as the only viable solution and any skepticism of said solution is seen as devastatingly anti-science, so much so that govt officials want to criminalize dissent from the said theory. This is doubly true if said end of the world theory is non-falsifiable and unpredictable by any measure.

Except a key difference now is that we have literally had the ability to end life as we know it on this planet for 50+ years. Factor in rapid changes in technology and industrialization on a scale not previously imagined and I would think that taking our current environmental issues and concerns seriously is warranted.

And where has skepticism regarding environmental change been criminalized?

[Lady Florida.]

14 minutes ago, ChocolateReignRemix said:

 

And where has skepticism regarding environmental change been criminalized?

I doubt it but perhaps she means those scientists who work for the government aren't allowed to discuss the science of climate change. Actual science is what's on the verge of being criminalized.

Edited August 8, 2018 by Lady Florida.

[Crimson Wife]

10 hours ago, Melissa in Australia said:

I don't think humans as a race will survive another 100 years. We are just destroying our environment at a too rapid  rate

Doomsayers have been saying similar things since Malthus and probably before (he's just the earliest doomsayer that came to mind). I'm a techno-optimist and I think the history of the past few hundred centuries supports a belief that we humans can use our ingenuity to come up with all sorts of creative solutions to problems..

Most of the cars on the road today (at least in my neck of the woods) get way better gas mileage than the ones on the road when I was a kid and ALL of them pollute less (because they'd never pass the smog test if they were as dirty as the '80's vehicles). I can think of tons of other examples but you get my point.

[EmseB]

54 minutes ago, ChocolateReignRemix said:

Except a key difference now is that we have literally had the ability to end life as we know it on this planet for 50+ years. Factor in rapid changes in technology and industrialization on a scale not previously imagined and I would think that taking our current environmental issues and concerns seriously is warranted.

And where has skepticism regarding environmental change been criminalized?

Right. This time it's different. Our generation is going to be the one that ends the world and only strict government control of natural resources or taxation of said resources will avoid certain disaster.

If you read my post, I did not say "skepticism regarding environmental change" has been criminalized. You've created two strawmen in one question. But there were 16 or 17 state AGs that were trying to litigate against energy companies on the basis of climate change denial or some such in internal communications. That is one example. They were using the argument regarding what was done in the courts to tobacco companies. 

I think that the threat of the use of nuclear weapons is actually much more acute that climate change and much more objectively attributable to human action, but that's a good example of doomsday predictions that many look back on now as quaint or just don't think about at all. The government doesn't run drills anymore for the general public, the constant threat of nuclear annihilation is seen as something from the '50s or '60s, maybe as late as the '80s. But ask your average person nowadays where their closest nuclear fallout shelter is and you'll probably get a blank stare.
 

Edited August 8, 2018 by EmseB

[barnwife]

This discussion of skepticism of experts/science reminds me of a BBC documentary on the industrial revolution in Britain (admittedly biased) compared to France.  At the time France had a scientific bureaucracy that reviewed and approved or disapproved scientific articles (according to the doc, I wasn't there) while Britain had a more hands off approach, that allowed a greater range of experimentation and failure and success.  Are we advocating for more government control over science to go along with the funding/mandated respect?  The respect of educated experts has to be balance with their proper role, if you run a photovoltaic manufacturing plant and have something not working right with your valuable sand, then you probably need a PhD expert at some point.  However, when that same PhD expert who saved your butt starts publicly advocating for government subsidies of solar panels, his vote counts exactly the same as my vote, for better or worse, that's the system we have.  If you have an electrical problem in your home, you'll call an electrician (who may not have finished high school), and if you happen to have a PhD in electrical engineering then you should especially defer to the advice of that high school dropout if you disagree with him. 

Arguments against progressivism are bordering on criminalized, in Canada for instance.  On the other hand, the government not giving unlimited money to your cause is seen as "criminalizing science"

[SKL]

Bureaucracy mainly serves to make real progress slower and more expensive.

So said my Indian prof back around 1990, when India was in severe stagnation and poverty (not to mention pollution) thanks largely to bureaucracy.

