China won't be able to pick up the pieces because a large-scale nuclear war means a decade of nuclear winter, the end of the ozone layer, and the possible annihilation of our entire species.

With our last breath, we 'won!' because it was better to go extinct than to look 'weak.'

I'll vote for cooler heads.

You do realize if the US burns, you'll freeze, starve, and wind up with cataracts in the inevitable nuclear winter right?

Infiltration, astroturfing and reputation destruction are as old as the hills. Such as this not really amusing story of a Muslim organization turning in a member who was hyping terrorism, only to discover he was an FBI infiltrant:

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/2946...

I think such things are to be expected. It sucks, but if you've a security vulnerability in any system, you can expect it to be exploited. The question we should be asking is, can online groups adapt to account for such possibilities, and how?

Ah, the old -science will all be wrong in 20 years...

Which is wrong of course, we still make use of Newtonian physics hundreds of years later, and were you to count mathematics, some aspects of mathematics date back thousands of years. It's fair to say that 20 years from now we will still accept phylogenetic trees and we will use physics that allows us to build computers. Science is a process of refinement, a spectrum of probabilities

The strength of science is that it can in fact discard ideas quickly. If a model is no longer useful, out it goes, or it is altered. I find it odd that the parent assumes that because science has procedures built in to allow it to change when it is wrong, that this somehow equates to astrology therefore being right. Eg science will be wrong in 20 years which it wont)==astrology is right. This does not follow.

Science has predictive power. Anyone can replicate its results if they replicate the conditions of the experiment. With astrology on the other hand, lots of us have tried it, and it doesn't work. It doesn't stand up to testing. If it worked for everyone, it wouldn't be an issue, but it doesn't. Sure, there's a percentage of people out there who claim it work, but that's to be expected in a large enough population as a statistical probability. You'll find people claiming garlic cloves ward off the flu too. What it comes down to in the end isn't just that such beliefs are wrong--they simply aren't useful for the most of us.

Of course when the phrase 'be open minded' comes out, this translates as 'crowds who believe in anything for thousands of years can't possibly be wrong, blindly follow them''. When the bandwagon fallacy comes out, you know the ego is at work. Let's talk Tim Leary. Science is the real, ultimate ego death. There's no room for ego in determining objective reality, because objective reality doesn't work the way one wants it to.

Agreed, it's not a misread. If you RTA, the stats clearly line up with other demographic groups and other findings.

The Right tends to be more of a certain Christian belief that has a deep seated fear of 'new agey', 'spiritistic', 'occult' etc practices, whereas the left has the Christians who don't care about that kind of stuff, and the secularists who are every bit as irrational.

I've noticed this trend too, having grown up amongst fundies then moving to the big city as I got older. You find pseudoscience everywhere.

My experience on the religious Right: Yoga, Meditation and Astrology open your mind to Satan. Pray to God, son.
My experience on the Left: Lengthy discussions of star signs, after laughing at those damn fool fundamentalists.

I think that justice should be what benefits society the most in the long run, but that's not how it seems to work in practice.

It's the paraphilia I'm talking about, not what normal adults may or may not be attracted to. The latter is typically exclusive (think, as child hits mid to late teens, child discovers an inability to be attracted to his peers. However, child is unable to seek counselling for obvious reasons of social stigma). It is at least from what I have read manageable with therapy and coaching, even if, similar to other and far less harmful paraphilia, it is not -curable-.

Yes. I think two researchers summarized the problem well.. the 'Dunning-Kruger' effect.

This shouldn't even be the least bit surprising if you've spent any time at all looking at the current research in the field, suggesting a combination of both environmental and neurological factors. It's like any other 'variation' in human sexuality, statistically you will find it anywhere given a large enough sample. Yet our solutions are entirely reactive rather than preventative. The solutions the experts propose repeatedly are simply never going to happen. This is a field where people assume getting really angry is the only way to fix things, and stopping to understand the problem and break it down into its components is somehow condoning it. Understanding criminal behavior with prevention in mind is 'hugging a thug' instead of getting tough on crime and we must operate under that false dichotomy.

If we fixed electronics like we treated society's ills, we'd take a sledgehammer to them accompanied by 'die MOFO die!' (a la office space) every time there was a problem. And we'd have a pile of wasted and broken things, and even more problems to deal with as a result... And well, that's what we are seeing, and will continue to see, until we get smart about this problem and start listening to what experts are saying.

A very small start, just the tip of the iceberg:

http://www.salon.com/2013/05/15/our_approach_to_pedophilia_isn%C2%B4t_working/

I'm not entirely sure the human equation has changed even if the tech has. I've met my fair share of quiet, introverted thinkers over the years and quite frankly this is a human nature thing. Some people are more outgoing than others, some are social butterflies who are busy networking, some like to stay at home and tinker. Some function well in groups, some do not. It's got nothing to do with smarts. People just think differently. It's a shame the thread has to turn smarts into an accusatory contest. Also, that the person you're responding to reacted in such an irate way seems to indicate to me that a nerve was poked: there is still a negative stigma attached to being a nerd that the person wants to overcome. That at least clearly has not changed.

And of course I do agree that the technology situation has changed, computers are ubiquitous now whereas in the 80's my ability to use a computer set me apart from my peers.

(Note, I'm not responding to the criticism of the not-peer-reviewed study in the article which I agree is a useless study, but rather its later assertion).

Which seems to indicate that there is some basis for comparability between the two, even if they are different, and further research is needed.

"the articles from this symposium provide evidence that neurological similarities exist in the response of humans (6) and rats (7,9) to foods and to drugs. Two of the reports (6,7), as well as our own work (14–16), suggest that even highly palatable food is not addictive in and of itself. Rather, it is the manner in which the food is presented (i.e., intermittently) and consumed (i.e., repeated, intermittent “gorging”) that appears to entrain the addiction-like process. Such consummatory patterns are associated with increased risk for comorbid complications as well as relapse and make treatment particularly challenging. The topic of food addiction bears study, therefore, to develop fresh approaches to clinical intervention and to advance our understanding of basic mechanisms involved in loss of control."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2714380/

All I can think of is the size of exoskeleton life that used to exist on this planet (some of which when the oxygen levels were higher).

http://listverse.com/2013/01/14/10-prehistoric-bugs-that-could-seriously-mess-you-up/

A perfectly valid analogy, in my objective opinion.