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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

#91

Post by jonhendry18 »

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…

"Massive spending programs without clearly-defined revenue streams."

Science doesn't have "revenue streams". Basic research doesn't have "revenue streams".

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

#92

Post by komali2 »

malvosenior wrote: post #75
chris_mc wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you didn't need uplifting doesn't mean others don't need it. Your "bootstraps" argument is such BS.

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…

> 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 door (including some poor people who were self driven).

Well, then perhaps they'll be missing out on some of the advantages that you've listed as your own selling points - perhaps a stronger sense of entrepreneurship, problem solving, and hardiness?

In any case, I disagree that the burden on businesses would be that significant. I've seen coding bootcamps churn out pretty decent frontend engineers in 3 months. Make it 6 and who knows what a company could do.

Furthermore, I don't believe it is necessarily a company's job to solve, like, illiteracy. That would be the governments' job, and considering a higher literacy would drive a greater GDP (and make a better society), that should be an objective everyone strives for. To do that, we need people that have lived through those situations to find the best way to lift people out of bad situations. To do that, we need their perspective. To get their perspective, we need them working for us... which means we need diversity.

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

#93

Post by jonhendry18 »

bluGill wrote: post #71
kaitai wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mathematics is surprisingly useful. You've used your credit card online -- where'd that encryption algorithm come from? "Useless" math. You've booked a flight online -- where'd that schedule come from? Uh, math again: all that optimization, those traveling salesman problems. Right now I'm doing all sorts of work studying risk in financial networks, studying public health, all using math that was considered "pure" jus…

I didn't argue all math is useless. I argued a lot of it is

Something may look useless now, but turn out not to be useless.

Something might be useless now, but further mathematics based on it might be worth billions.

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

#94

Post by komali2 »

mooseburger wrote: post #86
komali2 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

More specifically, to the republican party, climate change does not exist. Therefore, any climate change research is politically anti-republican (why would you research something that doesn't even exist?)

In the words of the leader of the republican party: "Climate Change is a Chinese hoax."

This isn't the fault of scientists in any way, shape, or form. This is a direct result of society, for some reason, organizing its political parties along "pro-intellectualism" vs "anti-intellectualism" lines. How can scientists fight back against this without being political? Should they just "deal with it?"

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

#95

Post by jonhendry18 »

commandlinefan wrote: post #59
Gravityloss wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably if you spend enough time and effort you can find something political in, say, the mathematics papers written by any given university research team on any given year. But if a politician advocates for teaching that Pi is exactly three, in my opinion that's on a whole different level. Your post advocates for false equivalence, in a somewhat indirect manner. We get to "all science is politicized". And then the…

> We get to "all science is politicized" No, just the science that's fashionable to politicize. You can't pretend that this article isn't at least more biased than the people they're supposedly warning us about.

The Trump Interior Department abruptly canceled a study into coal mining's effects on the health of nearby residents. An Interior Department official explained the decision this way: "Science was a Democrat thing"

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

#96

Post by jonhendry18 »

throwaway713 wrote: post #4

One of the problems with the “defend science” movement is that it’s often being (mis)-used to support philosophical positions that are fundamentally unanswerable by science: concepts like afterlife, gender, and when life begins. I’m not saying I disagree with the popular viewpoints, but science is the wrong tool for the job. (Does human life have inherent value? I don’t know, but better predictive models and more exp…

Afterlife? You're talking nonsense.

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

#97

Post by jonhendry18 »

eitland wrote: post #83
kaitai wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ;-)

"I'm an engineer"

"I guess a certain percentage of those who asked scientists"

Is guessing what engineers do now? I hope I never use anything you worked on.

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

#98

Post by cuspycode »

torstenvl wrote: post #42
throwaway713 wrote: post #4

One of the problems with the “defend science” movement is that it’s often being (mis)-used to support philosophical positions that are fundamentally unanswerable by science: concepts like afterlife, gender, and when life begins. I’m not saying I disagree with the popular viewpoints, but science is the wrong tool for the job. (Does human life have inherent value? I don’t know, but better predictive models and more exp…

When life begins is clearly a scientific question. Perhaps you mean the question of when society should recognize and protect personhood ?

Agreed. According to science, life began about 4 billion years ago, and has been going on without interruption ever since. Personhood is a completely different (but nonetheless very interesting) category.

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

#99

Post by xamuel »

komali2 wrote: post #88
xamuel wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bio…

Thanks for the answer. I think you touch on something with the Optometry example, and that example helped me to articulate a proto-idea I've been trying to get a finger on and haven't been able to grasp until now.

To avoid unnecessary anguish, pretend there's a country called Foo.

Natives of Foo are much less intelligent than the average human, and racists point to them as an example validating their racism. But imagine what's really going on is, the natives of Foo are all genetically disposed to have terrible sleep apnea, and that's what's causing their reduced intelligence.

If we ask "Why on earth are natives of Foo less intelligent?", then we can follow that thread and eventually realize it's because they all have sleep apnea. Then we can give them CPAP machines and fix the problem.

But if we dogmatically put our fingers in our ears and scream "everyone is equal!", then we have no hope of sorting the mess out. It would be as ludicrous as condemning optometry because we're afraid of hurting the feelings of people born with poor eyes.

Thanks for the comments about sociology vs. biology. Pragmatically speaking, we need to figure out how we can change our society to legitimately incentivize this "uplifting" (it isn't free). Our current tactic seems to be to brainwash people about magic pixie dust qualities of diversity. This doesn't do anybody any favors, because the invisible hand of the market doesn't care about propaganda. Push it far enough and the whole job market will be made of shell company contracting agencies whose sole purpose is to take on "diversity liability".

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