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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   35663 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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I am naturally a conspiratorial minded person, and yet no possible conspiracy theory could account for the mass mindlessness of modern academic "science."

Well there is no conspiracy there. It is just emergent behaviour of the money allocated for science has been taken over by greed and ideology. There is a long tradition spinning science communication to spread doubt. Tobacco companies pioneered it in modern massmedia with sowing doubt to the absolute scientific fact that they are killing their own customers. They wanted to communicate "alternative facts" that their products caused lung cancer. But the phenomena damages perception on what is science in the public eye because it benefitted their greed. That miseducation on science and scientific continues in the media even today. Somehow an avocado that travelled half way around the world on a fossil fueled transport is better for the climate than me eating a piece of meat that has grown less than a mile away.

There is a replication crisis going on also. That is also a function of allocation and greed. Researchers apply for grants for some research but there is nothing in the system that awards negative outcomes of research. So researchers have now an incentive to tweak, massage and fudge numbers to have positive outcomes on their research, because the moment they don't prove their hypothesis their funds dry up almost instantly.

But there is huge component bad ideas being inserted in that funding process too. The scariest thing that I heard of was an astrophycisist needing to show how it relates to DEI and gettings his grant denied because it wasn't furthering the 'cause'. Which is just plain incompetence.

Somehow an avocado that travelled half way around the world on a fossil fueled transport is better for the climate than me eating a piece of meat that has grown less than a mile away.

It is entirely possible that the extra fossil fuels needed to grow the piece of meat relative to the avocado outweigh the fuel needed to transport the avocado.

And in reality, meat is often transported across large distances.

Well I was trying to get across the point here, if I buy locally produced meat. If I buy meat that has been transported long distances or it comes from a "meat factory" then I'll concede that it can be carbon intesive. I have never touched an avocado tree but I've petted farm animals, so locally produced meat is an option for me and locally grown avocados aren't, so going vegan with something that you can't touch might not be better for the climate.

I agree. It's more like ants marching in a death circle.

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