It is necessary and true that all of the things we say in science, all of the conclusions, are uncertain, because they are only conclusions. They are guesses as to what is going to happen, and you cannot know what will happen, because you have not made the most complete experiments....John says:
Scientists, therefore, are used to dealing with doubt and uncertainty. All scientific knowledge is uncertain....
So what we call scientific knowledge today is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty....
If Krugman is terrified at the idea of not 'knowing,' maybe he's the one who's against science.I was going to challenge that "maybe," but that would be unscientific.
There are way too many political speakers embarrassing themselves these days by preening about how scientific they are, when all they mean is that they defer to authority. And there are way too many scientists who step up and pose as authorities to be deferred to (and given grants to).
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«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 234 of 234When did they stop allowing white women to get into college via affirmative action?
Probably when women overtook men by a huge margin in college populations.
You are trying way too hard. I feel sorry for you.
So can I assume you feel John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama are all prime examples of people who lack the kind of leadership qualities you feel sufficient to be President?
Yeah, all attended Harvard.
Looky, Raul can clip stuff from Wiki! Fun.
What I see from the list you present is that dynastic, wealthy families can afford to send their kids to Harvard and also have the connections to advance political careers. All, that is, except that curious case of Mr. Obama that neither you nor anyone else has been able to explain convincingly.
But why should I question the Harvard magic when the last two presidents have brought us into such unmitigated economic success?!?
What is the argument here? That Harvard is a good school and because people went to Harvard, a good school, they are good at everything?
Really?
Raul, you suck at this game.
I'm sure you cons celebrated when BHO's admin finally got it done.
I'm not a conservative, I'm a libertarian.
I applaud the current FCC for getting rid of the "Fairness Doctrine." Al Gore must be pissed at them...
Now if they would retract their "net neutrality" rule and disband, I would be in favor of awarding them medals.
So I guess we have to assume that the Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of a group of over 2500 Scientists from countries across the world is off base, and that the daily visitors to Althouse have the real scoop on climate change.
He beclowns himself again - as did the IPCC in its latest iteration.
First, and foremost, the IPCC is part of the UN, which is the furthest thing from apolitical as you can get. And, the General Assembly repeatedly votes to take money from the richer countries to give to the poorer ones - since each country (excluding Taiwan) has one vote, regardless of size or GDP, and there are a lot more poor countries than right ones.
And, so it is no surprise that about half of the articles in the last report came from unscientific sources - notably "environmental" advocacy groups. And, where did those "scientists" come from? Were they included because of their expertise? Or, were a lot of them put on to fill quotas and to pander to the 150 or so poor countries that control the General Assembly? Indeed, how many of them were "climate" scientists (the answer - almost none). Oh, and then we got those nice ClimateGate emails that talked, among other things, about how they were pulling strings to keep contrary views out of the IPCC reports (and out of peer-reviewed journals - including circumventing the anonymity of the peer review process).
I think there are very few here today who take that IPCC report for anything more than an attempt by the UN to extort more money from the richest countries in the world for the benefit of the far more numerous poorer ones. You are apparently one of the few.
So I guess we have to assume that Vatican II, a panel on Religion, made up of a group of over 2300 Priests, Cardinals, Bishops, and Pope from countries across the world was off base, and that douchebags like the person who wrote the crap I am now pitilessly mocking have the real scoop on God.
This shit is too easy.
So can I assume you feel John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama are all prime examples of people who lack the kind of leadership qualities you feel sufficient to be President?
Ok, let's go down the list:
Adams(2) - two of the most prominent men in Boston (where Harvard is located) at the time.
Roosevelt(2) - members of one of the richest NY families at the time.
Kennedy - Son of one of the richest and most powerful men in Boston (where Harvard is located) and grandson of the long time mayor of the same city (where Harvard is located).
Bush - Don't know how GWB got into Harvard. Both Bushes were Yalies, and GHWB's father was a senator from Conn (where Yale is located).
Obama - Raul apparently hasn't figured out yet that affirmative action exists and was being avidly practiced when Obama went to Columbia and then Harvard.
Remember Clarence Thomas (who went to the probably better rated YLS), and his admission to YLS being attributed to AA? Who is older? Thomas? Or Obama? (and, similarly, who went to law school first?)
Indeed, isn't it a bit surprising that so many of those people who condemned Thomas for being both stupid and an AA admit to what many believe was the better law school, are so quick to consider Obama so brilliant?
