06-21-2013, 07:12 PM | #46 |
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Conferences. There are thousands of them. Attended by many tens of thousands of bright people. How many university professors are there now? Many. And they still publish, they review each other's papers, their grant proposals, exchange their students, call each other by phone, and have beer with each other as often as possible. Certainly not all of them would I call great thinkers but there are plenty. And as with so many other things, salons which were elite and small in number have been democratized, globalized, and greatly expanded in number and the ways for communication to occur. If Hawkings or some other thinker wants to communicate with others, he's got a far better chance of encountering and exchanging ideas than at any other time in history, don't you think? Thinking and collegial rapport is not dead, I think. It's alive and well so long as there are still places of higher education. And pubs.
Last edited by vivaldirules; 06-22-2013 at 11:10 AM. |
06-21-2013, 09:03 PM | #47 |
Wizard
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It's funny that the smart people who think everyone evolved from monkeys try to fight climate evolution and cannot accept that keeping the less fit alive and encouraging them to reproduce might have an adverse impact on the gene pool. Kind of like asking a vegan why they are pro choice after letting them explain why they do not eat animals.
People do a lot of thinking today, but they rarely need data or research to validate their opinions. If they feel it, then it is. When I learned the scientific method a generation and a half ago, we were taught that a hypothesis was not considered law until tested over time. We were told that great minds once thought the sun revolved around the earth and that the earth was flat. That was a long time ago -- before Time magazine warned of a coming ice age. Are great thinkers always right or do they simply think, pontificate, and publish? You know who was a great thinker? Hazel. He had to work through a lot of cause and effect and overcome a moral dilemma before breaking Doc's arm. In the end, he executed a well thought out plan and the result was as predicted. He probably would have been a good president. Hazel did not need a reset button. Maybe the Bear Flag Restaurant is the great 'thinkers' and 'creators' salon of today? |
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06-21-2013, 11:15 PM | #48 |
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Perhaps we need less great thinkers and more great "doers."
Intellectual discourse is fine, but people who get out and make a difference change the world rather than hanging out in ivory towers and salons. |
06-21-2013, 11:17 PM | #49 | |
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I really shouldn't, but I am going to pick a specific nit in your post - that Time cover you posted is fake. Time never predicted a coming ice age. Here's the actual, undoctored cover: The idea in the 70s that the Earth was cooling rather than warming? Ya, that was an invention of the media and did not reflect scientific opinion. A survey of peer-reviewed scientific papers published between 1965 and 1979 showed that the large majority of research at the time predicted that the earth would warm as carbon-dioxide levels rose. Last edited by Ninjalawyer; 06-22-2013 at 03:22 PM. |
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06-22-2013, 06:21 AM | #50 | |
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06-22-2013, 06:34 AM | #51 | |
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Greek philosophers held that the earth was round hundreds of years before Galileo, but their positions did not stand up to peer review. If only they had had blogs and forums to explain. |
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06-22-2013, 06:45 AM | #52 |
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I think you probably need to be fluent in crazy to understand it fully, but it appears to be advocating letting 'less fit' people die to prevent them from weakening the gene pool and somehow linking that to a bizarre sideswipe against vegans that support the right to abortion. Nothing for the sane people here to concern themselves with.
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06-22-2013, 07:11 AM | #53 | |
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This. |
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06-22-2013, 07:45 AM | #54 |
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Could you elaborate on this? I don't understand how this fits into his theories or with neo-darwinism that came later.
Well, I suppose we do this in farming generally but I suspect it might be a little politically incorrect to suggest it for humans. Last edited by mike_bike_kite; 06-22-2013 at 08:26 AM. |
06-22-2013, 08:06 AM | #55 | |||
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I'm not advocating anything. I'm simply observing that...
1) there are inconsistencies in the beliefs of great thinkers. Scientists embrace evolution. They taught us that man evolved from monkeys. They taught us that glaciers descending on North America formed the white mountains. To accept that and ignore the possibility that changes in weather might be part of this evolution is inconsistent, in my opinion. 2) great thinkers are often wrong. Quote:
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I take vitamin D because I apply sunblock to my skin before exposing myself to the greatest natural source of vitamin D because I am concerned about radiation, but every year, a bunch of scientists put a lead bib on my chest and blast radiation at my skull from a nearby room. And the vegan thing? I sent an email to PETA a few years back. It said that I had come into possession of a pregnant dog and was willing to care for the dog but unable to care for the puppies. I inquired about the ethics of terminating the pregnancies and spaying the mother. PETA responded that I should let the dog have the puppies, find good homes for them, and prevent the mother from getting pregnant without mutilating her. So, adoption and abstinence. A few weeks later, I sent an email to the same address inquiring of PETA's position on abortion and was referred to their FAQ... Quote:
People tend to be inconsistent on their principles. All of this is on the internet for people interested in any of the discussed ideas to discover and consider. If anything in the preceding paragraphs causes a single person to ponder the topics discussed, then I think I have made the case for my initial position -- that internet forums are the salons of today's great thinkers and creators. Last edited by wizwor; 06-22-2013 at 11:06 AM. |
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06-22-2013, 03:17 PM | #56 | |
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I was thinking of later work I read that talked about the survival benefits of empathy and compassion, and somehow misremembered it as something Darwin had said. Effectively, we are better served as being a species that cares about people that need support rather than a species that dumps anyone with more than a sprained ankle in the woods. Wizwor is still wrong but my response on that point was glib and off-the-cuff. This does highlight a few things: (i) Darwin's evolutionary theory was groundbreaking at the time but far from complete; and (ii) it's good to be disagreed with so you can course correct. Last edited by Ninjalawyer; 06-22-2013 at 05:29 PM. |
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06-22-2013, 03:27 PM | #57 | |
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Yes glaciation happened, there is clear evidence. Evolution is dependent on two things mutations and environment. Weather does not play into evolution, long term climate might. and none of this particularly has to do with the topic at hand. I don't think anyone every claimed great thinkers were completely consistent. I'm not even very sure what the h*ll you are trying to say. |
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06-22-2013, 03:32 PM | #58 | |
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as far as the scientific method, pseudoscience and vitamins/vaccinations. I just happened to run across this great blog post today that might prove edifying for you and others: http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skept...oscience-fool/ |
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06-22-2013, 05:03 PM | #59 | |
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There are situations where our genes program us to protect others even if it puts us at risk but it usually only occurs when saving our children (or very close family members). The act looks like an example of self sacrifice but the reality is that our genes are shared with our kids so preserving their life means it raises the chances of our shared genes being passed on. I'm pretty sure it was covered in the book the Selfish Gene (Dawkins) and he explains it far better than I can after a few glasses of wine. |
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06-22-2013, 05:47 PM | #60 |
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