09 NOV 2015 by ideonexus
Far-Right Rhetoric is Profitable
Representative Tom Cole, an Oklahoman in the House Republican leadership and a former politics professor, said, “There’s a big difference between intellectual conservatism and what exists out there now. It’s much more populist in its orientation and much wider in its reach. This is not an elite opinion, a Bill Buckley sort of thing.” And in a nod to the new media’s greater profitability, Cole added, “While it’s conservative in its orientation, it’s a financially driven enterpr...Folksonomies: rhetoric cognitive bias
Folksonomies: rhetoric cognitive bias
1 10 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
Questioning the Milgram Experiment
It appeared that sixty-five percent of people would torture someone to death, if pressured to do so. The results made their way into both psychology and cocktail party conversation. But were they correct? At least one woman doesn't think so. Gina Perry, for her book, Behind the Shock Machine, traced as many participants in the Milgram experiment as she could, and re-examined the notes of the experiment. Milgram claimed that seventy-five percent of the participants believed in the reality of t...Folksonomies: psychology ethics
Folksonomies: psychology ethics
1 
notes
notesThese questions raise an even greater objection to the validity of the experiment. If the results cannot be reproduced, because the experiment was unethical, then we shouldn't cite it a evidence of anything every. Science demands reproducible results, and without replication we do not have evidence.
13 APR 2012 by ideonexus
What It Means to be a Scientist
In reality, scientists are just people like you and me. Most of us don't wear lab coats (I don't) or work with bubbling beakers or sparking van de Graf generators (unless they are chemists or physicists who actually work with that equipment). Most scientists are not geniuses either. It is true that, on average, scientists tend to be better educated than the typical person on the street, but that education is a necessity to learn all the information that allows a scientist to make discoveries....Folksonomies: scientific virtues scientific method
Folksonomies: scientific virtues scientific method
It's not about how they dress or their education, but their adherence to the scientific method.
16 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Design As Evidence of Evolution or Creation
It’s important to realize, though, that there’s a real difference in what
you expect to see if organisms were consciously designed rather than if
they evolved by natural selection. Natural selection is not a master engineer,
but a tinkerer. It doesn’t produce the absolute perfection achievable
by a designer starting from scratch, but merely the best it can do with
what it has to work with. Mutations for a perfect design may not arise
because they are simply too rare. The African rhinoce... 1 notes
notesThere's a big difference between how species would look if they were designed or engineered versus how they would look if they evolved. Evolution works with pre-existing traits, and engineer works from scratch.
