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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 12, 2019 - 09:33am PT
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A better point would be to suggest that those of us not in the field doing the work should be open to the idea. The level of confidence in the idea of abiogenesis still surprises me considering the lack of any remotely possible theory.
I don't think a possible theory is as remote as you think, given that a lot of progress has been made describing what should be in the theory and what should not.
But I gave a parable in one of these threads about understanding the Sun. No doubt my lack of humor and inability to spin a yarn lead to an intense "eyes-glazed-over" response. So I'll be brief here:
There was not the remotest idea of how the Sun was able to generate the observed power, subject to the full interest of physics in the 1900's. No known physical mechanism existed that came remotely close.
I'd say this was a much larger issue than abiogenesis today.
Should physicists have evaluated if there was, in principle, a way to understand the Sun? The historic attribution of the Sun's power was from some divine agency. It is easy to experience how quickly a campfire loses its warming features as you walk away from the fire ring.
The Sun is a long way off, it must be one hellava fire!
But in the summer of 1919 the chemist Francis Aston developed a technique to make precise measurements of the elements, we know his invention today as mass spectroscopy. Two things were apparent in his data: 1) that the isotopes seemed to be nearly multiples of one hydrogen mass and that the element helium was slightly less than four times the mass of hydrogen.
Eddington realized that it was physically plausible that some, then unknown, process put the four hydrogens together to form a helium, and there was energy left over.
That energy explained how the Sun, and all stars, generated its power.
Not only that, but estimates of the size of the sun, largely all hydrogen, and the rate of the reaction, explained the age of the Sun, and stars.
And this also allowed even more detailed calculations regarding the properties of the stars, the Sun included.
So in the course of less than a year science went from a profound ignorance about the physics of the Sun to amazing insight regarding the properties of stars, and of a yet unknown field of nuclear physics, though the nucleus was not yet well described, nor were the physics of nuclear reactions.
No way that could have been figured into an assessment as to whether or not it was possible to "understand" the Sun. Yet it happened.
The parable illustrates the peril of concluding that we cannot ever understand something because we have not yet understood it.
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Minerals
Social climber
The Deli
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Feb 12, 2019 - 09:39am PT
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That one possibility is that god does not exist?
It's never happened, nor will it ever happen, as God is not dependent on gross material st00pid mental speculators guessing about everything they are so clueless about ....
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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limpingcrab
Trad climber
the middle of CA
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Feb 12, 2019 - 10:30am PT
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I don't think a possible theory is as remote as you think, given that a lot of progress has been made describing what should be in the theory and what should not. Agree to disagree here. When the number of hypotheses start getting narrowed down instead of expanded (more than 8 prominent ones now, that I know of at least) it may indicate progress. It will also help when thoeretical models can be backed up with experiments, and they also somewhat agree with other models for the other parts of the process.
The parable illustrates the peril of concluding that we cannot ever understand something because we have not yet understood it. Point taken and I agree. The fact that we don't understand something does not mean it can't be understood. For what it's worth, I don't think that you blindly accept abiogenesis like most people.
But, back to my follow up question for everyone: What evidence would it take for you, personally, to come to the conclusion that unguided abiogenesis is impossible?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Feb 12, 2019 - 11:42am PT
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Largo implies two solutions above: once you get RNA or DNA you're done. But that is tricky because of the specialness of those molecules, and the estimated time required to somehow get to them from component parts.
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Not my implications. Those are quotes from scientists embedded in the field. And I don't think the "estimated time" is the issue, rather the astronomical statistical improbabilities. Yet another are the first assumptions that a physical description will sort this out. That's linear-causal to the bone. A combined with B,C, D and F (for example), and later (linear time), G emerged, "caused" by the aforementioned physical parts.
I think, at bottom, Ed is struggling with accepting that nonlocality is a characteristic feature of quantum mechanicsand a fundamental property of nature. Bell's Theorem sure seemed to say so, but the knock on Bell so to speak is that he overlooked the role of time, and hence his theorem, that quantum mechanics is incompatible with local realism, is unproven.
Either way, "time" is the issue in all of this, because it drives the linear-causal "physical explanation" that Ed keeps driving for - that physical parts at Time A "caused" phenomenon B further (later) down the road.
Ed's view of time is classical, it would seem. Tick tock. When you swap out clock or linear time with constant flux, or impermanence, sans time, then you get another picture. You also get different perspectives, since clock time IS operative from certain vantages, certainly the meta one we live in as biological folk.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Feb 12, 2019 - 03:01pm PT
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"There's incremental advances that happen in all kinds of things. But every once in awhile there's just this iconic [quantum] leap." -Peter Croft, Free Solo
2a) "Soloing El Cap, if [Alex] pulls this off, is this quantum leap." -PC
Riffing, taking inspiration...
