Four kinds of people

There are four kinds of people in this world: cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics…

Cretins don’t even talk; they sort of slobber and stumble…

Fools are in great demand, especially on social occasions. They embarrass everyone but provide material for conversation…Fools don’t claim that cats bark, but they talk about cats when everyone else is talking about dogs. They offend all the rules of conversation, and when they really offend, they’re magnificent…

Morons never do the wrong thing. They get their reasoning wrong. Like the fellow who says that all dogs are pets and all dogs bark, and cats are pets, too, therefore cats bark…Morons will occasionally say something that’s right, but they say it for the wrong reason…

A lunatic is easily recognized. He is a moron who doesn’t know the ropes. The moron proves his thesis; he has logic, however twisted it may be. The lunatic on the other hand, doesn’t concern himself at all with logic; he works by short circuits. For him, everything proves everything else. The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars…There are lunatics who don’t bring up the Templars, but those who do are the most insidious. At first they seem normal, then all of a sudden…

― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum

A war on science or just people being unscientific ?

Hmmm.

[The comments below include a prime example of someone claiming they're interested in truth but just want higher standard, whereas in fact they are simply wholly irrational. It's become somewhat popular to suggest that such people should be taken at their word for some reason - that because they profess to care about science they actually do. I submit that this is entirely wrong, that people driven by ideology to confirm their own pre-existing beliefs are most certainly not interested in a higher standard of reasoning. They are unable to properly assess their own irrationality because, just as Dunning-Kruger means that stupid people can't know they're stupid, irrational people can't know they're irrational. They only claim to want higher standards as a purely rhetorical device. There's absolutely no deeper search for the truth going on whatsoever.]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-there-really-a-war-on-science/?wt.mc=SA_GPlus-Share

Trump versus the Pope

Bwaahahahahah !

Quote the Pope :
"I say only that this man is not Christian if he has said things like that. We must see if he said things in that way and I will give him the benefit of the doubt," the Pope said.

Quote the talking racist toupee :
"For a religious leader to question a person's faith is disgraceful. I am proud to be a Christian," Mr Trump said. "No leader, especially a religious leader, should have the right to question another man's religion or faith."
Ummm....

"[The pope] said negative things about me. Because the Mexican government convinced him that Trump is not a good guy," he said.
Is talking about oneself in the third person the American equivalent of the royal we ?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-us-2016-35607597

An insider's view on airport security

“This job,” he said, “has taught me that our presumptions about people are rarely true. We have so many preconceptions, especially about foreigners, but they are nothing more than fear of the unknown. We quite comfortably make sweeping generalisations about entire nations of people. These people we suspect of being evil, most are just students and deadbeat dreamers and artists and teachers and greedy businessmen – the same characters that populate all societies. And then some of them, a tiny portion of them, are actually individuals with intent to harm others. But we foolishly judge them all by the few who are bad.”
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20160210-the-man-who-could-stop-planes

American versus European values

Covers pretty much everything. Not really particularly surprising, but quantifies widely-held perceptions. Notably :
- Americans are more gung-ho than Europeans
- Americans are roughly split as to whether their culture is superior to others, while this varies considerably in European countries
- Americans have this odd notion that the role of the state should be to do as little as possible, while Europeans see it as a way to ensure a social safety net
- Americans are waaaay more religious than Europeans
- Americans are less tolerant of homosexuality than Europeans, though they're catching up fast
- Pretty much universally, those with a university education are less inclined toward the use of military force, less inclined to believe in their own cultural superiority, more inclined to believe the state's main role should be welfare, and more tolerant of homosexuality.

Originally shared by Joerg Fliege

Those colonists and their strange values.
http://www.pewglobal.org/2011/11/17/the-american-western-european-values-gap/

This is not the sonic boom you're looking for

I've never seen video of this before.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160216-you-think-this-is-a-sonic-boom-its-not

Atheism is not just a modern idea

Sounds like a good read. But to comment on the OP's comment, why is it I encounter far more evangelical atheists than religious people ? Is there just some super-weirdy selection effect that means they gravitate toward me while the religious nutters generally keep their distance ?

Originally shared by Ruth Mckay

""Believers talk about atheism as if it's a pathology of a particularly odd phase of modern western culture that will pass..." Yes. Yes, they do. It's the one thing I hate about the Internet - home grown evangelists; they're everywhere, patronising folk left, right and centre.

