Science will prevail in other countries. America will be a shadow of it's former glory in a decade thanks to the one third of the voting public that thinks sky daddy is proud of our decent into idiocracy.
No, not only because of one third. Those who obstinately refused to vote in a time of very clear impending crisis are equally responsible. Those who willfully abstain in a time of active crisis will be actively contributing.
Are you aware that only a few seats are up for grabs? And only a few states matter in a presidential election? It sounds good to blame non voters but it logistically doesn't make sense. Everyone voting in Utah won't do jack shit in local or national elections. The same people will still end up winning. We don't even see national political ads here because it wouldn't make a difference. And it's the same way in a lot of places.
You need to put the blame where it belongs. The blame is with Nazis and Nazi sympathizers.
I have a STEM background, studied biology in college, and yet still my uneducated, MAGA parents have had the audacity to tell me, “we’ve done the research” on topics ranging from virology, vaccines or even climate change and they refuse to listen.
The current anti-intellectual movement sweeping the world is absolutely terrifying, and will be studied for decades to come.
To quote the 4th doctor: "The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit facts, they alter facts to fit the views, which can be uncomfortable if you're one of the facts needing altering."
I totally get it-- trump did say he loves the uneducated, and really that means the willingly ignorant. Many people don't get to go to college but they realize logically that experts in a field are the ones who should be listened to. trumpians are the anthesis of this, they go on a webpage that fits their belief structure and count that as writ in stone.
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
― Isaac Asimov
Oh my roommate and me where talking g about this like last week and thinks I'm too cynical saying We will never see American innovations in science and technology again in our lifetime. Best they can do is throw compressed gas cans on a roadster.
It's anti-intellectualism's last gasp. Hang tight. It'll get ugly first but we are pushing back. The culture has already shifted against them. We can reverse course. It'll take time though.
I remember reading a science fiction story that seemed just like this. I think it ended with the head scientist consulting his horoscope to see what to do each day. I don't remember the name, and I think I have two stories mixed up. One had Combat Football, where there were few rules, and stadiums were locked up once the game began, so the teams' fans would also fight each other. The teams weren't by city, but ethnic groups and other nationwide groups like bikers. The other story had basically gladiator fights, to the death, often involving women.
I mean it seems an inevitable outcome from the gradual devaluation of science brought on by a lack of exclusion. A large part of the population won't ever engage with the philosophy of science, and so when "science" is expanded to include things like philosophy or sociology, the concept is bound to lose integrity in public perception.
lol, sweeping the nation? There’s clearly a massive amount of uneducated people out there with no critical thinking skills. For some reason, they are the loudest and seem to show up to vote.
I would say about 10% are science deniers. That’s not sweeping…stop.
"I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the abilities to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness."
That final interview he did with Charlie Rose was hauntingly accurate. We desperately need his guidance now more than ever.
"It’s a thing that Jefferson laid great stress on. It wasn’t enough, he said, to enshrine some rights in a Constitution or a Bill of Rights. The people had to be educated, and they had to practice their skepticism and their education. Oherwise we don’t run the government—the government runs us."
We should be a bit careful with scientific heroism though, that US in particular seems prone to.
I don't want to take anything away from Sagan, great scientist, great insights here. But no one is irreplaceable. It's a message of hope: we're not lost without him. We have more information today, and there are many just as capable and intelligent people around.
We need to build on and extend his work, shoulders of giants. What makes sense to do today? Look for information, principles, ideas. Don't just try to find the next science hero.
As this is a bit political, the (in particular US) right tend to build up strong confident personas. Political heroes, kings. Not only Trump, but he's ofc an example of this. They believe things because their hero said it. In politics, I feel left is a little better at that, although far from immune. Left tend to listen a bit more to science rather than follow heroes, although part of that is probably because science tends to agree more with the left narrative (facts are left biased).
As a scientist, I love when science is used or referred to in politics. While even science isn't infallible, It's the closest we have to facts by a wide margin. Very high hitrate, scientific consensus does sometimes turn out to be wrong, but it's so rare that each case has its own wiki entry, compared to the often worse-than-random straight up malicious disinformation you'll hear from politicians or influencers (this happens on both sides, although left tends to be less tolerant of it), where straight up knowingly lying is often accepted or widely acknowledge as default.
So with way more context than needed for a small note on tone:
Sagan is amazing, but let's look at science, the data, the facts. We don't need him to continue working for better science literacy.
What you say isn't wrong and the hope in it is admirable and relatable - but Sagan's persistence and care is less common as adversarial identity politics shrouds and divides us. The hope for Sagan to be here, to some, is a hope for enlightenment not only in science but of each other. He was so very wonderful.
Yes, I agree completely, and that's pretty much his whole point. He wasn't some scientific prophet, and we just accept his words because he said so. You question authority. We have to distrust ourselves and what feels true, or what we want to be true from what we can actually demonstrate and test. And always be willing to change your mind based on the evidence, and follow it wherever it goes. Bit always demand evidence. This was the lesson of The Demon Haunted World.
If you just quote him like some authority, then you miss his point entirely. It's not really a left vs right issue, this is just human nature. Tribalism, confirmation bias, hero worship, etc. These are human problems. It doesn't matter what side you choose. But I agree, we shouldn't just look for another Carl Sagan to tell us what to think. Learn his baloney detection kit, and apply that scientific skepticism to everyone. Including the people you agree with, and especially yourself. Everyone should be held to those standards.
I was really blown away by this quote, and not that this actually cheapens it at all because he was deadly accurate, but I looked it up and he wrote it in 1995, when we were already balls deep in the transition to globalism
We've almost reached it. The mental faculties are starting to decline (due to suppressed education and AI exposure. (Not being just a hater, MIT found AI usage erodes current skills and cognitive ability, and even switching back to your brain only, AI still leaves lasting damage)), which makes it all the more important to resist.
(Source for the study:
https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt/)
I felt the same way about the Playboy magazine 25-30 years ago lol. Seriously though it is so painful to watch the way science is being demonized and/or de-prioritized for ridiculous reasons. I understand that an authoritarian government needs an ignorant populace because they’re much easier to manipulate, but seeing the brain drain happening in this country right now in real time is absolutely devastating.
As human beings, we are capable of SO much more… SO much better. Instead we are held back on an extraordinary scale all because a handful of people are prioritizing accumulating and hoarding more wealth than they could EVER possibly use let alone need… and advancing science is simply not something that maximizes profit this fiscal quarter, so it is abandoned.
Anything related to investing in the future, in the long term, is seen as a waste by the people running the show… and that just sucks for all the rest of us.
I also think right now our biggest challenge is to solve the social problems. We keep getting stuck in the mud because we solved a lot of scientific issues… but we haven’t collectively developed our moral intelligence or culturally integrated the values.
We are still having Hume’s is/ought problem centuries later. Science is getting a lot better at telling us what exists. The scientific enterprise cannot tell us how to solve the ethical problem about what to do about the things that exist.
So gutting the humanities and arts; such that PHD level graduates have little chance at economic prosperity… isn’t helping us get any closer to solving the philosophical problems that could answer how we should allocate the abundance that modern society is capable of generating.
We might have to seriously rethink money, careers, and what a productive life looks like in the modern age.
The longer we cling to the old and ignore the new problems, the more our children suffer for it.
Don’t forget about the people who enabled them. I hate to say that the religious are some of the most culpable of vilifying science and therefore education.
This country is being groomed for disaster. Science and education are being demonized and religion pushed to the front. At the same China rightly controls religious fervor and amplifies education. The US is about to become a third world country and China will own the world.
One of the worst parts about it is that the people who’ve made the emphasis on religion possible are so unfathomably awful and could not possibly be less “godly” if they tried. The fact that some of them are genuinely trying to bring about the end of days for whatever ridiculous reason is so absolutely bonkers I can’t even articulate it.
I don't think we're really capable of so much more. Every time we start headed in that direction, fascist assholes show up and convince millions of stupid people to tear it all down, and then we start all over.
There's clearly something wrong with humanity, because this keeps happening.
I used to read it to. I loved Martin Gardner and James Burkes' columns.
But they went away, and the magazine started publishing things that insulted my intelligence.
I cancelled my subscription to Scientific American in 2013, after they hired the New York Times gadget columnist, David Pogue.
The last straw was his column arguing that US schools should stop trying to get kids to remember things -- since we can give them tablets with all the information in the world on them -- and focus on more important things like critical thinking.
As if its possible to reason about things if you don't know anything. And, of course, the Internet doesn't contain all the world's information, nor are web pages as long-term reliable as something chiseled in stone.
The article in question was titled "The Last Thing You’ll Memorize: Have smartphones in every pocket made memorization obsolete?" by David Pogue.
