The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back • Hacker News Board

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#111

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 6:10 PM UTC

superqwert wrote: post #100

dragonwriter wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which is not necessarily true - for example, many arguments against the theory of evolution question whether it is a falsifiable theory The “theory of evolution” is a large composite explanatory story wrapped around a large number of testable (mostly thoroughly tested) hypotheses. It's falsifiable by falsifying any of the components, though the replacement is liable to look remarkably similar but for who the falsif…

Of course, any number of subsets of the theory being disproved could falsify the super-set theory. But if there are two super-set theories, and you cannot falsify one over the other, then those collections are not falsifiable. Some philosophers argue that all the subsets of evolution - genetics, mutations, natural selection could still support permanence of species with local changes. Until you can create an entirely…

> Until you can create an entirely new species in a laboratory without direct gene editing, there cannot be positive proof for evolution

Being able to do that is no more positive proof of evolution than any of the more or practical tests. Also, speciation has been observed and created in controlled settings without direct gene editing (indeed, some before gene editing was even a thing), so if it was positive proof of evolution, we could mark that off as proven absolutely.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#112

Post by happytoexplain » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 6:12 PM UTC

ip26 wrote: post #78

happytoexplain wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound like you're being sarcastic, but I can't be sure. It sounds like you think the premise is ridiculous, but your second sentence is totally reasonable - of course we should discuss all aspects of a topic. Again, I'm not sure if your first question was honest or not, but answering it is straightforward and I think you'll find only extreme minorities of opposing opinions: Leading forcibly by the arm may be obje…

I think your parent comment is alluding to the attempts by certain groups to massively expand the use/scope of the word "violence", e.g. the "speech as violence" idea.

I think that would be a reasonable point if that was the topic, but I don't think you're right about their intention because the topic is very explicitly about physical violence. Steering over to the philosophical realm of non-physical "violence" as an abstract concept would be a pretty dramatic departure from the topic, especially since it's not even stated in the comment. They even use an act of physically overpowering a person as their example.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#113

Post by mbostleman » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 6:25 PM UTC

charliesharding wrote: post #5

The way in which public considers science today is much more analogous to the way the public considered religion during the time of Galileo. Think of the way people are castigated for not believing in scientific "truths". I see signs in peoples yard saying that "in this house, we believe science is real". As someone who has studied biochemistry for years, this kind of reverence for science is truly troubling. The one…

I think the problem is that increasingly science ends up getting used like a human shield to justify government action. When this happens the science ends up getting distorted in both directions - deniers and "believers" - based not on any actual science but on one's political bubble preference.

If the data were available, it would be interesting to see the correlation between this distortion of science and the size of the government in relation to GDP.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#114

Post by thetrumanshow » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 6:26 PM UTC

ip26 wrote: post #78

happytoexplain wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound like you're being sarcastic, but I can't be sure. It sounds like you think the premise is ridiculous, but your second sentence is totally reasonable - of course we should discuss all aspects of a topic. Again, I'm not sure if your first question was honest or not, but answering it is straightforward and I think you'll find only extreme minorities of opposing opinions: Leading forcibly by the arm may be obje…

I think your parent comment is alluding to the attempts by certain groups to massively expand the use/scope of the word "violence", e.g. the "speech as violence" idea.

You can't escape this context, sure. But I was hoping for expansion on the idea where the poster stated "They should be investigated if their parenting is so poor that they resort to physical violence against the child." ... to which my reply is to ask what the limits are.

I can certainly imagine scenarios where leading by the arm would be considered violence, as it can cause pain and has the potential to injure.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#115

Post by __MatrixMan__ » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 6:31 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #77

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #49

I agree with the author that the public perception of science today is in a sorry state, but I don't think that a heightened reverence for authority (of any sort) is the way out. We design our scientific curriculum based on the philosophy of Popper, who was all about the scientific method. We teach that there are rules which lead to progress. There are counterpoints to Popper that don't appear in the modern curriculu…

> which facts to use? That's easy: the ones that are confirmed by experiments. Feyerabend was correct in calling science "anarchic" in that there is not one "scientific method" that will always point you at the right facts. Scientists do whatever works. But Feyerabend was wrong in thinking that, because of that, "all facts are alternative facts". It is possible to establish facts. You do that by experiments. It's jus…

It's easy if you're deciding between two masses for an electron. In that case you've already decided that some theory which describes electrons is the one for you--so in that context one is a fact that the other is just plain false.

