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“Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans”

nature.com

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Re: “Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans”

#271

Post by rurp »

psyc wrote: post #212
brightball wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 90s before mass internet adoption, it sure felt like it. We had disagreements, but nothing compared to what we see today.

Everyone's gonna tell you this is fully explained by nostalgia and various cognitive biases, actually, cuz that's what we do hyea. But I'll back you all day. I know they literally can't hear it, but I always have the urge to tell Gen Y and later that for a minute in the mid-late 90's we had this shit mostly, not totally - that'll never happen - but mostly figured out. And then they blew it all up, and damned us all t…

I would go further and say we actually do have quite a bit of hard evidence that societal disagreements were more civil several decades ago. Bipartisan legislation, violent threats against public figures, mass murders, and attempts to violently overthrow an election have all gotten objectively worse since the rise of the internet.

I don't know how much the internet has caused this deterioration, but it is strongly correlated.

Re: “Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans”

#274

Post by makeitdouble »

UnpossibleJim wrote: post #119
rrauenza wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

David Shor was ostracized for presenting this research: https://www.vox.com/2020/7/29/21340308/david-shor-omar-wasow... > Shor, citing research by Princeton political scientist Omar Wasow, suggested that these incidents could prompt a political backlash that would help President Donald Trump’s bid for reelection. At the same time, he noted that, historically, nonviolent protests had been effective at driving politica…

If people are truly worried about electing people like Donald Trump they'll broaden education and, in particular, education in the hard sciences like maths and computer science to bolster critical thinking and logic. At that point we won't elect reality show hucksters who blatantly lie and foment sedition.

We should get past the belief that those who aren’t on our political side are just lacking education and not thinking properly.

You might despise the candidate (and to my opinion most candidate can be despised in many ways), but that doesn’t put all their voters at the candidate’s level, nor preclude supporters from “using” their candidates to push a specific aspect.

To me that’s the lesson times and times again, when we think some candidate is obviously non viable and we’re just dumdfounded as they’re elected.

Re: “Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans”

#275

Post by 62951413 »

wikitopian wrote: post #24

The astrophysical sciences make me feel vulnerable, insignificant, insecure, and irrelevant relative to the vast expanse of the universe. I demand an end to this harm.

Telescopes evoke phallic associations and so promote the male dominance. The world demands female-friendly optics. #defundastronomy #cancelgalileo

Re: “Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans”

#276

Post by Broken_Hippo »

thisiscorrect wrote: post #243
scelerat wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a trend on the political left right now that basically equates speech directly with violence (e.g. asking whether a man is capable of getting pregnant is violence) I must admit I have not seen an argument like this outside of a strawman characterization.

In fact, there were even claims during the 2020 riots that "White silence is violence." See e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSVUrvnJFXs . That's right, even _not_ saying anything at all (including not parroting the expected slogans) is a direct act of violence.

This is not the same thing.

If you know the kid next door is being abused - and you do nothing about it, you are partially at fault for the violence happening to the kid. If you do something (call child services, for example) and it fails, you tried, and should try again lest you fall in the same trap.

It is similar with police violence and racism. If you sit idly by and don't demand change, despite knowing people are getting beaten and things like that, you are partially responsible.

I'm pretty sure the same thing happens with other things too: You knew someone was taking money from the company yet did nothing, you are at risk of getting in trouble too. It isn't a concept that exist in only one arena.

Re: “Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans”

#278

Post by dane-pgp »

altruios wrote: post #231
al_mandi wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a person of faith. At the same time, we point out that the religion of "scientism" exists whether people admit it or not, especially when they claim that they "believe in science". Correct faith and science are not contradictory. And those people mix up belief in the unseen with blind faith without proof or evidence.

Tell me how your believe is better than someone else's 'blind faith'? Science is falsifiable - anything pushed forward by science has a way to be disproved built in (other wise it is not science). That's important because then you can update your worldview based on new evidence. For the same to be true of religion - it must be falsifiable: it MUST have a way to disprove itself via experimentation... oh wait... the (C…

Just because that prayer lead to a miracle in the past, doesn't mean you can demand that God grants the same miracle again in different circumstances. That's trying to treat God as something like an appliance rather than an agent, and even an appliance would have instructions for when it would work.

If I may reverse the burden of proof, and be equally unreasonable, let me say that if you think that there is no afterlife, then you should go kill yourself. You're going to die at some point anyway, and this way you'll get your answer right away. It's a 100% falsifiable position, but unfortunately very few people who have done the necessary experiment have been able to communicate their findings to the scientific community afterwards.

Re: “Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans”

#279

Post by Banana699 »

n4r9 wrote: post #108

There is a very clear trend in the HN crowd's reaction to this statement, so I'm inclined to offer a defense. I'm not linked to Nature in any way, just of a rebellious bent. The principle objections to the guidance appear to fall into the following categories: * They threaten the objectivity of science * They prevent the publication of "heretical"/"non-PC" results * They are too vague I strongly recommend that people…

> a journal has a great ethical responsibility for the impact of what it publishes and is within its rights to say "no" on that basis.

No. This is really hilarious, but really though, No.

The whole point of science is no content-related norms. You can put content-related norms wherever you want. You can put them in your useless HR departments, you can put them in the brainwashing (uh, ahem, "orientation") of new hires. But the moment you start saying "All papers dealing with topic X are refused, regardless of supporting evidence or explanatory\predictive power" then you're literally not doing science. You're playing dress up.

Every single philosophy of science from pre-Popper onwards is very clear that good science doesn't give a single shit about the moral content of an idea and how politically-correct it is, only how well supported it is and how elegantly it explains existing data and how accurately it predicts new data.

Evolution says you're no better and no worse than rats, who are also your distant cousins btw, neuroscience says that what we call "you" is really just a bunch of electrochemistry that anybody can learn to manipulate and push to do things. Science doesn't give a shit about your panic that somebody can "misinterpret" those results, that's your problem, stop being lazy and find other solutions to it, don't censor science.

Re: “Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans”

#280

Post by causality0 »

the guidance helps in considering whether it is ethically appropriate to question a social group’s right to freedom or cultural rights

Somebody want to explain to me what the heck "cultural rights" are and how publishing data could interfere with them?

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