2b) Moving from a supernatural God and Heaven-based belief system that's not evidence-based to an arts and sciences-based belief system that is evidence-based, if the modern 21st century human primate world pulls this off, is this quantum leap.
Granted, it's not for everybody to envision, let alone to actually do.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Feb 12, 2019 - 03:20pm PT
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So here's mechrist talking about "mental fitness" all the way back in 2013...
"Nobody said it wasn't premeditated. The word was intentionally. A drunk driver does not intend specifically to kill people. The mass shooters intended to kill people with their guns, which are designed specifically to kill.
ANYWHERE you sell a car you have to transfer the title. A car used to kill dozens of innocent people can be traced back to the purchaser. In many places, NO record of sale is required to purchase guns, which are designed specifically to kill.
We have DUI check points to check if the mental fitness of the driver is compromised. We have NO similar checks for the mental fitness of people with guns, which are designed specifically to kill."
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=2036534&msg=2037388#msg2037388
So it's not like the "idea" of "mental fitness" or "spiritual fitness" is brand new. (Gee I'll have to check out these terms on google history to see their numbers across the decades, always a fun project. Bet they're on the rise.)
Anyways, people in the future, like many already, are likely to evaluate / debate which category of belief system aids "mental fitness" best? aids life management best? what kind of belief system? old-school vs new? science-free or science-abiding? and so forth.
To my lights, it does not bode well for either "religion" or for the living personal God Jehovah / God Jesus as an actual for-real, intervening entity - at least not amongst the reasonably educated which is the demographic I'm mostly most interested in.
...
Let me set this down, lest I forget...
Regarding the issues of life and death, mortality, expectations, acculturation, etc... It is interesting that Alex made the point, in his movie Free Solo, while he and Sonni were having a heart to heart moment, that he didn't feel "obligated" "to maximize his lifespan." My sentiments exactly. I don't either. Thanks, Alex. You don't think / feel alone.
...
"It's always about, like, excellence and perfection. I was certainly raised that way - that you need to perform. It's also just kinda rad because you're doing something for the first time in human history." -Alex Honnold, FS
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Feb 12, 2019 - 03:44pm PT
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JL: "Either way, "time" is the issue in all of this, because it drives the linear-causal "physical explanation" that Ed keeps driving for - that physical parts at Time A "caused" phenomenon B further (later) down the road. Ed's view of time is classical, it would seem. Tick tock. When you swap out clock or linear time with constant flux, or impermanence, sans time, then you get another picture."
And it's not pretty!
(Good to see you moving in the direction of unpacking Peter Lynds' article.)
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 12, 2019 - 05:41pm PT
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God and Heaven-based belief system that's not evidence-based
It's 100% evidence based and you're blind as a bat and 100% clueless terrible wannabee scientist .....
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 12, 2019 - 07:00pm PT
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I think, at bottom, Ed is struggling with accepting that nonlocality is a characteristic feature of quantum mechanicsand a fundamental property of nature.
I am not struggling at all, don't know how you could remotely think this, unless, of course, you don't understand quantum mechanics.
You're also confused about time, causality, and classical mechanics.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Feb 12, 2019 - 07:48pm PT
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^^^ A polite understatement IMHO. Nevertheless, I admire JL's tenacity.
If only he would unpack Peter Lynds.
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Feb 13, 2019 - 05:09am PT
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I am not struggling at all, don't know how you could remotely think this, unless, of course, you don't understand quantum mechanics.
You're also confused about time, causality, and classical mechanics.
Wow, that is a classy burn.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Feb 13, 2019 - 09:13am PT
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"It's about being a warrior. It doesn't matter about the cause necessarily. This is your path and you will pursue it with excellence. You face your fear because your goal demands it. That is the goddamn warrior spirit." -Alex, Free Solo
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Feb 13, 2019 - 09:56am PT
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So Jeremy, what's important to grasp, imo, is that the core reasoning, core research, core evidence coming from core biology and chemistry is a lot more solid and less speculative than say the respective counterparts coming out of today's "bloody edge" physics, be it particle, astro or cosmology.
Given this, especially for those who have spent years to decades in a biochemistry or molecular biology lab environment, it really is not THAT hard to imagine the self-organizing of a crude replicator (incl its complimentary parts) just as it's not that hard to imagine production of amino acids under the right conditions. Again, so it seems to me as well, who has spent years, bitd, in chemistry labs.
When Dawkins and others spoke of a crude replicator system (incl any complimentary parts, substrate, matrix or environment) emerging, they had in mind I'm pretty sure a system way way way less sophisticated, less evolved, than any RNA/substrate we imagine.
