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Post by JayUtah on Jan 24, 2007 13:42:40 GMT -4
Remember that the conspiracist psyche often dismisses actual science. The only acceptable "science" is that which lies conceivably within the conspiracist's personal experience and touches his immediate life. Practitioners of other fields are just faking it -- they do no better job than the conspiracist would if he were given the job. And consequently theoreticians in those fields have no real insight -- they just make up arbitrary can-do and cannot-do "rules" in order to maintain the artificial hegemony for the practitioners. Since many of those "rules" seem to violate intuitive belief, they make no sense. They seem to be artificial limitations set up ahead of time according to no good rationale, so there's no problem with breaking them.
People laboring under that mindset have a hard time accepting scientists and technicians as ordinary people who just want to get their jobs done right with a minimum of fuss. They have a hard time believing there really are people who do orbital mechanics computations for living, and that to them it's just as mundane and straightforward as someone else's job adjudicating medical claims or writing Java code. Orbital mechanics is not just an academic pursuit. It's as real and as concrete as auto repair or furniture sales. The rules that govern it derive from experience, not some authoritative dictation.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Jan 24, 2007 13:55:59 GMT -4
Conspiracists have much the same attitude towards people who work in government as well. To them the government is a monolithic, evil thing, with no conscience and no internal division, not a bunch of regular people doing their day jobs.
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Post by JayUtah on Jan 24, 2007 15:23:48 GMT -4
Right. Certain people find it easier to cope with life's ills if they can believe there's an evil force out there preventing them from accomplishing their goals and living the good life. They believe people fall generally into two categories: the Powers That Be, and the Oppressed. The Powers That Be maintain the good life for themselves artificially at the expense and effort of the Oppressed.
Authority under that mindset has no value other than to maintain the autocratic and exploitative status quo. It does not, for example, have any value in maintaining the public peace. Education and Science under that mindset has little value other than putting an intellectual veneer on the abuse of power. Authority turns to Science in order to dream up justifications for the consolidation and retention of power, and to disenfranchise through disinformation any who might challenge Authority.
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Post by gillianren on Jan 24, 2007 18:14:09 GMT -4
I'm not sure I've mentioned it before, but I'm very, very grateful to all of you who actually do science-y things for a living. I can't do it. My mind's wrong for it. But all of you make my life better and easier in a lot of ways I probably don't even notice. I hope that my books sell someday, so I can return the favor.
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Post by Grand Lunar on Jan 27, 2007 23:13:37 GMT -4
I too am grateful for those trained in the ways of science that debunk the nonsense that floats about the world, especially hoax theories.
What books are you selling Gillianren? Just so I can look for them.
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Post by gillianren on Jan 28, 2007 2:56:17 GMT -4
Well, none, yet--I meant to publishers. I've written a series of books about superheroes; the first one's in revisions to get it good enough to send out.
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Post by nomuse on Jan 28, 2007 13:56:24 GMT -4
Neat.
Be interested in starting a thread, about if it is possible to use real-world physics and logic and not "break" what it is that makes superhero stories work?
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Post by gillianren on Jan 28, 2007 23:54:08 GMT -4
Sure, though I'll freely admit the science in my books can be fairly dodgy. (And I end up invoking magic in the long run as the ultimate explanation for why they work.)
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jan 29, 2007 9:09:31 GMT -4
Not magic. "Sufficiently advanced technology." Clarke's Third Law.
Fred
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Post by twinstead on Jan 29, 2007 10:17:28 GMT -4
Sure, though I'll freely admit the science in my books can be fairly dodgy. (And I end up invoking magic in the long run as the ultimate explanation for why they work.) Not a problem; that's exactly what conspiracy folks do
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Post by gillianren on Jan 29, 2007 16:59:17 GMT -4
Not magic. "Sufficiently advanced technology." Clarke's Third Law. Well, I do bring in the Queen of the Fae.
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Post by wingerii on Jan 29, 2007 17:04:22 GMT -4
I have a book called "The Science of Superheroes". I don't have it with me right now, but I remember it being a very interesting read. Stuff about radioactive spiders and gamma rays and all that.
I think the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto also has a superheroes exhibit running right now.
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Post by gillianren on Jan 29, 2007 21:50:44 GMT -4
And if I could get there . . . .
Thanks for the book suggestion. I'll take a look.
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Post by wingerii on Jan 29, 2007 22:06:57 GMT -4
Yeah, Toronto might be a little too far for you, but I think it's a traveling exhibition, so keep an eye out. Here's the book. Looks like there's a supervillains one as well.
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Post by nomuse on Jan 30, 2007 4:09:27 GMT -4
Like I said, probably should be a new thread in the off topic section....
There's an argument in certain circles that the classic four-color comic is a bit like the American Musical; it has traditions that are best not examined logically. Long-time writer and artist John Byrne argues that pointing out how silly it is to wear a cape into a fight (as the recent movie "The Incredibles" does) damages the necessary suspension of disbelief. Once you start questioning the logic of capes, you start questioning why the satin tights and domino masks and all the rest of the costume. It is the same problem as trying to shoehorn a band into every scene of a musical to try to explain where the music is coming from. It only attracts attention to a dramatic skeleton that is best left hidden.
A better task is to try to find what it is that makes superheros -- or musicals -- "work," and capture that in a different form. For instance, I think of "The Road Warrior" as being a comic book in another form. Larger-than-life characters drawn with quick bold strokes, hyperkinetic action sequences, and a sense of the mythic; a pervasive sense that this is not just cardboard cutouts in a battle-of-the-week, but archetypal figures acting out an epic.
Anyhow. New thread? There's a ton of interesting topic in there.
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