Could it be that Obama is a lot "cleaner" and more "articulate", and with his much lighter skin (since he is only half black to start with), he was considered a much safer black than Thomas who looks black and grew up in the segregated south? (Ignoring that Thomas' biggest failing for many on the left is that he left the reservation, and Obama hasn't.)
BTW - if you are looking for Harvard credentials - try Romney. He has two graduate degrees from Harvard, is white, and his father never had the type of power that the Roosevelts or Kennedy did.
Also note that the Adamses went to Harvard when it was one of the only colleges in the country, and the Roosevelts and Kennedy did so when a much, much, higher percentage of the admits to Harvard were not merit based, but rather, based on family.
So can I assume you feel John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama are all prime examples of people who lack the kind of leadership qualities you feel sufficient to be President?
After my last long post, I realized that the bigger problem with that quote is that it does not make logical sense. What he is essentially saying is that since these former Presidents were Harvard grads, they were presumably leaders, and therefore those graduating from Harvard would logically be leaders.
And, that is obviously a logical fallacy.
Another problem - most of the Presidents before Obama listed were Harvard undergraduates. The one big exception is GWB, who has a Harvard MBA - which is considered the MBA to get if you want to run a company, but not if you are going to just be a VP, etc.
HLS does absolutely nothing to teach leadership or management (which is in stark contrast to HBS, which specializes in such). Indeed, Obama was at the school when the amount of anti-social behavior was probably at its peak. Think "Paper Chase". Students cutting cases out of case books so that their classmates couldn't read them, and thus, would do worse on the tests, etc. That sort of thing was what was happening at HLS at the time that Obama went there. Not really the sort of thing that teaches either working with others or being able to lead.
Keep in mind that law schools in general through that time, and possibly to the present, do not teach collaboration. Rather, they thought, encouraged, and rewarded individual achievement. Also, much of law school is very theoretical - much more theoretical than the actual practice of law, which may be one reason that this President seems to detached from reality.
I don't really give a shit where the president went to school. Ronald Reagan and Abe Lincoln went to Eureka College and nowhere, respectively, and they were awesome.
It doesn't take any hind of highfalutin education to understand that we need to cut government spending, cut red tape massively, and simplify the tax code massively.
Nothing here is particularly complex.
Proof that Bush wasn't admitted anywhere because of affirmative action.
There is no doubt that Bush got into Yale because he was a legacy admission. True, legacy admission is not affirmative action, it is actually anti-affirmative actions. It ensures that the children of Yale graduates get preferential treatment no matter how dim they are in order to perpetuate the ruling class in this country. Bush is a perfect example of this.
Fred -- I know all that, dude.
This may have already been mentioned, but Feynman was notorious for making philosophical statements about science that most scientists and philosophers of science strenuously reject. So to quote him as to the nature of science does not establish the point.
I sincerely wonder if Krugman (and many of the people who post here) have ever read such cautionary classics as Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds and Parkinson's Law. Skepticism is at the heart of science, and these people come across as True Believers.
One is able to claim certainty when all evidence supports a proposition and no evidence contradicts it. "The sun will rise tomorrow" is a certainty.
To not think about this issue and throw out the concept of certainty without defining what it rationally could mean is, in my view, irrational. I don't accept that Feynman in the passage quoted is making sense.
Principlex, should I presume that as an architect you are familiar with the Kardashev scale? There may well be civilizations that could turn off our sun tomorrow. Not to be overly picky, but it doesn't really rise, either. It remains stationary but appears to rise because of our planetary rotation. Bear in mind one of General Semantics' prime directives: the map is not the territory.
Many of us were raised and educated in the belief that science and scientists were cruelly objective. If it was ever true it certainly is a fairy tale now. The scientific community still attempts to clothe themselves in that myth. Once science became a tool for elite policy and agenda the scientific community lost the right to evaluate itself as science qua science. Scientific conclusions now needto be evaluated politically, sociologically and even psychologically. So when Insty says, "I'll believe in AGW when the people who espouse begin to live like they believe it," that is an evaluation of scientific conclusion. Perhaps not as critical an evaluation as data but a valid critique of AGW theory none the less.