I think this understanding is another one that goes through cycles.  Right now it is popular to hold up highly bureaucratic countries up as the model.  People forget the collapse of the Soviet Union etc. which was considered a massive failure thanks to bureaucracy.

[SeaConquest]

2 hours ago, EmseB said:

Right. This time it's different. Our generation is going to be the one that ends the world and only strict government control of natural resources or taxation of said resources will avoid certain disaster.

If you read my post, I did not say "skepticism regarding environmental change" has been criminalized. You've created two strawmen in one question. But there were 16 or 17 state AGs that were trying to litigate against energy companies on the basis of climate change denial or some such in internal communications. That is one example. They were using the argument regarding what was done in the courts to tobacco companies. 

I think that the threat of the use of nuclear weapons is actually much more acute that climate change and much more objectively attributable to human action, but that's a good example of doomsday predictions that many look back on now as quaint or just don't think about at all. The government doesn't run drills anymore for the general public, the constant threat of nuclear annihilation is seen as something from the '50s or '60s, maybe as late as the '80s. But ask your average person nowadays where their closest nuclear fallout shelter is and you'll probably get a blank stare.
 

 

It's 2 minutes to midnight, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Who thinks nuclear weapons/doomsday predictions are quaint? I'm freaking petrified.

https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/past-announcements/ 

[ChocolateReignRemix]

2 hours ago, EmseB said:

Right. This time it's different. Our generation is going to be the one that ends the world and only strict government control of natural resources or taxation of said resources will avoid certain disaster.

If you read my post, I did not say "skepticism regarding environmental change" has been criminalized. You've created two strawmen in one question. But there were 16 or 17 state AGs that were trying to litigate against energy companies on the basis of climate change denial or some such in internal communications. That is one example. They were using the argument regarding what was done in the courts to tobacco companies. 

I think that the threat of the use of nuclear weapons is actually much more acute that climate change and much more objectively attributable to human action, but that's a good example of doomsday predictions that many look back on now as quaint or just don't think about at all. The government doesn't run drills anymore for the general public, the constant threat of nuclear annihilation is seen as something from the '50s or '60s, maybe as late as the '80s. But ask your average person nowadays where their closest nuclear fallout shelter is and you'll probably get a blank stare.
 

1.) I am not so sure that previous generations believed they could cause the world to end.  I believe there was always a fear of some kind of cataclysm, but considering how tenuous life was for many, many generations I think that is understandable.

2.) Again, climate change aside, humans do possess the ability to end life as we know it on this planet. That ability did not exist prior to 1945. Fallout shelters and drills were already a thing of the past when we came close to accidental nuclear launches in 1983 and 1995.  There was also a lesser known malfunction in 2010.

3.) Actually your exact words were " so much so that govt officials want to criminalize dissent from the said theory."

[Bluegoat]

13 hours ago, Barb_ said:

 

Middle eastern science was far advanced compared to west. The church put a prohibition on autopsy and actively suppressed scientific discovery when they believed it contradicted church doctrine. Still, as you point out science found a way, often illicitly, to advance itself in spite of the public attribution of natural phenomena to god’s will or to magic. 

 

I would argue about this business of suppression.  There is really a lot less of that than people think, it's not something that's really articular to the medievals either, and the church was a major source of funding and patronage in the pursuit of science. 

The idea that the church banned autopsies isn't as well founded as a lot of people think - there's some significant reason to think they did not ban them.  But even supposing they dd, I would not call it anti-science to limit activities that were seen to impinge upon human dignity, even if they advanced knowledge of the natural world.  We might not see the body that way ourselves, but that's not really a scientific, or anti-scientific, belief.

[prairiewindmomma]

On 8/6/2018 at 5:59 PM, Bluegoat said:

I think it may depend on how things go with the environmental crises.  If we somehow manage to keep some semblance of civilization, people will think much different things than if we don't. If there is actually a society that manages to survive, I think they will have to grasp in a profound and physical way the dependence of individuals on each other and nature. I think people may look back at a lot of the things we import distances - including people, and think it's nutty.  