> Calculators will always be with us. So why not let them do the grunt work and free up more time for students to learn more complex concepts or master more difficult problems?
> In the same way, maybe we’ll soon conclude that memorizing facts is no longer part of the modern student’s task. Maybe we should let the smartphone call up those facts as necessary—and let students focus on developing analytical skills (logic, interpre- tation, creative problem solving) and personal ones (motivation, self-control, tolerance).
There were a LOT of regular columns that had very very old authors who'd been at it forever, and I figured when those people died off, most of the magazine would go as well. And a few like Forrest Mims III who just got annoyed with the obnoxiously atheist editorial staff, and decided to stop living a lie. No surprise, they dumped a fundy christian who dared to talk about their own religion, and risked spoiling their nice sciency atheist vibe. That literally nobody gave a shit about..
Stupid fights like that where the editorial staff just got something up their asses, and wouldn't let it go, I think were the beginning of the end.
That and online media tended to disseminate the information FAST, and anything of interest in the science community, would be old old news by the time they got it published.
It still provided entertainment for those casually browsing the various subjects, and who weren't just hardcore nuts trying to nose into the latest in astrophysics or whatever. lol!
You can't put toothpaste back in the tube. This slow corruption of media news sources only encourages those with a grip on reality to send their messages elsewhere. Trump's intentional suppression of intelligence will just backfire when the scientists whose work is invaluable go to where the doors are open and there is support. America falls, others rise. I'm sure that's what the administration wants. Do you?
It already backfired. China is already on track to build the world's best new particle accelerator and a state of the art neutrino experiment. They are also surging ahead in quantum computing, green energy, space technology, and of course materials science and semiconductor manufacturing. China is building over a dozen new nuclear reactors and terrawatts of solar capacity, while the US is still saying "drill baby drill" and cutting research funding.
I'm a scientist myself and I'm getting ads on facebook and Instagram telling me to go work in other countries. Makes me sad man. My dad voted for you-know-who and says "well I don't get why they're cutting research." It's obvious dude... it's revenge on the people who oppose him. Same story with why Scientific American is muzzled, and why other newspapers and publications got censored before the election by their billionaire owners. The looting of our industry and research apparatus is ongoing, and happening out in the open.
This is why you don't put a foreign asset in charge of a country. They do what they can to break it up, which is what has been happening since round 1. Trying to break the country up for the benefit of the foreign nation he serves.
Unfortunately when it comes to science specifically, that doesn’t mean they’re guaranteed to fill the gaps in scientific research and funding. They haven’t. It could take decades or centuries.
I have written for them in the past year (and am quoted in the November issue for my science). No one mentioned politics at any point to me, but then they weren’t topics where it would come up.
Exceptionally good editors and staff though- you obviously have to be to work there- but the entire science writing industry (and writing industry in general) just has so many strains right now. It’s the classic conundrum of how people want good writing but don’t want to pay for it.
Yes, writing everywhere is struggling. I wish this was the top comment. Unfortunately this subreddit doesn't allow image replies but there's so many charts showing what you're talking about. The industry is less than a quarter of what it used to be.
I’m looking at the renewal form for Sci Am. I’m not going to re-subscribe. I’ve read it, off and on for 65 years, either at a library or by subscription. With the owner said to be pushing the content to the right to please an anti-science US president, I’m quite done with it.
It’s like the decline and death of someone you admired.
It’s similar to the right-wing politicization of CBS. My wife and I remember all the great shows CBS had from the mid 1950s through the 1970s and the news with Walter Cronkite. There were comedies. dramas, 60 Minutes. Then a Trumpish oligarch got control. It seems like every night is full of programs about FBI or NCIS. We’re done with it.
There is no right pushing of content. In fact, the editorial mandate has not been changed at all. I am amazed how misinformation like this propagates. Love to learn the sources of where these thoughts originate.
The issue is that there is no such thing as a capitalism-proof monopoly law. Under capitalism, business ALWAYS trends toward monopoly. It is a fundamental, irrefutable law. You can pass legislation to try to curb this, but eventually those with the most money WILL get that legislation overturned or disregarded. It is inevitable.
In a society where money directly equals power then those with the most money always win, regardless of what the legislation says. It’s just a matter of time.
“Helmuth, who joined the magazine in 2020, had pushed it to cover more politics, arguing that science cannot be disentangled from its social context. Scientific American had issued presidentialendorsements for the first time under her leadership.”
2020 is when I stopped reading. I can read about Gaza or race or gender or the fucking president anywhere. I come to SA to read about the cosmos and the structure of reality, largely to get away from the nightmare of humanity right now.
My children all read Asimov, Sagan, and others, and stared at critical thinking and fallacy posters on the walls before they knew how to read them. They are now in their forties, and my hope is that they exceed my adherence to them, and continue to do so. I didn’t get that from my parents. This is the greatest gift I gave them, aside from, you know, life, lol. And they have done so with their kids in turn. That is my greatest sense of fulfillment and pride.
I’m not the only one who did this. Many others have. Don’t think that the baton hasn’t been passed at all. It has.
And the generation proceeding you is doing everything they can do to pass that same baton. Some advisement is welcome, because we face some of the most sinisterly ignorant forces possible - many with their algorithmic battering rams - trying to poison our own children’s minds.
I was a subscriber from 1996 until around 2006. At 2006, I simply could not take the garbage quality of the articles that showed no signs of improving.
I started subscribing to Scientific American because it did a good job of communicating on hard science. Obviously, it's not a research publication. But it did a good job on focusing on research publications and translating the information to a lay but somewhat sophisticated audience. And I did enjoy that it did include short articles discussing fringe areas of research that probably weren't going to go anywhere, but they were at least interesting to see that someone was actively researching the issue.
Around 2002 or so I noticed a marked decrease in covering hard science, and a greater emphasis on soft sciences and even sociological garbage, which doesn't even deserve to be called science. They were trying to do what other, lighter, less serious publications like Popular Science were doing. To qualify the trend - they were trying to expand their audience to dumber readers.
But even more unforgivable was that the editing just went to being non-existent. Typos, grammar errors, lack of punctuation. It went from the writing quality of at least a grad student to close to a middle schooler.
They've been dead to me for 20 years.
And it's baffling that this author is trying to defend publishing articles like “Science Tells Us the U.S. Is Heading toward a Dictatorship.” That's not science. That's argument, philosophy, politics, maybe even history. But to place such a purely opinion piece under the guise of science is insulting to science. And it never should've been published in something that was supposed to be dedicated to hard science and how science changes the world.
I agree wholeheartedly. In the 90s I wrote some programs implementing artificial neural networks trained using the back propagation method which is basically gradient descent which I learned from a Scientific American article.
NOTHING like that was to be found a decade or so later. Everything had a noticeable political message, which I often actually agreed with, but the hard science was completely gone. The politics preceded the current administration’s first go around by a lot.
You may want to actually read the piece before opining on it. First, it is clearly labeled as opinion. Secondly, it's full of detailed takes from political scientists. While political science, like other social sciences, is naturally not as rigorous as Physics, it's still science.
And SciAm has always had articles on archaeology, anthropology, and political science, this wasn't a new trend.
The real change that I personally regret is that most articles are now written by science journalists. They used to be almost exclusively written by scholars, about their actual research (or adjacent to it), but this has become more and more the exception.
Political science is not a science, and when people disagree with half baked ideas thar are not supported by data, let alone tested, they are called anti-science. Yeah, SciAm went down the toilet over a decade ago and has been publishing crap. Not surprised.
Same. i had a subscription and gave up on it around the same time. Ironically, half or more of the people commenting don't seem to get whar science is , and many seem to make this political.
I can't wait until they're only allowed to publish "approved" science articles about "approved" science. Like how damaged ear cartilage can repair itself perfectly in a few days.
Just further evidence that literally every person who supported the Trump administration in any way, even tacitly (including EVERY voter), needs jail time.
TL;DR: wrote this whole thing out in response to a comment but realized I was responding to the article and I got semi off topic but it’s also relevant so I’ll leave it
From what I’ve personally seen, a loud minority (or maybe it’s the majority, idk but I don’t think so) makes science seem infallible and incompatible with religion/spirituality.
At a time where trust in government is low and humanity is facing new things like AI slop, sloppy file cover ups, and an incoming technocratic surveillance state, I think, speaking for myself here as well, some other people I’m sure, it’s easy to want to take a step back and re-evaluate some things.
And so they turn to human nature: superstitions, religions, shared stories/experiences, and on the darker end of the spectrum, pseudo science, psy-ops, and questionable pod cast hosts. I think everyone does this, just some people on the other “side” turn to science and materialism, or maybe non-reductive physicalism is a better way to put it.
