Reddit reviews The War on Science: Who's Waging It, Why It Matters, What We Can Do About It

> Legitimately, did you come up with this eloquence on your own?

Read a lot on the topic.

Recommend A Generation of Sociopaths for the details on tax breaks/regulations and empirical breakdown on how they flopped on things like marijuana, abortion, and immigration based on what was convenient and desired at the time.

For a good write up on how the meritocracy was hijacked and turned into a tool for inherited wealth transfer, How the Boomers Broke America, written by a Boomer no less who profited from the original meritocratic system they took over.

How America Lost Its Mind goes even beyond the Boomers and gets into the culture of "Democracy means my opinion is as valid as anyone else's facts" and how the young Boomers of the '60s tripping on acid, deciding all reality was subjective would eventually end up glued to Fox News & Rush Limbaugh being spoon-fed their desired subjective reality decades later.

The War on Science isn't written with a specific generation in mind, but shows how an ocean arose between the scientific community and Americans as a whole during the Cold War and guaranteed government funding for all things science to win it. Gets into the psychology of what happens when people aren't intimate with empiricism and become mistrustful of experts and facts.

If you look at demographic trends, such as Pew Global, you see a lot of interesting things: Longer working hours for us now than they grew up with, from the mid 70s onwards median wages stagnating as productivity grew multiple-fold as labor laws/unions were weakened, Millennials have lower rates of drug usage, teen pregnancy, abortion, pre-marital sexual partners, etc. yet still get bashed as being "bad" by their multiple divorcee parents.

If you have specific questions or whatever, feel free to ask.

Cheers

Edit: Note that this isn't a scathing indictment of every individual Boomer. My father inadvertently checks a lot of the more negative generational stereotype blocks without necessarily being a bad person for example, just how he was raised and the effects of living in a society dominated by his peers. There are plenty of good Boomers, this is an analysis of how their culture came to change the nation when they became a supermajority with over 50% of all votes by the early 80s, and were able to completely hijack public policy to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. It's a warning, as millennials will soon be the largest demographic, and barring a Black Swan type demographic event, will enjoy nearly that level of political power and potential for abuse in the decades to come as the Boomers die out.

Read the book, too. Understand that the war on science is *not* a right-wing thing (opposition to vaccination, opposition to GMO, the left is not innocent), and vote for people who aren't anti-science.

https://www.amazon.com/War-Science-Waging-Matters-About/dp/1571313532

This is a very interesting book, have you heard of it? You should check it out.

Also, do you know there is almost complete scientific consensus on the fact that co2 is damaging to our ecosystem? And on top of that almost complete consensus that its human beings exacerbating that damage? Is it interesting to you that the people who tend to reject these scientific claims and debate the objective truth happen to be the giant energy industries, the politicians who support these industries, and religious groups?

I'm about 380 pages into it so far. It is a long book. Otto has some pretty good suggestions and I agree with almost all of them.

FYI, it is a massive tome and loaded with sooo much information. I'm not sure it lends itself to tl;dr methods. One thing's certain: there has been a constant effort to demean science and cast doubt on it. That effort is funded immensely by fossil fuel industries to prevent and delay legislation; and of course the baying fundies love it because they hate science (especially evolution).

Otto's book really nails it: names, emails, internal memos, monetary expenditures, dishonesty, etc.

On the other hand, the book is very affordable. You can order it here

I use Amazon Smile because they donate a portion of your purchases to a charity of your choice (and I use the FFRF).