30 JUL 2024 by ideonexus
Life in the US is More Complicated to Exploit Less Intell...
Coming from Europe, everything in the US seems more complicated, and set up with the purpose of making it hard for less intelligent people.
Filing taxes is always the responsibility of the private citizen instead of the employee, the price of goods is displayed without sales tax and it's up to the citizen to calculate the real price, health insurance and car insurance are both overly complicated and full of clauses, financing and credit cards are literally shoved in your throat. Every proces... 1 
notes
notesAlso applies to standard vs metric, phonetic spelling, and other unnecessarily complex systems.
03 MAR 2014 by ideonexus
Science and Democracy are Synergistic
The values of science and tha values of democracy are
concordant, in many cases indistinguishable. Science confers
power on anyone who takes the trouble to learn it. Science
thrives on the free exchange of ideas; its values are
antithetical to secrecy. Science holds to no special vantage
points or privileged positions. Both science and democracy
encourage unconventional opinions and vigorous debate. Both
demand adeguate reason, coherent argument, rigorous standards of
evidence and hones...
1 The two concepts support one another.
03 MAR 2014 by ideonexus
The Success of Science
One of the reasons for its success is that science has
built-in, self-correcting machinery at its very heart. It takes
account of human fallibility. One of its commandments is,
"Mistrust arguments from authority." Too many such arguments
have turned out to be painfully wrong. Authorities must prove
their contentions like anybody else. This independence of
science, its unwillingness to pay automatic obeisance to
conventional wisdom, makes it dangerous to doctrines less self-
critical. ... 1 notes
notesComes from its built-in self-criticism, its proven results, and the reverence and awe it inspires.
03 MAR 2014 by ideonexus
The Danger of Scientific Ignorance in a Science-Based Civ...
I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time — when we're 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 ability to set their own
agendas or knowledgeably question those In authority; when,
clutching our crystals and r... 1 notes
notesWe are more reliant on science than ever before, but we are also most disdainful of it.
02 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
Policy Must be Tested
Policy is the starting-point of all the practical actions of a revolutionary party and manifests itself in the process and the end-result of that party's actions. A revolutionary party is carrying out a policy whenever it takes any action. If it is not carrying out a correct policy, it is carrying out a wrong policy; if it is not carrying out a given policy consciously, it is doing so blindly. What we call experience is the process and the end-result of carrying out a policy. Only through the...Folksonomies: governance public policy
Folksonomies: governance public policy
1 notes
notesOnly when a policy is carried out by the people, who understand it, is it tested and found to be correct or wrongheaded.
24 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Science Should Settle Policy
The most important scientific concept is that an assertion is often an empirical question, settled by collecting evidence. The plural of anecdote is not data, and the plural of opinion is not facts. Quality peer-reviewed scientific evidence accumulates into knowledge. People’s stories are stories, and fiction keeps us going. But science should settle policy.
Susan Fiske on the truth of assertions and opinions as being testable.
24 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
The Problem With Experimentation in the Real World
Government policies—from teaching methods in schools to prison sentencing to taxation —would also benefit from more use of controlled experiments. This is where many people start to get squeamish. To become the subject of an experiment in something as critical or controversial as our children’s education or the incarceration of criminals feels like an affront to our sense of fairness and our strongly held belief in the right to be treated exactly the same as everybody else. After all, i...Timo Hannay observes that we cannot experiment with classrooms and prisons because finding one experiment works means another didn't, creating winners and losers and offending our sense of justice.
21 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
The NDEA had Broad Benefits, but Unquantifiable Benefits
The four NDEA Titles featured in this report contributed to general upward trends (e.g., in the rate of high school, college, and graduate completion; in the level of student preparedness in science, mathematics, and modern languages; in the number of teachers and degree-granting institutions; in the number of bachelors and doctoral degrees awarded; and in the number of scholarly publications by doctoral recipients) during the years that they were in force. Their provisions also contributed t...Folksonomies: quantification public policy
Folksonomies: quantification public policy
1 notes
notesThe National Defense Education Act improved science, technology, and college enrollment in the US, but its effects cannot be separated from the broader forces and trends going on during the time it was implemented. Future public policies intended to boost STEM must be implemented in such a way as to make their effects quantifiable.
13 MAY 2013 by ideonexus
Public Policy Shouldn't Bet on Science
You ask whether, given a choice, I would put more resources into space or AI. My answer is that either choice would be stupid. Politicians always want to make such choices too soon, because they imagine they can pick winners. Usually they pick losers. The only way to improve the chances for finding winners is to keep all the choices open and try them all. That is particularly true for space and AI, which are not really competing with each other. They are done by different kinds of people in d...It will always bet wrong. All science should be open, free, and supported.
19 JAN 2013 by ideonexus
America is Naturally Anti-Science
In the end, politics is about story. Robert McKee, Hollywood's master of storytelling, views the world from the top of America's other great cultural export—its movies.
"1 think that the American ethos is not science-friendly and never has been," he says. "The American model is Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. Guys who never went to college and who were geniuses and invented things, and people like them. The inventor versus the scientist. Somebody who can go west, discover gold mines, and cr...Science is hard work, America is about the dream of Hollywood. We are living on the benefits of science, but will those innovations become cultural rituals if we won't do what we need to do to promote science and education?