The problem is, a large portion of the population can’t seem to understand nuance. A lot of these things can coexist. I, speaking for myself again, trust science. But I also fully believe some sort of “non-human intelligence,” is interacting with humanity. This is based on my own experiences for the most part but the point is, this doesn’t make me reject science. I just view life as a dualist and assume science will catch up someday.
My point being, paying attention is important but just because one thing is this way or seems this way, doesn’t mean it really is. Science is about being open-minded. Idk. Super off topic, my bad, I’m stoned. I’ll add a TL;DR: lol.
>But I also fully believe some sort of “non-human intelligence,” is interacting with humanity.
This is where you lost me. I'll admit that there's nothing disproving it as long as you keep it that vague, but it sounds like all the other religions and God claims and ghost claims. And those ones always end up having a non-supernatural explanation.
Human minds can be very easy to fool. We're hardwired to look for patterns, and we start to see patterns where they don't actually exist.
I hear ya. I try to keep it vague when I talk about it because it’s definitely, usually, received similarly but less politely than it was by you.
I realize the brain is fallible. I guess I’ve just experienced enough weird stuff that’s been simultaneously experienced by others that I’m convinced that even if it’s “just the brain being weird,” science hasn’t fully figured it out.
I genuinely don’t think it’s beyond possibility for something like that to be occurring though. Different people ascribe different names and associations to their experiences but I think it’s a little more than brain “deception” even if it is just a different brain perception.
My main point being, I think my belief(s) can coexist with our current reality. I guess I just don’t think that idea is super weird. There are lots of people who function as part of society who hold “supernatural” beliefs. Does that mean all of those people shouldn’t learn science? No way. In the same sense, I don’t think science needs to directly clash with anything that’s beyond our paradigm.
Edit: hopefully fast enough, yeah, human minds are crazy fallible and that’s another instance of people not paying attention or weighing the multiple variables of a situation.
I'll add my 2¢ here, since my comment is also tangential to the main topic.
The other day, I was reading some things about the history of the Internet and the regulation of its infrastructure in the US. In one of those Wikipedia pages there was the inclusion of an interesting term. I'm unsure if it is a direct quote from the cited "National Information Infrastructure" plan, or if it was a phrase inserted by the Wikipedia editor, but regardless I think it is accurate:
>...National Information Infrastructure (NII) plan, which governed the transition of the Internet from US federal control to private-sector governance, with an accompanying shift from the 1968-1992 single-payer economy to a competitive market economy.
And my point there is that sometimes, in certain situations, which are generally explainable by the term "utility" - though context and nuance is important - it makes sense to allow the natural monopoly to be a monopoly so that it may be appropriately and efficiently managed and regulated as a single entity rather than that single entity being shattered and spread into a thousand pieces. When a natural monopoly is forcefully broken into multiple pieces, that does not make things better, for anyone. It makes the service or product worse, at a higher cost, and any oversight is harder to do. This makes things worse from every standpoint, whether that is the citizens/customers, the citizens/workers, or the citizens/public servants/regulators.
Note, there is no such thing as a "consumer" or "producer", that is stupid framing borrowed from approximately 1920-1945.
Right, so also, monopoly is kind of an ambiguous term. Because what's the difference between having a national monopoly as opposed to a bunch of regional businesses? It isn't like that national monopoly could be ran by one person or one group, so does it make a difference? Yes, because if it is under a single umbrella, all the data is under a single umbrella, which means all the financial and legal things are in one place. Instead of how it is now, when that single monopoly is *literally forced* to not be able to interoperate because of legal and financial barriers. Which is the mechanism by which the aforementioned worse quality for higher costs is created.
Now the Internet and computer technologies has changed the way things work. Previously, a lot of clearly objective, indisputable truths, were definitely true and could not be any other way. The Internet has changed that. Massively. That doesn't mean everything can be a monopoly however. I would argue that actually, most of what we have allowed to be a monopoly, should not be, and what we have forced to be split - like the telecommunications infrastructure - should be a single monopoly, because that's the only thing that makes sense.
Or consider the video game "platforms". Why can't I choose to switch between them, and have my games that I bought transfer? Whether it is a license or ownership shouldn't really matter, because I paid for it. I should be able to switch - isn't that how a "competitive market" would function? And further more, is it not *uncompetitive* and directly in violation of both the letter and spirit of the antitrust laws, to charge some people for multiplayer gaming access, while making it free for others? (Answer: yes, it is).
Anyway E Pluribus Unum nerds. It's literally the motto. The founders would be appalled that pretty much everything they warned against, we did anyway, and everything they set up as an aspiration towards the future, was discarded at all points except maybe 1945-1970.
Oh, right, the kind of kicking off point of all this was, broadly your comment and specifically
The problem is, a large portion of the population can’t seem to understand nuance. A lot of these things can coexist. I, speaking for myself again, trust science.
My point being, paying attention is important but just because one thing is this way or seems this way, doesn’t mean it really is. Science is about being open-minded.
Because while reading the article, I was thinking - as with many other media situations - does it really make sense to have something as broadly defined as "science" to have multiple outlets that are, at least somewhat, geared towards the general population? That have basically the same role, which is to provide a communications layer from the experts to the laymen? Wouldn't it make sense to merge Scientific American and Science.org? (Answer: yes, it would)
Also, side note
But I also fully believe some sort of “non-human intelligence,” is interacting with humanity. This is based on my own experiences for the most part but the point is, this doesn’t make me reject science. I just view life as a dualist and assume science will catch up someday.
I highly recommend reading about AI, and all the related things. Such as early computer science philosophies, information theory and... well there's a lot of interrelated topics, but those and neuroscience/neurochemistry/psych- cover most of it. Because I really don't think it's so much a "non-human intelligence" in that way that I am inferring you intended, but more in the sense that intelligence literally *isn't* a human only thing. To some degree information itself is just signals, sensory inputs, and all life reacts to it in a certain way. Pavlov and Skinner. And information theory in particular, as well as like... how the LLMs function, makes it kind of clear, in an unclear and hard to define way, that language itself actually is part of this, even though only humans have a language that is this advanced.
I’ll be honest I only gave your comment a quick skim but it deserves a full read, plus I’m curious about the links, so l will come back to it this evening.
I will say I enjoyed learning about the NII plan, I had never heard of that. I don’t mean to imply nuance and paying attention negate anything. Some things are as they are.
And most importantly, I agree science should be open ended. That’s sort of my point. There’s two loud groups of people, who don’t account for everyone, that make it seem like one avenue is the correct one and there’s no room for more.
I think there’s room for a lot.
In regard to NHI/AI, I will say I’m not educated enough to confidently say I agree, disagree, or even fully understand. I just know I’ve had an array of experiences, some sober, some not, some shared, that surpass what science is often willing to look at, simply because it isn’t measurable in a way that we use yet.
Science is agnostic to claims that cannot be falsified. Can we falsify your belief in a super-intelligence that is causing measurable impacts on humankind? It’s not that it’s not compatible or it is, per se, it’s just that it’s not a scientific question, so it’s irrelevant to science.
Damn bro I typed a whole ass response and you deleted the original comment, I’ll leave it below.
But you are putting words in my mouth/being slightly pedantic. I didn’t say super-intelligence or “measurable impact,” I just said interacting with. I’m not making claims beyond that.
TL;DR: here’s the original reply
I definitely dwell in a very dualist or if I want to do some heavy lifting, a close to non-reductive physicalist state of mind.
First, let me be clear. I understand that science functions in a way that makes sense and is measurable. With that being said, I can believe in any religion or other supernatural entities while still seeing, understanding, and accepting the provable process of a theory or whatever.
I mean some people literally believe God/gods/etc., are real but influenced evolution. They acknowledge the process while maintaining their belief. It doesn’t mean their belief is testable but it really isn’t able to be disproven either.
I don’t know if it’s a super-intelligence, just some sort of non-human intelligence or as (iirc) I mentioned in a different comment, I’d even be willing to accept it’s some reflection of our own consciousness or something that we aren’t fully aware of yet.
I only know so much but from what I can gather it’s still 50/50 on if consciousness is local or non local (I think that’s the right term) and we just don’t know enough to eliminate possibilities. We just don’t need them to hurt science either.
In regards to the religion comment, I think it comes down to how literally you interpret religious teachings/text. Some of those beliefs are more or less incompatible with scientific theory. Like, if I literally believe the world was created in a couple days and accept the idea it was done so 6 thousand years ago, I have to reject a lot of fundamental scientific theories.
I deleted my original comment because I thought it was too harsh, so I just said science was agnostic, which is true, lol.