The commodification of people, land and natural resources in particular. The idea that communities should be so movable.  The idea that anyone can own things like natural landscape features or minerals, etc.   I also wonder how they will look at the way we have increasingly made a commodity of ideas, in terms of things like intellectual property and all the subsidiary ideas that spring from it.  

I rather wonder if the idea of the nation-state will survive in recognizable form.  I can't decide if people will think it's too parochial or too abstract.

If I try and think a little closer, I think the kind of secular scientism, or some of the pop ver of so-called enlightenment values, that is very popular right now among some,is done for, say in the next 100 years it will be seen as really out to lunch and obviously wrong.  

I'm a bit worried that we're going to see multi-national corporations acting independently of nation-states. Since they possess capital beyond the budgets of many countries and are increasingly capable of touching many parts of our lives...it's worrisome. I don't think it will quite be like the show Continuum.....but the astounding lack of digital privacy available to us is scary. Like, tin hat scary.

[Bluegoat]

12 hours ago, SKL said:

As far as science, I think a big red flag for BS is if belief in "fact xyz" is essentially divided on political lines.  Whether people want to admit it or not, there are smart people in every party.  Also, if people actually wanted folks to be more open-minded / intellectual about "fact xyz," they would avoid making it a political issue.

I remember lots of environmental pushes when I was a kid, but I don't remember them being a major part of any party's platform.

 

Back in the early days of climate change science, it was bi-partisan.  If you look back at the early 80s, in Canada for sure but also under Reagan I believe, there was a lot more political will to do something and stronger legislation.  

It wasn't until later that it was politicized, mainly due to lobbying by the oi industry.  The oil industry, for the record, totally believes in human driven climate change.

Although - even now, if you look at some parts of government, like the military, they have all kinds of plans for climate change which seems to put the lie to the idea that the government doesn't believe it.

Edited August 9, 2018 by Bluegoat

[Farrar]

I'd like to believe that scientific literacy would somehow fix things... but I think science has gotten too far. I mean, I've seen things where science professors or experts in one field get things pretty off in another field. I think it's rather impossible to have a grasp on the world these days. Our knowledge is too specialized. We can be reasonably good at sniffing things out, but we'll never be as good as educated people were a century or more ago because there's simply too much to know. It's too complex.

But again, this is why I think we have to choose to trust experts and let them work it out. I think it's pretty scary to have to do that... but I'm not sure what the reasonable alternative is.

[Tsuga]

On 8/7/2018 at 5:30 PM, Bluegoat said:

 

I guess this is mostly a joke, but plenty of people haven't actually said that.

Yeah, I have a lot of beliefs that I realize future generations may not hold. Abortion is one I haven't added here because I can definitely see a possibility of coming to a definitive biological and philosophical milestone about women's bodies versus fetuses' rights and future generations thinking "well you all were wrong" and it going either way.

The water situation--only rich people who want more land are in any way denying this. It's insane. Yes there is more silicon, yes there is more water. We have calculated the supply however and the consequences and time is running out.

Edited August 9, 2018 by Tsuga
Autocorrect :(

[Tsuga]

1 hour ago, prairiewindmomma said:

I'm a bit worried that we're going to see multi-national corporations acting independently of nation-states. Since they possess capital beyond the budgets of many countries and are increasingly capable of touching many parts of our lives...it's worrisome. I don't think it will quite be like the show Continuum.....but the astounding lack of digital privacy available to us is scary. Like, tin hat scary.

They already do in most countries. It didn't bother Americans or the EU much... Yet. Oh sure they got the USSR but that just meant we won, capitalism and freedom won, right?

But now they have enough to overcome us. Awesome, hope all that "foreign policy does not affect me why don't they take care of their own" doesn't come back to roost.

No really. I hope if doesn't. I would rather not make the entire earth into a banana republic.

The corporations that England, Germany, France, Japan and the US built are indeed more powerful and therefore mostly own the resources of, many countries.

But this isn't the Mother Jones so let's all pretend this could not possibly go wrong for us personally.

