Friday, October 19, 2012
Science! It works, bitches.
People are suspicious of science. Presidential candidates take great care to not be too enthusiastic about it, or to flatly deny what we know is true from science. Science doesn’t address our human side. It is dangerous; Frankenstein mythology pervades our fiction. Science produces the things that give us cancer, nuclear weapons, power plant disasters, genetically modified organisms, clones, designer babies, and other heartless abominations. It creates the substances that kill us with cancer, deform our babies, and clog our arteries.
But if we were to form a clear, objective view about the institution in the course of human history that has done more for human happiness, longevity, health, wealth, comfort, prosperity, and flourishing, there is only one answer: science. Nothing else we have ever engaged in has made such a positive contribution to everything that matters most to us. Complaining about the awful things that science does to us is like complaining about the brand of caviar you’ve been given while taking an opulent, luxury cruise on the Queen Mary.
Here’s just one bit of the evidence:
Human mortality improvement in evolutionary context Oskar Burger, Annette Baudisch, and James W. Vaupel
Abstract
Life expectancy is increasing in most countries and has exceeded 80 in several, as low-mortality nations continue to make progress in averting deaths. The health and economic implications of mortality reduction have been given substantial attention, but the observed malleability of human mortality has not been placed in a broad evolutionary context. We quantify the rate and amount of mortality reduction by comparing a variety of human populations to the evolved human mortality profile, here estimated as the average mortality pattern for ethnographically observed hunter-gatherers. We show that human mortality has decreased so substantially that the difference between hunter-gatherers and today’s lowest mortality populations is greater than the difference between hunter-gatherers and wild chimpanzees. The bulk of this mortality reduction has occurred since 1900 and has been experienced by only about 4 of the roughly 8,000 human generations that have ever lived. Moreover, mortality improvement in humans is on par with or greater than the reductions in mortality in other species achieved by laboratory selection experiments and endocrine pathway mutations. This observed plasticity in age-specific risk of death is at odds with conventional theories of aging.
That is, human life expectancy and mortality rates have improved more in the last four generations than they have in any period in human history. To quote the Io9 article, “In fact, the changes are so dramatic, that a 30-year-old hunter-gatherer had the same mortality rate as a modern 72-year-old.” We have seen greater improvements in the last 4 generations than in the previous 8,000 generations of humans.
This evidence just concerns the length of life and some of the causes of death, but consider the multiplication effect. Science makes concrete improvement in the quality and comfort of our lives with advances in technology, medicine, chemistry, agriculture, and a dozen other fields so that a day in your life is orders of magnitude better by every measure of quality than a day in the life of a hominid hunter-gatherer. Then science quadruples the number of days you will have to experience those benefits too by radically extending life expectancy. Given infant mortality rates for primitive people, disease, ignorance, scarcity, superstitions, natural disasters, and other risk factors, you most likely wouldn’t have survived infancy if you had been born 10,000 years ago. Now you will live into your 80s or 90s (the average lifespan continues to rise). Many of us will then die of cancer or heart disease after a life of unprecedented comfort and pleasure in human history. But ironically, the complaint will be that science is the culprit in our deaths for producing cancer causing agents in our environments, or substances that are bad for our hearts in our food.
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6 comments:
Great point! By the way, your book is interesting so far. I just got the Kindle version.
Operation Archangel
rich millionaires with their heads up the arses
I think this qualifies as a DOS attack... for RATS IN A TRAP
youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wHs0vM3gRTA
you can thank RANDI
now for some SYMBOLIC TWO-DIMENSIONAL ANALYSIS!
on the TIMELINE
0 min 33 sec - Randi in the RED SHIRT - signifying the *bl..dy deed* that is about to happen
1min 18 sec - Banachek talks about respect for the claimant and then they mock "these kind" of people in the final part
3 min 20 sec - the test of the power bracelet that increases a person's energy and balance. Notice our challenge is all about POWER & BALANCE, proving the existence of a HIGHER POWER
5 min 15 sec TEST BEGINS. Skeptics one by one stand in CRUCIFIXION POSE
1 hr 10 min 21 sec Test is ended in failure
1 hr 10 min 30 sec request is made to make change in the PROTOCOL
1 hr 10 min 51 sec Applause is made by all those who wanted him to fail from the very beginning
1 hr 25 min 39 sec Now they talk about the Nightline clip that was filmed in Manhattan, also the scene of the 9/11 event
1hr 28 min 42 sec - They talk about make-shift tests. They think that because no one can win the prize that psychic phenomena does not exist
1 hr 29 min 45 sec Banachek says "the majority of *these* people.'" A contemptuous reference that occurs repeatedly
1 hr 31 min 53 sec The reference to envelopes. Remember the 911 in Angel's envelope!
1 hr 37 min 11 sec Swiss says he is not worried about a paranormal event happening. Little does he know what is actually taking place
1 hr 39 min 50 sec The mocking of SPIRITS!
1 hr 40 min 27 sec Reference made to the TERROR of witnessing a supernatural event, i.e, the blood leaving the face
1 hr 41 min 15 sec Reference to "these people"
1 hr 41 min 40 sec Belief in the supernatural is claimed to be a psychological defence mechanism to cope with reality. Swiss talks about how desperate the psychics become when debunked. Little does he know what is happening to the skeptics!
1 hr 42 min 11 sec WHEN PROPHECY SUCCEEDS! KABOOM
youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gHbYJfwFgOU
which WORLD-VIEW will not exist, sh*thead?
____________
5000 whining atheists vs the Great Prophet
how the divine pen of Michel Nostradamus crushed the international atheist movement
skepticalcommunity.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=34862
________________________
youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=s3lwG4MytSI
one applicant right here...
get the POINT, Randi....
__________________________
for lies on top of lies
youtube.com/watch?v=bbmXpNEFipE
do you think you can threaten my right to FREE SPEECH?
what if I told you that I am not who you think I am….
Not Dennis Markuze - but a FAN!
youtube.com/watch?v=nvatDdOWcLw
you're not the center of the universe!
____________________________
youtube.com/watch?v=3yRpSNIOwA4
a dishonest liar
youtube.com/watch?v=ruQFh_TkPto
WHINE WHINE WHINE
________________________
Best Clips on Atheist:
youtube.com/watch?v=7V6B9D1S4xQ - JUST A TINY SMIDGEN OF A GAP! JUST A TINY SMIDGEN OF A GAP!
Another pseudonymous post by our old insane friend David Mabus...
Wow, is that lunatic back? I thought he'd been put away. Someone should do something about him for his own sake.
By the way, I know the characters I typed in do match the word verification so why does it take me so may attempts (I@ve lost count and, in all honesty, the will to post so this will be my first and last here if it does in fact ever get through)
"By the way, I know the characters I typed in do match the word verification so why does it take me so may attempts ..."
If you have a web accelerator, turn it off. But yes, this captcha system is shit.
Science has made it possible for civilization to be destroyed in an afternoon.
Just because it hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean it isn't going to.
The WMDS are with us FOREVA,SUCCA!
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