When did liberals become so "whats in it for me" when it comes to science?

[TZ]

I refer to certain individuals in GD who are complaining about the shuttle program and Hubble and the ISS as huge wastes of money and if there aren't any significant benefits to Americans they should be cut out.
I even heard one person refer to Hubble as a super expensive camera and that the stuff learned by it, isn't important!
WTF? I feel like I was arguing with freepers.........:wtf:

[varkam]

1. Just another reminder that anti-intellectualism isn't just a staple of the freeptards.

[WoodrowFan]

2. Apollo

Anybody else notice that when the US scaled back the Apollo program that the economy really started stagnating. I know, post hoc ergo propter hoc, but I always wondered if the cutbacks had a negative effect on technological innovations and the economy in general.


I was always annoyed by the "let's spend the money on Earth" anti-NASA cliche. I mean, WHERE do they think it's spent if not on Earth? Is there a space shuttle store on Mars NASA is using? It reminds me of the old RW argument that the New Deal didn't end the Depression, World War II did. So large scale government spending didn't help the economy but large scale government spending did? :wtf: The lesson from World War II isn't that public works didn't help the economy, it's that public works programs in the New Deal were not large enough to end the Depression by themselves. Likewise with the Space Program. Scientific research is a form of useful public works program: it provides jobs AND it helps spur the knowledge and technology that help the entire economy grow. It IS spending money "on Earth" and it helps society as a whole.

This doesn't mean you neglect short-term immediate help, such as feeding the hungry, but it does mean you have to include both short term help AND long term spending at the same time.

[Orrex]

3. I'm not a great advocate of manned space exploration, but...

Space exploration and the study of space have yielded answers to questions that troubled humans for millennia. Hell, they've answered questions that we weren't even equipped to ask just a few decades ago.

The advancement of knowledge for its own sake is a worthy goal in itself. I understand some people's concerns that NASA is a waste of money, but really it's pretty darn cheap--around $17B for FY 2008. I mean, we spend that much between dinner and dessert in Iraq, so what's the big deal? Obviously a lot of government dollars could be better spent than they currently are, but NASA is not the money pit that its detractors would have it be.

The Mars Rovers are a positively historical success story, vastly exceeding their 90-day service lives. And Voyager II is still sending a trickle of data even 3+ decades after launch. Sure, there are some spectacular failures (centimeters-to-inches, for example), but on balance the entire program's been a remarkable achievement.

[TZ]

4. What really surprised me was the contempt for Hubble!

My god, what we have learned from that and yet, it was so cavalierly dismissed as "a big expensive camera"!:argh:

[moggie]

5. Sounds like McCain and the "overhead projector"

There's probably an element here of Keats' objection that Newton had "destroyed the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to a prism", which provided the title for Dawkins' "Unweaving the Rainbow". Some people don't want us to learn more about the universe, since the feel that its mystery is important to its appeal.

[moggie]

6. Hey, don't tar liberals with that brush

Do you have any evidence that this attitude is more prevalent among liberals than conservatives? Or is it just that you expect better of liberals, so you notice it more?

[salvorhardin]

7. I keep referring people to Hofstadter

Anti-intellectualism is thoroughly woven into the fabric of American society. At different points in time it's expressed more or less by both liberals and conservatives and in different ways. In hard times it seems as if liberals resent money spent on science and during times of plenty conservatives wring their hands over social change brought about by science and technology. And then there's the denialists who oppose any science that runs counter to their dogma or their pocketbooks.

[moggie]

9. I have a promising book on my to-be-read pile

"The Age of American Unreason - Dumbing Down and the Future of Democracy" by Susan Jacoby. She was inspired in part by Hofstadter, but feels that the current tide of anti-intellectualism is more dangerous than that in Hofstadter's time. One thing I'd like to know is: is the anomalous level of religious belief in the US a cause, or a symptom?

[TZ]

10. hmm good question

It seems to me a lot of the more scientifically literate countries aren't as heavily religious...Seems like one of those chicken and egg deals...

[salvorhardin]

11. I really disliked that book

In many ways I thought Jacoby just came off as a whining snob who wasn't happy that people valued the same sorts of things she did. Furthermore there were many examples of Jacoby resorting to bad science (TV watching causes autism). In particular she doesn't consider the socioeconomic drivers behind a lot of the behavior she decries. The best part of the book was her coverage of 1950s middlebrow culture and even that suffered greatly from her snobbishness. I wanted to like the book, I really did. I loved her previous book Freethinkers but this one was an epic fail.

The Uncredible Hallq has a scathing review (I never wrote mine): http://uncrediblehallq.blogspot.com/2008/04/review-age-of-american-unreason.html

And Salon has a more even-handed review: http://www.salon.com/books/review/2008/02/15/susan_jacoby

ETA: I am really uncomfortable with authors who would tell us that things were better in the past. I'm just not at all sure that's true. Sure, it seems like people are a lot dumber and anti-intellectual than they were half a century ago, but is it because they really are that way or is it because modern digital media allows us to be exposed to so much more inanity making it all the more obvious. In short I think Jacoby is indulging her own peculiar confirmation bias.

