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The world's most famous SF writer who is not an SF writer has died
Submitted by Capt. Xerox on November 5, 2008 - 11:04pm.
Author Michael Crichton died today at the age of 66. While not explicitly labelled as a science fiction writer, he certainly wrote a number of books that would qualify as genre fiction - Jurassic Park, The Lost World, The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man and Sphere are a few of his science fiction thrillers that most people are familiar with, mostly through their movie adaptations.
He's one of those figures that polarizes readers. You love him or hate him. I have only read The Andromeda Strain so I can't offer much of an opinion on his books. It was an entertaining summer read, but hardly high art. Would I read more of his books? Probably not. I've seen the movies and don't think the books would tell the stories any better.
Some people dislike him not because of his books, but for some of his outspoken opinions, especially on the subject of environmentalism which he calls nothing more than a religion and his disdain for people's belief in the man-made causes of global warming. He's also debated other groups such as SETI researchers so he's managed to piss off plenty of people with his opinions.
What are your opinions about Crichton as a writer or on his views of science?
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I get the impression that
I get the impression that you felt he committed apostasy for not beleiving in either? Environmentalism is fine in small doses but certainly even you can't be serious that mankind is the sole cause for any climactic changes that go on all the time. AGW is total nonsense since the Sun causes more changes than anything mankind can do.
Crichton on SETI and Global Warming.
I thought he was a good science extrapolationist.
Jurassic Park for example is no longer science-fiction, with egg nucleus removal and subsequent injection of "naturally" frozen cells (found inside bits of animal carcasses encased in ice for example) scientists can now bring back extinct animals via embryonics and subsequent stem-cell cloning.
see recent Cloning 'resurrects' long-dead mice.
re: his anti-SETI views.
His argument was that none of the Drake Equation elements
N=N*fp ne fl fi fc fL
(number of stars in our galaxy, planets, planets with life, evolution, intelligence, can communicate, lifespan)
could be known, and so the equation that founded SETI and therefore SETI itself was a load of unscientific religious hokum.
That's an interesting argument, but I think the premise is myopic.
The drake equation may have _inspired_ SETI research but it is not the end-all be-all of the science of SETI.
Extra-Terrestrial Intelligent-Life Probability mechanics has since evolved out of it.
And probability is a science that sounds like hokum and magic when you try to explain it, but it has remarkable accuracy. If it didn't, lottery companies would go broke.
re: Crichton's controversial views on global warming.
I agree with his conclusion.
ie. "Sooner or later, we must form an independent research institute in this country. It must be funded by industry, by government, and by private philanthropy, both individuals and trusts. The money must be pooled, so that investigators do not know who is paying them. The institute must fund more than one team to do research in a particular area, and the verification of results will be a foregone requirement: teams will know their results will be checked by other groups. In many cases, those who decide how to gather the data will not gather it, and those who gather the data will not analyze it. If we were to address the land temperature records with such rigor, we would be well on our way to an understanding of exactly how much faith we can place in global warming, and therefore what seriousness we must address this."
but the way he got there was to argue that science (and particularly any science he disagreed with) was all politics, and that's such a load of fetid dingo's kidneys.
I found his article "Aliens Cause Global Warming" to be thought-provoking and filled with a good degree of interesting supporting evidence.
..that unfortunately/frustratingly lead to misleading and unsupported gross generalizations that ultimately served to generate the impression that science isn't science.
That it's politics with hidden agenda.
The argument structure reminded me of Noam Chomsky, a brilliant linguist and a master at using supporting evidence to support an unsupported conclusion and pass it off as fact.
What they share in common in my observation, is that If you look closely, you can spot the slight-of-hand, the moment when, while making a load of well-supported claims, they slip in a leap that's actually UNsupported.
And If not paying close attention, it's easy to miss that point.
Even though I disagree with his gross generalization/analysis of scientists and science, I have to agree with his conclusion.
Yet I feel compelled to also say hang-on 'mate, despite the impression created by the article, due diligence in applying the scientific method IS actually employed by scientists.
It all depends on which science or scientists you focus on, but I agree with him that where possible, it should always be done.
The Avante Guardian. ---- Einstein's Hair^2 //Approved.
Crichton "The movie"
When I was young, I read "The Andromeda Strain", "The Terminal Man", "Westworld" (the published as a screenplay), and later "The Lost World". All movies that I enjoyed. And therein lies the limiting aspect of Crichton the writer. It was only hollywood representations that urged me to seek out his books and in that respect they were fine. But the movies were always better than the books.
