From: ibshambat@gmail.com   
      
   Responsibility presupposes knowledge. Without knowledge, people do not   
   understand the world enough to know the consequences of their actions, which   
   means that they cannot act in a calculated manner to influence their   
   environment in such a way as to    
   achieve the intended result.   
      
   There are many demagogues claiming responsibility as their value while being   
   against knowledge. These people rail against scientists, academia, climate   
   science or "liberal elites" in the same sentence as they claim to support   
   responsibility or integrity    
   or American values. They are wrong - absolutely.   
      
   These people claim that prosperity is created by business and only by   
   business. What they do not realize is where the knowledge behind this   
   prosperity comes from. Most of what business sells is technology; and   
   technology comes from science.   
      
   Which means that it is science, and not business, that is the ultimate source   
   of prosperity. And while business certainly has a vast role in creating   
   prosperity, without science capitalism would be nothing more than exchange of   
   basic commodities at the    
   level it was in medieval Persia.   
      
   The people who claim to value liberty, responsibility or economic opportunity   
   at the same time as they attack or deny science are lying. Scientific   
   knowledge is at the root of prosperity as well as of all progress. Texas Oil   
   is not the root of prosperity;   
    science is.   
      
   And lacking or denying this knowledge, people engage in grossly irresponsible   
   behavior, such as poisoning the oceans and the air and making the world a   
   worse place for their children than they have found it.   
      
   Are most scientists liberals? Yes. Why? Mainly because the scientists do not   
   make very much money for the time, effort and money they put into their   
   education, which means that the people driven by economic interest tend to   
   avoid the profession. The only    
   people who go into science are either the people who love the field or the   
   people who are driven by the ideal of service.   
      
   And if the conservatives seek a greater presence – and influence - in the   
   academia, they would be advancing these things as their values and teaching   
   them to their kids.   
      
   It is much easier to rail against “liberal elites” than it is to produce   
   knowledge. What we see instead is these people railing against “liberal   
   elites” while using their work to enrich themselves. They fail to compensate   
   the people from whom    
   they get their knowledge according to the value that they are getting from it,   
   choosing instead to damn or defund them.   
      
   That is an act of supreme dishonesty. And dishonesty does not qualify as a   
   conservative value.   
      
   Or as responsibility. Or as liberty. Or as American patriotism or the American   
   way.   
      
   Is academia right on all counts? No. I have opposed political correctness ever   
   since I knew what it was, because it is intellectual fascism. I oppose   
   personality psychology because it damns people, claiming irrationally that   
   some people are evil and can    
   only be evil whatever they do, however hard they work and whatever work they   
   do on themselves. And I oppose materialist fundamentalism – falsely known as   
   skepticism - because I and many people I know – including eminent   
   scientists, successful    
   entrepreneurs and highly educated, highly accomplished professionals in fields   
   ranging from software to medicine - have had very real spiritual experiences.   
   Experiences with less than one in a billion chance of happening. And not one,   
   but many of them.   
      
   Does the academia not reflect “American values”? Political correctness,   
   materialist fundamentalism and irrational psychological theories do not; but   
   for as long as American values include honesty and integrity, real science   
   does. This is the case for    
   physics or mathematics or chemistry or biology or computer science or medicine   
   or engineering; this is also the case for climate science. Not only has it   
   been validated by 10,000 of the world's brightest minds, but it should be   
   common sense. You raise    
   carbon dioxide emissions while burning down the rainforests that absorb carbon   
   dioxide, you have problems.   
      
   Responsibility presupposes knowledge; and claiming to be in value of   
   responsibility while being against knowledge is a racket. It allows people to   
   use the work of the scientists to enrich themselves without valuing or   
   compensating them according to the    
   value of what they get. It leads them to behavior that is vastly irresponsible   
   and that leaves the world a worse place for their children. It leads them to   
   engage in brutal, destructive practices. It leads them to listen to liars and   
   demagogues who con    
   them and laugh all the way to Congress or all the way to the bank.   
      
   There is no responsibility without knowledge, and there is no prosperity   
   without science.   
      
   It is time that knowledge, education and science be valued according to the   
   benefit they provide.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)