[moggie]

12. Sounds like it'll be a frustrating read

Still, it'd be boring if I only read books I totally agree with.

[TZ]

8. I expect better of liberals

I don't expect to hear the same whine about NASA being a waste of money and if it doesn't benefit Americans in their daily lives it is worthless..I NEVER heard this anywhere but RW nutjobs. Being as my mostly liberal family is very science orientated (with my dad being a HUGE fan of astronomy and my Uncle a huge fan of Physics) it just surprises and disappoints me.

[cosmik debris]

13. My argument for xenophobes.

(This argument only works on xenophobes, but it usually works well.)

Look at the Western Hemisphere. The predominant languages in the Western Hemisphere are Portuguese, Spanish, English, and French. Because those are the people who spent the cash to bring their cultures to the New World and conquer it.

In 400 years, what will be the predominant language and culture on Mars or Titan or Io? Will it be Chinese? Russian? Japanese? The decisions made today will answer that question. What do you want the future to look like?

[CanSocDem]

14. "liberals" aren't arguing "What's in it for me..."

They are probably asking what's in it for people.

Corporations aren't people, even if your 'government' treats them as such. This is the issue liberals are focused on despite your paranoia for your pet technology. They aren't out to shut down the hospitals or pill makers; just make them more accountable to the PEOPLE.

Camera's in 'space' are going to tell us....what again????

The origins of the universe....????

:rofl:

.

[Name removed]

15. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[CanSocDem]

17. The reason this is so confusing...

...for you, is because you waste ALL your energy trying to characterize the messenger instead of listening to the message.

"...xenophobes, anti-science woo, narrow minded fundie, poster child for anti-intellectualism, a classic case--someone too stupid, idiot, dense...."

What we're dealing with here....

"And since when is a government agency a corporation?"

Hmm....When it operates out of the USA???

Was there no economics component in your "zoology degree"...????

.

[TZ]

20. once again you demonstrate your narrow minded ness

because you can't separate out science from economics. And I HAVE worked with govt agencies and corporations and they aren't the same.
Tell me how that has ANYTHING to do with your lack of understanding of physics and cosmology? Oh and tell me again why you are more knowledgable than Stephan Hawking? Cause you did drugs? This is your brain on drugs...see above idiocy.

[NoodleBoy]

18. Wait, this is your reality-- can't you just wish the big bad corporations away?

[Random_Australian]

19. Then they are arguing it very poorly, and extremely short-sightedly.

"Corporations aren't people, even if your 'government' treats them as such"

The OP never claimed different.

Furthermore, despite your claims of the referenced people arguing that we should "make them more accountable to the PEOPLE", I went and looked.

And they weren't arguing that at all. It's exactly as described in the OP - "if there aren't any significant benefits to Americans they should be cut out".

"Camera's in 'space' are going to tell us....what again????

The origins of the universe....????"

1) Stop using non-sequiturs.
2) Start using grammar. (....????? and 'space' and camera's)
3) Let's play pattern recognition!

Turtlensue complains that "I even heard one person refer to Hubble as a super expensive camera".

Wow! It looks like using perjorative descriptions of important things is offensive. Hmmmmm.

So, when carefully trying to stimulate debate and you know that you'll just annoy/anger people by referring to the Hubble as a camera, and implying it has no value.

But you want to say the Hubble isn't worth it, so do you say:

A) I don't think it was a worthwhile investment because (x,y,z)

B) "Camera's in 'space' are going to tell us....what again????

The origins of the universe....????"

Which one is geared to annoy and irritate?
Which one would really be completed by an "I'm laughing at you" smilie?
Which one looks like yours?
Will you suddenly become completely innocent when replying to this?

[TZ]

21. of course not

But I think I can predict his reply to you as this: I'm right and you are wrong! You are an evil and corrupt scientist who oppress the people! I never went to school so I'm free of the corrupting influence of....knowledge.

His purpose being to annoy and disrupt, not to debate..but when one lacks certain skills I guess one needs to fall back on what they know best...

[Random_Australian]

23. GASP! You are either psychic, or have read any of the previous responses CanSoc has used!

I'm guessing psychic.

Or maybe CantStop will just respond to this post and ignore the previous? Maybe also say that since this post is talking to you, my responses to them only contain insults.

[CanSocDem]

24. Too funny...

"His purpose being to annoy and disrupt, not to debate..."


If you can stop your name-calling long enough to read one of my posts and actually make an attempt to understand what I'm talking about, you will find a lot to debate.

"I never went to school so I'm free of the corrupting influence of....knowledge."


But you do know 'zoology', right???

.

[TZ]

25. There is nothing to debate with you.

You already know all the answers. And no "evidence" really exists to contradict you, in your little "reality".
And I know a hell of a lot more than zoology if you pay attention. But you don't.

[Warpy]

16. Probably because we've been fighting for crumbs

for the past 40 years, ever since liberals went out of power.

