A brilliant and scary extrapolation…..teaching the “Physics Debate”?
-cvj
(Found on Pharyngula. For more, see here, and here.)
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November 22nd, 2005 at 1:18 pm
Found on Pharyngula…
… home of the Neo-Darwinian AntiFanatics.
November 23rd, 2005 at 1:56 am
Okay, this is somewhat tangential, but…
I teach an Intro to Theatre course at a local university and, because of my own interests, have been talking a fair amount about how changes in science and technology affected modernist drama, most specifically with regards to Pirandello and relativity. At one point, a student asked, regarding special and general relativity, “So, are these just theories or are they actually true?”
Which I suppose shouldn’t be that surprising in the land of “teach the controversy,” but it was. What exactly are they learning in high schools these days?
November 23rd, 2005 at 2:01 am
Kate…. it is scary isn’t it? Thanks for that story… quite a reminder that this is no joke.
-cvj
November 23rd, 2005 at 12:09 pm
Tell them this:
If theories are opinions, and everyone is entitled to their own, then relativity or evolutinary-theory represent good reason why opinions aren’t equally valid, and others should keep theirs to themselves.
Doesn’t mean that crap doesn’t roll downhill from both sides though…
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=297#comment-6065
November 25th, 2005 at 7:11 am
Doesn’t mean that crap doesn’t roll downhill from both sides though…
This whole neo-darwinian side of the debate reminds me of extreme liberal green activists that think that the “right” is totally in the wrong, because their values are based on stuff that ONLY falls from religious misconceptions.
They wrongly believe, for example that they must be “right”, because they *think* that science is on their side, based on their extremely short-ranged projections even though they cannot in a 100,000 years prove that global warming is not a simple manifestion of the same impetus that drives squirrils to bury nuts.
Given that Milankovitch models predict that we are approaching a short, then long-term period of glaciation that occurs with a cumulative runaway effect that can only be held at bay by rapidly accelerating our tendency to warm the climate, given such a short amount of compartive time with which to accomplish this. How arrogant fo us to assume that we can fool mother nature.
How arrogant are BOTH sides to assume that we can violate the ecobalance that we are contributing members of/”BELONG” to, that we cannot see that the polarized extremism simply serves as a *near* counterbalance to the runaway greenhouse effect that’s inherent to our runaway “lust” for energy.
Like the flatness of the universe, these anthropic coincidences/ECOBALANCES, represent the most efficient means for EVENLY diseminting energy, per the second law of thermodynamics, which must maximize time in order for energy to dissipate MOST uniformly.
The most accurate world-view lies ALMOST exactly in between. Let the extremists think about that anthropic coincidence for a few decades, while a very small number of truly honest scientists recognize purpose in nature.
Einstein must’ve hated politics, since he recognized the kind of higher, “god” doesn’t throw dice structuring in nature that enables this kind of thing.
Multiverses, Uncertainty, String Theory, and infinities.
ID’s’ all the same, and I say, prove it or lose it.
November 25th, 2005 at 11:28 am
Kate: “..Pirandello and relativity..” ! I want to know more. Published anything on the internet?