Tag: science

I’ve been wondering about swine flu since the time the English papers were full of panic-stricken reports that a perfectly healthy child had died of swine flu. Upon reading the details, it became clear that she had only died of it after first suffering through the medical equivalent of getting run over by a truck twice:

If you’ve been diagnosed “probable” or “presumed” 2009 H1N1 or “swine flu” in recent months, you may be surprised to know this: odds are you didn’t have H1N1 flu. In fact, you probably didn’t have flu at all. That’s according to state-by-state test results obtained in a three-month-long CBS News investigation.

What I don’t understand is why the medical authorities seem so determined to see an epidemic of one sort or another take place. First bird flu, now swine flu, and in two years time we’ll probably be instructed to quake with fear over the lethal dangers posed by Malaysian Spitting Frog Flu. I’ve never seen anything like the media coverage of medical matters like the last five years. Even the height of the AIDS scare was nothing like this.

As I have said many, many times before, AGW/CC is a complete crock of steaming bovine ejectus. The “scientists” who subscribe to the theory are either corrupt, ignorant, or ideologically supportive of global governance and this will become increasingly obvious to everyone over time. So, it should come as no surprise that the leading AGW/CC salesman should demonstrate that he has very little grasp of temperature as his numbers are off by an order of magnitude:

Conan: Now, what about … you talk in the book about geothermal energy …
Al: Yeah, yeah.
Conan: and that is, as I understand it, using the heat that’s generated from the core of the earth …
Al: Yeah.
Conan: … to create energy, and it sounds to me like an evil plan by Lex Luthor to defeat Superman. Can you, can you tell me, is this a viable solution, geothermal energy?
Al: It definitely is, and it’s a relatively new one. People think about geothermal energy — when they think about it at all — in terms of the hot water bubbling up in some places, but two kilometers or so down in most places there are these incredibly hot rocks, ’cause the interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees, and the crust of the earth is hot …

The interior of the earth is actually somewhere between 3,700 and 6,000 degrees Celsius, depending upon the estimate. Needless to say, this suffices to show that no intelligent individual should pay any attention whatsoever to Al Gore’s statements about planetary temperature, past, present, or future. Everyone makes mistakes, but in this particular case, as with Gladwell’s infamous Igon Value, the nature of the error indicates the degree of the ignorance.

While I disagree with the idea that IQ isn’t a reasonable measure of intelligence, I very much agree with the distinction between intelligence capacity and intelligence utilization. From New Scientist:

The problem with IQ tests is that while they are effective at assessing our deliberative skills, which involve reason and the use of working memory, they are unable to assess our inclination to use them when the situation demands. This is a crucial distinction: as Daniel Kahneman at Princeton University puts it, intelligence is about brain power whereas rational thinking is about control. “Some people who are intellectually able do not bother to engage very much in analytical thinking and are inclined to rely on their intuitions,” explains Evans. “Other people will check out their gut feeling and reason it through and make sure they have a justification for what they’re doing.”

The analogy I prefer is firepower. IQ is intellectual firepower. Some have .22 caliber popguns, some have 152mm howitzers. But a .22 to the forehead is far more lethal than a 152mm artillery shell that falls miles wide of the target. This is why I occasionally refer to “functional idiots”. These are people with the intellectual capacity to function in an intelligent manner who for various reasons don’t actually use that capacity and so end up with conclusions that are identical to those reached by people without any such capacity.

When people are doing the same stupid thing over and over again, when they are trusting the word of some scientist or priest rather than critically examining the reliability of that word, when they are operating on the basis of information instilled in childhood about which they have never actually thought or on pure emotion, it does not matter how intelligent they are, because they are obviously not making use of that intelligence.

One of the greatest challenges that intelligent people face is learning to distinguish between when they are using their intelligence and when they are not actually making use of it. The action of an intelligent person behaving thoughtlessly is no more likely to be intelligent than the action of an unintelligent person, and in fact, if the action of the intelligent person is not guided by the wisdom of the stored societal knowledge known as tradition, it is actually very likely to be observably less intelligent and lead to less positive results.

What Chesterton described as “the democracy of the dead” may not always be the optimal path, but it is unlikely that it is the most suboptimal one. As has been demonstrated many times throughout the past, creating a significant disaster worthy of historical note usually requires a truly intelligent person. This is why wisdom is always to be preferred to mere intellectual brilliance.

The public is rejecting the AGW/CC scam:

Just 57 percent think there is solid evidence the world is getting warmer, down 20 points in just three years, a new poll says…. The poll was released a day after 18 scientific organizations wrote Congress to reaffirm the consensus behind global warming. A federal government report Thursday found that global warming is upsetting the Arctic’s thermostat. Only about a third, or 36 percent of the respondents, feel that human activities — such as pollution from power plants, factories and automobiles — are behind a temperature increase. That’s down from 47 percent from 2006 through last year’s poll.

Brainwashing and appeals to scientific authority only go so far when Joe Public’s car is buried by snow in early October. No doubt the true believing scientific community will respond with calm reason and logical persuasion, by which of course I mean that we can look forward to the usual suspects shrieking about how stupid everyone is for daring to think for themselves and wistfully dreaming of PhDoctocracy.