Rant over.
http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/disbelieve-it-or-not-ancient-history-suggests-that-atheism-is-as-natural-to-humans-as-religion#sthash.9XXtxsd1.hpvt

Bad science in action

"The next step is for our anti-hero to write a “systematic review” at the end of the year (or, really, whenever he gets around to it). In it, He Who Shall Not Be Named predictably rejects all of the studies that do not support his position as being “fatally flawed,” or as having been “refuted by experts”—namely, by himself and his close collaborators, typically citing their own contestable critiques—while at the same time he fails to find any flaws whatsoever in studies that make his pet procedure seem on balance beneficial."

He will, however, carefully point to a few rather weak studies that point out flaws in his arguments in order to make himself seem objective.

http://quillette.com/2016/02/15/the-unbearable-asymmetry-of-bullshit/

Ferengi rule of Acquisition no. 13

Ferengi rule of Acquisition no. 13 : Anything Worth Doing Is Worth Doing For Money

Fascinating article which should be read in its entirety.

"I had never heard of Maggie McNeill before a week or so ago when, in the aftermath of my ridiculously stupid comment about Fox News reporters dressing like hookers, she fired off one of the most surprising Tweets of my life on the information superhighway."

It's not actually stupid, just badly phrased. Fox News attempts to use sex appeal as a weapon because they haven't got the faintest inkling of how to do "fair and balanced" reporting. In this case it is the lowest common denominator. Which in no way whatseover implies that women, be they attractive, ugly, prostitutes or nuns, cannot give insightful commentary (just look at the BBC for crying out loud) - only that Fox attempt to compensate for the lack of proper reporting in the stupidest way possible. Kindof like how Michael Bay attempts to replace proper storytelling with explosions and lens flares.

". Nurses clean shit off of bedridden patients’ bottoms, doctors probe their genitalia, masseuses put their hands all over people’s bodies, day-care workers tend to the care of their children. Yet nobody thinks any of these extremely intimate activities needs to be banned, and nobody pretends that nurses must be coerced into nursing."

Though if people were coerced into nursing I'd suggest that society needs to take a good long look at itself.

"Prostitution is the secret ingredient that makes monogamy possible, which means it isn’t hyperbole to say we make Western civilization possible.

Getting a little bit carried away there, methinks.

"...instead of cherishing that he was only looking and cuddling when he could’ve had sex, she probably would’ve been angry or hurt that he had called me at all. Which is … spectacularly dumb, but typical."

Is it really spectacularly dumb ? Isn't it just that some people have different values than others ?

Originally shared by Yonatan Zunger

Maggie McNeill is a sex worker, a deep thinker, and an amazing writer. The article below is a great introduction to her: it's an interview she recently gave to Jeff Pearlman about the day-to-day of her work, and most of all about the kinds of people who she encountered. It's a fascinating set of stories, and the story of the clean-up worker after Katrina is going to stick with me for quite some time.

There are important things to learn from her writing.

First, that sex work is work. It can be pleasant or horrible, honest or dishonest, fulfilling or soul-crushing, just like any other work can.

Second, that many kinds of sex work — especially the work of escorts, call girls, and the like — are psychologically very complex. It's a mixture of companionship, therapy, desire, and sexuality. If you were to view this sector of sex work on a spectrum with other jobs, its closest relatives would probably be psychoanalysis and diplomacy.

And third, that people are really interesting. Her work has provided her with a chance to see people in profoundly honest moments, and her writing gives you a chance to peer behind the curtains of people's lives, and often see just how human they are.

The interview is a great start, but once you've gotten that, I highly recommend her site as a whole (https://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/), as well as her Twitter feed,@Maggie_Mcneill.
http://www.jeffpearlman.com/maggie-mcneill

Stephen Hawking joins the anti-philosophy brigade for some reason

Oh dear, it seems Stephen Hawking doesn't understand philosophy any more than Neil deGrasse Tyson. How is this possible ? Even at the most basic level science relies on philosophy, not least of which is the necessity to question one's own biases and indeed other people's biases. Or what the role of science should be in society, or how we should organise academia to best pursue knowledge and avoid the pitfalls of prestige-based arguments without discounting expertise, or why people insist on believing things that fly in the face of all evidence, or how we ensure that a scientific consensus is established independently and not just from a "follow the herd" mentality. None of these things are trivial.

But there are much higher level questions too : what does it mean to say that proper time is zero at the speed or light ? What does probability mean in an infinite Universe or multiverse ? How can something be a particle and a wave simultaneously ? Can science answer the question, "why" or is it limited only to "how" ?

Science is an intensely philosophical exercise whether you like it or not.

Great article (too complex to summarise).
https://philosophynow.org/issues/82/Hawking_contra_Philosophy