I'm disappointed that all the highly speculative esoterica that's come out of theoretical physics the last couple decades; along with the countless more or less meaningless studies in coffee and red wine, etc that go back n forth; along with say the recent "grievance studies" in sociology mostly at liberal arts schools have led the general public to doubt science at large generally speaking, incl the institution, the community of scientists, the knowledge production and the knowledge bases. A real shame. In a time when we really need the core understanding of science as much as ever. Case n point: the entire vaccine mess that's still in the news.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 13, 2019 - 10:11am PT
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"...especially for those who have spent years to decades in a biochemistry or molecular biology lab environment, it really is not THAT hard to imagine the self-organizing of a crude replicator (incl its complimentary parts) just as it's not that hard to imagine production of amino acids under the right conditions."
It is not hard to imagine many things, it is much harder to realize them. Given the visibility of this topic, and the "decades" of people working the problem, one can conclude it might be more difficult to provide the details. And the details matter.
We have not "engineered" life abiogeneticly yet, at least not what we currently label "life." This suggests appraising our assumptions (which has been ongoing) about the definition of "life." In particular, the transition, if there is one, from not-life to life might be less well defined.
But once again, the details matter in a scientific explanation.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Feb 13, 2019 - 10:22am PT
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is it easy for me to imagine that scene because it's easier to fit with my views
Maybe it's easier for you to imagine the likelihood because it fits with your reasoning, your power of reasoning, too. Given the sum total of your life experience.
I know you know: we figure out a lot of things with evidence, we also figure out a lot of things with our (God-given, lol) reasoning, too. I know you know this too. I'm just repeating it so neither of us forgets this component in the layers of argument or case making.
Evidence, +1. Reasoning, experience-based especially, +1.
Just look at the role expertise, aka skill development, played in Honnold's FS success. Years in the making, eh? Contrast that with the skillz of an average Sapiens. It's quite a contrast. No reason this same contrast doesn't exist in conversations - or arguments or internet postings - concerning science and life management, etc.
P.S. That whole cell theory (life from life) matter is a distraction, imo. All one has to do is consider a community, an ecology, of viruses, bacteria and primordial cells. Again, is it really THAT hard to imagine an evolutionary step from a virus (alive or not?) to a bacterial cell? If anything, seems to me, the evolutionary step from prokaryote to eukaryote is bigger. But yes, we were not there, darn it! but we can still use our reasoning, our power of reasoning, to give us some ground to stand on, I'd say, when trying to make sense of these things in these areas.
I like asking myself these questions.
Ditto. The story of my life. lol
I pretty much took it on blind faith...
FWIW, I'd seriously think about reframing it. I'd bet the lead model of thinking you have in your head concerning this issue is not based on "blind faith" at all, certainly not "blind faith" in any archaic religious sense. But rather in the wake of all your education in biology and general life more of an evidence-based and reason-based trust (or evidence-based reason based faith). My two cents.
I deploy an evidence-based, reason-based trust or faith every time I fall on my climbing rope. And it's always got me through. So far at least.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Feb 13, 2019 - 10:31am PT
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I'm disappointed that all the highly speculative esoterica that's come out of theoretical physics the last couple decades; along with the countless more or less meaningless studies in coffee and red wine, etc that go back n forth; along with say the recent "grievance studies" in sociology mostly at liberal arts schools have led the general public to doubt science at large generally speaking, incl the institution, the community of scientists, the knowledge production and the knowledge bases. A real shame. In a time when we really need the core understanding of science as much as ever. Case n point: the entire vaccine mess that's still in the news.
There's a very depressing effect at large in current political discourse in the form of generalizations and exaggerations. It allows us the delight of our passions but it becomes transparent under scrutiny and does no good to any reasoned argument. The idea that liberal arts schools have led to the doubting of science is perfectly absurd on the face of it. Please, show us the study behind such a claim: data.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Feb 13, 2019 - 11:22am PT
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Tell me, Paul, how does a paper on "feminist glaciology" help science.
That was the point.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Feb 13, 2019 - 11:27am PT
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I think, at bottom, Ed is struggling with accepting that nonlocality is a characteristic feature of quantum mechanicsand a fundamental property of nature.
I am not struggling at all, don't know how you could remotely think this, unless, of course, you don't understand quantum mechanics.
You're also confused about time, causality, and classical mechanics.
You have to be the first person in any mind studies who has no confusion whatsoever per the big issues.
Per classical mechanics, I suspect you mean the study of the motion of bodies (including the special case in which bodies remain at rest) in accordance with the general principles first enunciated by Sir Isaac Newton. Then you have Bell, who many (that I know) insist said that there is no local cause in the universe and no location either, at least in the Newtonian sense. But I'm sure you could cite where this is "mistaken," or where others have "misinterpreted the data."
Per time, most science refer to time as "what a clock reads." Of course in classical, non-relativistic physics, time is a scalar quantity, usually described as a fundamental quantity.