[Pawz4me]

5 hours ago, Farrar said:

I'd like to believe that scientific literacy would somehow fix things... but I think science has gotten too far. I mean, I've seen things where science professors or experts in one field get things pretty off in another field. I think it's rather impossible to have a grasp on the world these days. Our knowledge is too specialized. We can be reasonably good at sniffing things out, but we'll never be as good as educated people were a century or more ago because there's simply too much to know. It's too complex.

But again, this is why I think we have to choose to trust experts and let them work it out. I think it's pretty scary to have to do that... but I'm not sure what the reasonable alternative is.

And yet it seems to me that huge numbers of people now think they ARE more expert than the experts. Google gives us the ability to find info. And that can be awesome. But I think way too many people don't understand what they don't know. The number of people on this board who try to self-diagnose complex medical issues or post asking what they should "tell" their doctor to do/test for boggles my mind. I'm old enough to remember when doctors weren't questioned or challenged at all and that definitely wasn't good. And we do need to advocate for ourselves, absolutely. And too often we have to be too forceful about that. But it also seems to me too many people have gone way too far in the other direction now and think they know more than the experts because they spent a few hours on Google scholar or read Becky Jo's website on xyz condition. And Becky Jo agrees with their thinking so by golly she must be right, right? Even though she has zero credentials.

It's a bit scary that we live in a world where so many people have no idea what they don't or might not know, too many laypeople who consider themselves experts. And not just on medical stuff.

[Bluegoat]

6 hours ago, Tsuga said:

Yeah, I have a lot of beliefs that I realize future generations may not hold. Abortion is one I haven't added here because I can definitely see a possibility of coming to a definitive biological and philosophical milestone about women's bodies versus fetuses' rights and future generations thinking "well you all were wrong" and it going either way.

The water situation--only rich people who want more land are in any way denying this. It's insane. Yes there is more silicon, yes there is more water. We have calculated the supply however and the consequences and time is running out.

 

Yes, i think there are really different kinds of predictions.  Your abortion example is a good one, or I can imagine things really going further into a kind of capitalist oligarchy, or there being a crises and something quite different happens where we become much more collectivist and anti-consumerist.

But where there are real material issues, I think clearly we can see that there will have to be some response.  Climate change is in all likelihood going to create a lot of environmental refugees, so that will push certain kids of change.  Now, how that will play out, who knows, people could get their act together internationally or there could be a lot of horrible death and suffering.  But there will be some kind of reckoning around that.

I also think you can sometimes pick out trajectories with some confidence if you look for certain patters in near future scenarios.  I said up-thread that I thought the type of scientism and pushing of supposedly enlightenment values will become passed.  I based that pretty entirely on the typical trajectory for ideas in academia percolating into the public consciousness to the point where most people think they are obvious - about 100 to 150 years.  Now, something could occur to really interrupt that and something unexpected could happen - but those ideas have been passed in academia for 50 years or so now, and in another 50 to 100, all things being equal, I'd say they will be passed everywhere.

[Bluegoat]

8 hours ago, prairiewindmomma said:

I'm a bit worried that we're going to see multi-national corporations acting independently of nation-states. Since they possess capital beyond the budgets of many countries and are increasingly capable of touching many parts of our lives...it's worrisome. I don't think it will quite be like the show Continuum.....but the astounding lack of digital privacy available to us is scary. Like, tin hat scary.

 

If you like sci-fi, Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series has an interesting thought experiment about this kind of thing - on Earth, several increasingly large corporations have come to dominate the planet, taking over many of what we think of as government functions - for their own employees of course or for their own benefit.  National governments are too small, too poor (the money is all in the corporations) and really exist functionally as branches of the corporations, in order to carry out tasks like keeping roads open.  Nations are desperate to align themselves with particular corporations in order to reap the benefits of their investment.

When I see cities desperately competing to have Amazon come in and ruin invest in their cities, I think of those books.

[Ausmumof3]

7 hours ago, Farrar said:

I'd like to believe that scientific literacy would somehow fix things... but I think science has gotten too far. I mean, I've seen things where science professors or experts in one field get things pretty off in another field. I think it's rather impossible to have a grasp on the world these days. Our knowledge is too specialized. We can be reasonably good at sniffing things out, but we'll never be as good as educated people were a century or more ago because there's simply too much to know. It's too complex.

