Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Shameful Decline of Scientific American

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 247 posts

Re: The Shameful Decline of Scientific American

#31

Post by analog31 »

My parents got Scientific American when I was a kid, which would have been half a century ago. I remember interesting, meaty articles, a column for amateur scientists, and column on math (Hofstadter for a while). Many of the articles were written by top scientists.

So of course my spouse and I subscribed for our kids. My first impression was: "It's turned into the Internet." Rather than nice narrative text, the articles were broken up into all sorts of bits and pieces, in vibrating colors. Like the Internet, it actually makes it hard to focus on an article.

Re: The Shameful Decline of Scientific American

#32

Post by WesternWind »

I mean apparently Wilson suggested at one point that because eusocial insects exist where some insects serve others, slavery among humans is natural?

Which ignores a huge amount of differences. To pick one eusocial insects of the same species are closely related to the ones they serve, and how slavery is not universal. Family and kinship groups are probably a way better metaphor than slavery. Occasionally some insects use other insects of a different species like aphid farming ants, but that's more like having livestock.

Ultimately by suggesting that genetics causes behavior but also being inconsistent about how that works, Wilson at times reinforced the status quo in problematic and mistaken ways, without looking at cross cultural studies, anthropology, or other fields that might have given him a broader view.

Anyway the idea that criticizing Wilson is somehow immoral because he is dead seems silly. It's not like many of the same criticisms weren't offered when he was alive, for example this 1975 review of his book. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1975/11/13/against-sociobio...

Many people who did great things also said some shitty ones, And some shitty people like Nixon did some good ones. Quite a few people are dead and canonizing them after death as somehow saintly for their good deads and ignoring anything problematic they did rather than challenging their mistaken beliefs where they contradict facts is against the spirit of scientific inquiry.

As an aside, my understanding is that while conservatives continue to try to make "woke" into a state of being or a quality of character, as if folks can achieve it, the original usage was stay woke, IE to remain vigilant and observant of what's going on so you can adapt and learn. As far as I'm concerned we all should be doing that, changing our beliefs as we learn, rather than wrapping ourselves too much up in what we currently think to be true. If Wilson's ideas are worthy they will be born out by current and future inquiry into our nature as human beings.

Though challenging the status quo might require you to go against your sociobiology.

Re: The Shameful Decline of Scientific American

#33

Post by Maursault »

I am not defending SJW in saying this, merely pointing out a clear and obvious fallacy and a shameful one considering those who submit and post here that use it. Employing the pejorative "woke" is an ad hominem fallacy because it doesn't speak to any argument, and it, in fact, says nothing at all. It ignores all argument for the sake of, I presume, insult. It is fundamentally tribalistic. Insulting or denigrating the opposition in an argument does not win any argument, not ever. In fact, it hands victory to your opponent whether their argument is sound or not. Using "woke" is, effectively, a stupid way to communicate, and I mean that literally. If one is too stupid to form an argument or to obliterate an opponent's argument using sound reasoning, then you'll employ "woke" in pejorative, as well as other common fallacies. Also, when "woke" is employed as pejorative, I'm nearly certain it is racist or sexist, depending on the context. So in trying to sound cool, the user ends up sounding racist or sexist, again, depending on context.

Use meaningful words. Form an opinion. Have good reasons for that opinion. Defend your position with facts and logic. If not, speak not.

Re: The Shameful Decline of Scientific American

#34

Post by bambax »

> The normal distribution is not about default humans. It’s about the fact that in many statistical studies, the characteristics of the population tend to cluster around a mean. So if the average height of the human population is 5 foot 7, then most individuals will be around that height.

NO!! This is known to be false. The average does not mean "most" measurements match the... mean. And it actually does happen that the normal distribution is often (wrongly) interpreted as defining some kind of standard specimen that does not, in fact, exist.

There's a famous story about that exact topic, relating to US pilot seats. Excerpts from an article about it:

> Using the size data he had gathered from 4,063 pilots, Daniels calculated the average of the 10 physical dimensions believed to be most relevant for design, including height, chest circumference and sleeve length. These formed the dimensions of the “average pilot,” which Daniels generously defined as someone whose measurements were within the middle 30 per cent of the range of values for each dimension. So, for example, even though the precise average height from the data was five foot nine, he defined the height of the “average pilot” as ranging from five-seven to five-11. Next, Daniels compared each individual pilot, one by one, to the average pilot.

