Today seems to be stupid day...

Dec 19, 2011 09:30

Daniel Akst's article in The American, Science and the Chattering Classes, falls into that commonplace journalistic sin, handwringing over the stupidity of the masses without offering anything but a pablum response to a given problem.

The problem is scientific illiteracy. Akst writes, With its great stress on specialization, capitalism has eroded ( Read more... )

science, shrill, intelligent design, cooking

Leave a comment

Comments 9

shockwave77598 December 19 2011, 18:01:26 UTC
Actually, it's a failure brought by a facet of individuality -- laziness ( ... )

Reply


pixel39 December 19 2011, 18:48:44 UTC
Lots of people have no idea how to cook. No, really. My grandfather once showed me an article from the WSJ (this is pre-June of 1988, because that's when he died) about when Green Giant removed the cooking instructions from the canned corn labels they had to put them back because of the number of complaints they received from people who were apparently unable to figure it out themselves.

Reply

bldrnrpdx December 19 2011, 18:59:42 UTC
They do exist - I have roomed with, dated, and at one point even married those people.

Reply

hydrolagus December 19 2011, 23:31:04 UTC
It's unclear in the article whether it is a matter of can't cook their own food at all or can't cook it without something to reference. I have been baking palatable food from scratch since I was 6 but still wouldn't make something from a package without looking at the directions.

Reply


What's the weather like on your planet? ideaphile December 20 2011, 07:49:48 UTC
You wrote, "...it is not in the best interests of most businesses for the common people to understand the science behind their products ( ... )

Reply

Re: What's the weather like on your planet? pakraticus December 20 2011, 12:24:41 UTC
They want you to realize the labeled differences not the actual differences.

Take OTC drug cocktails. We have one cocktail for menstrual pain that's caffeine and acetaminophen. We have another cocktail for headaches that's caffeine and acetaminophen AT THE SAME AMOUNTS. And then we have caffeine pills, generic acetaminophen and a pill splitter for the same cost as the name brands. If people actually understood what was behind the first two products, they wouldn't buy either one.

Pharma companies *REALLY* don't want the public to know "It just has to be statistically better than a placebo," not "Well, it wasn't quite as effective as the drug the patent just expired on."

Electronics. Take something like digital cameras. The number they advertise, megapixels. What they don't want consumers to know is more megapixels for a given sensor size == more noise in the image.

Reply

Re: What's the weather like on your planet? ideaphile December 20 2011, 18:45:09 UTC
I can see that you don't understand the difference between accepting the fact that many customers don't understand science and actually preferring that customers don't understand science.

. png

Reply

Re: What's the weather like on your planet? elfs December 20 2011, 14:42:20 UTC
I don't know what planet you're from, but mine is inhabited by Homo sapiens, the species that got to the top of the food chain by being the most subtly deceitful creatures the planet has ever seen. So I have to disagree, from your initial premise to the last, about the idea that "90% of all businesses very much want customers to understand and appreciate what goes into their products ( ... )

Reply


Leave a comment

Up