Comments | erudito: Gendered brains, gendered science, playful plaque ...

erudito

Gendered brains, gendered science, playful plaque ...

Jun 18, 2005 11:40

Yes, the brains of men and women really are different. Via wildilocks. An intellectually serious debate about why women are disproportionately absent from higher reaches of science and mathematics.

Local historical plaques are not normally this playful in spirit. Via the_christian.

Did I know Andre Norton died? Definitely do now. Via meninaiscrazy

Organising in favour of ( Read more... )

Leave a comment

Back to all threads

taavi June 19 2005, 00:48:29 UTC

There is a error in your chain of reasoning about global warming at step 2. Even if global warming was not caused by human factors (eg caused by the sunspot cycle) its net effect could still be bad for us. In which case we would still have to take major action, though it would presumably be of "treat the effects" type ( ... )

Myths erudito June 19 2005, 01:13:09 UTC

On the chain of reason, your point is correct, though I was thinking of the Control Emissions Is Really Important argument, in which case the reasoning chain still applies

The claim that all climate scientists agree is simply not true, though oft-repeated. There is broad agreement that there is some likely warming and that is about it. The level, degree of human contribution and seriousness are still much disputed, it is just the dispute doesn't get much of a run, not least because turning the weather into a coherent story with goodies and baddies is just so attractive for media. (And provides lots of opportunity for bureaucratic empire-building, dinning governments for research money and beating green credentials which appeal to middle class Western voters, rather than more urgent environmental issues which affect folk elsewhere.)

There are some starting links here, if you are interested ( ... )

Re: Myths taavi June 19 2005, 01:57:53 UTC

http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/document.asp?latest=1&id=3222... )

PS taavi June 19 2005, 01:59:10 UTC

Hope you don't mind me hopping into your journal and arguing btw. I'm not sure we've met IRL, but we seem to share a lot of friends, and I enjoy debating these sorts of issues.

Re: PS erudito June 19 2005, 04:20:58 UTC

Not at all, I enjoy intelligent debate too. If I wanted a closed forum I would post friends only or restrict ability to comment.

Re: Myths erudito June 19 2005, 04:17:43 UTC

Yes, well the official scientific bodies do seem to have come on board. I will confess not to having been following the issue as closely as I did a few years ago, when there was patently some very dodgy stuff being passed off. (I remember gong to a Bureau of Metereology seminar in about 1997, and being appalled at what was regarded as acceptable modelling methodology. And the infamous "hockey stick" which abolished the thoroughly document Medieval Warm Period was equally dodgy.)

Though I remain a bit sceptical of the arguments from authority that seemed to be tossed around a lot. Not my understanding of how science works.

I also note that the G8 statement is actually rather more low-key than what is often stated as the "proper" position.

Re: Consensus erudito June 19 2005, 07:57:39 UTC

On the issue of institutional consensus, I am reminded of the economic value calculation debate of the 1930s concerning the Mises-Hayek claim that a socialist economy could not be made to work because it could not calculate economic value. The professional consensus at the time and for quite some thereafter was that Lange and Lerner won the argument. With the collapse of the USSR and access to archives and uncensored memoirs, it is now very clear that, in fact, von Mises and Hayek were correct. (Soviet planners were doing things such as calculating price ratios from American mail order catalogues or using price information from the New York Times precisely because their system was incapable of generating genuine price information ( ... )

Re: Myths lokicarbis June 19 2005, 02:04:41 UTC

The claim that all climate scientists agree is simply not true

The claim, however, that sweeping generalisations masquerade as truth in this blog is gaining power almost daily...

Re: Myths erudito June 19 2005, 04:20:01 UTC

Your examples being?

Re: Myths2 erudito June 19 2005, 07:46:13 UTC

It is perfectly normal part of debate for people to point out qualifications which have to be made to propositions. And what we have in mind and what we write don't always coincide. It's why I call this LJ Thinking Out Aloud because part of the point is to test ideas ( ... )

Back to all threads