Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office • Hacker News Board

Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#161

Post by SpikeDad » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 12:36 AM UTC

hueving wrote: post #59

jackmott wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The republican party is simply unacceptable on many levels for any intelligent, honest person. I realize that you, like many people, simply do not see it that way, and imagine that there is some kind of equivalence or near equivalence in how corrupt and crazy both parties are, but most of us don't. What we are seeing is horrific, a party that is against reason and goodness and civility at almost every step. They pick…

>The republican party is simply unacceptable on many levels for any intelligent, honest person. Anyone who would say this with a straight face isn't intelligent or isn't honest, so they can't speak for intelligent honest people. >but most of us don't. Who exactly do you think you are speaking for? Identity politics and strong liberal populations in universities has made it social suicide for anyone to admit they have…

Sorry your link to that list is a joke. Half of the people on the list are not active or even elected politicians. One (Susan Collins) was happy to voice support AFTER the state voted for same sex-marriage.

You're talking about a handful across a political party of thousands of virulent anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-science elective officials.

Who's going to vote for Progressive Republicans? No Republican.

Funny but already we have Republicans ready to spend billions on a stupid wall. Data shows over and over that it's Democratic Presidents that provide the most stable and fiscally responsible administrations.

Your arguments are full of holes

Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#162

Post by cderwin » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 2:29 AM UTC

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #50

cderwin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that, but take a look at the HN thread on Peter Thiel's prospective gubernatorial campaign[0]. It's needless to say the idea of a Thiel governorship was not very popular. This isn't to say the criticism found there is unreasonable, just that it's not special. People in science and people in tech can get involved in politics, but most of the political issues out there are not scientific or technological so sup…

Hardcore libertarianism is the exception, not the norm in tech. Tech tends to float in big cities and as such is naturally liberal. A lot of the successes of early tech startups is in part due to liberal hiring policies welcoming women, gays, and minorities who otherwise had a hard time working or getting hired at the old conservative shops like IBM. Its the weirdos who gave us the Apple // and the Mac. Not the butto…

> Its the weirdos who gave us the Apple // and the Mac. Not the button down conservative culture Thiel represents.

I don't think that's fair. First of all, in some sense Thiel is one of those "weirdos" you mentioned above as a gay man. But that aside, the more modern versions of those enterprises -- google, facebook, uber -- were all funded by that "button-down conservative culture". It is hard, if not impossible, to call the success of those enterprises as anything but cooperation between "the weirdos" and people like Thiel.

And it is of course ridiculous to say that Thiel isn't genuinely a member of the tech community: if partners in ycombinator aren't genuine members of the tech industry, then who is? Just the engineers?

Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#163

Post by curun1r » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 2:32 AM UTC

EdHominem wrote: post #160

curun1r wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, look around at those who believe what you do I've yet to meet another person who is intentionally ambivalent on the issue, so I can't exactly do that. I'm neither pro-choice nor pro-life. I've chosen to remain neutral on the issue and allow others to make the decision since both sides of the debate seem wrong to me and I can deal with either outcome. But I can see both sides of this argument and both sides fe…

> I've yet to meet another person who is intentionally ambivalent on the issue I can see why circumstances make you feel that there's a special something about a fertilized egg, but we're really all in the same situation - but for a tiny difference someone else would have been born. If your grandmother had a weapon she might have been able to prevent being raped, which would have been a positive spin on the same resu…

I know you're trolling, but...

> I can see why circumstances make you feel that there's a special something about a fertilized egg

This is being intentionally dismissive. The fact is a fertilized egg inside a woman has, for centuries, resulted in a baby being born without the woman being able to do anything about it. Being able to safely terminate a pregnancy is a relatively new development. The fact that my grandmother had an abortion and, because of the law at the time and the circumstances surrounding it, the procedure didn't succeed in terminating the pregnancy is very different from playing the what-if game.

> Neutral is pro-choice. No law.

No, neutral is letting others determine the law without interjecting my opinion.

> That's a fundamental misunderstanding of what science is. There's no reason you can't apply science to religion.

I never said you couldn't. I only said that both science and religion can both be the basis for political positions. It was you who made the connection of science being rational and religion being irrational. I was merely pointing out that neither rational nor irrational bases can inform this issue. A position on this issue is strictly based on morality and philosophy. This contrasts starkly with other issues like climate change or tax policy where math and science can inform a more correct position.

