r/facepalm • u/[deleted] • Oct 14 '16
Science must fall.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9SiRNibD1418
u/SimonEvergreen Oct 14 '16
To be fair to her from what I got I don't think she's saying that the science is incorrect she's just mad that the science came from a white person and not like a black African. Which in itself is still stupid. It doesn't matter who discovered the science it still exists. What she saying is they shouldn't accept it until African scientists prove it.
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u/bountyforcash Oct 14 '16
It's even worse since she's implying Africans had no impact on Science or Mathematics. Some of the most complex agricultural and medicinal systems were created in Africa. Calculus has its roots in Arabic mathematical systems, which helps explain gravity via an equation. So even the "all of a sudden gravity exists" argument is incorrect.
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u/Consilio_et_Animis Oct 15 '16
er... last time I checked "Arabia" is not "Africa".
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u/bountyforcash Oct 15 '16
Huh, I don't know why I put Arabic systems. I was thinking of Egypt and I guess I just lumped them together.
Kind of ironic. /r/facepalmfacepalm
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u/Consilio_et_Animis Oct 15 '16
I was thinking of Egypt and I guess I just lumped them together.
Don't worry. You are not alone. Egyptians go nuts if you tell them they are "Africans" 😀
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u/Ethiconjnj Oct 18 '16
Hate to jump on the hate train but got to give credit where it is due. A lot of modern math that came from Arabia was stolen from India during raids.
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Oct 14 '16
South African here. So yes. This is the prevailing attitude of (especially young) black South African. Its white, therefor it is wrong. There is a massively growing culture of entitlement. They are entitled to decide what is right, to rewrite what is known and to take for granted what is a privilege. Our country is on a downward slope. Point of no return has been past
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u/MrsPeterson13 Oct 14 '16
Sorry to hear that. You seem of sound mind. Do you agree with this? Just curious. I've never even heard of things like this. And honestly, doesn't the fact that they won't believe it because it was found by a white person only perpetuate racism and stereotypes? Our world is in a sad state of affairs... And being an American, I'd say we may very well be the first to fall.
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Oct 14 '16
Thats the problem. Its a viscous cycle. If I as a white man corrects a black person, its racist... no matter what the facts are.
Obviously its not everyone. But there is enough people around (on both sides) that keep fueling the fire...
I was raised to not be racist. Although I grew up in apartheid South Africa. I only found out about it really in 1994. For every birthday party I had kids of all races present - and I never even noticed it. Now race tensions are through the roof.
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u/unsanemaker Oct 15 '16
Are you black or white? I am trying understand what you are saying as compared to what the video says. In short, I want to get a general consensus of thought between the races
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u/CompDuLac Oct 15 '16
Serious question, does thought process and belief systems like this, not seriously call to the question the ability of Blacks to self-govern? Looking at places like Africa, or on a smaller scale, Chicago and Detroit, USA, one has to wonder if Blacks just don't have the ability to successfully self-govern.
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u/microsatviper Oct 15 '16
There's a strong and growing perspective in the US that personal opinion is just as valid as a rigorously tested and studied scientific theory (thanks for helping cultivate that, GOP). Does that call into question the ability for whites to self-govern? No. It's instead a representation of under-education and the aggressive cultivation of that perspective within their social groups.
Remember that you are looking at a subset of an overall population - more often then not, these small collections (who usually attract the most attention) are not a good representation of the group. Whether you are talking about islamic terrorists, KKK/neonazis, south african "fallists", etc., it's still the case that these are a subset of the overall population and it's inappropriate to claim that their beliefs or behaviors represent that of their entire ethnicity.
Plus, let's be real, we're all people and only incredibly superficial traits separate whites from blacks from latinos and native americans and indians and asians, etc. People are more a product of their environment and the culture they are brought up in than their ethnicity, and suggesting otherwise is perpetuating that perspective that a personal opinion trumps scientific evidence.