Gotcha. I appreciate the explanation. My bad if I came off harsh as well.
I see what you are saying. My view of compatibility only exists if everyone interpreted things that way. Fair point, I really can’t argue with that stance.
I guess the lines of two things being true blur easily for me. Just my perspective. Again, the point of my OP wasn’t to take a stance vs science or vice versa, rather, I was echoing my experience and observations and trying to point out why some folks have fallen victim to extremes.
I think you hit on two things here. One there is a part of science (not a huge part) that likes to devalue faith. But there is nothing incompatible with faith and science. One is about physical things the other is about spiritual belief. Yes people of faith occasionally devalue science as well but that’s the issue with
That cycle. Faith has no place in science. But science shouldn’t govern things like faith (think about science and morality. There is nothing moral or amoral about science but you can’t really build a moral system that isn’t a little cringe off just science where as you can make a pretty good scientific numeric case for some horrible shit if you ignore all ideas of faith outside of science). So we need both whether you like it or not.
The second point you made about trust in government I think is pretty much on but it’s really fueled by modern media. modern media is embracing the idea that when science is wrong science has failed. It’s just the opposite. When science fails and someone says “we discovered we were wrong but here is the right answer”. That’s not a defeat for science. That’s a victory. The scientific establishment overcame its past pre baked ideas and examined itself honestly to find the truth. That’s actually how it should work. The media plays like this is a failure “another theory disproven”. Vs “new knowledge discovered”. It’s used as a weapon because so often science tells us unpleasant things that lead us to point the finger at powerful people. For example smoking and cancer. Or global warming and fossil fuel. Science told us those things were someone’s fault. And those someone’s worked hard to devalue science using the media “plenty of People smoke and don’t get cancer. Why would you lie to us”. Things like that. A lot of mistrust in science is specifically due to a non understanding that science evolves and changes. Hundreds of years ago alchemy was considered a legit science. Why isn’t it one anymore? Because the scientific community realized it was bullshit and policed themselves. How often do you see the media or government officials police themselves?
I appreciate the articulated response and that you pointed out it’s not, nor as you say, should it be, a large group of “science vs religion or however you would word it. Not trying to be pedantic, I think we are saying the same things.
And I can’t help but to agree, modern media, although I’m unsure if you mean just social media, but likely in general has misled a lot of people. I’m not trying to make an argument for being ignorant. I can believe in something and still be grounded.
To put it briefly, I think modern media is a bummer and I’d hope we can get to a more transparent place soon. That said, with all we’ve seen recently, it’s not wrong to evaluate things with a healthy skepticism. The psy-op was well played and perhaps I’m partially victim but apart from what some people would view as “believing in ghosts” which I think (lol) , is “acceptable.”
I’m not trying to make a case for anything anti science. I’m just explaining a legitimate perspective which I’m sure some people share or share something similar as I mentioned previously. There’s a lot of room for both things to exist, they don’t have to interact with each other or influence each other. One is tangible and one is less so. Yin & yang or whatever. I hope that makes sense. Thanks again for the response.
When atheists say they believe in evidence and reason, this is what they're actually talking about. Entertainment media inspired by yet unrelated to science.
vampyire | 19 hours ago
Being a trained scientist the anti-science insanity sweeping the nation is horrifying to me
citizen42069101 | 18 hours ago
I'm not even a trained scientist. Just being capable of critical thinking makes this horrifying.
jxj24 | 17 hours ago
I am, and watching the deliberate destruction of just about everything I believe in has been among the worst experiences of my life.
Adventurous-Brain-36 | 16 hours ago
A huge portion of the world still very much trusts in science. Take heart.
BlastTyrantKM | 2 hours ago
This is like telling someone who's hungry, "Most of the people living on your street have plenty of food. You'll be fine, don't worry"
The idiots have almost complete control of the US
citizen42069101 | 17 hours ago
I just want you to know science will prevail and some of us still believe in you and your branch of knowledge.
SkoobySnacs | 9 hours ago
Science will prevail in other countries. America will be a shadow of it's former glory in a decade thanks to the one third of the voting public that thinks sky daddy is proud of our decent into idiocracy.
Adventurous-Brain-36 | 9 hours ago
No, not only because of one third. Those who obstinately refused to vote in a time of very clear impending crisis are equally responsible. Those who willfully abstain in a time of active crisis will be actively contributing.
SkoobySnacs | 6 hours ago
Are you aware that only a few seats are up for grabs? And only a few states matter in a presidential election? It sounds good to blame non voters but it logistically doesn't make sense. Everyone voting in Utah won't do jack shit in local or national elections. The same people will still end up winning. We don't even see national political ads here because it wouldn't make a difference. And it's the same way in a lot of places.
You need to put the blame where it belongs. The blame is with Nazis and Nazi sympathizers.
InfiniteWaffles58364 | 11 hours ago
Yeah, every day is becoming more excruciating. It's too much to bear.
MrCookie2099 | 4 hours ago
When the Republican party of Texas still bothered to make platforms, one part of the platform was to remove teaching critical thinking in schools.
crumpetsandbourbon | 12 hours ago
I have a STEM background, studied biology in college, and yet still my uneducated, MAGA parents have had the audacity to tell me, “we’ve done the research” on topics ranging from virology, vaccines or even climate change and they refuse to listen.
The current anti-intellectual movement sweeping the world is absolutely terrifying, and will be studied for decades to come.
Serris9K | 11 hours ago
To quote the 4th doctor: "The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit facts, they alter facts to fit the views, which can be uncomfortable if you're one of the facts needing altering."
vampyire | 12 hours ago
I totally get it-- trump did say he loves the uneducated, and really that means the willingly ignorant. Many people don't get to go to college but they realize logically that experts in a field are the ones who should be listened to. trumpians are the anthesis of this, they go on a webpage that fits their belief structure and count that as writ in stone.
steemSTEM | 11 hours ago
Trump is a symptom, not the cause of the anti intellectualism
Wag_The_God | 10 hours ago
It's becoming a feedback loop...
steemSTEM | 7 hours ago
No, the disease is raging on. Regardless of Trump.
evident_lee | 12 hours ago
But I watched a really well made video by Patriot Liberty doctor and he told me exactly what I wanted to hear. It must be true.
Toaneknee | 59 minutes ago
…. Or maybe not, unfortunately.
TheVoidSeeker | 17 hours ago
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” ― Isaac Asimov
It has been sweeping for a long time.
dsmith422 | 11 hours ago
And the country was still mostly embracing science back when he wrote that (1980). Now, we are actually running from it and embracing woo.
1nconsistentConstant | 11 hours ago
Even early authors like de Tocqueville commented on America's skepticism of abstract reasoning.
MrSnarf26 | 18 hours ago
We all lose when superstition and anti intellectualism win
Memory_Less | 17 hours ago
We become “owned” by the elite in a way that we have never experienced with technology and ai “advancements.”
AcknowledgeUs | 17 hours ago
*became
Memory_Less | 10 hours ago
Indeed, but there’s ‘still’ room to prevent total ownership.
AcknowledgeUs | 17 hours ago
It’s egoic greed disguised.
RustedRelics | 16 hours ago
We’re going through an anti-enlightenment.
jbray90 | 15 hours ago
Unfortunately, the facilitators of all this agree with this idea exactly and call it “The Dark Enlightenment”.
RustedRelics | 12 hours ago
Wow. That’s a horrifying term. Applicable for sure.
bringbackmegaman | 19 hours ago
It's so depressing
vampyire | 19 hours ago
it's sickening
PenguinSunday | 18 hours ago
It's horrifying too
ErictheStone | 14 hours ago
Oh my roommate and me where talking g about this like last week and thinks I'm too cynical saying We will never see American innovations in science and technology again in our lifetime. Best they can do is throw compressed gas cans on a roadster.
SubterrelProspector | 14 hours ago
It's anti-intellectualism's last gasp. Hang tight. It'll get ugly first but we are pushing back. The culture has already shifted against them. We can reverse course. It'll take time though.
OcotilloWells | 16 hours ago
I remember reading a science fiction story that seemed just like this. I think it ended with the head scientist consulting his horoscope to see what to do each day. I don't remember the name, and I think I have two stories mixed up. One had Combat Football, where there were few rules, and stadiums were locked up once the game began, so the teams' fans would also fight each other. The teams weren't by city, but ethnic groups and other nationwide groups like bikers. The other story had basically gladiator fights, to the death, often involving women.
mindbodyproblem | 13 hours ago
Sometimes I’ll start a sentence and I don’t know where it’s going. I just hope to find it somewhere along the way.
OcotilloWells | 12 hours ago
Weird, me as well.
