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Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

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Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#121

Post by feralchimp »

TheCapn wrote: post #113
feralchimp wrote: post #103

Why do Americans elect lawyers? Laws and contracts are the operands of government. Money and a convincing demeanor are the operators of elections. Government is not really an experimental enterprise. Science is about constructing interesting subsets of general-purpose reality to eliminate variables, then testing other variables and seeing what happens. The history of Legislative attempts to eliminate real-world varia…

>Why do Americans elect lawyers? I think you're overthinking it. Lawyers make good politicians because they're good debaters. A good debater and charismatic individual garners votes. So long as you're not 110% bat-shit insane you'll win votes and the better you are at making the opponent look bad the better on you. Too much of American politics isn't so much about making realistic promises and outlooks on the future…

Perhaps we're both overthinking it. Lots of people are good debaters.

Lawyers are good debaters and more of them want the job.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#122

Post by super_mario »

Maro wrote: post #71
gcp wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Among the 435 members of the House, for example, there are one physicist, one chemist, one microbiologist, six engineers and nearly two dozen representatives with medical training....This showing is sparse even with the inclusion of the doctors, but it shouldn’t be too surprising. The article clearly considers engineers and doctors to be scientists. As it should - they are all well-versed in the scientific method by…

My wife is a medical doctor doing a Phd right now. By her own admission, doctors are _not_ well-versed in the scientific method _by education_. The others in her lab are all biologists, and she spent the first year playing catch-up in terms of being able to do science, and says she still feels like she'll always be behind compared to the biologists in the lab who got a regular scientist training in their 5 years at t…

The process of diagnosing a disease works quite like scientific method. You form a hypothesis based on symptoms, and then you test your hypothesis by ordering various kinds of lab etc. tests. You inspect the results and modify your theory on what could be wrong.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#123

Post by freehunter »

sbierwagen wrote: post #94

I’ve visited Singapore a few times in recent years and been impressed with its wealth and modernity. I was also quite aware of its world-leading programs in mathematics education and naturally noted that one of the candidates for president was Tony Tan, who has a Ph.D. in applied mathematics. Tan won the very close election and joined the government of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who also has a degree in mathemat…

It's possible to admire the scientific research of the Nazi Party while simultaneously denouncing the horrific ways they conducted their experiments.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#124

Post by Jun8 »

prewett wrote: post #22

Why don't Americans elect scientists? Because current American culture is anti-intellectual. I can't really back this up concretely, but as an American, it's hard to find anything intellectual around. A long time ago, people went to hear lectures on the weekends, and the Lincoln-Douglas debates were well attended. Now, TV "news" is a joke, and even NPR is becoming a bit entertainy. I get the feeling that few American…

I think America has always been "anti-intellectual" in the narrow sense that it didn't have a large elite class like many European countries have, the prevailing attitude has usually been the "self-made man" as opposed to egghead. This may or may not be a bad thing (e.g. elite classes by their very nature are hard to break into).

As far as I understand from your command, you tend to correlate the sentiment you call anti-intellectualism with the right-wing politics on the rise in the US (this is what I infer when you say "even NPR"). This, of course, is true, but is half the story. Many in what may be called left or liberals (again, very loose terms) also exhibit a form of this behavior. An old but interesting read on this matter is The Closing of the American Mind.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#125

Post by tincholio »

gcp wrote: post #86
Maro wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife is a medical doctor doing a Phd right now. By her own admission, doctors are _not_ well-versed in the scientific method _by education_. The others in her lab are all biologists, and she spent the first year playing catch-up in terms of being able to do science, and says she still feels like she'll always be behind compared to the biologists in the lab who got a regular scientist training in their 5 years at t…

Well-versed may be a very relative term. I've been exposed to physics, engineering and computer science. The physicists had the scientific method drilled in deep. The engineers a bit. The computer scientists had vaguely heard about it. We still call them computer scientists. Your wife may suffer from a similar "relative difference". (Coincidentally, I could repeat your story with my wife, who's a computer scientist w…

CS is a tricky term, in that it is actually (mostly applied) math, and math ain't science...

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#126

Post by tokenadult »

Maro wrote: post #71
gcp wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Among the 435 members of the House, for example, there are one physicist, one chemist, one microbiologist, six engineers and nearly two dozen representatives with medical training....This showing is sparse even with the inclusion of the doctors, but it shouldn’t be too surprising. The article clearly considers engineers and doctors to be scientists. As it should - they are all well-versed in the scientific method by…

My wife is a medical doctor doing a Phd right now. By her own admission, doctors are _not_ well-versed in the scientific method _by education_. The others in her lab are all biologists, and she spent the first year playing catch-up in terms of being able to do science, and says she still feels like she'll always be behind compared to the biologists in the lab who got a regular scientist training in their 5 years at t…

My wife is a medical doctor doing a Phd right now. By her own admission, doctors are _not_ well-versed in the scientific method _by education_.