Since 1980, the wealthy have garnered more and more of the country's wealth, leaving little for the infrastructure and less for research and none at all for the rest of us, who were expected to assume huge debts in order to have a middle class lifestyle.

Research that seemingly leads nowhere in terms of immediate benefit, preferably benefit that generates profit, is seen as wasteful because there is just so little wealth to go around after the wealthy scraped most of it off the top.

[Deep13]

22. Hubble has been a bargain.

So have most of the robot probes and the other orbiting observatories. I can't begin to guess the extent to which human knowledge of the cosmos has been expanded by them.

Frankly, I have always been a critic of the space shuttle. Every time that think goes into orbit, it costs half a billion dollars and that is exclusive of the actual mission. Plus, it is limited in what it can do by its low-orbit operation. It just does not seem like an improvement over Apollo Applications except that recovery is cheaper. I actually like the new program alot better.

Same with that orbiting apartment building. All that money and effort to go precisely nowhere.

[JitterbugPerfume]

26. I just do not understand it

Pictures from the Hubble give me a sense of awe and wonder that would not have been possible before.

Science for the sheer joy of learning, and the attempt to understand the magnificence of it all makes the so called "cost" worth the effort.\

Some people just make their world so small--

[salvorhardin]

27. Maybe it's partly because awe and wonder are cheap today

For many people, they can get that same sense of awe and wonder simply by ponying up $9 for a movie ticket. And the neat thing about movies is that they don't need explaining usually. You just sit there, turn off your mind and get amazed.

However when it comes to this...?



Oh sure. It's a pretty picture. But what is it? It's all well and good to rattle off that it's a picture of a glowing shell of gas some 19,000 million million miles away, somewhere off in the direction of the constellation Draco; a remnant of the dying spasms of a star that expired over four and a quarter million years before the Earth was even formed.

I think that's mind blowing. I'm pretty sure you and the rest of the regular posters in this group feel the same way. But you have to have a fair amount of education just to understand the simplest explanation. You have to understand what light-years are and how when we see distant objects in the night sky that we're really looking back in time. You have to understand what a nebula is. And if you really want to understand it you've got to have even more education. You need to know about things like binary central stars and white dwarfs and triple-alpha process fusion. It's complicated. It takes years to get to that level of understanding. Hell, to even understand it at the layman's level, the only level I understand most of astronomy at, you've got to read dozens of books and watch hours of PBS or BBC documentaries.

And what if you don't accept the process, the method, by which scientists come to know such things? What if you yourself have had very little training in science and are suspect of what scientists do because they cloak everything in dense technical jargon and incomprehensible mathematical notation? What if you don't see any connection between the death of long ago distant star and the aging of the sun that gave birth to the very ground you're walking on?

Well, then the value of putting cameras in space seems pretty questionable compared to the price of that movie ticket. Especially when you consider that we're here now and there are millions of sick and starving people; some of them right in your own back yard. So you get angry at those egg head scientists and all the money spent on their silly toys. And you get smug in your opinion that none of it really matters and we have better things to spend our money on. And you remain ignorant.



FWIW: The above image of the Cat's Eye Nebula was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys High Resolution Camera on May 4, 2002. Much more detail here: http://heritage.stsci.edu/2004/27/index.html

[dawgmom]

28. These are the same people who have no respect for basic research

They are the ones who push and push for increases in government spending on applied research, earmarked to specific diseases, in a time when the overall pot of money for research spending is shrinking. What suffers as a result? Basic research, which is absolutely critical as the engine of all applied research. It's shortsighted, and it's stupid -- and it's been worse under Bush.

[PVnRT]

29. We could be leading in that category

if the budget hawks who don't "get" science hadn't shot down the Texas Supercollider, which, if I remember right, would have been larger than the LHC.

[lizerdbits]

30. Bingo

Especially cancer research. There will never be one magic thing that fixes all genes involving cell cycle regulation that go awry leading to cancer, we need to learn more basic, normal molecular cell biology research. Or autoimmune diseases- lets find out even more about normal immune function and maybe we'll have a better idea of what specifically goes wrong causing our own body will attack itself.

I still think there should be disease specific research but maybe there should be a different balance of funding. Things like the discovery of the genes associated with an increased risk of certain cancers may save many lives with early detection.

[dawgmom]

31. Double Bingo

Right on the money.

Of course there should be disease specific research, as you said -- but when there are so many different kinds of cancer (it's not just one disease, as the public likes to think of it) then it's essential that we do basic research also, to seek the common thread, if there is one.

The problem in so much disease research, as in cancer research as you mentioned, is that the balance of funding skews towards treatment. It's understandable -- the medical model applies, and when advocacy groups drive the dollars, they drive them towards treating and saving people who are already sick. I understand that. However, we must balance funding so that early detection gets a fair share of the pie, and also the forgotten stepchild, prevention and causation.

[dropkickpa]

32. Sigh. Tell me about it

So much of cancer research is just figuring out HOW it works, because every cancer is different.