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Nobel Disease

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Re: Nobel Disease

#81

Post by i-blis »

I am convinced that a similar proportion of non-prize winner scientists across all fields of natural sciences share "scientifically unsound ideas" or "scientifically unsupported or discredited beliefs", or however else we want to call them. I am not even confident that age may be a decisive factor.

As an (almost retired) anthropologist with background in genetics, I do certainly nurture yet unverified and pretty unorthodox convictions, if only as a matter of hypothesis. Looking around me among colleagues who have a wealth of experience, cultivating strange ideas seems to be very common and indeed part of the discovery process.

How can one find new insight without erring ?

Re: Nobel Disease

#82

Post by cestith »

swat535 wrote: post #61
cestith wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is ethically unsound.

"Ethics" is subjective, there is no such thing as an objective ethics (unless you are religious). This is why thought experiments like the Trolley problems don't have a simple answer.. and they get even more complex with variations of the thought experiment.

I agree ethics can be subjective, so much so that there is more than one model of ethics.

However, please tell me which model of ethics supports eugenics. Is it Utilitarian, Rights, Fairness, Common Good, or Virtue?

Re: Nobel Disease

#83

Post by qurren »

i-blis wrote: post #81

I am convinced that a similar proportion of non-prize winner scientists across all fields of natural sciences share "scientifically unsound ideas" or "scientifically unsupported or discredited beliefs", or however else we want to call them. I am not even confident that age may be a decisive factor. As an (almost retired) anthropologist with background in genetics, I do certainly nurture yet unverified and pretty unor…

I think the logic here is backwards.

Nobel Prize winners won the prize because they had unorthodox ways of thinking that led them to an actual discovery. I'd think that it's quite normal that 1 out of 10000 unorthodox beliefs ends up being a scientific reality of high impact.

i.e. ~1 out of 10000 unorthodox thinkers will win the Nobel Prize, 9999/10000 of those thinkers you will never hear about. For the one who won, it's likely they will have continued unorthodox ideas, 9999/10000 of which will not lead to a second Nobel Prize.

Re: Nobel Disease

#84

Post by BeetleB »

i-blis wrote: post #81

I am convinced that a similar proportion of non-prize winner scientists across all fields of natural sciences share "scientifically unsound ideas" or "scientifically unsupported or discredited beliefs", or however else we want to call them. I am not even confident that age may be a decisive factor. As an (almost retired) anthropologist with background in genetics, I do certainly nurture yet unverified and pretty unor…

Almost everyone harbors some scientifically unsound ideas. Especially when it comes to the human body and/or mental abilities.

Re: Nobel Disease

#85

Post by RGamma »

CalRobert wrote: post #41
embedding-shape wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 o…

> or stop them from reproducing

It may not be possible to breed any trait to any distribution one would like.

For body size, maybe, also depending on maternal nutrition. But apparently there is (and anthropologists think always has been) a certain percentage of people with schizophrenia even though it carries a severe reproductive disadvantage.

Similarly, it may well be that personality always approaches a certain distribution like a random experiment.

The culling mechanism would work in any case, of course.

Re: Nobel Disease

#86

Post by stronglikedan »

cestith wrote: post #82
swat535 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Ethics" is subjective, there is no such thing as an objective ethics (unless you are religious). This is why thought experiments like the Trolley problems don't have a simple answer.. and they get even more complex with variations of the thought experiment.

I agree ethics can be subjective, so much so that there is more than one model of ethics. However, please tell me which model of ethics supports eugenics. Is it Utilitarian, Rights, Fairness, Common Good, or Virtue?

Since it's subjective, you can just make up your own model supporting eugenics, and it'll be just as valid as any other model.

Re: Nobel Disease

#87

Post by epolanski »

bmitc wrote: post #72
epolanski wrote: post #26

People that enjoyed success in any field tend to think they can replicate in others. See Musk, whom believes that if he's done A or B right, makes him an expert on the entire alphabet.

Musk hasn't ever been intellectually successful in anything. He's a grifter.

He's definitely been successful as an entrepeneur.

That doesn't make him an expert in physics, computing, politics, economy, etc, etc.

Re: Nobel Disease

#88

Post by i-blis »

qurren wrote: post #83
i-blis wrote: post #81

I am convinced that a similar proportion of non-prize winner scientists across all fields of natural sciences share "scientifically unsound ideas" or "scientifically unsupported or discredited beliefs", or however else we want to call them. I am not even confident that age may be a decisive factor. As an (almost retired) anthropologist with background in genetics, I do certainly nurture yet unverified and pretty unor…

I think the logic here is backwards. Nobel Prize winners won the prize because they had unorthodox ways of thinking that led them to an actual discovery. I'd think that it's quite normal that 1 out of 10000 unorthodox beliefs ends up being a scientific reality of high impact. i.e. ~1 out of 10000 unorthodox thinkers will win the Nobel Prize, 9999/10000 of those thinkers you will never hear about. For the one who won,…

The article lists an order some 10 of Nobel prize-winners later seen as "unsound" mostly in a field other than their main area of expertise. Making them 1 in 100. I won't be surprised that 1 in 100 senior scientist expresses unorthodox or even unsound ideas when foraging far away from their field, particularly on the kind of topics listed.

I agree that the share of unorthodox thinkers should all in all be higher among those winners. This is indeed what made them advanced in their field. But the main bias remains: looking at those whose voice reaches even when they venture out of their field rather than the full pull of (good) scientists.

Re: Nobel Disease

#89

Post by qurren »

i-blis wrote: post #88
qurren wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the logic here is backwards. Nobel Prize winners won the prize because they had unorthodox ways of thinking that led them to an actual discovery. I'd think that it's quite normal that 1 out of 10000 unorthodox beliefs ends up being a scientific reality of high impact. i.e. ~1 out of 10000 unorthodox thinkers will win the Nobel Prize, 9999/10000 of those thinkers you will never hear about. For the one who won,…

The article lists an order some 10 of Nobel prize-winners later seen as "unsound" mostly in a field other than their main area of expertise. Making them 1 in 100. I won't be surprised that 1 in 100 senior scientist expresses unorthodox or even unsound ideas when foraging far away from their field, particularly on the kind of topics listed. I agree that the share of unorthodox thinkers should all in all be higher amon…

Venturing outside your field is also part of what drives discovery itself, not a post-Nobel symptom, because you see the new field with a fresh set of eyes rather than textbook-brainwashed eyes.

A lot of discoveries are made by someone who "imported" insights from one field to another.

Re: Nobel Disease

#90

Post by tripletao »

yreg wrote: post #44
Denote6737 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

The most likely theory of artificial origin is that SARS-CoV-2 was deliberately created as a chimera of two natural sarbecoviruses with a human-designed furin cleavage site between them. The WIV proposed to undertake this research in collaboration with Ralph Baric in the DEFUSE proposal, as a step towards his goal of a pan-coronavirus vaccine. DARPA declined to fund the proposal, in part due to safety concerns. Zhengli Shi had the technical knowledge to perform the work alone at the WIV, although no specific evidence has yet emerged that she did so.

https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-gra...

That said, Montagnier appears to have speculated that SARS-CoV-2 contains genetic information from HIV. That seems almost surely false, since the sequences he cited occur frequently in many organisms.

https://apnews.com/article/conspiracy-theories-iran-only-on-...

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