Excerpts from One Hundred Proofs That the Earth Is Not a Globe, a pamphlet distributed by William Carpenter in 1885
This was tweeted a little while back. I was curious, so I went out and found all 100. It’s continually amazing how logically weak the arguments are that people will still believe.
Unequivocal: Today’s Right is Overwhelmingly More Anti-Science Than Today’s Left
Both left and right have fringes, where silly claims are made. Thus, for instance, after Fukushima some lefties went hunting for dead babies on the U.S. West Coast from ionizing radiation supposedly traveling across the Pacific. Like I said, fringes.
But the fringes aren’t very relevant—unless the inmates are running the asylum. That’s what you have today on the right, where Republicans and Tea Partiers overwhelmingly reject mainstream knowledge in key areas and these views are also endorsed by elected representatives and even presidential candidates.
Bingo. The wackaloons on the left aren’t in a position to decide on legislation.
Perpertuum Mobile: The Quest for Perpetual Motion
In terms of the laws of physics, at least as we understand them in the early twenty first century, perpetual motion machines are impossibilities. However, a wide variety of machines, theories and devices have been developed and proposed over the years. Here’s a look at some of the more interesting ones here at Dark Roasted Blend.
Calamities of Nature’s fill-in-the-Blank form to make you sound like Deepak Chopra. If, for some unfathomable reason, you wanted to sound like Deepak Chopra.
Texas authorities find no bodies after psychic tip
A false tip from a psychic prompted Texas authorities to swarm a rural home searching for a nonexistent mass grave and up to 30 bodies, including those of dismembered children.
(Update) From this report
“We have to take tips like this very seriously,” McNair said.
No, you don’t. The only redeeming part I can see is that the search warrant was not issued based on the tip. That would have been truly scary.
Indexed: You can’t use logic against belief
I’m sure the views and timing of this with the after-birther ruckus is purely coincidental. Or conspiratorial.
Quantum Entanglement: A New Way to Be Married
In other words, when two or more particles are entangled, they behave as if they were one and the same, and any change to one instantaneously and identically changes those entangled with it even if they’re a universe apart. “Just try doing that in a marriage contract,” Mr. Keats says.
That’s quoted text but there’s no link to the source, which led me to Google and find a press release which says something similar
According to quantum mechanics, when two or more particles are entangled, they behave as if they were one and the same. Any change to one instantaneously and identically changes those entangled with it even if they’re a universe apart.
Unfortunately, Mr. Keats is wrong. This is the oft-reperated canard of the pop-sci version of quantum entanglement. Any measurement of one will tell you the state of the other, but that breaks the entanglement, and it means you cannot know the state of the particle beforehand. So this gesture means having to forget who you are. As soon as you remember, or someone recognizes you, that’s gone.
What the quote should really say is
According to people who don’t understand quantum mechanics, when two or more particles are entangled, they behave as if they were one and the same. Any change to one instantaneously and identically changes those entangled with it even if they’re a universe apart. In real quantum physics, this isn’t the case.
You can still turn this into a romantic gesture, but please, don’t mangle the science to do so.
The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science
In other words, when we think we’re reasoning, we may instead be rationalizing. Or to use an analogy offered by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt: We may think we’re being scientists, but we’re actually being lawyers. Our “reasoning” is a means to a predetermined end—winning our “case”—and is shot through with biases. They include “confirmation bias,” in which we give greater heed to evidence and arguments that bolster our beliefs, and “disconfirmation bias,” in which we expend disproportionate energy trying to debunk or refute views and arguments that we find uncongenial.
Short version: you can’t use logic and reason to talk someone out of a position they didn’t arrive at using logic and reason.
I think it points a way for arguments like global warming. I don’t understand why energy independence isn’t being trumpeted more loudly as a goal, with the goal of improving our economic situation and that of national security — importing less oil to keep more money in the US and eliminate foreign dependence.
WTF: Journal publishes ESP B-u-n-k
This made the rounds a little while back, and the statistics were questioned then, but I link to this recent post because it sums it up well:
As far as I can tell, what Dr. Bem’s experiment has proved is that college students looking at pictures frequently expect porn. Quelle surprise!
Or, perhaps, once they know they might see porn, they anticipate seeing porn.
Denial Depot’s Jaws: A movie review looks at the movie from a denialist perspective.
Matt Hooper from the “Oceanographic Institute” turns up. No-one seems to have called him, he just kind of appears. I’ve heard that scientists can actually smell sources of funding from up to 50 kilometers away. Hooper takes one look at the body and arrogantly proclaims:
“It wasn’t an ‘accident,’ it wasn’t a boat propeller, or a coral reef, or Jack the Ripper. It was a shark.”What alarmist nonsense! He just blew through all those equally good explanations. And as the local pointed out “nobody’s seen a shark”. So it’s unscientific for Hooper to assert there definitely is a shark. He’s hiding the uncertainty and doubt. Of course if he admitted there wasn’t a shark all his funding would dry up…
I just want to point out that as far as Jaws being a movie about denialism, I got there first.