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We Must Defend Science in the Face of Political Attacks

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Re: We Must Defend Science in the Face of Political Attacks

#81

Post by xamuel »

chris_mc wrote: post #78
xamuel wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't use foul language. I'm genuinely interested in komali2's answer. I'm not pulling some rhetorical trick or something. Please follow HN guidelines and give fellow commenters the benefit of the doubt. There are obviously many causes of under-representation of minorities, not least of which is that if they were more fully represented, then that would help them to pass their genes along and thus over a long p…

No, I will not be civil with someone saying, literally, that minorities are less genetically able to do certain jobs. Fuck off.

Reverse the cause and effect. I am not saying "minorities are less genetically able to do certain jobs". Rather, I (and Charles Darwin) are saying "people less genetically able to do certain jobs tend to become minorities". That's Biology 101, or it would be if there was less politicization of science!

Re: We Must Defend Science in the Face of Political Attacks

#82

Post by [deleted] »

chris_mc wrote: post #79
malvosenior wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You did not refute any of my points. Do you really think lowering the barrier of entry for poor people then giving them on the job training will bring them to the level of people that are already high performing? Companies do not have the resources to make that happen as it would require decades of training, education, therapy, life adjustments... just to get to the same level as some people have coming through the d…

HN is such a cesspool of ignorant fucks like yourself, get fucked and die.

[deleted]

Re: We Must Defend Science in the Face of Political Attacks

#83

Post by eitland »

kaitai wrote: post #63
eitland wrote: post #47

> 47 percent of scientists at the National Park Service and 35 percent at the Environmental Protection Agency report they had been asked to omit the phrase "climate change" from their work. I guess a certain percentage of those who asked scientists to do that did it for the same reason I dislike many (but certainly not all) blockchain initiatives: it has been bolted on a something where it didn't belong just to "prof…

I have to say, parks and the environment are, ah, pretty impacted by climate... Why do you think that discussion of climate is "bolted on" to parks/environment unnecessarily?

If you read carefully you might notice that I don't say everyone does, but I fully expect scientists to be smart enough to add those magic words to anything they want to study.

Source: I'm an engineer, I fully expect scientists to outperform me in this ;-)

Re: We Must Defend Science in the Face of Political Attacks

#84

Post by ameister14 »

komali2 wrote: post #58
mooseburger wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One that does not serve the interests of any one political faction.

In that case it is impossible to do Climate Change, science, no? It serves the interest of the Democratic "agenda," as a side effect.

That can be construed as political but also as non-political.

Re: We Must Defend Science in the Face of Political Attacks

#85

Post by ameister14 »

komali2 wrote: post #51
ameister14 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we should be precise here. Saying the march is part of the problem does not mean that the lobbyists are not also part of the problem. It also does not mean the march is a _root cause_ of the problem. It just acknowledges that the march is a part of the politicization of science, which it is.

What action, with the objective of reducing the politicization of science, could be taken that could be construed as "non-political?"

Conducting scientific experiments and publishing their results absent government funding.

Re: We Must Defend Science in the Face of Political Attacks

#86

Post by mooseburger »

komali2 wrote: post #58
mooseburger wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One that does not serve the interests of any one political faction.

In that case it is impossible to do Climate Change, science, no? It serves the interest of the Democratic "agenda," as a side effect.

There are many ways around global warming, of which current Democrat policy is just one. Republicans are being silly by not proposing alternative approaches to this problem, agreed, but they absolutely can.

Re: We Must Defend Science in the Face of Political Attacks

#87

Post by insickness »

apo wrote: post #9

You have a group of people in Washington tasked with doling out money for research. By its very nature this federal funding has politicized science for a long time. Ask anyone who has been through a scientific PhD program whether or not their field has been politicized because of grants received or not received. The trick this article plays is to argue in part that science needs to be politicized the right way. Diver…

> science needs to be politicized the right way. Diversity initiatives.