Okay...I'm done feeding the troll :-)

Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#164

Post by cderwin » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 2:57 AM UTC

hueving wrote: post #70

croon wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all for changing parties from within, but with: * Life starts at inception * Man-made climate change * Evolution (taught in school) * Not a single payer healthcare system when comparing to any industrialized country on earth * Anti-consumer ethics in FCC, compared to any other industrialized country on earth * Tax policies clearly aimed at keeping money flowing upwards, only very slightly veiled, yet again compar…

>If "progressive causes" == science backed causes, then go right ahead. No, "progressive causes" will be whatever is in vogue in the party. So anti-GMO with labeling campaigns and leverage the scientists to cast doubt on their safety would be very possible. Perhaps it will be to convince people that science has shown that people with more money are evil and should be jailed based on the UC Berkley study with the BMWs…

For what it's worth, when I wrote "progressive causes" in my original comment, I wasn't refer to things as black and white as the science on GMOs. I was referring to scientists using their scientific authority to make progressive claims on issues like abortion, or taxation, or anything else that ignores either (a) actual scientific evidence to the contrary or (b) the lack of scientific consensus on the issue at all.

For example, there is significant disagreement within economics on, say, minimum wage. It would be an abuse of authority for an economist (for example, Paul Krugman) to claim we ought to raise the minimum wage because there is an economic consensus that we should do so, when in fact there is not and the said economist wants to raise minimum wage because it's a progressive cause.

A good example of this in practice is Neil deGrasse Tyson's "Rationalia" tweet[0] in response to the Brexit vote. He claims that a constitution should have just one line: "All policy shall be based on the weight of evidence". He is implicitly appealing to authority by invoking the scientific method, and as a progressive he clearly is under the impression that such a technocracy would come to nearly exclusively progressive conclusions. But of course this denies the fundamental truth that he could find a perfectly rational opponent for any of the causes he supports, from public funding of science to Britain's membership in the EU.

The problem here isn't that scientists can be wrong: everyone knows that. The issue is that claims like these are becoming more and more common, and their gross effect is that the very institution of science has become tainted with progressive bias.

[0] https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/748157273789300736?ref_...

Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#165

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 3:45 AM UTC

nonbel wrote: post #61

omginternets wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Null-hypothesis statistical testing The parent poster has ... for some inexplicable reason ... decided that this technique is invalid. This reeks of a profound misunderstanding of the technique, and a failure to discriminate between poor use and invalidity.

It isn't inexplicable. NHST entails affirming the consequent and transposing the conditional, which are known formal fallacies.

[deleted]

Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#166

Post by omginternets » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 3:52 AM UTC

nonbel wrote: post #58

aphextron wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Ok, but please do not vote for anyone calling themselves "scientist" who practices NHST, you will only be perpetuating this nation- (even civilization-) destroying practice: Can you expand on this? What is NHST?

Null hypothesis significance testing. It is a "method" of statistics that resulted from confusion between Ronald Fisher's significance testing with Jerzy Neyman and Egon Pearson's hypothesis testing sometime in the 1940s. None of those three are free of blame either. While there is all sorts of things wrong with NHST, the primary thing is that researchers never actually test their own hypothesis. Instead they test a…

>Instead they test a "null" hypothesis that acts as a strawman, usually that some parameter equals exactly zero

How is "there is no difference between my groups/conditions" a strawman?

This is by far the most common H0.

Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#167

Post by hueving » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 4:48 AM UTC

cryoshon wrote: post #148

hueving wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a vaccine developer or someone working on genetically modified crops, you'll get pushback from Democrats. Pick your poison. >but only one party has put those people in charge of the party and the party platform. If only there were some way to get people elected into the party to change this.... nah, let's just dig in with the party that got summarily rejected by the current voting system we have.

>If you're a vaccine developer or someone working on genetically modified crops, you'll get pushback from Democrats. Pick your poison. hi, former vaccine scientist here: there was never any pushback from democrats that i ever heard of, and i can say with authority that nobody would pick republican any percentage of the time for any purpose. i'm not even exaggerating. scientists are liberals. that's all.

>i'm not even exaggerating. scientists are liberals.

>that's all.