> Before he crunched his numbers, the consensus among his fellow air force researchers was that the vast majority of pilots would be within the average range on most dimensions. After all, these pilots had already been pre-selected because they appeared to be average sized. (If you were, say, six foot seven, you would never have been recruited in the first place.) The scientists also expected that a sizable number of pilots would be within the average range on all 10 dimensions. But even Daniels was stunned when he tabulated the actual number.

> Zero.

> Out of 4,063 pilots, not a single airman fit within the average range on all 10 dimensions.

https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-...

Re: The Shameful Decline of Scientific American

#35

Post by colordrops »

thelettere wrote: post #26
colordrops wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically it's a joint responsibility between the system and the individual. Culture and historical context have a huge role in how people behave, which is why one country can consist of mostly skinny healthy people and another unhealthy overweight people. It's not because the latter country's people are genetically predisposed to be irresponsible adults. You can't fully blame the system or the individual. It's b…

You're right but at the same time all the evidence points towards the benefit of one's own disposition being biased towards responsibility and choice. External locus of control and learned helplessness are not fun states of mind, and an emphasis on external factors tends to become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Particularly of course when this focus gets "in the air" and becomes an integral part of the culture. Which, i…

You're missing the fact that an individual's disposition and choice isn't entirely a creation of their own. Otherwise you'd see a random distribution of dispositions, rather than very different dispositions based on cultural context.

The rest of your statements are vague and hand-wavy, and I'm not sure how to respond.

Re: The Shameful Decline of Scientific American

#37

Post by technothrasher »

WesternWind wrote: post #32

I mean apparently Wilson suggested at one point that because eusocial insects exist where some insects serve others, slavery among humans is natural? Which ignores a huge amount of differences. To pick one eusocial insects of the same species are closely related to the ones they serve, and how slavery is not universal. Family and kinship groups are probably a way better metaphor than slavery. Occasionally some insect…

> I mean apparently Wilson suggested at one point that because eusocial insects exist where some insects serve others, slavery among humans is natural?

Even if you granted him for the sake of argument that slavery among humans is "natural", so what? That in no way answers the is-ought problem.

Re: The Shameful Decline of Scientific American

#38

Post by mperham »

modeless wrote: post #36

What can I put in my house today that will let my children discover science and physics the way Scientific American let me discover them as a teenager?

Scientific American? Just because this post had issues with one article doesn’t invalidate the entire periodical.

Re: The Shameful Decline of Scientific American

#39

Post by alisonkisk »

throwawaysea wrote: post #5
jdkee wrote: post #2

Reposting my comment from the E.O. Wilson thread from a couple of weeks ago, "As a reader of the magazine for the past 35 years or so, Scientific American, the print publication, has devolved into what Popular Science was about 20 years ago. Sensationalist headlines, writing geared towards a much lower reading comprehension level and the introduction of politics and opinion in various articles. A sad state of affairs…

I definitely have been reading a lot more from alternative sources such as the ones you mentioned. I also would say that the democratization of journalism is really important today because of the politicization of so many institutions, including virtually all traditional media outlets like Scientific American. The threat to heterodox thinking isn’t especially new either - Quillette recently reposted an interview of E…

The SA article was terribly written and argued, but Wilson's own words in that interview greatly increased my sympathy for Wilson's critics who were suspicious of sociobiology. Wilson severely underplayed the connection between sociobiology and eugenics and Nazism that came before. "I'm just doing science" is a weak defense when the science is something so adjacent to what had just recently been used to murder 10million people.

Re: The Shameful Decline of Scientific American

#40

Post by bmitc »

modeless wrote: post #36

What can I put in my house today that will let my children discover science and physics the way Scientific American let me discover them as a teenager?

I highly recommend the Scientific American Library book series. This is an out of print but readily available series in the used book market that is probably the greatest collection of scientific writing I've seen. I have been slowly collecting all of the entries, and for the ones that I've read, they are absolutely excellent. There are lots of pictures and the writing is at a level understandable by laymen but it does not dilute the technical aspects just to be palatable. The books I have read tell the real story. The authors are all fantastic and usually experts in their field, such as John Wheeler, Steven Weinberg, Peter Atkins, Julian Schwinger, Martin Rees, and others.

https://www.goodreads.com/series/181771-scientific-american-...

https://www.thriftbooks.com/series/scientific-american-libra...

The series reminds me of being a kid and taking home my granny's old encyclopedia set. I'll normally just grab one of the Scientific American Library books and peruse through it reading bits here and there.

Post reply on HN