Diary 8/14/17 - Where do we go from here?

Historically science has been about learning stuff and better understanding the functioning reality in front of us.  It has always been a constructive dialogue, and even a contact sport between intellectual adults.  That’s because science demanded dedicated nonstop learning and often new information would conflict with long standing beliefs.  Still scientists adhered to rules of honesty, not just honesty in their own scientific work and reports but representing other’s position and evidence honestly, even when debating contentious issues.

Deviants and demagogues would appear from time to time, but given that they were embedded within a skeptical community of informed all-around skeptical experts, the occasional frauds found themselves exposed, while the wheels of science returned to the solid ground of allowing verifiable facts to dictate what people ‘believed’ (though always provisional, knowing that new information could modify and enhance the more simplistic established understanding.

As it turned out, none of that was ever a problem so long as scientific learning was tied to increasing earnings and profits and riches, all was well.

Then during the course of the twentieth century something fundamental and unavoidable changed.  Our science facilitated human population explosion came face to face with the reality of our finite Earth’s limits on growth which then came face to face human’s avaricious appetites.  

Scientists being at the forefront of understanding our living planet, were the first one’s to appreciate the Faustian Bargain our fast paced fossil fuels driven society had locked all of us humans into.

By the 70s the reality was clear,

Diary 8/11/2017 - Center for Inquiry Forum, Cracking the Contrarians' Code.

Due to obligations and commitments crowding my reading and writing time down to the bottom of my get-it-done list it has remained scattered and lately mostly confined to commenting over at the Center for Inquiry forum.  Recently conversations have gotten a bit livelier and occasionally even constructive since a few more people are getting involved.   

Check it out sometime.  Faith based vs Fact based.  Climate skeptical challenges add some spice, civility and feigned civility, facts and fiction, devious rhetoric and touche's, sometimes genuine learning, insults and ruffled feathers, usually for effect, occasionally heart felt, sturm und drang and all that fun stuff.

Still, at the end of the day we’re left with the same challenge that started long ago with the first strategic attacks on the scientific understanding of tobacco smoke dangers - though at the time no one realized it, too many still don’t.  ( For those details see: http://www.merchantsofdoubt.org.  It's all been documented, though contrarians prefer to dismiss the book as meaningless ad hominem attacks {on their right to lie I presume}, all the while ignoring all evidence presented.)

The challenge is: How to engage in a constructive intellectual dialogue with characters who are dedicated to disparaging and dismissing serious science with what ever words and tactics are required at the moment, merely because it’s what their jobs depend on?

Good faith learning holds no interest.  Sowing doubt and confusion is the goal and it’s such an easy thing to achieve if one possesses no scruples and limitless chutzpah.

Resentment towards and dismissal of evidence is a given.