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Nobel Disease

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Re: Nobel Disease

#41

Post by CalRobert »

embedding-shape wrote: post #36
aswegs8 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> It's just completely outside of today's Overton window Never heard it expressed like that, but I guess you could apply it to tons of stuff? > Lobotomy is not scientifically unsound, as aswegs8 proves, it's just completely outside of today's Overton window.

I mean, if we wanted every human on Earth to be over 6' tall, we could just cull the short ones (or stop them from reproducing), and this is scientifically valid, but, of course, evil.

As far as lobotomy, I don't know, but it seems to be widely discredited inasmuch as it didn't achieve its aims (or if it did, the aims themselves were highly questionable)

Given the title, lobotomy is an apt reference "The originator of the procedure, Portuguese neurologist António Egas Moniz, shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine of 1949 for the "discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy in certain psychoses"," - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobotomy

Re: Nobel Disease

#43

Post by amanaplanacanal »

embedding-shape wrote: post #33

> an informal term for the embrace of strange or scientifically unsound ideas by some Nobel Prize winners, usually later in life. It has been argued that the effect results, in part, from a tendency for Nobel winners to feel empowered by the award to speak on topics outside their specific area of expertise Sounds pretty much like every founder out there who strike gold once in the past now believing their genius now…

Angela Collier has a terrific video about this : billionaires want you to know they could have done physics.

Re: Nobel Disease

#44

Post by yreg »

Denote6737 wrote: post #31
ciropantera wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lab leak is one thing, "deliberately created and escaped" is a different story.

It depends on personal interpretations of "deliberately created". To wit, virology labs will deliberately breed up more virulent strains of viruses in order to study their effects.

I don't know what's Montagnier's position beyond that paragraph on Wikipedia, but a virus undergoing gain of function research could be I suppose described as "deliberately created" (obviously not from scratch and not deliberately released).

Re: Nobel Disease

#45

Post by SiempreViernes »

lmf4lol wrote: post #40
cestith wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is ethically unsound.

are ethics man-made or „given“ to us by god, the watchmaker or the universe?

I think that in this context it's more useful to pose the question in there other direction: which moral systems declare that the slave trade and the disenfranchisement of persons on the basis of skin colour is not ok?

Re: Nobel Disease

#46

Post by dyauspitr »

ciropantera wrote: post #7

A lot of these aren't "strange or scientifically unsound ideas" but downright racism. Whether Nobel prize recipients are less or more racist than their contemporaries is debatable but I'm not sure they fit the same category as "believed in ghosts" or "claims to have talked to a fluorescent racoon".

The key point is it’s not just ethically wrong, but it’s not scientific because it’s subjective and has no basis in reality. For instance, you cannot use genetic studies to define a race because for instance, in Africa, you could have massive genetic diversity in people that are 200 miles apart. That doesn’t make them different races. If you did attempt to classify people into races based on something scientific like genetics, you would end up with hundreds of thousands of “races”. With even more fine tooth classification, you could subdivide those people into further sub groups that becomes indistinguishable from just classifying extended families.

Re: Nobel Disease

#47

Post by ectoloph »

In the article, Milton Friedman sums it up well I think by describing the attention is 'corrupting'.

It cannot be good for you for everyone to assume that you are somehow omniscient all of a sudden.

At either extreme, it isn't good. You start believing it and overestimating yourself more and ore, or you are buried under an ever increasing sense of impostor syndrome.

Re: Nobel Disease

#48

Post by amanaplanacanal »

lmf4lol wrote: post #40
cestith wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is ethically unsound.

are ethics man-made or „given“ to us by god, the watchmaker or the universe?

For the most part they come out of emotions that evolution found useful for procreation (love, fear, anger), then extrapolated to people living in small groups, then to larger societies after the invention of agriculture via the "iterated prisoners dilemma".

Re: Nobel Disease

#49

Post by burnerzzzzz »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #43
embedding-shape wrote: post #33

> an informal term for the embrace of strange or scientifically unsound ideas by some Nobel Prize winners, usually later in life. It has been argued that the effect results, in part, from a tendency for Nobel winners to feel empowered by the award to speak on topics outside their specific area of expertise Sounds pretty much like every founder out there who strike gold once in the past now believing their genius now…

Angela Collier has a terrific video about this : billionaires want you to know they could have done physics.

seconded

Re: Nobel Disease

#50

Post by everdrive »

embedding-shape wrote: post #36
aswegs8 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> It's just completely outside of today's Overton window Never heard it expressed like that, but I guess you could apply it to tons of stuff? > Lobotomy is not scientifically unsound, as aswegs8 proves, it's just completely outside of today's Overton window.

Well in fairness so long as you describe the goal as "largely destroying the frontal cortex and all the functions that go along with it," then lobotomy is incredibly sound.
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