Its funny to think how all of our teachers taught us basic facts and scientific reasoning, and we all felt so secure in our knowledge, until 2016 or so when the brain washers came and revealed just how easily put faith can be dismantled.
Your instincts are likely correct, despite what your teachers may have taught you.
Certainly one thing you can talk about is how hard it would be to build and maintain any particular conspiracy, motives aside. Some are far more realistic than others.
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“‘All the time’? That doesn’t sound remotely true or even reasonable, and I don’t know if I should trust anything you say because of this allegation. Now, moving on, the NOAA, who has no self-interested motive to lie to us, unlike, say, someone whose actual existence relies on the lies they say, says this about their data. Honestly, it’s up to you to determine if the data they are providing is reasonable and believe it. I’m just up here telling you what their data say, and that it might be on the next test. No, you don’t have to believe it, but you have to remember it.”
“Also, for homework, read ‘1984’ then ask yourself, 'Why is it when one party is in power the other one always predicts authoritarianism and doom and gloom and extinction, but all is nuts and candy when the other is in power? Over and over and over, the world never ends as was predicted. When someone is wrong that many times, it’s time to stop listening to them. Moving on…”
DISCLAIMER: I’m no teacher, and I’d probably quit if I were in one of those 1984 states, where the government decides what is truth.
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It is definitely better to believe the random guy on youtube when there is no way to actually verify his credentials because it fits with your world view you did your own research.
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So has “science” confirmed the origin of COVID-19 virus, or do we still have to completely and fully trust what our government tells us, despite conflicting reports supported by various scientific communities?
If that is what you took from my post, I feel sorry for you.
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You’ll be happy to know you don’t need to feel sorry for me. I wasn’t replying to your post, I was just joining the conversation and happened to post after you.
I would say that phrase as “that science and the government were long ago co-opted by industry”
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Odd, did you do that by clicking the reply button on my post and not the generic reply button at the bottom of the thread? The software notified me that it was a direct reply.
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Science seems to still be researching in spite of politics/government really wanting to point fingers.
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Actually, the fact that we have heard about the replication crisis is a good sign. In some sense it shows how more complex ideas/systems are more difficult to examine and “prove”, but also that people try. It should also lead to a understanding of scientific humility rather than scientific dogmatism. Science isn’t right because it’s "right " , but because the preponderance of the evidence is well explained.
You can discuss how Newtonian gravitation explained planetary motion well, except Mercury had a small but measurable anomaly. (Oh noes, a crisis!) Enter Einstien, and voila, it matched much better. The same effect applies to earth and Venus (and the other planets), but Mercury is close enough to the sun to make it noticeable under close observation.
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Sorry, which scientific disciplines are impossible to take seriously anymore due to the co-opting of the government?
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The great thing about “science” is that it’s not some body that issues proclamations. It’s fragmented groups doing their own research, challenging one another to slowly chip away at theories that don’t turn out to be correct. By its very nature you’d expect the scientific answer to a new question to improve over time, as more people try theories and test them out.
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…except when Twitter, Facebook and other ministers of truth shut down and censor the conversation.
Those companies also amplify a lot of disinformation.
I guess if I was on the side that promoted things like Ivermectin and other nonsense that was repeatedly debunked, but led to more deaths as people took the information seriously, I might hold a grudge too.
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Twitter did not, I think someone misinformed you there.
Whether Social Media organizations should try to throw a blanket on their own massive dumpster-fires (and risk burning themselves) is a good question, but it’s not the same as the government.
The sad truth is-- we aren’t in a position to stop Mark Zuckerberg from censoring any information that Facebook’s shareholders think should be censored, in order to maximize profit. Whether or not Free Speech is allowed on facebook is a question of a revenue.
Similarly Musk is saying that he bought Twitter in order to protect Free Speech. But it’s pretty weird that we need a guy to spend $44B so he can sell us free speech.
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I don’t think this is a great example for students (given it’s still hot), but I think it’s a good example for grownups to understand what it takes to make a conspiracy, and how the scientific community and the government both succeed and fail at their jobs when confronted with something challenging.
That said, I think this quote is also dead wrong.
The scientific community and the government have been pretty close to each other. They both came out strong on the Natural hypothesis. They both had lingering doubts, with some individuals doubting harder than others. They both did a bad job of expressing those doubts and examining those doubts. They both suppressed dissent, to some degree.
And they both their shifted positions when a few scientists published their doubts in Science Magazine, in response to the terrible WHO investigation. Then the US government sent out scientists and spies and (supposedly) came to no conclusion at all-- neither for nor against. And the dissenters in the Science Magazine article-- also split-- they also have no conclusion, with some moderately confident that it is natural origins, and some moderately confident in the opposite, but no certainty.