Lying liars: Wakefield and Rose

[andygates]

I'm filled with smiles today to see that the BMA are heartily spanking Andrew Wakefield, the doctor whose bogus - knowingly bogus - research started the whole stupid false MMR flap and gave credibility to a whole generation of vaccine-phobic woo-mongers telling people that a shot will turn their kids into Rain Man, (here, buy this crochet spiral chicken liver instead, it'll purge toxins and align your native reiki chakras).  Wakefield, you are a lying liar. 

And I'm filled with weary to see that the latest Final Nail in the coffin of global warming, yes, there are so many final nails that you have to wonder whether there's any wood at all or, for that matter, room for a body (alas, it aten't ded and aten't dying: eppur si riscalda no matter what the lying liars write) -- *breathe* that this latest Final Nail, Rose's piece in the Daily Mail about Himalaya glaciers, is a big fat lying lie.  The boffin at the heart of the story, Murari Lal, was heinously misquoted and fibbed over; the story pretty much made up out of whole cloth.  Rose, you are a lying liar.

Comments

[carldem.livejournal.com]

Do you think my agnostic position is a wrong conclusion, regardless of how I got to it?

If the position is correct then it can be used for a basis of action.

Otherwise yes everyone just ends up debating, then debating about debating, then debating about who is paying. And nothing gets actually done. Better that the reason is ignored if some action is useful.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

I think an agnostic position on this is about as daft as an agnostic position on creation vs evolution. The only way to hold such a position - other than facile universal agnosticism, which is surely a mental illness - is to be under-educated.

So either you can't be bothered to look up the fight, or you're fundamentally incapable of decision, or your decision has nothing to do with the issue.

[carldem.livejournal.com]

Exactly.
For me there is no climate change issue yet. Just a bunch of people arguing about who's right.

I know it doesn't matter who wins, climate change or retarded self protectionists; or chrisitans vs other christians; or Israelis or Palestinians. Getting _into_ the fight is a lose situation!

If I find some evolutionary winners, that are adaptable and energy (ie cost) cheap to impliment. Then there's a good chance that's the correct decision to start with, and being cheaper can be acted on.
Once that's being implemented then one can measure the effects and test the causes of those effects. Because until the cost vs benefit of effect is known and tested for -each- instance of application, then the science is still lab theory, and everything is still going to hell in either direction.

I find education quite a poor tool BTW. I know many highly educated people, yet for all their education they become extremely specialised and seem to have poor adaption qualities. They often seem to flourish within a stratified and artifical environment, yet when face with real world forces seldom seem to impliment what they've been taught. It's not that the education is bad...just evolutionarily expensive, and as resources are forced tighter (by population) then they are not so useful/adaptable. This is further linked in some way to the way that certain topics become socially taboo - like the fact that most of the issue is related to population density and size, but like genetics and race, it's a very hot potato. The final result being a constant supply of patches for the symptom, a seldom a solution for the issue which is the same type of operation the pharmaceutical companies have. Why sell cures, when symptom relief is so much more profitable!

The beauty of the agnostic position is it requires no investment, it is evolutionarily cheap. Not that "reality of god can't be known" but "gods existance is gods problem" leaving the entity to ponder theirm own existance and how to express it. The latter being a far more useful and functional process, and one which amusingly enough leads to the eventual proofs that god does exist.
Which is similiar to the climate issue. It doesn't matter if there's a problem, it matters about the size of effect/impact our individual efforts have. If we can control those effectively (and cheapily/competitively) then the bigger problem is not much of a outside threat. If we can't control them effectively then we have a bigger and more immediate problem on our hands than climate change! Although debating about climate change and truths will mask that symptom.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

You're confusing agnosticism with not caring.

[carldem.livejournal.com]

No I'm not. Have you ever known me to do so?

I have got one or both of the agnostic positions (or variants thereof) that has been decided. Why invest more into a situation which does not require further proof?

The "There can be no proof for 'God'" or the "I am not sure 'God' exists" both show a logic value of "X" (vs 1 or 0).

In an argument of "There is no such being/thing as 'God'" (atheist) vsor "There is such a thing as 'God'" - the agnostic position is very much a fencing sitting, low energy requirement. It does not need to prove -or- disprove 'God'. The actual existance of God being pretty much immaterial to the agnostic point of view!
Hence the importance of knowing what you're actually arguing about. What would be the point of an agnostic arguing for -or- against the existance of God, as the agnostic position has already rendered such an argument as redundant. Why invest effort into a redundant waste? Hardly economically, or environmental useful!

Better to find something useful and go from there.