I was quite surprised to learn that he took such a critical assessment of science and scientists while at the same time exploring futuristic visions and events. To say that some of the Drake equation variables are guesses at best is fine. But at the same time some of those guesses are unqustionably large numbers that are known so they become minimum values when plugged into the equation which tend towards ET life. So the validity of interpretation falls into the mathematics of probabilites and statistics. More rigorous research and better data is always a quest for scientists in all fields. But that does not mean you have to poop on all the theories being put forward now. That's just too easy and a cop out.
~ Lazarus ~
Crichton the writer vs. Chrighton the 'scientist'
He wrote many of the most well-known novels of the late 20th century and early 21st.
As a spokesman though... I tend to have a real problem with the so-called 'intelligent' when they put down all global warming beliefs. Maybe manking alone isn't responsible 100 % for it, but to not even believe we could do anything to reduce it...? That's just dumb.
I learned that he was a Republican. Dubya cited his words as his proof that global warming is a myth. Take that as you will.
----
I'll sleep when my writing muse wants to.
RightWing Corporate PseudoScientific AntiGlobalWarmingTechniques
'aye, I didn't follow Crichton's back and forth on the issue enough to discern whether he was a willing or unwilling tool of corporate politics but it probably wouldn't take too much digging to verify.
Certainly the arguments Crichton supplied were co-opted by big biz and their representatives to justify denial and non-action on the global-warming/climate-change front.
It's not surprising. The supporting arguments looked strong but weren't very good.
Even the argument against "consensus science" was a horrid example of the same linguistics fragging that leads to laypeople arguing that "a scientific theory is only a theory".
(when it's the precise opposite -Ed)
In the same way, he falsely implies "scientific consensus" is some sort of unresearched polling of scientists, for their uninformed opinion. Some sort of vote.
When what it really means is that scientists -who are working in the field of research- have come to a preliminary conclusion based on the weight of the available evidence.
And that conclusion has independently been arrived at, based on independent research, by the majority of scientists studying in the fields numerous research areas.
It's not quite the same thing as a hands-up poll of the unresearched uninformed's "opinion", as Crichton implies.
The arguments are precisely the sort of arguments the corporate world would lift for their own purposes, at surface level it sounds good to anyone who doesn't know how these things are really done, and it's utterly wrong.
Also, somewhat ironically, Big Biz and their political and gen-pop supporters were _actually_ the ones to apply Crichton's pseudo-scientific polling technique. Only they couldn't find many that would agree with them. So they cheated.
They were the ones that would attempt to poll-quote "scientists" most of whom wound up as either not scientists in the field, not acredited scientists at all (and sometimes people that didn't even exist -Ed) in an attempt to use those faux-scientific claims as evidence that global warming _wasn't_ happening.
All in an attempt to present the fabricated illusion that there was an equal and opposite "scientific-consensus" on climate-change.
/BEGIN Aside/
Fox loves to do a variation on that too. And I've seen CNN do it. They present a split screen with 2 people for an issue, 2 against. What's wrong with that? I'm glad you asked. (we thought you might be - Ed) *cough* imo that's fine for public opinion, but for science, that is grossly misleading. When an issue _isn't_ evenly supported by the science, imo they should not be allowed to present an even balance of representatives on screen, because it creates a FALSE misrepresentation to the public.
That's my view anyway.
/END Aside/
Anyway, back to pseudo-scientifc polling.
BigBiz and their reps have since been busted for that, as
fake anti-global warming "research" papers have been caught,
lists of faked anti-global-warming scientists have been published and then retracted when it was revealed the list was bogus and put together by corporate friends
and real scientists have said "get me off your anti-global warming list!"
(and that's not including some global-warming skeptic sites that create lists that contain real scientists, who just so happen to have been dead for quite some time - Ed)
But whether or not it was Crichton's intent to supply the corporate world with a blue-print (if an ultimately ineffective one - Ed) I don't know.
I think most of the arguments in Crichton's 2003 article are a load of misleading bunk.
It can look like he was trying to support the right wing corporate sponsored anti-global warming campaign, but I give him the benefit of the doubt that what he may have been trying to do, was call for more due-diligence and in the process, big biz saw an opportunity to co-opt his arguments for their own agenda.
The Avante Guardian. ---- Einstein's Hair^2 //Approved.
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