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

The purge of German science in 1933

privatdozent.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 262 posts

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#141

Post by [deleted] »

kmeisthax wrote: post #124
graycat wrote: post #77

Common estimates are that WWII killed 50 million to 100 million people. So, wanted to get some understanding of how it happened, how to avoid such, and looked at many descriptions of that history. I'm just a US citizen, not a professional historian, and here have only rough explanations, maybe not 100% wrong. A really short description: Hitler became a dictator and then went nuts. For a little more: (1) Foundation. T…

A couple of things you're missing: - Hitler had rich German backers who specifically wanted to destroy the Weimar Republic[0], because democracy was starting to turn on the German capitalist class. - Hitler was never popular enough to gain control through democratic means. The Weimar Republic was split in thirds between liberals, Nazis, and communists; the liberals thought letting Hitler be "vice-chancellor" (under a…

[deleted]

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#142

Post by JumpCrisscross »

kmeisthax wrote: post #124
graycat wrote: post #77

Common estimates are that WWII killed 50 million to 100 million people. So, wanted to get some understanding of how it happened, how to avoid such, and looked at many descriptions of that history. I'm just a US citizen, not a professional historian, and here have only rough explanations, maybe not 100% wrong. A really short description: Hitler became a dictator and then went nuts. For a little more: (1) Foundation. T…

A couple of things you're missing: - Hitler had rich German backers who specifically wanted to destroy the Weimar Republic[0], because democracy was starting to turn on the German capitalist class. - Hitler was never popular enough to gain control through democratic means. The Weimar Republic was split in thirds between liberals, Nazis, and communists; the liberals thought letting Hitler be "vice-chancellor" (under a…

> Luck that the Progressive movement backed a liberal, not an authoritarian

This one seems important. The liberals who backed Hitler did so far more spitefully than did ours backing FDR.

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#143

Post by soperj »

Tainnor wrote: post #121
perihelions wrote: post #8

One aspect of this that fascinated me is Nazi Germany's "physics denialism" (?) — the reactionary response to the modern physics revolutions of the early 20th century. (I.e. the twin revolutions of quantum physics and of relativity). It was a much weirder response than simply an attack on physicists who happened to be Jewish humans. Fields of physics were conspiratorially labelled as having a "Jewish" character, and…

It was the same thing in mathematics. For example, when Edmund Landau defined pi as "twice the value of the unique zero of cos in the interval [0, 2]" (a very common definition) instead of geometrically, this was attacked as being "un-German" (even though you can obviously go from the geometric to the analytic definition and vice versa). https://institucional.us.es/blogimus/en/2017/03/pi-and-the-n...

Haven't multiple states done the same thing? (trying to redefine pi)

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#144

Post by graycat »

kmeisthax wrote: post #124
graycat wrote: post #77

Common estimates are that WWII killed 50 million to 100 million people. So, wanted to get some understanding of how it happened, how to avoid such, and looked at many descriptions of that history. I'm just a US citizen, not a professional historian, and here have only rough explanations, maybe not 100% wrong. A really short description: Hitler became a dictator and then went nuts. For a little more: (1) Foundation. T…

A couple of things you're missing: - Hitler had rich German backers who specifically wanted to destroy the Weimar Republic[0], because democracy was starting to turn on the German capitalist class. - Hitler was never popular enough to gain control through democratic means. The Weimar Republic was split in thirds between liberals, Nazis, and communists; the liberals thought letting Hitler be "vice-chancellor" (under a…

Thanks!

> rich German backers

I can believe that.

Yup, I've wondered how many barriers, constraints, etc. the US REALLY has to ensure that we are safe from being like 1930s Germany. My guesses are our Constitution and three branches, but that's guessing and hoping. Uh, my doubts, worries are the main reason I looked into what happened in Germany.

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#145

Post by biorach »

pasabagi wrote: post #138
EnigmaFlare wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IQ test have genuine predictive power when applied to large groups. So no, they're not unscientific. In fact, the idea of IQ tests being useless or culturally biased is a now-outdated excuse that people used to use to justify the different results between ethic groups. It's now well accepted that different ethnic groups have different average IQs, and that IQ is a useful predictor of various life outcomes. What the p…

In general the thing people find obnoxious about this kind of argument is that both 'race' and 'IQ' have their origin in eugenics, but are meaningless in genetics. The genetic variation across one race (say black) is much greater than the variation between races. There are no well-established genetic predictors of IQ. So, even if you do find evidence that there is a statistical correlation between these two unscienti…

Thank you

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#146

Post by wolverine876 »

perihelions wrote: post #8

One aspect of this that fascinated me is Nazi Germany's "physics denialism" (?) — the reactionary response to the modern physics revolutions of the early 20th century. (I.e. the twin revolutions of quantum physics and of relativity). It was a much weirder response than simply an attack on physicists who happened to be Jewish humans. Fields of physics were conspiratorially labelled as having a "Jewish" character, and…

> There was a fanaticism that's hard to grapple with philosophically, a thing that's far outside rationality, a magical thinking. How much more "magical" can you get than disregarding natural physical laws, and substituting your own? That's the definition of magic.