Obviously, there is no such external object or force that anyone calls "time." A clock is not part of the natural universe. Originally, time was the quantification of natural cycles and rhythms like tides and night and day. It is derived from X. It is not an entity or external object.
This is a good look at the different way physicists view time:
Einstein once said to his friend Michele Besso, "For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
Einstein’s statement was not merely an attempt at consolation. Many physicists argue that Einstein’s position is implied by the two pillars of modern physics: Einstein’s masterpiece, the general theory of relativity, and the Standard Model of particle physics. The laws that underlie these theories are time-symmetric — that is, the physics they describe is the same, regardless of whether the variable called “time” increases or decreases. Moreover, they say nothing at all about the point we call “now” — a special moment (or so it appears) for us, but seemingly undefined when we talk about the universe at large. The resulting timeless cosmos is sometimes called a “block universe” — a static block of space-time in which any flow of time, or passage through it, must presumably be a mental construct or other illusion.
Many physicists have made peace with the idea of a block universe, arguing that the task of the physicist is to describe how the universe appears from the point of view of individual observers. To understand the distinction between past, present and future, you have to “plunge into this block universe and ask: ‘How is an observer perceiving time?’” said Andreas Albrecht, a physicist at the University of California, Davis, and one of the founders of the theory of cosmic inflation.
Others vehemently disagree, arguing that the task of physics is to explain not just how time appears to pass, but why. For them, the universe is not static. The passage of time is physical.
My sense of Ed's conundrum is that he considers this last sentence literally - that time itself (a measurement) IS physical. Or it relates to physical processes and in some way, the two are selfsame.
Point is, when Ed says I don't understand time, the implication is that if I was jiggy with QM, I would be right there with him, while the fact of the matter is leading physicists are all over the amp per what time is, though my friends in the know tell me that few if any modern thinkers consider time, itself, to BE physical in the way that a tree or a piton is pjysical. But I trust Ed has another take on it.
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limpingcrab
Trad climber
the middle of CA
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Feb 13, 2019 - 11:32am PT
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Anyone with good PubMed access have any recent papers on the subject? I'd recommend watching the video Ed posted a page or so ago, autocatalytic sets have had a lot more attention in the last 5 or so years. Otherwise I can get published stuff for you when I'm back in my office, if you've got a long attention span :)
I like your honesty here, Jeremy, and my original point was mostly to encourage people to to try to understand why they believe whatever they believe.
it really is not THAT hard to imagine the self-organizing of a crude replicator (incl its complimentary parts) just as it's not that hard to imagine production of amino acids under the right conditions. Agree to disagree. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to compare it to finding a bag of puzzle pieces, finding one corner and one edge piece, and then assuming that all the pieces are there and are from the same puzzle.
If you get reaaaallllyyy bored, find 20 or so prominent, recent papers published on the topic and compare the conditions that are required for their experiment to, 1. the hypothesized conditions of early earth, and 2. the conditions required for the other 19 experiments. (assuming they're not just theoretical models)
You might start to notice that step 3 must happen in a drying out puddle with no UV light, and step 2 must happen near a hydrothermal vent, etc... Also, that many hypotheses bolster their claim by disproving other hypotheses rather than proving their own in a big web of contraditions.
When Dawkins and others spoke of a crude replicator system (incl any complimentary parts, substrate, matrix or environment) emerging, they had in mind I'm pretty sure a system way way way less sophisticated, less evolved, than any RNA/substrate we imagine. A popular one is that a type of salt crystal was the first replicator.
Case n point: the entire vaccine mess that's still in the news.
Seriously! I'm doing my best on this one, I work this topic into a lot of lectures and am not very gently about it.
In particular, the transition, if there is one, from not-life to life might be less well defined. Kinda annoys me that I'm supposed to teach the "7 key characteristics of life," when I agree with you that the definition might not be that simple.
The idea that liberal arts schools have led to the doubting of science is perfectly absurd on the face of it. Please, show us the study behind such a claim: data. Part of this blame might lie with those "pay-to-publish" garbage journals that news and websites like to draw from, then retract.
End of science Actually sounds like a fun read, I'll have to add this to my summer break list. Could make for fun classroom discussion.
Now that it's a new page I'll throw this unanswered question up one last time:
What would it take for you, personally, to come to the conclusion that unguided abiogenesis is impossible?
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Feb 13, 2019 - 11:32am PT
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Tell me, Paul, how does a paper on "feminist glaciology" help science.
That was the point.
And my point is how many liberal arts classes/ schools are there in this country? And you're going to take a couple of crack pot papers and condemn an entire group of disciplines as a result? You do what your enemies do: you exaggerate and generalize. It's a specious argument from the get go.
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