But it gets tricky in cases where you're deciding between facts whose enclosing theories are incompatible. Is gravity a force, or is it an acceleration? Each is a fact in its own theory--the more relevant question has to do with your situation: which theory is more useful?

Your epistemology appears to allow for the absoluteness of facts to be itself an absolute fact. Mine doesn't. From your perspective I must appear to be out of touch with reality, and from my perspective you appear to be resting an awful lot on circularity. People have been having this debate for millennia, I don't think we're going to resolve it this year.

I think that a more fruitful question would be this: If one highschool uses textbooks that acknowledge that the philosophy of science is not itself a science--and presents the various competing views, and another highschool uses textbooks that assert the absolute truth of scientific facts without justification--which highschool produces more parents that opt their children out of vaccinations?

The nature of facts meta-epistemic, and therefore can't be a matter of knowable truth--in that domain, utility is all we have. The vaccination debate, however (I just picked an example from a hat, feel free to substitute your favorite pseudoscience) is a clash between two theories, one with great justification, and one with hardly any. It only persists because we don't educate people to evaluate competing theories, so low-effort alternatives appear to wide audiences as viable contenders.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#116

Post by thetrumanshow » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 6:32 PM UTC

happytoexplain wrote: post #112

ip26 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your parent comment is alluding to the attempts by certain groups to massively expand the use/scope of the word "violence", e.g. the "speech as violence" idea.

I think that would be a reasonable point if that was the topic, but I don't think you're right about their intention because the topic is very explicitly about physical violence. Steering over to the philosophical realm of non-physical "violence" as an abstract concept would be a pretty dramatic departure from the topic, especially since it's not even stated in the comment. They even use an act of physically overpowe…

Correct: I do understand that the definition of violence has been expanded in some areas of public discourse, but it wasn't my point.

My point was to find out where the poster believed to be the new demarcation line for physical violence that is acceptable (in parenting). I intended to suggest that leading by the arm might be considered violence by some, perhaps including myself.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#117

Post by war1025 » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 6:58 PM UTC

phd514 wrote: post #50

dymk wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religion and science derive understanding about the world in fundamentaly different and incompatible ways. To call it religion is just incorrect.

Thomas Kuhn would disagree.

Really meaning to read "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" at some point. I had a philosophy professor in college who was all about that guy. Definitely shaped my worldview to some extent.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#118

Post by unknownkadath » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 7:04 PM UTC

dexen wrote: post #71

x220 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so?

Quoting verbatim from the GGP, >Think of the way people are castigated for not believing in scientific "truths" and > the author is trying to burn religious texts and dissenting viewpoints to their "settled science".

If "skeptics" understood what the Navier-Stokes equations do, it would be easier to sympathize.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#119

Post by vharuck » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 7:07 PM UTC

stdbrouw wrote: post #76

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A dogmatic belief in anything is detrimental. It takes wisdom to understand this. Many followers of science lack this. Scientific method is a great tool - for the type of questions that it is designed to deal with - and a disaster waiting to happen if used for other areas of inquiry.

> Scientific method is a great tool - for the type of questions that it is designed to deal with - and a disaster waiting to happen if used for other areas of inquiry. What other areas of inquiry would that be?

What we value. The scientific method can be used to make better paints, but we decide what styles of art we prefer.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#120

Post by Fellshard » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 7:07 PM UTC

unknownkadath wrote: post #53

phd514 wrote: post #22

The opening paragraphs of this article are just another example of what appears to be an ongoing attempt to manufacture conflict between "religion" and "science". The books that were burned at Ephesus were explicitly identified in Acts 19:19 as sorcery books, not "books of nature". Stuff like this gets published in Nature and people wonder why "science" is losing its credibility?

Oh, well, as long as it was sorcery. Burning those books is a completely normal thing for completely normal people to do.

Have you... read the passage, or done the slightest research into the historical context in which it was set?