People now deny climate change, often because it's 'liberal' - think of the incredible consequences of climate change, far greater than the disregarded physics, and yet it's ignored. It's the same with vaccines - people are causing their kids to become sick and sometimes die. It applies to many more things these days - anything 'liberal' is automatically rejected, regardless of cost.

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#147

Post by vundercind »

soperj wrote: post #143
Tainnor wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was the same thing in mathematics. For example, when Edmund Landau defined pi as "twice the value of the unique zero of cos in the interval [0, 2]" (a very common definition) instead of geometrically, this was attacked as being "un-German" (even though you can obviously go from the geometric to the analytic definition and vice versa). https://institucional.us.es/blogimus/en/2017/03/pi-and-the-n...

Haven't multiple states done the same thing? (trying to redefine pi)

Multiple? No.

Indiana, in 1897, tried, but the bill failed (after notable early success!).

https://www.straightdope.com/21341975/did-a-state-legislatur...

(Other sources seem to agree)

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#148

Post by ctrw »

Daishiman wrote: post #115
ctrw wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Whatever information you're getting, know that you're on the end of disinformation, because the mortality reductions were definitely broad-spectrum.

Is that why the US is the only country to mandate covid vaccines for children when there were no deaths in that group?

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#149

Post by brabel »

wongarsu wrote: post #28
xyzelement wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW in the current time we definitely encounter "wrong physics" in places where science and politics intersect. EG - a scientist can easily get smacked down for being "a climate change denialist" or an "antivaxer" or a similar unpalatable label way before the merits of their effort are evaluated.

Also a "climate alarmist". There is a band of climate science you can freely publish without reputational damage, but don't go over or under it. But that's probably nothing compared to the narrow band of tolerable science when it comes to questions of race or ethnicity. Anything that could be construed as people of some descent being "inferior" in any aspect is pretty risky to publish.

I've just watched a documentary on Netflix, "Three Identical Strangers" (SPOILER ALERT), about a 1960's to 1980's study about identical twins/triplets separated at birth and who grew up in intentionally distinct conditions (of the triplets, one grew up in a blue collar family, one in middle class, and one in a upper class family, all with an older sibling in the family as a sort of "control").

Apparently, the study ran for decades, but the results were never published... it's unclear why but it seems plausible to me that, aside from the ethical concerns, the study came to uncomfortable conclusions about the polemic "nature VS nurture" debate. Initially, they show how all siblings in the study, despite the intentionally very different environments, all came to like and do the exact same things... but later in the documentary, it also shows there were differences enough that the similarities were only superficial (in what I can't see as anything other than trying to appease the "nurture" crowd - as there seems to be no justification for that, as much as I tried to find it in what was shown).

The documentary also mentions the study may even actually have been about the influence of different parenting styles on the children, or even about mental illness, given many of the participants in the study had biological parents who may have been mentally ill (who the hell would give up their children if they didn't have some serious mental issues?!), which again seems to point at trying to divert from the study findings in my opinion.

The documentary is a little sensationalistic as it tries to outrage the viewers instead of trying to understand the actual circumstances of the study (siblings were always separated at birth at the time in most adoption agencies, apparently, that was not the fault of the study), which is a pity but understandable as that makes for better entertainment which is what Netflix really needs for its viewers to be happy, but still it's well worth a watch.

These articles talk a little bit about the controversies:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2208369-three-identical...

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/nov/11/nature-or-nu...

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#150

Post by graycat »

pdonis wrote: post #134
graycat wrote: post #77

Common estimates are that WWII killed 50 million to 100 million people. So, wanted to get some understanding of how it happened, how to avoid such, and looked at many descriptions of that history. I'm just a US citizen, not a professional historian, and here have only rough explanations, maybe not 100% wrong. A really short description: Hitler became a dictator and then went nuts. For a little more: (1) Foundation. T…

> By then Hitler had done lots of ugly things and got away with them, e.g., the Holocaust. No, actually the Holocaust, meaning the actual mass killing of Jews, didn't start until 1941, about the time Hitler attacked Russia. Not to say Hitler hadn't already gotten away with plenty of ugly things by the time he attacked Poland. But the Holocaust wasn't one of them at that time.

> No, actually the Holocaust, meaning the actual mass killing of Jews, didn't start until 1941, about the time Hitler attacked Russia.

Hitler attacking the Jews started before 1941, and I used Holocaust as a one-word description of all the Hitler attacks on the Jews. E.g., Google says that Kristallnacht was 11/9/1938.

Post reply on HN