You're wrong. You just don't hear from the conservatives because it's become acceptable to be borderline militant about political views that aren't liberal enough in universities.

The disconnect is mind boggling. I had several tenured professors on my Facebook feed ranting about how everyone who would consider not voting for Hillary was a racist, sexist, and a fascist. Is it really a big surprise that people with conservative view points don't speak up in research groups? In particular people shooting for tenure would be committing career suicide to admit conservative political leanings.

Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#168

Post by hueving » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 5:08 AM UTC

SpikeDad wrote: post #161

hueving wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The republican party is simply unacceptable on many levels for any intelligent, honest person. Anyone who would say this with a straight face isn't intelligent or isn't honest, so they can't speak for intelligent honest people. >but most of us don't. Who exactly do you think you are speaking for? Identity politics and strong liberal populations in universities has made it social suicide for anyone to admit they have…

Sorry your link to that list is a joke. Half of the people on the list are not active or even elected politicians. One (Susan Collins) was happy to voice support AFTER the state voted for same sex-marriage. You're talking about a handful across a political party of thousands of virulent anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-science elective officials. Who's going to vote for Progressive Republicans? No Republican. Funny but al…

>Who's going to vote for Progressive Republicans? No Republican.

You used a capitalized P so I assume by "Progressive", you just mean Democrats, in which case you are probably right. However, if you get your mind out of the two party system long enough for critical thought, you might find that you can have socially progressive and fiscally conservative people. Or socially progressive and states rights people. Or socially progressive and small government people.

>Data shows over and over that it's Democratic Presidents that provide the most stable and fiscally responsible administrations.

How much did the debt grow under the Obama administration?

>Your arguments are full of holes

That's not an argument.

>You're talking about a handful across a political party of thousands of virulent anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-science elective officials.

That was the result of a two second search to show refute a false claim. Don't shift the goal posts.

Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#169

Post by hueving » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 5:09 AM UTC

sqeaky wrote: post #105

jdpedrie wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize a Republican President was just elected who supported gay marriage, right? It wasn't a show stopper for him. The cognitive dissonance is strong in this thread.

What this one person does, particularly trump, is not indicative of the whole party. Republicans have a long history of being categorically against climate change, against civil rights, pro religion, against the separation of church/state and in general not big on silly little things like evidence or human compassion. Trump is a special case in so many ways. Few of the republicans in power wanted him and he pretty mu…

No true scottsman. Democrats support slavery by your close-minded inflexibility of a political party's values.

Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#170

Post by EdHominem » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 6:50 AM UTC

curun1r wrote: post #163

EdHominem wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've yet to meet another person who is intentionally ambivalent on the issue I can see why circumstances make you feel that there's a special something about a fertilized egg, but we're really all in the same situation - but for a tiny difference someone else would have been born. If your grandmother had a weapon she might have been able to prevent being raped, which would have been a positive spin on the same resu…

I know you're trolling, but... > I can see why circumstances make you feel that there's a special something about a fertilized egg This is being intentionally dismissive. The fact is a fertilized egg inside a woman has, for centuries, resulted in a baby being born without the woman being able to do anything about it. Being able to safely terminate a pregnancy is a relatively new development. The fact that my grandmot…

> This is being intentionally dismissive.

Not at all.

> The fact that ... is very different from playing the what-if game.

I was trying to speak broadly so as not to speak for you. How would you put it?

> No, neutral is letting others determine the law without interjecting my opinion.

For a pure observer, maybe. For a taxpayer, not so much.

> It was you who made the connection of science being rational and religion being irrational.

Yup.

> I was merely pointing out that neither rational nor irrational bases can inform this issue. A position on this issue is strictly based on morality and philosophy.

Assuming you feel that a human should not be killed (without reason anyways) you can formally extend that reasoning to a baby, a fetus, and so forth. At some point, the initial reasoning may stop applying. Congrats, you've now derived an opinion on abortion.

You may feel that morality has a religious core, but that's a god of the cracks type thing. You can squish that bit away and analyze the rules systematically using the tools of logic.

> This contrasts starkly with other issues like climate change or tax policy where math and science can inform a more correct position.

There shouldn't be any contrast. What's the problem with runaway climate change? The suffering and death that it will cause. But that's the same ethical framework you'd use to analyze abortion. And it leads the same place - your basic value for the lives of others, which you may call religious or not.