Would you believe an angry creationist tried to get Jeffrey Shallit fired for critically reviewing some creationist books? Of course you would. It’s what they do. I’ve had a couple of loons do the same thing, rifling through my university’s faculty list to get all the email addresses they could, and then send off bulk email to everyone documenting my crimes. It’s annoying, but it’s also incredibly stupid; every time it has happened, there’s a bit of a laugh among the people targeted, and it’s an uncomfortable laugh at these sad people with their weird delusions.
It doesn’t help their case that their arguments are always so awful. Here’s another example: David Klinghoffer, the Discovery Institute hack, is claiming that Proxima B calls evolution into question. How? I don’t know. But as Matthew points out, the logic is ridiculous.
If life is common, that’s evidence for intelligent design. But if life is rare, that’s evidence for intelligent design. Everything is evidence of your theory when you haven’t internalized the concept of falsifiability.
It doesn’t help that the Proxima B story is an example of ridiculously over-hyped nonsense: the observation that there’s a big rock orbiting a star almost 5 light years away does not imply that it is habitable or that anyone will be colonizing it soon. It doesn’t help that Klinghoffer quotes Mr Indiscriminate Hype himself, Michio Kaku.
It’s a “game changer,” the “holy grail,” only a “hop, skip, and a jump” away, physicist Michio Kaku tells CBS, which characterizes the planet as a possible “Earth 2.0.”
Jebus, but that guy is a pandering twit — it’s gotten to the point where, if I see his face appearing on the television, I turn it off, confidently secure that I’ve spared myself another trickle of bullshit. And really, life is contingent on a set of circumstances that we haven’t mapped out yet, so discovering that another planet either has no life on it or has independently evolved it (and neither of these things are known for Proxima B) says absolutely nothing about the validity of evolutionary theory.
Would it be earth 2.0 or earth times two and likely tidally locked?
Regardless, the entire matter does prove that the ability to say stupid things has evolved independently on multiple occasions. So much hoopla, so few observations. :/
But, it does remind me of some men’s room graffiti at Columbia Research Labs many years ago. “There is intelligent life on earth! But, I’m leaving tonight”.
I’ll just show myself out…
Anything orbiting anything is a stark refutation of creationism. The biblical description of the sky is clearly the Babylonian dome. Bringing intelligent design into the discussion doesn’t help – as is said, it’s just a claim, not a coherent theory.
Ah, pay no attention to those idiots. I think it’s really exciting that we’re getting so much more information about the galaxy and nearby star systems. Yeah, we can’t go there in the foreseeable future, but we’re figuring out more about our place in the universe and I am happy to keep on doing that and leave the ignoratti to their wanking.
Honestly, I have a hard time getting worked up over hype science so long as it isn’t actively hurting people.
The last time I had a discussion with a creationist* I pointed this out as a big problem with creationism/ Intelligent Design: it’s lack of falsifiablity. There was nothing that could show it to be false, so claiming anything showed it as true was ultimately meaningless. He thought this was me checkmating myself, immediately wondering why I couldn’t admit he was right and creationism was true. The sad thing is, this was in very same e-mail- just a paragraph later actually- where he claimed to be well versed in basic science after I noted his apparent lack in that knowledge, highlighting his use of “It’s just a theory” as support for my assertion.
* And by last time, I mean both sequentially the last time and the one which made me decide, unless there is a good reason otherwise, I would never have another discussion with one again. Three weeks of my time wasted sending e-mails back and forth, only for his final reply to consisted of nothing but claims I called him a liar over and over.
is code for “just a guess”+*shrug*.
It’s frustrating how common this use of the word distorts from its other meaning. The one more commonly used to describe a scientific description of ‘how stuff works’. (NB ‘how’, not ‘why’).
I started to stop listening after “just a …”. that qualifier on “theory” means it is not actually a theory in any sense; just a euphemism for “w.a. guess”.
*shrug* ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That a planet is within the habitable zone is necessary but not sufficient.
Mars and Venus are within our solar system habitable zone.
They might well have had life at one time. Mars might still have life. But if it does, it isn’t the type that produces trees, bison, and skyscrapers.
According to a BBC report:
“If there are lifeforms on Proxima b – even simple microbes – they may find the going rather tough, however.
Red dwarfs are very active. They tend to throw out big flares that would bombard a nearby planet with energetic particles. The X-ray emission is much more intense as well.”
Pffft!!! Quite the confused underachiever creationist here.
Usually, they just send death threats and hate mail. I long ago lost count of how many I’ve gotten.
PZ Myers probably has gotten as many as any scientist.
Ice Warriors.
“Earth 2.0” reminds me of Thomas Friedman calling Islam “Judaism 3.0.”
Completely incoherent specious catchphrase, there with “Chindia” and “The
World Is Flat.”
Apart from revealing the extent to which Michio Kaku thinks of everything
in terms of software engineering. It might just be used metaphorically, but
the language of computing is an infestation.
In what way is this planet an upgrade? And how does one upgrade a planet?
And indeed, if it’s anything like actual upgrade, it might be worse.
“We’re running on 10,000 year old hardware”
“Increase the clock speed of our brains”
“Backup our minds”
Michio Kaku also recently commented that in the near future we’ll have
“perfect capitalism” because we’ll see all the prices of all the items in
the store and be able to compare them instantly. No need to go into all the
ways in which that is idiotic.
@Matrim #4:
It’s actively hurting a number of people’s ability to think. I don’t think it helps anyone in the journey from ignorance to knowledge if Kaku or his like keep putting up roadblocks which need dismantling.
I think that what Kaku is trying to do by going on about science and scientific understanding is trying to encourage and reassure the ignorant into seeing science and scientific understanding as safe and positive and amazing. That he often fails with people who already think like that is obvious and too bad
uncle frogy
Rich Woods@12: “I don’t think it helps anyone in the journey from ignorance to knowledge if Kaku or his like keep putting up roadblocks which need dismantling.”
I knew a mathematician back in the 1970s who said, of a certain other mathematician—let’s say X—that X didn’t “do mathematics”, X did “anti-mathematics”, in the sense that to show the error of X’s conclusions you had to actually do mathematics, but at the end nothing was left. (Unlike matter/anti-matter, there’s apparently no conservation law for [mathematical] knowledge.)
A few decades before that, E. E. Cummings wrote “all ignorance toboggans into know / then trudges up to ignorance again”.
I do not intend to connect those (at most) two epistemological stances except by juxtaposition.
@13-
Kaku is like Team Science’s Jason Statham. Most sciencey people want Jet Li instead.