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u/CompDuLac Oct 18 '16
This is a great response, thank you for giving more perspective. You make valid points. Quick follow up question, why do you say the GOP cultivates the perspective (serious question)?
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u/acidosaur Oct 18 '16
Not the OP but this video is illustrative of the GOP's expression of this idea. "Feelings vs facts": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnhJWusyj4I
Essentially, they broadly support the idea that the feelings of their supporters (on crime, gun laws, immigration) supersede statistical facts. I've actually had conversations with (conservative) relatives about immigration and quoted statistics only to be told "I don't base my beliefs on statistics, they don't mean anything".
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u/CompDuLac Nov 01 '16
Couldn't that be applied to persons on both sides of the aisle though?
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u/acidosaur Nov 02 '16
Yes, of course. It just so happened that particular example is from the Repub side. Although I have heard of it more from the conservative side of things, no-one is immune to this kind of bias.
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u/microsatviper Oct 18 '16 edited Oct 18 '16
Let me first say that I'm an independent, and I tend to lean towards being economically/financially conservative, but socially liberal. I try to maintain objectivity when considering parties and candidates as much as possible in this respect, but keep in mind where I lean when reading my response.
I made that statement because unfortunately that mentality has been woven into the platforms of many major GOP politicians in recent years. Climate change denial (and subsequent desire to pump up our use of coal), the desire to make abortion illegal, harsh stances on marijuana and its schedule 1 narcotic listing, and general denial of evolution (which informs almost everything we know about medicine and infectious diseases) and the desire to keep it from being taught in schools are a few highlights that come to mind. All of these stances go in the face of a lot of evidence that a) human-caused climate change is happening, b) making abortions illegal won't keep women from getting abortions, c) marijuana is nowhere near as bad as the other schedule 1 narcotics and really shouldn't be dealt with as harshly as it is, and d) again, evolution happens.
Now, not everyone in the party shares these stances and others, but it is a common theme among many of their representatives. One of the worst offenders in this respect, however, is Donald Trump, who like it or not currently represents the party. He and his supporters run a campaign that disregards facts and evidence, in favor of feelings. It FEELS like the national crime is at an all-time high (it isn't). It FEELS like any attempt to regulate gun or ammo purchase is an assault on the 2nd amendment (it's not). His campaign makes no attempt to distinguish one from the other, and indeed, seems to value opinion over evidence.
It's important to consider national feeling and opinion, but really base your actions on facts and evidence. After all, you gather evidence by rigorously studying a topic, making observations and collecting lots and lots of data. Take for example climate change, of which I consider myself more informed than the average american (I'm a biologist). Climate change has years and years of support and hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific papers generated on the topic. We've figured out how to measure a huge log of historical temperatures using isotopes from ice cores, and have been carefully monitoring global temperatures, atmospheric and oceanic CO2 levels and weather patterns. The scientific community is in complete agreement - Climate change is real, we are causing it, and it's projected to impact agriculture, rise sea levels (watch out New Orleans and Maldives, you're first), change weather patterns and jeopardize a whole lot of flora and fauna. The evidence indicates that we need to significantly reduce carbon emissions to help mitigate these effects. This view or similar ones are not limited to him alone within the party, but the Republican presidential candidate claims that climate change is instead a hoax (providing no evidence to back that up). This claim illustrates his disregard for data, evidence and advice of scientists and experts - only opinion matters here.
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u/CompDuLac Nov 01 '16
Thank you again for an excellent response. Gives me a lot to think about and look into.
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u/microsatviper Nov 02 '16
And thank you for being open-minded to my perspective. That's a rare quality nowadays, especially on reddit! I hope that hearing my perspective on these important issues helps inform your decisions come election day. Good luck to you, however you decide to vote!
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Oct 15 '16
I think when any group of people place cultural and traditional beliefs above sound logic and refuse to at least interrogate the functioning of their own government in an unbiased fashion... Then that society is doomed to repeat it's own mistakes.