But again, this is why I think we have to choose to trust experts and let them work it out. I think it's pretty scary to have to do that... but I'm not sure what the reasonable alternative is.

Also I think there has always been a place for the kind of individuals who are good at getting an overview of information from a variety of experts and figuring out how to actually use it.  Politicians and strategists, managers etc.  often those with the personality to go deep and be an expert in one field aren’t great big picture thinkers.  Not always but often.

[Ausmumof3]

7 hours ago, Farrar said:

I'd like to believe that scientific literacy would somehow fix things... but I think science has gotten too far. I mean, I've seen things where science professors or experts in one field get things pretty off in another field. I think it's rather impossible to have a grasp on the world these days. Our knowledge is too specialized. We can be reasonably good at sniffing things out, but we'll never be as good as educated people were a century or more ago because there's simply too much to know. It's too complex.

But again, this is why I think we have to choose to trust experts and let them work it out. I think it's pretty scary to have to do that... but I'm not sure what the reasonable alternative is.

Also I think there has always been a place for the kind of individuals who are good at getting an overview of information from a variety of experts and figuring out how to actually use it.  Politicians and strategists, managers etc.  often those with the personality to go deep and be an expert in one field aren’t great big picture thinkers.  Not always but often.

[Bluegoat]

1 hour ago, Pawz4me said:

And yet it seems to me that huge numbers of people now think they ARE more expert than the experts. Google gives us the ability to find info. And that can be awesome. But I think way too many people don't understand what they don't know. The number of people on this board who try to self-diagnose complex medical issues or post asking what they should "tell" their doctor to do/test for boggles my mind. I'm old enough to remember when doctors weren't questioned or challenged at all and that definitely wasn't good. And we do need to advocate for ourselves, absolutely. And too often we have to be too forceful about that. But it also seems to me too many people have gone way too far in the other direction now and think they know more than the experts because they spent a few hours on Google scholar or read Becky Jo's website on xyz condition. And Becky Jo agrees with their thinking so by golly she must be right, right? Even though she has zero credentials.

It's a bit scary that we live in a world where so many people have no idea what they don't or might not know, too many laypeople who consider themselves experts. And not just on medical stuff.

 

It's a very difficult problem for sure.  And I don't know that I really see the answer.  Because really, I am not comfortable, not at all happy, with people who are experts being given a sort of carte blanche or being the only ones who have the expertise to make certain kinds of decisions that will have profound effects for our society.  

I know there have been some discussions here, maybe more on the politics board, about the other model that seems to be the real competition for liberal democracy now - not tyranny but the kind of system you see in China where there is an elite who are taken into politics and are expected to lead  not necessarily a class elite, an elite in terms of ability and vision.  And it's been interesting to see how many people in our society seem to be gravitating to something more like this, rejecting liberal democracy. Not the dream of it,I think, but they've become worried that it is just a dream that actually cannot work.  

I wonder how much this problem of expertise is related to that.  How can liberal democracy work when most people actually are incapable of really understanding the technicalities, or beginning to evaluate them?  Whether or not they can, I think maybe a lot of people feel a little hopeless about it - they don't see a democracy there but rather a technocracy, maybe lead by people who don't really share their values.

[historically accurate]

3 hours ago, Pawz4me said:

And yet it seems to me that huge numbers of people now think they ARE more expert than the experts. Google gives us the ability to find info. And that can be awesome. But I think way too many people don't understand what they don't know. The number of people on this board who try to self-diagnose complex medical issues or post asking what they should "tell" their doctor to do/test for boggles my mind. I'm old enough to remember when doctors weren't questioned or challenged at all and that definitely wasn't good. And we do need to advocate for ourselves, absolutely. And too often we have to be too forceful about that. But it also seems to me too many people have gone way too far in the other direction now and think they know more than the experts because they spent a few hours on Google scholar or read Becky Jo's website on xyz condition. And Becky Jo agrees with their thinking so by golly she must be right, right? Even though she has zero credentials.