Only_Razzmatazz_4498 | 17 hours ago
I remember reading Asimov and Sagan in the 80s already sounding the alarm. We’ve gone of the deep end at this point though.
DocJawbone | 18 hours ago
As a human being living in the world, I agree
UniqueIndividual3579 | 15 hours ago
Who was it who said "My ignorance is as good as your education"?
ScribeofShadows | 12 hours ago
Isaac Asimov
jahozer1 | 17 hours ago
Same
monkeyswithknives | 11 hours ago
I'm an English teacher. People are against books.
vampyire | 11 hours ago
that's just a heartbreaking situation for us to be in :(
monkeyswithknives | 11 hours ago
For the record, I love science, too.
Ntroepy | 13 hours ago
It’s really heartbreaking just how monumentally stupid all this is in the long term.
Suttreee | 12 hours ago
I mean it seems an inevitable outcome from the gradual devaluation of science brought on by a lack of exclusion. A large part of the population won't ever engage with the philosophy of science, and so when "science" is expanded to include things like philosophy or sociology, the concept is bound to lose integrity in public perception.
spaceocean99 | 12 hours ago
lol, sweeping the nation? There’s clearly a massive amount of uneducated people out there with no critical thinking skills. For some reason, they are the loudest and seem to show up to vote.
I would say about 10% are science deniers. That’s not sweeping…stop.
Cannibalis | 19 hours ago
"I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the abilities to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness."
-Carl Sagan
ArchitectNebulous | 17 hours ago
He is terrifying just how accurate he was in his prediction.
Cannibalis | 14 hours ago
That final interview he did with Charlie Rose was hauntingly accurate. We desperately need his guidance now more than ever.
"It’s a thing that Jefferson laid great stress on. It wasn’t enough, he said, to enshrine some rights in a Constitution or a Bill of Rights. The people had to be educated, and they had to practice their skepticism and their education. Oherwise we don’t run the government—the government runs us."
Aggressive_Roof488 | 8 hours ago
We should be a bit careful with scientific heroism though, that US in particular seems prone to.
I don't want to take anything away from Sagan, great scientist, great insights here. But no one is irreplaceable. It's a message of hope: we're not lost without him. We have more information today, and there are many just as capable and intelligent people around.
We need to build on and extend his work, shoulders of giants. What makes sense to do today? Look for information, principles, ideas. Don't just try to find the next science hero.
As this is a bit political, the (in particular US) right tend to build up strong confident personas. Political heroes, kings. Not only Trump, but he's ofc an example of this. They believe things because their hero said it. In politics, I feel left is a little better at that, although far from immune. Left tend to listen a bit more to science rather than follow heroes, although part of that is probably because science tends to agree more with the left narrative (facts are left biased).
As a scientist, I love when science is used or referred to in politics. While even science isn't infallible, It's the closest we have to facts by a wide margin. Very high hitrate, scientific consensus does sometimes turn out to be wrong, but it's so rare that each case has its own wiki entry, compared to the often worse-than-random straight up malicious disinformation you'll hear from politicians or influencers (this happens on both sides, although left tends to be less tolerant of it), where straight up knowingly lying is often accepted or widely acknowledge as default.
So with way more context than needed for a small note on tone: Sagan is amazing, but let's look at science, the data, the facts. We don't need him to continue working for better science literacy.
i_build_minds | 6 hours ago
What you say isn't wrong and the hope in it is admirable and relatable - but Sagan's persistence and care is less common as adversarial identity politics shrouds and divides us. The hope for Sagan to be here, to some, is a hope for enlightenment not only in science but of each other. He was so very wonderful.
Cannibalis | 5 hours ago
Yes, I agree completely, and that's pretty much his whole point. He wasn't some scientific prophet, and we just accept his words because he said so. You question authority. We have to distrust ourselves and what feels true, or what we want to be true from what we can actually demonstrate and test. And always be willing to change your mind based on the evidence, and follow it wherever it goes. Bit always demand evidence. This was the lesson of The Demon Haunted World.
If you just quote him like some authority, then you miss his point entirely. It's not really a left vs right issue, this is just human nature. Tribalism, confirmation bias, hero worship, etc. These are human problems. It doesn't matter what side you choose. But I agree, we shouldn't just look for another Carl Sagan to tell us what to think. Learn his baloney detection kit, and apply that scientific skepticism to everyone. Including the people you agree with, and especially yourself. Everyone should be held to those standards.
jxj24 | 17 hours ago
You'll rarely go wrong betting on human laziness and stupidity.
ebfortin | 17 hours ago
Incredibly accurate. It's like this guy traveled through time and came back to warns our 1980s self.
NDaveT | 15 hours ago
He didn't have to travel through time, the signs were there in the 1980s.
Edwards v. Aguillard was in 1986.
LoveaBook | 12 hours ago
tsk, tsk NDaveT.
A direct link for the curious: Edwards v. Aguillard.
Significant_Treat_87 | 14 hours ago
I was really blown away by this quote, and not that this actually cheapens it at all because he was deadly accurate, but I looked it up and he wrote it in 1995, when we were already balls deep in the transition to globalism
Drumfucius | 15 hours ago
The Demon-Haunted World should be required reading at the high school level.
Gram-GramAndShabadoo | 15 hours ago
Of all the people that had to have an early death... I just think about what leaning he could have continued to bring to the general public.
WillemDaFo | 9 hours ago
Fuck! https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/carl-sagans-foreboding-of-an-america/
Serris9K | 43 minutes ago
We've almost reached it. The mental faculties are starting to decline (due to suppressed education and AI exposure. (Not being just a hater, MIT found AI usage erodes current skills and cognitive ability, and even switching back to your brain only, AI still leaves lasting damage)), which makes it all the more important to resist.
(Source for the study: https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt/)
DocumentExternal6240 | 20 hours ago
I used to read it. It had many interesting articles.
cityshepherd | 19 hours ago
I felt the same way about the Playboy magazine 25-30 years ago lol. Seriously though it is so painful to watch the way science is being demonized and/or de-prioritized for ridiculous reasons. I understand that an authoritarian government needs an ignorant populace because they’re much easier to manipulate, but seeing the brain drain happening in this country right now in real time is absolutely devastating.
As human beings, we are capable of SO much more… SO much better. Instead we are held back on an extraordinary scale all because a handful of people are prioritizing accumulating and hoarding more wealth than they could EVER possibly use let alone need… and advancing science is simply not something that maximizes profit this fiscal quarter, so it is abandoned.
Anything related to investing in the future, in the long term, is seen as a waste by the people running the show… and that just sucks for all the rest of us.
acousticentropy | 19 hours ago
I agree we are capable of so much more.
I also think right now our biggest challenge is to solve the social problems. We keep getting stuck in the mud because we solved a lot of scientific issues… but we haven’t collectively developed our moral intelligence or culturally integrated the values.
We are still having Hume’s is/ought problem centuries later. Science is getting a lot better at telling us what exists. The scientific enterprise cannot tell us how to solve the ethical problem about what to do about the things that exist.
So gutting the humanities and arts; such that PHD level graduates have little chance at economic prosperity… isn’t helping us get any closer to solving the philosophical problems that could answer how we should allocate the abundance that modern society is capable of generating.
We might have to seriously rethink money, careers, and what a productive life looks like in the modern age.
The longer we cling to the old and ignore the new problems, the more our children suffer for it.
thenikolaka | 18 hours ago
Don’t forget about the people who enabled them. I hate to say that the religious are some of the most culpable of vilifying science and therefore education.
Fee_is_Required2 | 19 hours ago
I agree 100% with you - it’s maddening.
Forward_Success_2672 | 15 hours ago
This country is being groomed for disaster. Science and education are being demonized and religion pushed to the front. At the same China rightly controls religious fervor and amplifies education. The US is about to become a third world country and China will own the world.
cityshepherd | 7 hours ago
One of the worst parts about it is that the people who’ve made the emphasis on religion possible are so unfathomably awful and could not possibly be less “godly” if they tried. The fact that some of them are genuinely trying to bring about the end of days for whatever ridiculous reason is so absolutely bonkers I can’t even articulate it.
intensive-porpoise | 19 hours ago
I'm not sure if it's a global conspiracy as much as journalistic deadlines and printed media have been pushed into the Impossibility of Quality.
Either way, if there were a demand, there would be a supply. That might be the most frightening aspect.
Starfire70 | 16 hours ago
Fully agree with you. I often wonder how we ever managed to get this far like this.
brainmydamage | 10 hours ago
I don't think we're really capable of so much more. Every time we start headed in that direction, fascist assholes show up and convince millions of stupid people to tear it all down, and then we start all over.
There's clearly something wrong with humanity, because this keeps happening.
norbertus | 11 hours ago
I used to read it to. I loved Martin Gardner and James Burkes' columns.