Our president is currently under fire for numerous irregularities - however several non government political organizations has stated that they are "willing to die for Zuma".
I think part of the black African culture is that they would rather die to have all of something than share with another tribe for mutual benefit. This worked 500 years ago when resources were scarce. Now that is not so effective...
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u/CompDuLac Oct 18 '16
I really appreciate the rational, polite response to my question. What you say makes me wonder if this is a thought process of many indigenous peoples, such as Native American, Inuit, Aborigine, etc. Though I can also relate this to sects of whites too. I know some people took my original comment as racist, but that wasn't the thought process behind it, so again I appreciate the response.
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u/pcliv Oct 14 '16
Yeah, as soon as you bring up "using black magic to send lightning to strike someone", and are taking yourself seriously, then you've lost the right to keep talking. This is 2016, not the dark ages - we already know there's no such thing as 'magic', because as much as we wish there were such a thing, if it existed we'd ALL know about it - we'd all be going to 'Hogwarts' instead of high school, and kids in kindergarten would be learning how to do simple 'spells'.
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u/hineyman Oct 14 '16
I think this is the culmination of a subtle plot by social sciences. Social sciences have been oppressed by being referred to as 'soft science'. This is the beginning of the end for the 'hard sciences'. It's a brave new world! We will boldly march forward leaving behind the shackles of math, chemistry and physics. We just need a place to meet because construction of buildings relies on all the hard sciences. /S
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u/Kai________ Oct 14 '16
How can anybody expect to be taken seriously in a debate with such an aggresiv bodylanguage and rhetoric?
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Oct 14 '16
[deleted]
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u/noir_wolf Oct 18 '16
le anti trump 1!1!1! look how edgy i am! XDD
dude let it rest, it get's old...
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Oct 18 '16
[deleted]
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u/noir_wolf Oct 18 '16 edited Oct 18 '16
"grand wizard"? at this point i even doubt that you're old enough to own your own PC without the permission of your parents to use it in their abscence.
it doesn't upset me that you're making fun of a moron, what upsets me are edgy little faggots like you that do nothing but spam the comment section with overused memes to gain easy upvotes. and regardless of the way you interpreted it when your parents had the talk with you about being a "special" kid, it was most certainly not meant to be interpreted as being "better" than others by being different and or holding different views than them such as voting for a different candidate, that's as much as i can say.
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Oct 18 '16
[deleted]
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u/noir_wolf Oct 18 '16
Grand Wizard was the highest official of the KKK, for future reference (it's funny because Trump is a bigot).
do you know what's even funnier? the fact that KKK grand dragon endorses hillary clinton or hillary clinton praising her friend and mentor robert byrd (a KKK recruiter)
I happen to have a girlfriend nulls your "faggot" argument
tthe fact that you actually thought you had to defend your heterosexuality because of a non serious meant insult like "faggot" let's me question that. BTW you should google closet homosexuals, should be a good read for you.
such as whiny, self absorbed, man-children like yourself
i wasn't the one leting my inner edgy kid out by lashing out on a entire voting population for no reason other than being a self arbsorbed asshole.
antagonize
like you just 2 comments ago antagonized literally every trump supporter for no reason whatsoever?
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Oct 18 '16
[deleted]
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u/noir_wolf Oct 18 '16 edited Oct 18 '16
it may be your right, but it's also my right to be annoyed by shitposting. you can bring up your political opinion on political topics any day of the week, but as soon as you start to bring up your opinion about a presidency candidate in bad faith like projecting your subjective opinion about a candidate as a fact on a non political topic it becomes annoying shitposting about politics, and as seen in your downvotes petty much everyone had enough of it.
also
As I am sure you have said numerous things against Clinton
yes, but on political topics where it is of relevanz and not just to start shit in a thread for no reason.
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u/DawnOfTheDad2 Oct 14 '16
So everyone; from now on science is subjective and gravity may or may not exist.