>The 2+2=5 discourse
I'm getting the distinct sensation that almost no one actually understands what science even is. You're lucky if someone knows what a p value is but even if they do they've probably never stopped and thought about how the significance threshold was set at a pretty arbitrary point and how the results of an experiment can be altered merely by slightly moving the significance threshold or redefining what it is that you're looking for. This is before we touch the difference between symbols, rule constructs and material reality. The levels of illiteracy on display, especially among supposed professionals, are disquieting.
On the other hand.. 99% of the 2+2=5 people are legitimately dumb culture warriors who know even less about science than their opponents do and would quickly take their position if the tables were turned. They are accidentally right. Right only because their ideology tells them to think something that happens to be right. If you pressured them they wouldn't give you a reasonable meta-rational account of why they believe what they believe. They'd just feelpost.
Can the public be educated on this subject or is this a lost cause?
Can science be defended from both the scientism crowd and the faux postmodernism crowd? At the same time?
I'm getting the distinct sensation that almost no one actually understands what science even is. You're lucky if someone knows what a p value is but even if they do they've probably never stopped and thought about how the significance threshold was set at a pretty arbitrary point and how the results of an experiment can be altered merely by slightly moving the significance threshold or redefining what it is that you're looking for. This is before we touch the difference between symbols, rule constructs and material reality. The levels of illiteracy on display, especially among supposed professionals, are disquieting.
On the other hand.. 99% of the 2+2=5 people are legitimately dumb culture warriors who know even less about science than their opponents do and would quickly take their position if the tables were turned. They are accidentally right. Right only because their ideology tells them to think something that happens to be right. If you pressured them they wouldn't give you a reasonable meta-rational account of why they believe what they believe. They'd just feelpost.
Can the public be educated on this subject or is this a lost cause?
Can science be defended from both the scientism crowd and the faux postmodernism crowd? At the same time?