But they went away, and the magazine started publishing things that insulted my intelligence.
I cancelled my subscription to Scientific American in 2013, after they hired the New York Times gadget columnist, David Pogue.
The last straw was his column arguing that US schools should stop trying to get kids to remember things -- since we can give them tablets with all the information in the world on them -- and focus on more important things like critical thinking.
As if its possible to reason about things if you don't know anything. And, of course, the Internet doesn't contain all the world's information, nor are web pages as long-term reliable as something chiseled in stone.
The article in question was titled "The Last Thing You’ll Memorize: Have smartphones in every pocket made memorization obsolete?" by David Pogue.
> Calculators will always be with us. So why not let them do the grunt work and free up more time for students to learn more complex concepts or master more difficult problems?
> In the same way, maybe we’ll soon conclude that memorizing facts is no longer part of the modern student’s task. Maybe we should let the smartphone call up those facts as necessary—and let students focus on developing analytical skills (logic, interpre- tation, creative problem solving) and personal ones (motivation, self-control, tolerance).
> http://users.auth.gr/gmenexes/docs/Scientific-American-August-2013-US.pdf
Ok, they all have "smart" phones now. So how's all that going with the feral iPad babies who can't read or do math?
Lanky_Ride_3315 | 16 hours ago
Try quanta and nautilus instead.
Ismhelpstheistgodown | 19 hours ago
Still do. It’s been a joy for 50 years. I need it to sort of keep up with my scientist children - Properly mad.
Aerospike_Ranger | 18 hours ago
There were a LOT of regular columns that had very very old authors who'd been at it forever, and I figured when those people died off, most of the magazine would go as well. And a few like Forrest Mims III who just got annoyed with the obnoxiously atheist editorial staff, and decided to stop living a lie. No surprise, they dumped a fundy christian who dared to talk about their own religion, and risked spoiling their nice sciency atheist vibe. That literally nobody gave a shit about..
Stupid fights like that where the editorial staff just got something up their asses, and wouldn't let it go, I think were the beginning of the end.
That and online media tended to disseminate the information FAST, and anything of interest in the science community, would be old old news by the time they got it published.
It still provided entertainment for those casually browsing the various subjects, and who weren't just hardcore nuts trying to nose into the latest in astrophysics or whatever. lol!
Epona44 | 19 hours ago
You can't put toothpaste back in the tube. This slow corruption of media news sources only encourages those with a grip on reality to send their messages elsewhere. Trump's intentional suppression of intelligence will just backfire when the scientists whose work is invaluable go to where the doors are open and there is support. America falls, others rise. I'm sure that's what the administration wants. Do you?
DoctorSpacecase | 14 hours ago
It already backfired. China is already on track to build the world's best new particle accelerator and a state of the art neutrino experiment. They are also surging ahead in quantum computing, green energy, space technology, and of course materials science and semiconductor manufacturing. China is building over a dozen new nuclear reactors and terrawatts of solar capacity, while the US is still saying "drill baby drill" and cutting research funding.
I'm a scientist myself and I'm getting ads on facebook and Instagram telling me to go work in other countries. Makes me sad man. My dad voted for you-know-who and says "well I don't get why they're cutting research." It's obvious dude... it's revenge on the people who oppose him. Same story with why Scientific American is muzzled, and why other newspapers and publications got censored before the election by their billionaire owners. The looting of our industry and research apparatus is ongoing, and happening out in the open.
FullofLovingSpite | 18 hours ago
This is why you don't put a foreign asset in charge of a country. They do what they can to break it up, which is what has been happening since round 1. Trying to break the country up for the benefit of the foreign nation he serves.
Reagalan | 18 hours ago
It's like when a subreddit starts getting toxic; the rest of us just get up and leave.
ADarwinAward | 15 hours ago
> America falls, others rise
Unfortunately when it comes to science specifically, that doesn’t mean they’re guaranteed to fill the gaps in scientific research and funding. They haven’t. It could take decades or centuries.
The-Invisible-Woman | 19 hours ago
Trump poisons everything. The chilling effect and outright attacks on science will be felt for years.
Unlikely_Comment_104 | 19 hours ago
*decades
Weevil1723 | 17 hours ago
A New Dark Age, made all the more frustrating by how preventable it was
Neumaschine | 17 hours ago
Generations
limbodog | 19 hours ago
Destroyed by anti science politicians, and cowardly owners
anrwlias | 18 hours ago
Collaborating owners. They actively support the Trump admin.
Andromeda321 | 18 hours ago
I have written for them in the past year (and am quoted in the November issue for my science). No one mentioned politics at any point to me, but then they weren’t topics where it would come up.
Exceptionally good editors and staff though- you obviously have to be to work there- but the entire science writing industry (and writing industry in general) just has so many strains right now. It’s the classic conundrum of how people want good writing but don’t want to pay for it.
redredbloodwine | 16 hours ago
The only viable news media business model is disinformation.
Immorpher | 14 hours ago
Yes, writing everywhere is struggling. I wish this was the top comment. Unfortunately this subreddit doesn't allow image replies but there's so many charts showing what you're talking about. The industry is less than a quarter of what it used to be.
batlord_typhus | 19 hours ago
Hierarchies of authority cannot abide the authority of knowledge.
Nathan-Stubblefield | 18 hours ago
I’m looking at the renewal form for Sci Am. I’m not going to re-subscribe. I’ve read it, off and on for 65 years, either at a library or by subscription. With the owner said to be pushing the content to the right to please an anti-science US president, I’m quite done with it.
It’s like the decline and death of someone you admired.
It’s similar to the right-wing politicization of CBS. My wife and I remember all the great shows CBS had from the mid 1950s through the 1970s and the news with Walter Cronkite. There were comedies. dramas, 60 Minutes. Then a Trumpish oligarch got control. It seems like every night is full of programs about FBI or NCIS. We’re done with it.
nanopicofared | 17 hours ago
Sadly - just cancelled mine too. Got an immediate cancellation and a refund.
bobkaf | 7 hours ago
There is no right pushing of content. In fact, the editorial mandate has not been changed at all. I am amazed how misinformation like this propagates. Love to learn the sources of where these thoughts originate.
AcknowledgeUs | 19 hours ago
Let’s also mourn the fall of freedom with this explanation of our continued loss.
DocCEN007 | 17 hours ago
If people have facts and understand them as well as deductive reasoning, they're harder to control.
probablynotaskrull | 19 hours ago
Every day of my life I’m more convinced that corporations shouldn’t own other corporations.
anrwlias | 18 hours ago
We used to enforce monopoly laws to check this.
DragonDai | 10 hours ago
The issue is that there is no such thing as a capitalism-proof monopoly law. Under capitalism, business ALWAYS trends toward monopoly. It is a fundamental, irrefutable law. You can pass legislation to try to curb this, but eventually those with the most money WILL get that legislation overturned or disregarded. It is inevitable.
In a society where money directly equals power then those with the most money always win, regardless of what the legislation says. It’s just a matter of time.
calm-lab66 | 18 hours ago
That's a good point. The law says corporations have rights like people yet it's illegal for people to own people (slavery).
joaofava | 18 hours ago
“Helmuth, who joined the magazine in 2020, had pushed it to cover more politics, arguing that science cannot be disentangled from its social context. Scientific American had issued presidential endorsements for the first time under her leadership.”
2020 is when I stopped reading. I can read about Gaza or race or gender or the fucking president anywhere. I come to SA to read about the cosmos and the structure of reality, largely to get away from the nightmare of humanity right now.
murderedbyaname | 17 hours ago
Exactly. This administration is systematically targeting our safe spaces.
Sea-Shoe3287 | 15 hours ago
Agent Krasnov's work continues apace.
BeneficialTrash6 | 13 hours ago
wtf does your comment even mean in relation to the comment you were replying to?
SkepticalJohn | 18 hours ago
When the richest guy can threaten Congress you know civilization is crumbling. Maybe be sure to vote.
Justice_For_Pluto | 19 hours ago
My partner’s dad says scientists/doctors only “tell people what they want to hear.” Hope he’s ready for physicist grandkids
Semanticky | 15 hours ago
My children all read Asimov, Sagan, and others, and stared at critical thinking and fallacy posters on the walls before they knew how to read them. They are now in their forties, and my hope is that they exceed my adherence to them, and continue to do so. I didn’t get that from my parents. This is the greatest gift I gave them, aside from, you know, life, lol. And they have done so with their kids in turn. That is my greatest sense of fulfillment and pride.
I’m not the only one who did this. Many others have. Don’t think that the baton hasn’t been passed at all. It has.