Here's an article that challenges AGW true believers. So does this. But these points are peripheral to the topic of the orginal post that has prompted all of these comments, which is about Philosophy of Science. Those who defer to science or scientists would do well to consider Clarke's third law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Raul --
"So can I assume you feel John Adams, ... are all prime examples of people who lack the kind of leadership qualities you feel sufficient to be President?"
That many leaders had degrees from a specific college does nothing to infer that a degree from that college imbues its recipient with leadership.
There is a great deal of daylight (you know, the visible component of the energy stream that's the main factor in modulating the Earth's climate) between what the average liberal/global warmer layperson thinks the "scientific consensus" is on climate change, and what the actual scientific consensus is.
Short version is that the consensus is a lot closer to what the middle-of-the-road "skeptics" say, than what Al Gore says.
The middle-of-the-road skeptics say that the Earth is probably getting warmer, and that human activity is responsible for a small percentage of the warming -- and that doubling CO2 concentrations will get us less than 1 degree C of warming.
That's closer to a supportable scientific consensus than anything Al Gore has ever said, with the predictions of Florida underwater and whatnot.
We're more sciencey than they are.
"It is the seed of doubt that will save you."
Where there is no doubt, there is absolute faith.
Valentine Smith --
"So the transitional species are dead ends."
Oh for fuck's sake. I keep trying to read through the thread and bumping into this kind of rehashed crap.
No. By definition - and by the evolution opponent's own request - transitional means in between. You cannot ask for an "in between" fossil and then complain about it being a "dead end" without being an obvious ass.
You show by your dishonest statement that you're not interested in discussing facts.
Gabriel Hanna --
"Ah, so we're reduced to "follow the money", the infinitely malleable progressive conspiracy theory that substitutes for evidence."
I must say, it's equally as convincing as your implication that there's no monetary influence in science, yielding them a moral superiority they don't actually posses as humans.
As many have said over many years, why does anyone listen to the raving kook from Princeton?
To tack on for Val's sake if he see's read the above.
If a transitional evolves into another species, the transitional species by definition ceases to exist and will leave no further record.
Just like a dead end.
There's a shifting goal post in our near future.
Here is a link to an interesting article by Kevin Trenberth, "More knowledge, less certainty":
http://www.nature.com/climate/2010/1002/full/climate.2010.06.html
Kevin Trenberth is the quintessential IPCC insider. Here is the key sentence from the article:
"The uncertainty in AR5's climate predictions and projections will be much greater than in previous IPCC reports".
Digest that and let it sink in. Even though oceans of money have been invested in climate modeling over many years, Trenberth is admitting that the confidence in the accuracy of those estimates will be much less in the next big IPCC report than in previous IPCC reports. This is because the more climatologists learn, the more they realize how much more remains to be learned.
We are not close to being able to accurately model climate because it is extraordinarily complex. Skeptics have forced some of the politicized climatologists to be more honest about their actual skill in modeling climate. This a step forward but the real breakthrough requires that we strenuously focus on depoliticizing climatology.
Oligonocella—
ROTFLMAO!
Duh. So simple it escaped my great mind! LOL!
Doctor Hanna—
My apologies for the insult. It further exemplified my stupidity.
Here is a link to a discussion about an actual survey of climatologists by German scientists. The results will surprise lefties.
http://www.nipccreport.org/reports/2011/pdf/FrontMatter.pdf
"German scientists Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch (2010) released their latest international survey of climate scientists in 2010. The survey, which was actually conducted in 2007, consisted of 120 questions."
"What this means is that for approximately two-thirds of the questions asked, scientific opinion is deeply divided, and in half
of those cases, most scientists disagree with positions that are at the foundation of the alarmist case.
This survey certainly shows no consensus on the science
behind the global warming scare."
I find it telling that Krugman is an economist and feels this way. Economists believe really complicated things based on a couple of data points (WWII ending the Great Depression for example).
Compared to the uncertainty surrounding macroeconomics (primarily due to the inability to run large scale experiments), global warming looks like a bastion of certitude.
Then again he feels anyone who disagrees with him on economics is evil or stupid.
Raul on guns, God bless him, is indulging in associative impression rhetoric. We see it every day on TV. Unrelated images, presented together again and again, and our busy little neurons manufacture a connection pretty much to the propagandist's order.
How inappropriate it would be for Republicans to run a male candidate, since Gifford's assailant was male - or female, since the victim was female. What insensitivity!
I do love deconstructing me some bad faith argumentations.
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Phunctor
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