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

Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

reason.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

891–900 of 1001 posts

Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#891

Post by henearkr »

anglosaxony wrote: post #750
henearkr wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy enough: make matter things that have no reason to matter. Like what the skin color has to do with how good your physician is? Nothing. Science is smart enough to propose the adequate metrics, in this case it does absolutely not include melanin.

Deciding "what matters" isn't a question of science, it is a question of dominance and self-interest. You seem intent on dominating others and denying their legitimate self-interests.

What matters is a matter of causality, which is inside the realm of science.

Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#892

Post by jmb99 »

Agingcoder wrote: post #831
mtlynch wrote: post #790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reference for the curious: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6202

Thanks. I didn’t realize how bad things were. I’m not American. Is this an example of America’s culture war I keep reading about ?

This would be an example, but far from the whole picture.

Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#893

Post by henearkr »

anglosaxony wrote: post #747
henearkr wrote: post #602

This whole debate is surrealist. Bigotry and intolerance are fundamentally irrational and illogical, so the so-called "left-bias" of science is just science being itself. Now the comments in this HN page and the reason.com article are completely ignoring that, and only considering everything through a political filter.

>Bigotry and intolerance are fundamentally irrational and illogical, so the so-called "left-bias" of science is just science being itself. TIL science ignores sex differences in body strength and endurance, racial differences in average IQ, the Putnam study on diversity and social capital, racial differences in aggression and their link to violent crime, and studies on the effects (irreversible) puberty blockers have…

The fact that many variables are correlated doesn't condone using any of them as an evaluation criteria.

See my other comment on stat proxies.

Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#894

Post by henearkr »

someuser2345 wrote: post #745
henearkr wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy enough: make matter things that have no reason to matter. Like what the skin color has to do with how good your physician is? Nothing. Science is smart enough to propose the adequate metrics, in this case it does absolutely not include melanin.

It's left leaning universities that push for affirmative action policies, which do judge people based on their melanin.

That is intended to be a transient mechanism, to evolve towards a more balanced status quo after it has ended.

Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#895

Post by verzali »

lazyeye wrote: post #601
Crayfish3348 wrote: post #523

A book came out in August 2024 called "Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola," by Susan Greenhalgh. She's a professor (emeritus) at Harvard. The book is a history. It shows how the Coca-Cola Company turned to "science" when the company was beset by the obesity crisis of the 1990s and health advocates were calling for, among other things, soda taxes. Coca-Cola "mobilized allies in academia to create a soda…

I wonder how much of this same kind of manipulation/distortion is going on when we are told to "trust the science" with regard to climate change? The pressure to ignore or minimise inconvenient facts would be overwhelming (career at stake situation).

If you want to deny climate change you have to deny basic physics and chemistry, that's the problem with what you are saying.

Either you need to somehow show we've gotten the molecular properties of Carbon Dioxide wrong so that it doesn't absorb the wavelengths of light we think it does, or you need to show that we've gotten basic chemistry wrong, and that the reactions involving hydrocarbons and oxygen do not produce carbon dioxide.

These are all very basic things and have been known for about two hundred years. It was even possible, well over a century ago, to reason from these basic principles and conclude that mass burning of fossil fuels would result in a global temperature rise.

It just basic science, and if you want to deny it, you have to deny almost all of modern physics.

Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#896

Post by mozman »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #590
mrandish wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If cell phones or microwaves or a hundred other things were harmful we would not find out While I agree that there may be things which have subtle but cumulatively harmful effects over time, the two specifics that you cited (cell phones and microwaves) are very poor examples because they've been deployed so broadly for so long, the chances there is some significant medical harm still undetected is vanishingly small…

Also, trial lawyers would rapidly become the wealthiest people on Earth if genuine, reproducible evidence of harm from non-ionizing radiation could be found. If you thought the tobacco and silicone breast implant settlements were impressive...

Divorce lawyers are generally the most profitable. $750/hr if you’re good.

Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#898

Post by aint_that_so »

sunshowers wrote: post #791
aint_that_so wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got banned from a leftist Discord that I'd spent years on discussing all sorts of topics, just because I dared to question some of the standard left-wing stances on trans issues. I'd said something like, I don't think claiming an identity is enough, there has to be some sort of dysphoria. And then followed up with another comment like, if they want to keep the cock intact, then they're not actually trans women, as…

What is your expertise in the field?

About the same as anyone else on that Discord.

Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#899

Post by grecy »

mrandish wrote: post #553
grecy wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is exactly the problem we face now in so many aspects of life. If cell phones or microwaves or a hundred other things were harmful we would not find out, because of all the lobbying and armies of scientists paid to find and publish a very narrow version of truth

> If cell phones or microwaves or a hundred other things were harmful we would not find out While I agree that there may be things which have subtle but cumulatively harmful effects over time, the two specifics that you cited (cell phones and microwaves) are very poor examples because they've been deployed so broadly for so long, the chances there is some significant medical harm still undetected is vanishingly small…

> because they've been deployed so broadly for so long, the chances there is some significant medical harm still undetected is vanishingly small.

Cancer rates continue to rise, and will be well over 50% of all people in my lifetime.

There is no doubt our current world is making us very sick.

Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#900

Post by ashildr »

Levitz wrote: post #498
ashildr wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly the only people who are not supposed to “push a political agenda” are usually accused of being “woke” in one of the next sentences. “Keeping politics out” brought the US - and the world - Trump, two times. Most things in life are political.

>“Keeping politics out” brought the US - and the world - Trump, two times. Given the degree to which Trump benefits from anti-establishment sentiment, I'd like you to ponder if putting politics absolutely everywhere might very well be what got Trump elected twice. I find the idea that there just isn't enough political message completely incompatible with current reality.

If you don‘t seriously talk about politics but consider it sports and entertainment and about “winning”, you get Dr. Oz and RFKjr to decide about your health and Matt Gaetz overseeing justice.

Politics is everywhere and it has to be everywhere but politics is not Joe Rogan or Fox news. That‘s propaganda.

Post reply on HN