The burden of the Intellectual

[Kasz216]

kain_kusanagi said:

mysticwolf said:
I guess I'll never know what this thread was about, other than the odd mentions of penises and homosexuals and traffic lights.

Yeah I came in late too. That's why decided to comment on "intellectuals" and how they treat others:

"In my opinion people who consider themselves to be intellectual often are no more well educated than your average college graduate. Unlike the average grad they do tend to hold onto "facts" as though they were precious heirlooms. Like an old collector they like to show off their heirlooms as often as possible to prove their value. And just like that old collect when they feel threatened they will throw those heirlooms at their "attacker' and try to beat them to death with them.

Now you may have noticed that a few lines back I but the word "facts" in quotes. Intellectuals love facts, but they only care about the ones that fit into their ideas. So they read up on data, no matter how unsupported, that agrees with their perceptions. For an "intellectual" the only thing more important than being right is making others agree with them. The only thing they find more offensive than differing opinions is valid counter data and facts.

Real intellectuals work at universities or other research sectors. Anyone who considers them self an intellectual, but doesn't get paid for their abundant intellect is probably just an egomaniacal megalomaniac with a subconscious inferiority complex.

You might be saying, hey those a pretty big words, maybe you think you are an intellectual. Nope, I'm just an average guy who double checked the word "megalomaniac" on dictionary.com because I know I make mistakes sometimes. Intellectuals with argue an opinion as fact until the next ice age. The average person, like me and most of the people reading this, like to preface their opinions with "in my opinion" and will happily go on living life knowing that others don't share that opinion."

Nah, just wait a day.  The OP will be back then.  The posts being gone is something unreleated.

I'd also point out, the main problem with people who consider themselves intellectuals or rather, use the term... tend to have a tendency to never think they are wrong, despite later contrary evidence.  More often then not, people who consider themselves "intellectuals" actually tend to be mainstream adopters, who don't pay any attention to the actual science going on.

 

For example, Global Warming was mentioned, and it's a GREAT example of how following the science actually would cause your opinion to shift quite a bit.

 

We started out with gobal cooling, then ended up with global warming... but then.  Something weird happened.   We learned how to measure temperatures by sattelite, and then something weird happened.  Essentially global temperature remained completely unchanged.

Of which, the average person and some scientsits said "Well, the models say there should be warming, so it must all be deep in the oceans."

The trick being, the deep oceans are the only place we can't measure reliably with sattelites.  Sattelites being superior to the previous ground temperature measuring because it can measure much wider swaths of land, and the atomosphere, which, the atomosphere has less confounding variables, and is supposed to heat quicker then the ground does.

Either way, the "Oceans must be doing it" arguement was awful science... well not even science.  It was ignoring reality in place of the model, which was based off different less accurate data.  It was basically saying "A wizard did it.  Ocean Wizard."

However THEN a new study came out, that argued, quite convincingly, that the reason there has been basically zero climate change in the last 10 years is China.

Or more percisely, China and their coal.    With China's big resources boom, mining coal and buying coal from other places, the coal dust was released into the atmosphere, which, while coal is a global warmer.   The dust released by it's mining is actually a global cooling particle, that gets in the air and therefore cools both the air and the land.

In reality, it seems global warming effects are being blocked out by said coal in the short term... and we have no idea how much or how bad global warming has been.   Which is problematic, considering it COULD mean, earlier global warming models were correct.

In which case, the phrase "Global Warming must be addressed" is patently false, because it's already gotten to the point of where global warming CAN'T be addressed.

Which in general is the opinion I think someone who looks at the would based on the fact would take anyway when looking at the world... as there is no way to achieve massive enough global warming prevention, outside giant world dictatorship.

 

Though in general, someone who followed the science, would of logically questioned the validity of global warming for quite a while, due to the most accurate data just not matching up.