Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The Ideological Divide

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This is interesting (and partially confirms Haidt’s thesis).

The survey asked Democrats: “How many Republicans believe that racism is still a problem in America today?” Democrats guessed 50%. It’s actually 79%. The survey asked Republicans how many Democrats believe “most police are bad people”. Republicans estimated half; it’s really 15%.

The survey, published by the thinktank More in Common as part of its Hidden Tribes of America project, was based on a sample of more than 2,000 people. One of the study’s findings: the wilder a person’s guess as to what the other party is thinking, the more likely they are to also personally disparage members of the opposite party as mean, selfish or bad. Not only do the two parties diverge on a great many issues, they also disagree on what they disagree on.

This much we might guess. But what’s startling is the further finding that higher education does not improve a person’s perceptions – and sometimes even hurts it. In their survey answers, highly educated Republicans were no more accurate in their ideas about Democratic opinion than poorly educated Republicans. For Democrats, the education effect was even worse: the more educated a Democrat is, according to the study, the less he or she understands the Republican worldview.

“This effect,” the report says, “is so strong that Democrats without a high school diploma are three times more accurate than those with a postgraduate degree.” And the more politically engaged a person is, the greater the distortion.

This strengthens my long-standing thesis that either there is no strong correlation between “education” and knowledge, or that in many cases it’s negative. Non-STEM academia is a national disaster.

Business, Economics, General Science, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Science And Society, Space, Space History, Space Science, Technology and Society

The Next Fifty Years On The Moon

An interesting essay, but it has a few problems. First…

And they repeatedly use the phrase “lunar soil.” In fact we just update Evoloterra this weekend to fix this ourselves.

Finally, we have this comment, which seems gratuitous and almost a non sequitur in the context of this article:

Business, Economics, History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Apollo And The Treasure Fleets

1 Comment

Gary Oleson has a good op-ed over at Space News. A lot of space enthusiasts misinterpret the lesson of the Ming Dynasty. I wrote a similar piece seventeen years ago. As with most of my old space commentary, I’m always surprised at how well it holds up.

Speaking of old space commentary, I just read this for the first time, written by my former editor at The New Atlantis, in 2003. This was about the time that we first met, probably as a result of a comment I had at my blog about a post of his at National Review. I wrote my first essay for him about a year later.

[Update a few minutes later]

In searching for that blog post, I discovered something funny; it was based on that piece, so it wasn’t the first time I’d read it — I’d just forgotten, it was so long ago. I think what happened is that someone at The Corner commented about my blog post, which caused Adam to engage, and later call me to talk. The rest is history.

The original post, with comments, is here.

Education, General Science, Health, Media Criticism, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Blood Pressure

12 Comments

This isn’t news to me. I’ve always been concerned (to the degree that I am concerned) about both, and in fact, I worry more about diastolic than systolic. I’m trying to get it down with 20 mg of Lisinopril, but it’s still 150/100 on waking. Fortunately, I’ve never had a cardiovascular event, despite having lost both parents relatively young to heart attacks. I think I have a much healthier lifestyle, though. They were both life-long smokers, and overweight (partly as a result of horrible nutrition advice from the government).

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Chappaquiddick

4 Comments

Half a century later, still covering for the Kennedy’s.

The media cover up was aided by the fact that it happened during the moon landing.

[Update mid-afternoon]

Fifty years later, the media continues to whitewash Chappaqiddick.

“[The Lion of the Senate] was Kennedy’s nickname. He was like a lion, in the sense that he mated without limit and killed without remorse.”

Heh.

I disagree though, on one of his movie recommendations. There are many better documentaries of how we got to the moon than First Man, which was about Neil Armstrong, not Apollo per se. The best I’ve seen (and I saw it in IMAX at the NASM a few weeks ago) is Apollo 11. The most surprising thing about it, considering how good it is, is that it was produced by CNN. I recorded it a few days ago to watch tomorrow with friends.

Business, Education, History, Mathematics, Space, Technology and Society, War Commentary

Back To Basics

3 Comments

The military is being trained (for the first time in decades) how to manage without computers.

This is good, not just as a defense against cyber attacks, but because it will give them a lot more insight. Even when I started my career in aerospace, I worried that young people were being too confident in computer output, without understanding the fundamentals sufficiently to know whether or not it made sense.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!