The Skeptics Guide #803 - Nov 28 2020 (Ad Free)
Added 2020-11-28 16:54:13 +0000 UTCCOVID Vaccine Update; News Items: The Popularity of Principia, Supersized Wind Turbines, A Magnetar is Born, Plant Personality; Special Report: The Truth about Galileo; Whos That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Racial Bias; Science or Fiction
Comments
Hello, Just throwing my semi-informed opinion in here. I have studied racism from both a modern and historical perspective, but I would never qualify myself an expert, so just sharing, please feel free to check/correct anything I say. As an American expat living in England (24+ years), it is interesting to see a different culture with different biases. England is still very much a classist society (working class vs. elitists, white v. Asian (Middle and SE Asian) culture), but the topography of bias seems to be shifting. In India, there are definite classes, though this is more explicit, so bias & racism does exist outside Western culture. Implicit is, I think, hard to define and spot, and possibly Cara means systemic, meaning it's baked into the system and an anachronism that we've inherited without real examination (think of black people getting higher mortgage rates than white people). I think another aspect is what I view as subtle worldview building. From the day we're born, we're working to figure out the world. What we see and experience defines how we view the world. Being too young, we aren't able to actually question the world and have to just accept it. Say a 5-year-old child goes to the doctors and, for the first time, meets a black doctor. Having never experienced this before and possibly never met a black person (I've known this to happen from experience), they can potentially be apprehensive. I wouldn't call this racism, and a lot depends on how the people around the child act. I think another affect is the amygdala (??), the reactive pre-processing portion of our brain before the much slower executive part of our brain engages. When something is amiss, no matter what it is, it can put our body on high alert to prepare for freeze/flight mode. That can be anything, and skin color can be a trigger. I wouldn't call this racism, but, I think, might come close to implicit. It's a topic that requires a much deeper dive than a small portion of the show. I too would love to know where there isn't any bias.
Asymetra
2020-12-03 19:23:15 +0000 UTCI'm really glad Cara was able to go deeper into the racial bias thing because I was totally unaware she studies it. It really reframes a lot of the discussions that have previously felt like tangents to the show. I'm a bit curious about one of the things she said though. I'm inclined to feel it's off the cuff, but I want to follow the advice given in this show and assume it's backed by known evidence. At one point in the discussion, Cara mentions that implicit racial bias and a normal vs. other mentality has long existed in western culture. I don't know if this singling out of western culture is intentional, but I'm not really aware of any cultures that have not either currently or historically had such tendencies, and have heard firsthand accounts of people from a variety of backgrounds experiencing it in non-westernized areas of the world. I'd love to know if there are studies I could read that document places and cultures where this isn't the case.
MurphyAlter
2020-12-02 09:10:29 +0000 UTCSure. I'm tapelt at yahoo.com. I am doing a lot of research on alternative energy.
Ted Apelt
2020-11-29 01:43:55 +0000 UTCSolar capacity has almost tripled in recent years, from 19,000 MW in 2015 to 48,000 MW in 2018. More than 54,000 utility-scale wind turbines are installed in the U.S., with a cumulative capacity of 89.4 GW. U.S. wind capacity increased by 431% between 2007 and 2017, a 18% average annual increase. https://www.windpowerengineering.com/business-news-projects/reaching-100-renewables-with-the-green-new-deal/ That's an APR of 36.2% for solar and 18% for wind. At this growth rate, this is what percentage of current U.S. total generating capacity (786 GW) we would get each year: solar-30% capacity, wind-60% capacity year solar wind total 2019 2.48 8.05 10.5 2020 3.40 9.50 12.9 2021 4.62 11.2 15.8 2022 6.30 13.2 19.5 2023 8.59 15.6 24.2 2024 11.7 18.4 30.1 2025 15.9 21.7 37.6 2026 21.7 25.6 47.3 2027 29.5 30.2 59.7 2028 40.2 35.7 75.9 2029 54.8 42.1 96.9
Ted Apelt
2020-11-29 01:40:50 +0000 UTCIf you guys ever wanna chat with someone who works on wind turbines, hit me up...
Jess Donovan
2020-11-28 21:28:50 +0000 UTC
