148 karma · joined December 29, 2015
Popular science articles misrepresent the science and ignore the variance/complexity, in the end hurting the cause in the eyes of those who don't agree with the prescribed policies to address it.
Climate Change is by no means a 'settled' science, one of the most important questions scientists must answer is what the Climate Sensitivity is to CO2. There's a wide range of answers to this question by scientists, depending on which climate model you use, as well as many other factors.
Is there a thing as free will, and if so, is it explainable in terms of physics? And with consciousness (if you believe there is such a thing)? Is morality and ethics reducible to physics as well? There's a lot of presuppositions to the statement that everything is reducible to some purely mechanical process.
I have no doubt that many serious people believe as you have stated, but it's not a self evidently true claim.
> Coal miners are really technology workers who get dirty
Really?
I even agree with the premise that were going to see an increase of 'trades' style programmers assuming a certain classification of programming jobs, but the article is sensationalized.
1. Everyone knows Javascript (so everyone has an opinion)
2. It's easier to criticize something than to share original thoughts
3. Posting your thoughts about programming is popular (what percentage of mechanics blog about automobile trends?)
There is no easier article to write (and get page views) than writing a blog post about how terrible javascript/JS OSS is.
My point is that as an organization scales, you will have many teams, and teams of teams even. The wishful thinking is that you can disband this entire structure because 'we hire good communicators'.
Higher education correlates directly with an older average age, what would the statistics look like if you corrected for the high-education -> older age correlation? The average age of PhD graduates will certainly make them skip out on the age brackets which are most strongly associated with living at home.
> The Clinton Foundation has confirmed it accepted a $1 million gift from Qatar while Hillary Clinton was U.S. secretary of state without informing the State Department, even though she had promised to let the agency review new or significantly increased support from foreign governments.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-foundation-id...
Are we now assuming every charity is on equal moral grounds?
No doubt the path to career success is easier for those with parents who made an a collection of smart decisions, as well having made past smart choices.
If I must accept this definition of 'privilege', then we can simply call all outcomes in our life to be a direct result of the amount of 'privilege' we have.
Personally I reject this broad definition of privilege as it strips away peoples need to accept the fact that at the end of the day, they have the ability to make their own choices and develop their own self discipline.
There are world class developers who have arisen from 3rd world country level educations, there are elite athletes in third world countries who have self-coached their way to olympic level performance. Class mobility exists, and stripping away personal responsibility via the process of redefining language does not help anyone except for those who wish to just continue their life without critical introspection.
At the core, this is a political argument hidden under the shroud of being a linguistics argument.
Being a software developer isn't a privilege, it's a choice.
Could you please refer me to where he said that 'all climate change science is a hoax'? I would agree that would be a factually incorrect statement though I could not find anything where he said that. My interpretation of what I've read from what Trump has said, is that Trump believes that Climate Change Alarmists (from his perspective) utilize it to for political/policy reasons beyond the purely environmental reasons that they claim.
The opposing argument is that people are making is as follows: 'climate-alarmists' misuse climate-science as a means of making political change.
It is not a denial of all climate-change science.
I don't care to argue this topic because I'm not expert nor do I care to pretend to be one on the topic of climate change, but this misrepresentation of the opposing views is part of the liberal-bubble so many people live in - all while smugly assuring themselves how much smarter they are than everyone else.
Academics certainly has a liberal bias, after all, look at where they get most of their funding. Conservative professors are being publicly shamed and chased out of their positions.