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The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

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Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#341

Post by savingthrow »

thetrumanshow wrote: post #114
ip26 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your parent comment is alluding to the attempts by certain groups to massively expand the use/scope of the word "violence", e.g. the "speech as violence" idea.

You can't escape this context, sure. But I was hoping for expansion on the idea where the poster stated "They should be investigated if their parenting is so poor that they resort to physical violence against the child." ... to which my reply is to ask what the limits are. I can certainly imagine scenarios where leading by the arm would be considered violence, as it can cause pain and has the potential to injure.

You grab a child by the arm and drag it -- that's potentially violence, but we'd need to look at the action as a whole.

You hold a child's hand to guide it -- that's probably not violence.

HN needs a name for the falacy that people always seek to define precise exact rules for everything, ignoring the way that courts work by investigating the context of an action.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#342

Post by logseman »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #285
weberc2 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The situation is instead that a vast number of scientists are producing findings that contradict certain political preferences, and the response has not been a deeper investigation made in good faith — but rather an outright political rejection of the findings. How does a layperson make a deeper investigation on their own? The research is typically paywalled, the jargon is inaccessible, the experiments are prohibit…

1. You use sci-hub. Or write the researchers. Scientists don’t want to keep their work secret nor do they want a “priestly caste”, they want it out there and read. They work like dogs so people on HN can read and actually understand their work and not write about their political feelings instead. 2. Even if you’re not qualified to do the science yourself, you try to reject implausible ideas like the notion that there…

Sci-Hub isn't exactly easy to use or recommended by the larger community a grad student is likely to encounter.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#343

Post by savingthrow »

weberc2 wrote: post #25
AndrewDucker wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is hitting a child not physical violence? What definition of violence are you using which doesn't include hitting children?

A definition of violence that doesn't distinguish between a completely non-injurious form of discipline and an abusive, injurious form is not very useful and its proponents are willfully obtuse.

It is injurious. It causes harm. We know it causes harm.

But let's go with your incorrect assertion that it doesn't cause harm. Try slapping one of your co-workers, and then in court saying "but it was a completely non-injurious form of discipline" and see how far you get.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#344

Post by savingthrow »

ConceptJunkie wrote: post #97
lmm wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's meant as a punishment it's not "to get their attention"; it's done to inflict pain. Again, it wouldn't be acceptable with an adult; just apply the same standard.

If we could treat children the way we treat adults, they wouldn't be children, they'd be adults. This is the kind of willful obtuseness the poster upthread is talking about.

I'm not asking people to treat children as adults.

I'm just saying that hitting a child is always as abusive as hitting an adult, and often more so because the child has no chance of escape.

There are many ways of parenting, and msot of them do not include violence against the child.

This is why hitting children is illegal in many countries.

Never mind treating children as adults: how about we treat them as humans, with rights that need to be protected?

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#345

Post by TimTheTinker »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #213
igor47 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a fan of NVC(non-violent communication) and that framework could be summarized by the sentence, "when you do X,I feel Y". You basically become an instrument that reports on your internal state, plus you're also supposed to avoid assuming anything about the other person's internal state. This is a lot more like science then the usual default of blaming and assumptions and implicit expectations that most people con…

> "when you do X,I feel Y" Communication like that can be very helpful when dealing with personal conflict -- marriage, friendships, etc., but I can't see how that would help in the public sphere. If a political opponent, writer, or public speaker were to say or write something like that, it would be irritating and off-putting. I'd think "OK, but what's your point?"

To clarify, if a Senator stood up on the floor and began: “Mr President, when my honorable colleague argues in favor of [some policy], I feel shamed, belittled, and angry.”

... That would be inappropriate, unhelpful, and unproductive. It would be better to engage with the opponent’s argument with another argument than to resort to talking about personal feelings in that context.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#346

Post by notyourday »

everdev wrote: post #282
notyourday wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People so often miss this. Science is a slow, evolving and never ending process. The day a new study comes out, people want to use it as evidence that something is 'settled science'. Unless it is AGW. That's settled science and 99.9% of scientists agree with Al Gore even though in 1970s we were heading for Global Cooling and that was settled science. That's the fundamental problem: how difficult is it to say "Based…

> Unless it is AGW That's the catch is that even things that have overwhelming scientific consensus are not "settled science". There's always more data to collect and more theories to test. I'm not saying that we shouldn't believe the data or act on the conclusions, far from it. I just don't agree with using the absolute term "settled science". It's not like there's an equation everyone agrees on or a reproducible ex…

That's exactly the point: if one wants to be taken seriously one's predictions either have to pan out or the predictions should come with a caveat.

When the predictions do not pan out one should not expect the population to trust one's future predictions as much.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#347

Post by notyourday »

eanzenberg wrote: post #287
notyourday wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People so often miss this. Science is a slow, evolving and never ending process. The day a new study comes out, people want to use it as evidence that something is 'settled science'. Unless it is AGW. That's settled science and 99.9% of scientists agree with Al Gore even though in 1970s we were heading for Global Cooling and that was settled science. That's the fundamental problem: how difficult is it to say "Based…

"Settled science." The 2100 predictions have varied so widely. Most current simulations predict 1-4ft increase in sealevel by 2100. The predicted effects have varied widely and will probably continue to.

Lets run a thought experiment. It is 2100 and the sealevel increased by 0.25 inches. Did those 1-4ft increase predictions increase or decrease scientific authority?

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#348

Post by notyourday »

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #330
notyourday wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People so often miss this. Science is a slow, evolving and never ending process. The day a new study comes out, people want to use it as evidence that something is 'settled science'. Unless it is AGW. That's settled science and 99.9% of scientists agree with Al Gore even though in 1970s we were heading for Global Cooling and that was settled science. That's the fundamental problem: how difficult is it to say "Based…

> That's the fundamental problem: how difficult is it to say It's trivial, which is why that's exactly what scientists are saying? What was your point again?

No, the scientists get on TV and into news media and talk about nearly guaranteed outcomes. When those outcomes do not pan out the scientists are shocked to discover that to the population they look like buffoons.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#349

Post by YukonMoose »

aidenn0 wrote: post #274
YukonMoose wrote: post #234

Stop giving creedance to people that can say with a straight face “the science is settled”. That would be a start. It’s the oxymoron of our times.

The earth is not flat. The science is settled.

The theory seems well supported. Unless the ‘evil demon’ of epistemology is having his way with us...

I’m not sure that’s settled.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#350

Post by superqwert »

killaken2000 wrote: post #106
superqwert wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, any number of subsets of the theory being disproved could falsify the super-set theory. But if there are two super-set theories, and you cannot falsify one over the other, then those collections are not falsifiable. Some philosophers argue that all the subsets of evolution - genetics, mutations, natural selection could still support permanence of species with local changes. Until you can create an entirely…

What is the scientific method used in physics

Again, even this has variations - Einstein's method of arriving at SR and GR differed entirely from the way experimental physicists arrived at QM
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