Minerva567 | 14 hours ago
And the generation proceeding you is doing everything they can do to pass that same baton. Some advisement is welcome, because we face some of the most sinisterly ignorant forces possible - many with their algorithmic battering rams - trying to poison our own children’s minds.
It’s very, very difficult.
jcooli09 | 16 hours ago
Trump has destroyed most of whatever greatness America could ever claim, and he's working on the rest of it.
RIP America. I wish I hadn't survived to see your end.
Vanlife4me | 12 hours ago
Fell way back in 2015. You’re a tad late to the party.
Serris9K | 11 hours ago
I loved scientific American. Only reason I didn't read more was paywalls and I am poor
NicoBeingAModelCitiz | 18 hours ago
Just like the Atlantic. Which got a zionist editor and promptly became a mockery of itself. Its just Axios in bound format now
klesmerelda | 14 hours ago
Those in power want us to be fearful, fecund, and foolish
deekamus | 13 hours ago
Fall? More like knee-capping.
Lopsided_Tiger_0296 | 17 hours ago
Should be changed to “The Fall of America”
BeneficialTrash6 | 13 hours ago
This article is literally 20 years too late.
I was a subscriber from 1996 until around 2006. At 2006, I simply could not take the garbage quality of the articles that showed no signs of improving.
I started subscribing to Scientific American because it did a good job of communicating on hard science. Obviously, it's not a research publication. But it did a good job on focusing on research publications and translating the information to a lay but somewhat sophisticated audience. And I did enjoy that it did include short articles discussing fringe areas of research that probably weren't going to go anywhere, but they were at least interesting to see that someone was actively researching the issue.
Around 2002 or so I noticed a marked decrease in covering hard science, and a greater emphasis on soft sciences and even sociological garbage, which doesn't even deserve to be called science. They were trying to do what other, lighter, less serious publications like Popular Science were doing. To qualify the trend - they were trying to expand their audience to dumber readers.
But even more unforgivable was that the editing just went to being non-existent. Typos, grammar errors, lack of punctuation. It went from the writing quality of at least a grad student to close to a middle schooler.
They've been dead to me for 20 years.
And it's baffling that this author is trying to defend publishing articles like “Science Tells Us the U.S. Is Heading toward a Dictatorship.” That's not science. That's argument, philosophy, politics, maybe even history. But to place such a purely opinion piece under the guise of science is insulting to science. And it never should've been published in something that was supposed to be dedicated to hard science and how science changes the world.
BadEnucleation | 11 hours ago
I agree wholeheartedly. In the 90s I wrote some programs implementing artificial neural networks trained using the back propagation method which is basically gradient descent which I learned from a Scientific American article.
NOTHING like that was to be found a decade or so later. Everything had a noticeable political message, which I often actually agreed with, but the hard science was completely gone. The politics preceded the current administration’s first go around by a lot.
Langdon_St_Ives | 10 hours ago
You may want to actually read the piece before opining on it. First, it is clearly labeled as opinion. Secondly, it's full of detailed takes from political scientists. While political science, like other social sciences, is naturally not as rigorous as Physics, it's still science.
And SciAm has always had articles on archaeology, anthropology, and political science, this wasn't a new trend.
The real change that I personally regret is that most articles are now written by science journalists. They used to be almost exclusively written by scholars, about their actual research (or adjacent to it), but this has become more and more the exception.
Realistic_Special_53 | 9 hours ago
Political science is not a science, and when people disagree with half baked ideas thar are not supported by data, let alone tested, they are called anti-science. Yeah, SciAm went down the toilet over a decade ago and has been publishing crap. Not surprised.
Platooimagination | 9 hours ago
Political science employs scientific methods but studies a subject that limits law-like prediction. Too crude to say it's "not a science".
Langdon_St_Ives | 9 hours ago
Well that for one is your opinion.
Realistic_Special_53 | 9 hours ago
Same. i had a subscription and gave up on it around the same time. Ironically, half or more of the people commenting don't seem to get whar science is , and many seem to make this political.
paulsteinway | 16 hours ago
I can't wait until they're only allowed to publish "approved" science articles about "approved" science. Like how damaged ear cartilage can repair itself perfectly in a few days.
DragonDai | 11 hours ago
Just further evidence that literally every person who supported the Trump administration in any way, even tacitly (including EVERY voter), needs jail time.
conradthecook | 15 hours ago
Well we had a decent run
Immorpher | 15 hours ago
Eh, the majority of magazines died a long time ago. And it used to be owned by one of the biggest enemies of open-access science.
Hangashores | 3 hours ago
🇨🇦Canada respects, encourages and advances scientific research and education. Now is a great time to move north!
Ambitious_Zombie8473 | 14 hours ago
TL;DR: wrote this whole thing out in response to a comment but realized I was responding to the article and I got semi off topic but it’s also relevant so I’ll leave it
From what I’ve personally seen, a loud minority (or maybe it’s the majority, idk but I don’t think so) makes science seem infallible and incompatible with religion/spirituality.
At a time where trust in government is low and humanity is facing new things like AI slop, sloppy file cover ups, and an incoming technocratic surveillance state, I think, speaking for myself here as well, some other people I’m sure, it’s easy to want to take a step back and re-evaluate some things.
And so they turn to human nature: superstitions, religions, shared stories/experiences, and on the darker end of the spectrum, pseudo science, psy-ops, and questionable pod cast hosts. I think everyone does this, just some people on the other “side” turn to science and materialism, or maybe non-reductive physicalism is a better way to put it.
The problem is, a large portion of the population can’t seem to understand nuance. A lot of these things can coexist. I, speaking for myself again, trust science. But I also fully believe some sort of “non-human intelligence,” is interacting with humanity. This is based on my own experiences for the most part but the point is, this doesn’t make me reject science. I just view life as a dualist and assume science will catch up someday.
My point being, paying attention is important but just because one thing is this way or seems this way, doesn’t mean it really is. Science is about being open-minded. Idk. Super off topic, my bad, I’m stoned. I’ll add a TL;DR: lol.
Captain_Pumpkinhead | 13 hours ago
>But I also fully believe some sort of “non-human intelligence,” is interacting with humanity.
This is where you lost me. I'll admit that there's nothing disproving it as long as you keep it that vague, but it sounds like all the other religions and God claims and ghost claims. And those ones always end up having a non-supernatural explanation.
Human minds can be very easy to fool. We're hardwired to look for patterns, and we start to see patterns where they don't actually exist.
Ambitious_Zombie8473 | 13 hours ago
I hear ya. I try to keep it vague when I talk about it because it’s definitely, usually, received similarly but less politely than it was by you.
I realize the brain is fallible. I guess I’ve just experienced enough weird stuff that’s been simultaneously experienced by others that I’m convinced that even if it’s “just the brain being weird,” science hasn’t fully figured it out.
I genuinely don’t think it’s beyond possibility for something like that to be occurring though. Different people ascribe different names and associations to their experiences but I think it’s a little more than brain “deception” even if it is just a different brain perception.
My main point being, I think my belief(s) can coexist with our current reality. I guess I just don’t think that idea is super weird. There are lots of people who function as part of society who hold “supernatural” beliefs. Does that mean all of those people shouldn’t learn science? No way. In the same sense, I don’t think science needs to directly clash with anything that’s beyond our paradigm.
Edit: hopefully fast enough, yeah, human minds are crazy fallible and that’s another instance of people not paying attention or weighing the multiple variables of a situation.
irrelevantusername24 | 12 hours ago
I'll add my 2¢ here, since my comment is also tangential to the main topic.
The other day, I was reading some things about the history of the Internet and the regulation of its infrastructure in the US. In one of those Wikipedia pages there was the inclusion of an interesting term. I'm unsure if it is a direct quote from the cited "National Information Infrastructure" plan, or if it was a phrase inserted by the Wikipedia editor, but regardless I think it is accurate:
>...National Information Infrastructure (NII) plan, which governed the transition of the Internet from US federal control to private-sector governance, with an accompanying shift from the 1968-1992 single-payer economy to a competitive market economy.
And my point there is that sometimes, in certain situations, which are generally explainable by the term "utility" - though context and nuance is important - it makes sense to allow the natural monopoly to be a monopoly so that it may be appropriately and efficiently managed and regulated as a single entity rather than that single entity being shattered and spread into a thousand pieces. When a natural monopoly is forcefully broken into multiple pieces, that does not make things better, for anyone. It makes the service or product worse, at a higher cost, and any oversight is harder to do. This makes things worse from every standpoint, whether that is the citizens/customers, the citizens/workers, or the citizens/public servants/regulators.
Note, there is no such thing as a "consumer" or "producer", that is stupid framing borrowed from approximately 1920-1945.