It's a bit scary that we live in a world where so many people have no idea what they don't or might not know, too many laypeople who consider themselves experts. And not just on medical stuff.

I don't think anyone has ever used my name to mean "random woman with a blog". Very cool!

[BeachGal]

5 hours ago, Pawz4me said:

And yet it seems to me that huge numbers of people now think they ARE more expert than the experts. Google gives us the ability to find info. And that can be awesome. But I think way too many people don't understand what they don't know. The number of people on this board who try to self-diagnose complex medical issues or post asking what they should "tell" their doctor to do/test for boggles my mind. I'm old enough to remember when doctors weren't questioned or challenged at all and that definitely wasn't good. And we do need to advocate for ourselves, absolutely. And too often we have to be too forceful about that. But it also seems to me too many people have gone way too far in the other direction now and think they know more than the experts because they spent a few hours on Google scholar or read Becky Jo's website on xyz condition. And Becky Jo agrees with their thinking so by golly she must be right, right? Even though she has zero credentials.

It's a bit scary that we live in a world where so many people have no idea what they don't or might not know, too many laypeople who consider themselves experts. And not just on medical stuff.

 

Patients are not necessarily telling their physicians what to do; rather, they may be presenting options to explore that an MD might not know about that has good research behind it. Some people have tried their doctors’ suggestions to no avail or the treatment may be worse than the disease. That is why they seek other solutions.

Personally, I turn to researchers’ advice first. Some are MDs. It’s worked well for my family and me. In fact, just recently, I’ve been able to avoid eye surgery that came with a risk of going blind in that eye. By researching it online, I was able to find an MD researcher at a teaching hospital who has been treating the condition using three types of well-tolerated eye drops for a few months which completely reversed the condition in participants. Had I not done the research myself, I would have been facing the riskier surgery.

I also have the beginning of Dupuytren’s contracture — 2 nodules on my hand, some thickening near a tendon — which I’ve been treating with Serrapeptase and SSKI. One nodule is completely gone after several months of treatment. My second choice is a type of oxygen therapy. Should all this fail, then I’ll consider injecting them with Humira, which is showing good results in clinical trials at Oxford. My MD knew nothing about any of these treatments but is very interested especially after seeing one nodule disappear. He has never seen a nodule disappear.

There are some incredibly elegant, effective and even free ways to remedy many illnesses backed by excellent research, yet they’re not being used. People suffer as a result.

Edited August 9, 2018 by BeachGal

[SKL]

I just can't worry about doomsday theories.  For one thing, they are nothing new and so far they have all been proven wrong by time.  More importantly, there's nothing I'd do differently if they were true.  We're all gonna die - no matter what - who knows when.  We can only hope it isn't too painful.

To be honest, some things about raising kids today are so ridiculous - parents have so little actual freedom to act on their principles - I almost dread my kids having to raise kids of their own.  Now maybe that is something that will change over time - one can hope.  But as of now, if my kids both announced they don't ever want to be parents, I might just heave a sigh of relief.  Maybe that attitude is what will end the human race, LOL.

[AmandaVT]

I haven't read the whole thread and this thread seems to be taking a more serious turn than my answer, but I'm going to go with super white teeth. I think it's only been in very recent times and, more specifically, in the US that glow in the dark white teeth are "must haves". 

[Tsuga]

1 hour ago, SKL said:

I just can't worry about doomsday theories.  For one thing, they are nothing new and so far they have all been proven wrong by time.  More importantly, there's nothing I'd do differently if they were true.  We're all gonna die - no matter what - who knows when.  We can only hope it isn't too painful.

To be honest, some things about raising kids today are so ridiculous - parents have so little actual freedom to act on their principles - I almost dread my kids having to raise kids of their own.  Now maybe that is something that will change over time - one can hope.  But as of now, if my kids both announced they don't ever want to be parents, I might just heave a sigh of relief.  Maybe that attitude is what will end the human race, LOL.

The predictions about climate change have all come true, in fact have been worse than predicted, since the 1970s.

I have total freedom to act on my principles as long as those principles aren't "shoot someone in the face". You should come to the West. It's awesome.