Woke physics - image

[NortonDommi]

[QUOTE=DIYSwede;179031]FWIW: My personal experience is that in order to "win an argument",
there has to be a shared notion of what a relevant argument even is,
what would constitute necessary and sufficient facts for,
but also against the assumed hypothesis to be proven or disproved.
And lastly - a mind open enough to even for a moment consider having beliefs being false.

All government inquiries and 'consultations' have "terms/frames of reference" deliberately designed to exclude a lot of pertinent information including verifiable facts for precisely the reason you state so well.

[old kodger]

Jon,
It should be noted that the "flag" is trimmed with gold braid this (unless I'm seriously mistaken) is an indication of a military establishment

[Blackbeard]

I have found in general, those who partake of the "woke" movement have serious deficiencies in their mental processes, lack of knowledge regarding history, have not lived long enough to experience real life and been forced to deal with the "true realities" that are everyday living! This push on decolonization of mathematics is such an example! Math was never colonized by the whites as a sign of white supremacy! To say so completely disregards and cancels the development of mathematics by ancient civilizations such as Phoenicians, Romans, Egyptians, Greece, Mayans, Incas, Chinese, and so many more! Who is to say these people were the developers of mathematics as a tool of white supremacy? That mathematics traveled and expanded globally to Europe and was subsequently brought to America by early explorers and settlers is fact! Our modern world could never have developed without mathematics! Those so mindless to say that showing your work in math obviously have serious learning defects in understanding how the learning processes develop and improve. There is no racism in proof of work to determine if the student is set upon the right path. Math was never restricted to any race by any other race, or to a specific race only. To entertain these "woke" fools with their idiotology is a disgrace and only spawns further destruction of our society by this trash!

[Elizabeth Greene]

Could you clarify which part of this you disagree with?

Are they wrong that the vast majority of physics discoveries since Newton have been by men of European descent?
Are they wrong that lack of education and opportunities for women and minorities in science has been an issue?
Are they wrong in encouraging and training minority students to do synchrotron research?

To put a name on the problem, look at Marie Curie. She left Poland for Paris because women were explicitly forbidden to study at University in Warsaw. That was a long time ago, before WW1 so maybe it's a solved problem now? No, not really. The first woman of color to get a PhD in Physics in the US wasn't until after the end of the Apollo program. That's still a long time ago, Nixon was president. Is it solved now? No, not really. In 2019 1,100 US citizens completed a Physics PhD in the year before Covid. Off the top of your head, guess how many were black. 13% of the population would be around 150, right? No, it was 9, not 9%, 9 people total. That's a problem.

Admitting it's a problem doesn't make it your fault, my fault, or the fault of our colonial forbearers. I do not care about fault. What I care about is looking under that particular rock to see if there are big brains hiding under there that we've overlooked. There is a small finite number of people smart enough to do cutting edge physics work. If we can find a few more and bring them into the field then we all win.

I am the last person on Earth to indulge the social justice movement. They are bat****. Even so, I have to admit that Physics, like corporate boardrooms, is a complete sausage fest. I'm not going to crap on an organization that is trying to help that by encouraging and training people to pick up that mantle.

[Elizabeth Greene]

Jon,
It should be noted that the "flag" is trimmed with gold braid this (unless I'm seriously mistaken) is an indication of a military establishment

You are mistaken. As a warning, the majority of the legal advice from the Sovereign Citizen movement is built on fallacies that don't hold up. They do occasionally win a case, but it's a blind pig finding an acorn. It's selection bias that lets you hear about the winners and not the thousands of times they were literally laughed out of court.

[NortonDommi]

Elizabeth Greene ,
I do not know to whom your comments were directed but some science and statistics, given all available evidence have to be accepted as factual.
Do you deny that different peoples have different traits that seem to be genetic? That the I.Q. 'Bell-Curve' is nonsensical? I personally don't like the fact that Eastern Asians consistently score higher in I.Q. tests than Caucasians but a big part of that is attitude - basically the average East Asian in Westernised countries works a LOT harder at academic study that the average Caucasian. Something that I have personally noted,(rightly or wrongly),is that many Indians have a knack for mathematics, every Indian I have worked with seemed to be able to juggle numbers in their head with ease. Some theories suggest that particular mental abilities are related to language but this does not explain people of a certain ethnicity brought up in a culture different from their native one still retaining certain broad traits.
'Affirmative action' just makes everyone and society in general worse off. I want the smartest people, the top 10% going to university if they want to regardless of where they come from or what ethnicity or gender they are.
A lot of wealthy brats really are pandered to and do not deserve a place in university but money talks and most degrees these days are hardly worth the paper they are printed on.
As to women being suppressed perhaps a closer inspection of the foreign religion of Christianity that was forced upon Europe and later Britain starting around circa A.D. 300 by the Sun worshipping Roman emperor Constantine would be in order? Perhaps you would care to explain why you think there is a gender imbalance in universities throughout the Western world today? Women outnumber men, this is a fact and you can verify it yourself.
When it comes to lack of women in certain subjects ALL evidence suggests that it is not because of an externally imposed gender bias but because there are some subjects that women,(in general),have little interest in.
Someone I like to listen to is linked below. A historian who uses facts to form his opinions, something that is becoming rare these days.


History De-bunked. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRE...IJHTw-oqfwgNUQ
Critical race theory.

[old kodger]

E Greene,
I'm not so "mistaken" as you seem to advocate. A little research will reveal that "Old Glory" is a stars and stripes flag, BUT the stripes are vertical, this is the flag of The United States of America, the people's flag. The flag with horizontal stripes is military,...of the USA, quite different. You Ms Greene have been conned all of your life.

[Philip Davies]

Helpful reading

[Philip Davies]

Is this satire, I wondered at first.
Labelling an attitude as “woke” or “politically correct” is a way of dismissing it, just as “fascist” or “commie” are pejorative (but with greater justification)

[neilbourjaily]

Any society that fails to use all the resources at its disposal (NB: disposal is not the same as disposable) is doomed. A society that dismisses half its population, eg women, is doomed to failure, likewise the same when it comes to various ethnicities.
I am all the more the fool when I dismiss the opinion of a colleague, or a student, because I do not respect that colleague for the way she looks. Discovery comes from approaching a problem from a point of view not already taken combined with the training to avail of that different point of view.
Sadly, mothers and teachers still corral girls into being math haters. Many an argument under my roof was over my wife telling our daughter how hard math was. Many a confrontation in parent-teacher conferences began with teachers (women!) telling me my daughter would be better off pursuing, some other thing. And it was not because I had a plan for our daughter. I wanted her to pursue her own plan. I wanted my daughter to try and to fail so she could discover her own passions.
Now we have developed a society that protects us from failure. If I over tighten a bolt and it snaps off and I poke my eye, it's the mfgs fault! Awful things cannot be discussed in classrooms because some poor student may actually be horrified! The evening news warns me an image may be disturbing! We medal kids just for being at most of the soccer games.
Why do we not celebrate failure?
No wonder, despite our so called consciousness, we don't see more non-white males in the sciences. We don't want the poor dears to experience the dread of failure. Yikes! C'mon people, failure is good!
Unless failure comes from not trying, which is how we marginalize by "protecting". It is our societal duty to encourage us each and all to fail. Then we have the joy of encouraging the failed to stand up, brush off, and try again.
We've lost resiliance.
Sorry, wandered a bit there.