Right, so also, monopoly is kind of an ambiguous term. Because what's the difference between having a national monopoly as opposed to a bunch of regional businesses? It isn't like that national monopoly could be ran by one person or one group, so does it make a difference? Yes, because if it is under a single umbrella, all the data is under a single umbrella, which means all the financial and legal things are in one place. Instead of how it is now, when that single monopoly is *literally forced* to not be able to interoperate because of legal and financial barriers. Which is the mechanism by which the aforementioned worse quality for higher costs is created.
Now the Internet and computer technologies has changed the way things work. Previously, a lot of clearly objective, indisputable truths, were definitely true and could not be any other way. The Internet has changed that. Massively. That doesn't mean everything can be a monopoly however. I would argue that actually, most of what we have allowed to be a monopoly, should not be, and what we have forced to be split - like the telecommunications infrastructure - should be a single monopoly, because that's the only thing that makes sense.
Or consider the video game "platforms". Why can't I choose to switch between them, and have my games that I bought transfer? Whether it is a license or ownership shouldn't really matter, because I paid for it. I should be able to switch - isn't that how a "competitive market" would function? And further more, is it not *uncompetitive* and directly in violation of both the letter and spirit of the antitrust laws, to charge some people for multiplayer gaming access, while making it free for others? (Answer: yes, it is).
Anyway E Pluribus Unum nerds. It's literally the motto. The founders would be appalled that pretty much everything they warned against, we did anyway, and everything they set up as an aspiration towards the future, was discarded at all points except maybe 1945-1970.
Oh, right, the kind of kicking off point of all this was, broadly your comment and specifically
Because while reading the article, I was thinking - as with many other media situations - does it really make sense to have something as broadly defined as "science" to have multiple outlets that are, at least somewhat, geared towards the general population? That have basically the same role, which is to provide a communications layer from the experts to the laymen? Wouldn't it make sense to merge Scientific American and Science.org? (Answer: yes, it would)
Also, side note
I highly recommend reading about AI, and all the related things. Such as early computer science philosophies, information theory and... well there's a lot of interrelated topics, but those and neuroscience/neurochemistry/psych- cover most of it. Because I really don't think it's so much a "non-human intelligence" in that way that I am inferring you intended, but more in the sense that intelligence literally *isn't* a human only thing. To some degree information itself is just signals, sensory inputs, and all life reacts to it in a certain way. Pavlov and Skinner. And information theory in particular, as well as like... how the LLMs function, makes it kind of clear, in an unclear and hard to define way, that language itself actually is part of this, even though only humans have a language that is this advanced.
~~(brb grabbing a couple links)~~
https://www.reddit.com/r/generative/comments/1vabo6s/comment/p0kcrmf
Ambitious_Zombie8473 | 11 hours ago
I’ll be honest I only gave your comment a quick skim but it deserves a full read, plus I’m curious about the links, so l will come back to it this evening.
I will say I enjoyed learning about the NII plan, I had never heard of that. I don’t mean to imply nuance and paying attention negate anything. Some things are as they are.
And most importantly, I agree science should be open ended. That’s sort of my point. There’s two loud groups of people, who don’t account for everyone, that make it seem like one avenue is the correct one and there’s no room for more.
I think there’s room for a lot.
In regard to NHI/AI, I will say I’m not educated enough to confidently say I agree, disagree, or even fully understand. I just know I’ve had an array of experiences, some sober, some not, some shared, that surpass what science is often willing to look at, simply because it isn’t measurable in a way that we use yet.
Zul-Tjel | 11 hours ago
Science is agnostic to claims that cannot be falsified. Can we falsify your belief in a super-intelligence that is causing measurable impacts on humankind? It’s not that it’s not compatible or it is, per se, it’s just that it’s not a scientific question, so it’s irrelevant to science.
Ambitious_Zombie8473 | 11 hours ago
Damn bro I typed a whole ass response and you deleted the original comment, I’ll leave it below.
But you are putting words in my mouth/being slightly pedantic. I didn’t say super-intelligence or “measurable impact,” I just said interacting with. I’m not making claims beyond that.
TL;DR: here’s the original reply
I definitely dwell in a very dualist or if I want to do some heavy lifting, a close to non-reductive physicalist state of mind.
First, let me be clear. I understand that science functions in a way that makes sense and is measurable. With that being said, I can believe in any religion or other supernatural entities while still seeing, understanding, and accepting the provable process of a theory or whatever.
I mean some people literally believe God/gods/etc., are real but influenced evolution. They acknowledge the process while maintaining their belief. It doesn’t mean their belief is testable but it really isn’t able to be disproven either.
I don’t know if it’s a super-intelligence, just some sort of non-human intelligence or as (iirc) I mentioned in a different comment, I’d even be willing to accept it’s some reflection of our own consciousness or something that we aren’t fully aware of yet.
I only know so much but from what I can gather it’s still 50/50 on if consciousness is local or non local (I think that’s the right term) and we just don’t know enough to eliminate possibilities. We just don’t need them to hurt science either.
Zul-Tjel | 11 hours ago
In regards to the religion comment, I think it comes down to how literally you interpret religious teachings/text. Some of those beliefs are more or less incompatible with scientific theory. Like, if I literally believe the world was created in a couple days and accept the idea it was done so 6 thousand years ago, I have to reject a lot of fundamental scientific theories.
I deleted my original comment because I thought it was too harsh, so I just said science was agnostic, which is true, lol.
Ambitious_Zombie8473 | 11 hours ago
Gotcha. I appreciate the explanation. My bad if I came off harsh as well.
I see what you are saying. My view of compatibility only exists if everyone interpreted things that way. Fair point, I really can’t argue with that stance.
I guess the lines of two things being true blur easily for me. Just my perspective. Again, the point of my OP wasn’t to take a stance vs science or vice versa, rather, I was echoing my experience and observations and trying to point out why some folks have fallen victim to extremes.
midwest_riverman | 12 hours ago
I think you hit on two things here. One there is a part of science (not a huge part) that likes to devalue faith. But there is nothing incompatible with faith and science. One is about physical things the other is about spiritual belief. Yes people of faith occasionally devalue science as well but that’s the issue with
That cycle. Faith has no place in science. But science shouldn’t govern things like faith (think about science and morality. There is nothing moral or amoral about science but you can’t really build a moral system that isn’t a little cringe off just science where as you can make a pretty good scientific numeric case for some horrible shit if you ignore all ideas of faith outside of science). So we need both whether you like it or not.
The second point you made about trust in government I think is pretty much on but it’s really fueled by modern media. modern media is embracing the idea that when science is wrong science has failed. It’s just the opposite. When science fails and someone says “we discovered we were wrong but here is the right answer”. That’s not a defeat for science. That’s a victory. The scientific establishment overcame its past pre baked ideas and examined itself honestly to find the truth. That’s actually how it should work. The media plays like this is a failure “another theory disproven”. Vs “new knowledge discovered”. It’s used as a weapon because so often science tells us unpleasant things that lead us to point the finger at powerful people. For example smoking and cancer. Or global warming and fossil fuel. Science told us those things were someone’s fault. And those someone’s worked hard to devalue science using the media “plenty of People smoke and don’t get cancer. Why would you lie to us”. Things like that. A lot of mistrust in science is specifically due to a non understanding that science evolves and changes. Hundreds of years ago alchemy was considered a legit science. Why isn’t it one anymore? Because the scientific community realized it was bullshit and policed themselves. How often do you see the media or government officials police themselves?
Ambitious_Zombie8473 | 12 hours ago
I appreciate the articulated response and that you pointed out it’s not, nor as you say, should it be, a large group of “science vs religion or however you would word it. Not trying to be pedantic, I think we are saying the same things.
And I can’t help but to agree, modern media, although I’m unsure if you mean just social media, but likely in general has misled a lot of people. I’m not trying to make an argument for being ignorant. I can believe in something and still be grounded.
To put it briefly, I think modern media is a bummer and I’d hope we can get to a more transparent place soon. That said, with all we’ve seen recently, it’s not wrong to evaluate things with a healthy skepticism. The psy-op was well played and perhaps I’m partially victim but apart from what some people would view as “believing in ghosts” which I think (lol) , is “acceptable.”
I’m not trying to make a case for anything anti science. I’m just explaining a legitimate perspective which I’m sure some people share or share something similar as I mentioned previously. There’s a lot of room for both things to exist, they don’t have to interact with each other or influence each other. One is tangible and one is less so. Yin & yang or whatever. I hope that makes sense. Thanks again for the response.
Right-Attention3257 | 13 hours ago
When atheists say they believe in evidence and reason, this is what they're actually talking about. Entertainment media inspired by yet unrelated to science.