She is wise. A good website about current medical practice and whether or not it is based on science, with a lot of guest authors with varying specialties, is Science-Based Medicine.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/

Some doctors are more scientific than others. The practice of medicine will advance as it becomes more scientific.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#127

Post by jberryman »

thecabinet wrote: post #102
prewett wrote: post #22

Why don't Americans elect scientists? Because current American culture is anti-intellectual. I can't really back this up concretely, but as an American, it's hard to find anything intellectual around. A long time ago, people went to hear lectures on the weekends, and the Lincoln-Douglas debates were well attended. Now, TV "news" is a joke, and even NPR is becoming a bit entertainy. I get the feeling that few American…

One thing I absolutely despise about the phrase "anti-intellectual" is the ambiguity about what it means. There was a great explanation of why people should be suspicious of "intellectuals" in an HN comment from a year ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2400310 . ESR also had examined the various possible meanings: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4001 In general, though, "anti-intellectual" seems to usually mean, "Wh…

I think when people call the mainstream Republican party "anti-intellectual" they are referring to things like: the quite obvious skepticism of even the most mainstream scientific theories, constant rhetoric deriding intellectuals and artists, policies that are guided by puritan morality rather than a rational evidence-based approach aimed at a certain outcome (drug policy, abstinence-only sex ed., myriad other distracting culture-war issues), policies that place little value in the arts/education (Romney's recent proposed budget would slash the National Endowment for the Arts by half, saving something like $70 mil), etc.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#128

Post by smokeyj »

stretchwithme wrote: post #32

Its not who you elect that matters. Its how decentralized the system is and how limited the power of the government is that matters. When the amount of power is great and concentrated, those lusting after power work very hard to get it. And they will do what they need to get it. And then use the power to keep it. But when the government is limited and very decentralized, its not going to attract sociopaths as much. I…

I have a theory that part of Europe's success was due to the fragmented nature of States. Within a small area you have independent nations with their own laws, currency, elections, etc. This represents less single points of failure IMO.

I think the early U.S also had a similar model. State's had their own currencies and regulations, with the right to over-rule federal regulations. Now, the US is essentially one state, one currency, and a giant single point of failure. Now the EU and the US are metastasizing in size/power and crushing anything that poses a threat to their authority.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#129

Post by jberryman »

Jun8 wrote: post #124
prewett wrote: post #22

Why don't Americans elect scientists? Because current American culture is anti-intellectual. I can't really back this up concretely, but as an American, it's hard to find anything intellectual around. A long time ago, people went to hear lectures on the weekends, and the Lincoln-Douglas debates were well attended. Now, TV "news" is a joke, and even NPR is becoming a bit entertainy. I get the feeling that few American…

I think America has always been "anti-intellectual" in the narrow sense that it didn't have a large elite class like many European countries have, the prevailing attitude has usually been the "self-made man" as opposed to egghead. This may or may not be a bad thing (e.g. elite classes by their very nature are hard to break into). As far as I understand from your command, you tend to correlate the sentiment you call a…

> Many in what may be called left or liberals (again, very loose terms) also exhibit a form of this behavior.

That's a good point, but I don't think you really see this reflected on the public stage like you do with the right. For instance, I'm not aware of any barefoot, herbal-medicine/astrology enthusiasts on the national political stage.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#130

Post by bluekeybox »

I hugely respect science per se -- but scientists and most other types of intellectuals are typically people stuck working in a bureaucracy.

Working in a bureaucracy induces a particular type of thinking on an individual -- I call it statist thinking -- that bureaucracy is not evil (note: it is), that difficult decisions should be made through careful deliberation and possibly collaboration with others instead of on your own (a precondition for groupthink and a bad quality in an executive position which by definition requires a degree of mental toughness). People who got rich and successful outside of the bureaucratic system often become an object of envy by people inside the system, even if they will consciously deny it, which then leads to the perverted notion that the only way to make the world a fair place is to increase the reach of the bureaucracy.

Now, America was founded by intellectuals (though not of bureaucratic kind). The thing that distinguishes America from most other countries in the world is that in America one specific type of freedom is respected: "freedom to rise". In the old Europe people at the top were often members of aristocracy and it was obvious to everyone that they didn't have to work as hard as everyone else to get where they are. In America, people at the top were often (though I admit not always -- just more often than in Europe) the hardest-working, smartest, and toughest-minded individuals, and it was obvious to everyone that they got there on their own. Bureaucracy, in a way, is a lot like aristocracy (actually it is more like a medieval guild system), since it has its own system of ranks, and you can't easily get from one to the other just through working hard -- it has to be "bestowed" on you. Hence why Americans tend to disrespect bureaucracy, and, by the way, that is a very good thing.

EDIT: downvoted: time to leave Hacker News.

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