About me, me, me

I'm an engineer from Britain with a left-wing heart and a right-wing brain

POV

Science

• I have a very strong belief in science, but...
• ...I am well aware that most real life problems do not fall into that set that have unique answers from science and...
• ...I know it is unscientific to expect others to share my faith in science because

1. I have seen the evidence that they don't
2. why should they anyway? Anyone has the right to question science. The whole point of it is that you don't have to take anyone's word for it because you can go and check it for yourself. Otherwise they'd call it dogma.

I also think that if you wish your opinions to be taken seriously, your right to disagree with science goes with your obligation to check the evidence, and not simply read your holy book or follow the fashion.

I wish people would pay attention on those occasions when science does come up with a practical truth, especially the mathematical impossibility of eliminating either poverty or environmental destruction without controlling the population. When science can be applied, it makes things simple.

Pseudoscience, and inclusionists and deletionists

I tend to Inclusionism when dealing with articles about pseudoscientific nonsense. In other words, say it is rubbish, but don't delete the article.

I think this mostly because when you do a Google search on something wacky, you get a lot of commercial sites aiming to part the desperate from their money, and a Wikipedia article which might tell the thing you really need to know unless the deletionists have got to it first. Which they sometimes do.

Unfortunately, I have seen cases where people have become quite fanatical about deleting an article on something weird against the opinions of not only the loonies, but also the serious contributors. This wastes the time of honest scientists who want the facts to be available, and plays into the hands of fraudsters.

I think deletionists are often pompous individuals on power trips who get a kick out of obliterating what others have created. More sophisticated than the vandals who blank pages or insert dirty words, but probably more harmful.