No thank you. I don't need the left telling me that there are 30 genders nor the right telling me that climate change doesn't exist. There is no "right" politicization.

Re: We Must Defend Science in the Face of Political Attacks

#88

Post by komali2 »

xamuel wrote: post #64
komali2 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the difference is the concept of "uplifting." Given two people, one who had money and therefore lots of high-quality STEM education, and another who does not have money and struggling to acquire a STEM education while also dealing with poverty (and the poorer quality education that comes with it), yes, probably the rich kid will do better at their job sooner. But there's nothing inherently preventing the po…

That's a really interesting way of looking at things. How do you reconcile that with the notion of Darwinian evolution? Is it not true that individual organisms are born with small mutations which make them more or less suitable for an environment, and that over long time periods, the ones who are more suitable for an environment will flourish in that environment? Are you suggesting the individual could reverse a det…

> How do you reconcile that with the notion of Darwinian evolution? Is it not true that individual organisms are born with small mutations which make them more or less suitable for an environment, and that over long time periods, the ones who are more suitable for an environment will flourish in that environment?

Very true. Nothing has changed about the facts of natural selection in biology. I'm not talking about biology, though, I'm talking about sociology, and I don't think the mechanisms that act on biology have much of anything to do with sociology. For example, we can demonstrate that natural selection can be totally annihilated by, for example, keeping people with birth defects alive with medicine. We can even develop entire industries around keeping these people "equal." One of these industries is Optometry.

> Are you suggesting the individual could reverse a detrimental inherited mutation in his own lifetime (as opposed to the lifetime of his distant descendants), if properly nurtured?

Since we are talking about sociology, the "mutation" is a result of society, not of biology (or anything to do with the individual, really), in which case yes, any aspect caused sociologically can be reversed/changed/altered sociologically.

People born poor and thus lacking education can be given education, which both solves the problem for new "people born poor" while also "reversing" the detrimental effects of a lacking education in existent individuals (through nurturing them).

I believe this method of nurturing or uplifting is not only morally superior to the concept of social darwinism (and I am happy to defend this point moralistically), but it is also better by all other traditional measures of society "success" - average happiness, productivity, technological advancement.

Re: We Must Defend Science in the Face of Political Attacks

#89

Post by komali2 »

xamuel wrote: post #81
chris_mc wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I will not be civil with someone saying, literally, that minorities are less genetically able to do certain jobs. Fuck off.

Reverse the cause and effect. I am not saying "minorities are less genetically able to do certain jobs". Rather, I (and Charles Darwin) are saying "people less genetically able to do certain jobs tend to become minorities". That's Biology 101, or it would be if there was less politicization of science!

>"people less genetically able to do certain jobs tend to become minorities"

This is a sidenote to my longer comment - I've never seen evidence, ever, of a genetic component to the ability to do a certain job, that surpasses a statistical margin of error.

Re: We Must Defend Science in the Face of Political Attacks

#90

Post by komali2 »

fromthestart wrote: post #77
chris_mc wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you fucking saying that Darwinian evolution is the cause of underrepresented minorities in white collar jobs? What fucking planet are you from?

Is it really so outlandish to suggest that populations have diverged cognitively after tens-hundreds of thousands of years of separation? Or are you really that determined to pretend that all population differences just stop at the shoulders? The consistently different outward expression of genetic variation among populations is obvious - skin color, height, weight, fat proportion, hair type, eye color, predispositio…

> Is it really so outlandish to suggest that populations have diverged cognitively after tens-hundreds of thousands of years of separation?

Yes, actually, because civilization is only (barely) 10,000 years old, which is not many generations to develop "cognitive" difference.

Take a newborn member of one population, plop it in one on the other side of the planet, and in 20 years they'll be indistinguishable from anyone else (minus whatever effects that society applies to the child due to differences in their appearance).

I disagree the genetic heritage of an individual affects their cognitive ability in a way to overcome statistical error, with all the cognitive "noise" of society existing.

It should therefore be disregarded.

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