Re: Fwd: Dumb, Dumb, Duh Dumb

From: Brian Atkins (brian@posthuman.com)
Date: Sat Oct 20 2001 - 12:18:27 MDT


"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote:
>
> "Chen Yixiong, Eric" wrote:
> >
> > http://www.sciam.com/2001/1101issue/1101antimatter.html
> >
> > A brief collection of anecdotal evidence to support the notion that
> > "a little knowledge" would in actuality represent major progress
>
> I find it excruciatingly ironic that this article is being published by
> Scientific American, a major leader in the dumbing-down of science.
>
> Look at the writing quality of the article, which is 'x', where 'x' is
> some number that is very, very low. It is clearly being written for
> readers whose ability to parse long sentences and read big words is also
> 'x'. Humor columnists write to a higher-level audience than this.
>
> Try contrasting the writing quality of the above article with the one
> below, which says that the supposed inability of the public to understand
> science is overblown by a media that received science-free educations
> themselves:
>
> http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=97755
>
> And instead of torturing your brain with Scientific American, move on to
> reading the SciTech Daily Review, where I found the above link:
>
> http://www.scitechdaily.com/
>

And yet SciAm has been in business for how long? Hollywood action movies
make how much more money than "higher IQ" films? The market must be fed
what it wants...

-- 
Brian Atkins
Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
http://www.singinst.org/



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:14 MDT