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'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

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Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#241

Post by throwGuardian »

Science, facts and meanings of words have all been cancelled

You can do this experiment right now: type "Men can" in Google, and see the suggestions it returns. If you disagree with them, you're with 99.9% of humanity, and with science.

So how did the suggestion return an absurdity on Google - the AI ethics committee at Google have cancelled facts, and manually edited the response to this suggestion (as against the typically automated responses curated via page-rank + AI). Welcome to 2020 - where words, facts and science have no meaning

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#242

Post by zaarn »

There is a fairly good piece from the youtuber Contra, it's about 2 hours and goes fairly well into the details of Cancel Culture and how the author was herself cancelled after showing a <10 second clip of a specific person in a +1 hour video. I can certainly recommend it.

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#243

Post by gvjddbnvdrbv »

alasdair_ wrote: post #56
allovernow wrote: post #19

While this explicit cancel culture has been slow to arrive, this is exactly the kind of traditionally left leaning activism which has gradually come to infest almost all of academia (and to a lesser but growing extent, industry). The result is an extremely strong, emergent cultural pressure against certain results and certain questions, which has been holding back a wide range of fields and ensuring pursuit of severe…

>I'm not suggesting choosing between left and right, only pointing out that the bias is pervasive and undeniable. Can you point to specific examples of this where the science is actually robust and well documented but has somehow been blocked from being published or otherwise stopped due to this pervasive bias?

You just reframed the debate into terms that suit you. Very clever and great for arguing on the internet but ultimately you won't convince anyone with these methods.

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#244

Post by TorbjornLunde »

frogger23127 wrote: post #201
specialist wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're claiming that Watson's views of IQ, genetics, and race are scientific?

Absolutely. Your negative emotional reaction to scientific research is not a valid refutation of that research. Science is based on logic, not emotions. Facts do not care about your feelings.

I find it strange that when people defend so called “race science” today a common argument seems to be along the lines of “this is correct because some people have negative emotional response to something”. While having a negative emotional response to something certainly isn't an counter argument in itself and isn't a pro argument either! A viewpoint isn't correct merely because it pisses some people off.

Either way, as far as I know, biologist haven't really considered human races to be biologically meaningful category for quite some time now opting clines[1] which are not discrete, but gradual genetic variations over geographic areas, nor does it follow the traditionally defined racial lines. This is why I'm quite suspicious of people pushing so called “race science” as AFAIK it simply doesn't seem to have evidence behind it, rather, it seems to have specific political viewpoints behind it generally.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cline_(biology)

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#245

Post by wutbrodo »

Retric wrote: post #204
wutbrodo wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're asking for examples where science is robust and well-documented but has been _blocked_ from being published? You understand that this is effectively an unanswerable question, right? How would anyone here come to know about such findings if they existed, and further know that they well-documented _despite their not being published_? It's fundamentally unknowable how much science is being denied the imprimatur o…

Many academics are more than happy to raise a stink about suppression of other topics outside of traditional channels. Ex: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/23/agriculture-depart... So, it’s reasonable to expect examples of actual suppression. If nothing else I expect someone to be making that argument on at least one paper somewhere. Though how much merit that’s worth depends on the paper.

This isn't inconsistent at all with the premise we're discussing. Academics are happy to make a stink about _external_ influence on their research, influence that runs contrary to beliefs dominant in academia[1]. Bitching about the Trump administration isn't going to lose you any friends in academia, but bitching about forces internal to academia, whose sympathy much of academia lies with, is a whole different ballgame.

(Note that I'm referring to the opinions of "academia" fairly carelessly here for conciseness, when I mean things like "the dominant opinion among the individuals making up the departments that affect an academic's career")

[1] Note that I'm not making any statement about academia being left or right specifically. Ie, I think the OP comment of the thread may be right about these forces being sometimes lefty

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#246

Post by frogger23128 »

rfdbsd wrote: post #240
frogger23128 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's some research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_Global_Inequality There's a lot of emotional hysterical screeching accusations of "racism" but those aren't valid arguments.

You clearly didn't even read these wikipedia pages. Although they are about two different publications (one from 2002 and the other from 2006), each book is basically the exact same, and the latter presents the exact same flimsy evidence as the former. Also, from the contents of these very same wikipedia articles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations#R... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_Glo…

I am well aware that some people dispute it, but the fact is that IQ scores are consistently lower for some races. Similar studies have been done and always reach the same conclusions. You can easily replicate this result yourself. No one has been able to refute the basic data. The differences are self evident when comparing places such as Lagos or Zimbabwe versus Hong Kong. Also observe that the Jews are extremely over represented in the list of Nobel Prize winners. Your emotions make you blind to this obvious reality. Isaac Newton, Alan Turing, Albert Einstein, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Wernher von Braun; where are their Africans peers?

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#247

Post by lawnchair_larry »

Can_Not wrote: post #177
tasogare wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, intelligence is 100% environmental and cultural factor, that’s why genetic affliction such as the Down syndrome has absolutely no effect whatsoever on the subject intelligence... It’s incredible how far some people will bury their head from evidences because of their ideological beliefs. On the contrary, when some facts put a positive light on certain groups (for instance the better maximal physical performance)…

Strawman aside, down syndrome is just as common in black people as it is in white people, so you know, nobody was denying genetics play a role, they're just pointing out there isn't a proven correlation between "the white gene" and IQ like so many racism apologists want to believe.

You think it is racist to be curious about IQ variance across races? Why?

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#248

Post by frogger23129 »

rfdbsd wrote: post #240
frogger23128 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's some research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_Global_Inequality There's a lot of emotional hysterical screeching accusations of "racism" but those aren't valid arguments.

You clearly didn't even read these wikipedia pages. Although they are about two different publications (one from 2002 and the other from 2006), each book is basically the exact same, and the latter presents the exact same flimsy evidence as the former. Also, from the contents of these very same wikipedia articles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations#R... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_Glo…

I am aware that some people dispute it, but the fact is that IQ scores are consistently lower for some races. Similar studies have been done and always reach the same conclusions. No one has been able to refute the raw data and it is easily replicated. The differences are self evident when comparing cities such as Lagos or Zimbabwe versus Hong Kong. Also observe that the Jews are extremely over represented in the list of Nobel Prize winners. Isaac Newton, Alan Turing, Albert Einstein, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Wernher von Braun; where are their African or Papua New Guinea peers?

EDIT: Having lower IQ doesn't make anyone less human, so this is no justification for actual hateful racism. Nature is a blind process. Some populations have selected higher IQ and they have a powerful advantage, whether we like it or not.

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#249

Post by Eldt »

toomim wrote: post #213
jdauriemma wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those bell curves don't control for environmental and other non-genetic factors, making your statements - insofar as they are based on the document you linked - irrelevant to the conversation.

He wasn't commenting on which factors cause difference in test scores. He was simply saying that the test scores are different. But it's become an unfortunate pattern that when people bring up the difference in scores, other people (like you) presume that mentioning the correlation data itself is akin to arguing that they are caused by genetic factors, and then attack them for not mentioning the environmental factors…

This is disingenuous. Did you miss where he mentioned "whites" without any context of location/upbringing/...

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#250

Post by Eldt »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #247
Can_Not wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strawman aside, down syndrome is just as common in black people as it is in white people, so you know, nobody was denying genetics play a role, they're just pointing out there isn't a proven correlation between "the white gene" and IQ like so many racism apologists want to believe.

You think it is racist to be curious about IQ variance across races? Why?

He didn't say anything about curiosity - where did you get that from, exactly?
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