Centroids: Not sure why this was called to my attention. Basically I agree with the video
but also think that its message is so obviously true that discussion isn't necessary. Sort of like a discussion of whether the British were defeated at Yorktown. There is nothing to argue about. This said, it is useful to compare creationists with social constructionists. Both operate on the basis of "post truth" outlooks, or, better, post objectivity outlooks. I have no use either for social constructionist or creationists ("creationists" as the world is usually understood, anyway, since it seems to me that creation is "guided" in some sense and because there also seems to be purpose, in fact, the teleology of nature is easy enough to argue for because of its explanatory power, something woefully lacking in any kind of random chance interpretation of the universe). Philosophically, how can anyone defend either social constructionism of naive creationism? Creationism has not been the focus of any of our discussions in the past even though it has come up a scarce few times, in each instance in a peripheral sense, and we always passed on to something else -quickly. Meanwhile I don't recall anyone here making any kind of case for social constructionism. It doesn't interest anyone, least of all myself. It is prima facie false -and meaningless. Not that I haven't run across the homosexual version of this dubious theory in my research into same-sex sexuality; in that field it pops up on a regular basis, especially on the part of feminist homosexuals and "hard left" homosexuals -the kinds of persons who take John Boswell seriously. But the arguments are so transparently full of crap that I seldom spend any time refuting them. That would be like arguing with a headstong 3 year old, which would be a total waste of time. Anyway, not exactly a secret, I am a true blue Saint-Simonian and the foundation of Saint-Simonian philsophy is empirical science. I'd say that we are far past the simplistic sciences of ca 1800 AD but this still is, nonetheless, to discuss science, hence evidence, inductive logic, truth tests, questioning of one's hypotheses, and so forth. Or think of it as akin to medicine; there are results that can be observed and that often can be measured. The effort almost always is productive and useful. This does not mean closing the door on genuine mysteries. What a mistake that would be. But it does say that some mysteries of the past ceased to be mysterious decades ago, or even centuries ago. Billy PS I wonder what Ernie's take on the video is. --------------------------- ________________________________ From: radicalcentrism@googlegroups.com <radicalcentrism@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Centroids <drer...@radicalcentrism.org> Sent: Monday, March 5, 2018 5:32 PM To: Centroids Discussions Subject: [RC] Fwd: [FoRK] Science Wars: Is Science a Social Construct?, Women's Studies as Virus For Billy. :-) Sent from my iPhone Begin forwarded message: From: "Stephen D. Williams" <s...@lig.net<mailto:s...@lig.net>> Date: March 5, 2018 at 10:21:48 PST To: f...@xent.com<mailto:f...@xent.com> Subject: [FoRK] Science Wars: Is Science a Social Construct?, Women's Studies as Virus Reply-To: Friends of Rohit Khare <f...@xent.com<mailto:f...@xent.com>> This ties together and coherently refutes a wide range of anti-science ideas and people. Quite the hairy mess. There are plenty of good terms to learn from this like: science-shy students (because of cultural association, etc.). Science wars. I suppose that's always been a thing, in waves. Quite a thing that it's such a thing still, apparently stronger than ever with people who are serious about theories. Even if the theories aren't really serious. The whole video is good, but this is at the paper proposing a strategy for a "Women's Studies as Virus" approach: https://youtu.be/bxdBRKmPhe4?t=24m43s I'm all for general inclusiveness and equality, but this is deep into territory that is begging for good and persistent mocking. It's fine to not be into science, but attacking science with pseudoscience in all these ways is unacceptable. Not that there's any real worry about science, but there are various negative impacts and the occasional (I hope) dumb decision, in politics and elsewhere. It's going to take more than Niel to constantly refute all of this to avoid a nasty infection. It is amazing that people watch this kind of thing for reasons other than comedy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jLs-1GpwQM Dr Prof Alex Jones Explains Advanced Physics Stephen -- Stephen D. Williams s...@lig.net<mailto:s...@lig.net> stephendwilli...@gmail.com<mailto:stephendwilli...@gmail.com> LinkedIn: http://sdw.st/in V:650-450-UNIX (8649) V:866.SDW.UNIX V:703.371.9362 F:703.995.0407 AIM:sdw Skype:StephenDWilliams Yahoo:sdwlignet Resume: http://sdw.st/gres Personal: http://sdw.st facebook.com/sdwlig<http://facebook.com/sdwlig> twitter.com/scienteer<http://twitter.com/scienteer> _______________________________________________ FoRK mailing list http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <RadicalCentrism@googlegroups.com> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. 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