An interesting discussion. I agree with the commenters, like Eric Raymond, that there seems to be a confusion between conservative and libertarian.
Category Archives: Science And Society
Do You Have To Be Mad To Be A Scientist?
No, but it helps.
Libertarian Morality
Some interesting new research. I found this particularly salient:
Libertarians scored lower than both liberals and (especially) conservatives on sensitivity to disgust. The authors suggest this tendency “could help explain why they disagree with conservatives on so many social issues, particularly those related to sexuality. Libertarians may not experience the flash of revulsion that drives moral condemnation in many cases of victimless offenses.”
I’m not sure what they mean by “sensitivity to disgust.” If they mean that we don’t get disgusted, it doesn’t apply to me. But if they mean that, unlike some people, we don’t use it as the basis for morality, and especially for lawmaking, I think that’s right. I am quite repulsed by male homosex, but that doesn’t mean that I think that makes it immoral or subject to criminal sanctions, because I recognize that my reaction is a natural one for a heterosexual, and that many people are disgusted by different things. The fact that some are disgusted by the thought of eating bugs doesn’t make it immoral, and shouldn’t be, even to them.
The Biggest Threat To Humanity’s Future Existence
The Singularity? As he notes, it’s also the biggest opportunity.
As If We Didn’t Have Enough Problems
Could California be hit by a superstorm?
The good news is that it would flush out Sacramento, our version of the Augean stables.
But it would be both Bush’s fault, and due to global warming. Or climate change. Or whatever.
Real Health Care
Some thoughts from Jim Pinkerton:
…every billionaire eventually discovers that vast wealth is little better than health insurance when it comes to securing good health. Wealth and health insurance are both forms of finance, and whether the plan is deluxe or bare-bones, finance is retrospective — after you get sick, people get paid to treat you. And yet what plutocrats — and all of us — really need is prospective, even preemptive, medical science, the kind that produces not just wellness plans, but actual vaccines and cures. The rich can afford the best doctors, and the plushest hospital suites, but if that scientific spadework isn’t done in advance, if the right cure doesn’t exist when it’s needed, it can’t be bought on short notice at any price. The polio vaccine, for example, took 17 years; genuinely effective treatments for AIDS took 15 years. Cures cannot be impulse purchases. They can’t be bid for on eBay, or even at Sotheby’s.
And the Democrats’ preferred policies will only make things worse. It’s mass murder, really. Or at least manslaughter. If I can be so uncivil.
Thoughts On The Vaccine-Autism Fraud
Pointing out the war on science by the politically correct:
It was this F-word—feels—that left Mr. Mnookin justifiably gobsmacked, and it serves as the departure point for The Panic Virus, an attempt to explain how thousands of otherwise sophisticated Americans could make a fatuous decision to opt out of what is arguably modernity’s greatest medical achievement. Most children “exempted” from vaccines (a fittingly ridiculous term, as if the kids place out via AP exam) are not low-information progeny. They are being raised in college towns, in wealthy suburbs and in tony urban enclaves like Park Slope, by the sorts of parents who are otherwise given to grave tut-tutting about the anti-science stances of others—the climate-change know-nothings, say, or the ovine devotees of the garish Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky.
This part really grates, though:
How do we handle Mr. Mnookin’s fatuous friend? The Panic Virus aims to engage him or, failing that, to explain him; and yet a better choice still is to spurn him. Surely this same man, at this same party, could not have denied the existence of climate change without provoking spit-takes of wheat beer or dropped forkfuls of braised ramps. And the two claims are analogous, for both deny science in the service of what is, at base, an ideology: the magical faith that sacrifice is never required—at least not by you!
As a firm believer that evolution is the best, if not only theory to explain the diversity of life and the fossil record, and that there is no credible evidence that vaccines cause autism, I get outraged at such comparisons. It is neither “anti-science” or “denying science” to be skeptical about the claims of those who have been fudging data and don’t know how to do basic programming, let alone model complex and chaotic phenomena, while demanding that we pauperize millions in the future in the name of their claims. Skepticism lies at the heart of science. And this is an oversimplistic characterization. No one I know of “denies climate change.” Anyone with a lick of sense knows that the climate has never been static. The issues are whether or not it is changing as a result of our actions in a predictable way, if such changes (if they’re occurring) will be net good or bad, and if bad, what the best means of dealing with the problem are. And we are a long way from knowing the answers to any of those questions. That many of the people who claim certainty on the matter have been shown to be hacks and frauds doesn’t increase confidence in anyone making such claims. If anyone is “anti-science,” it is those who betray it with such unscientific behavior.
[Update Monday morning]
The Real Issue In Arizona
…that few in the media seem to want to talk about, because it doesn’t fit The Narrative.
Another madman:
[Updaate mid morning]
The madness lobby. It is kind of bizarre to have a lobby for an illness that fights to prevent treatment.
Deferred Gratification
What’s the present value of a future marshmallow? Even five minutes into the future?
It’s made all the harder of course, not just by the fact that kids have lower impulse control, but by the fact that a minute lasts forever when you’re a kid.
I also think that this is a parable for our current economic straits.
Reining In The EPA
Will the Senate do it?
I think there’s a good chance. There are a lot of Democrats up for reelection next year who aren’t going to be willing to fight it. The question is whether or not the president will be willing to risk a veto. Especially if it may get overridden.