Steven Dutch, Natural and Applied Sciences, Universityof Wisconsin - Green Bay
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I will respond to questions and comments as time permits, but if you want to take issuewith any position ea
pressed here, you first have to answer this question:
What evidence would it take to prove your beliefs wrong?
I simply will not reply to challenges that do not address this question. Refutabilityis one of the classic determinants of whether a theory can be called scientific. Moreover,I have found it to be a great general-purpose cut-through-the-crap question to determinewhether somebody is interested in serious intellectual inquiry or just playing mind games.Note, by the way, that I am assuming the burden of proof here - all youhave to do is commit to a criterion for testing.It's easy to criticize science for being "closed-minded". Are you open-mindedenough to consider whether your ideas might be wrong?
Michael Douglas, as stock broker Gordon Gekko in the 198x film Wall Street, delivered a line that became a mantra for the Nineties: "Greed is good." As PopWatch commentator Owen Gleiberman noted recently, the more enduring insight was one Gekko served up later in the film when, sufficiently lubricated by Scotch, he finally opens up and admits "I create nothing."
Gleiberman uses that admission as the take-off point for a discussion of the Wall Street collapse of 2008, which is altogether relevant, but he only scratches the surface of the problem.
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Created 21 January, 2003, Last Update 24 May, 2020
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