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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”

#391

Post by dkonofalski »

dane-pgp wrote: post #278
altruios wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 afterl…

>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.

Why not? If a god has shown that they can intervene in the physical world we live in, why shouldn't we be able to test that?

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

#392

Post by fatherzine »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #11
tarakat wrote: post #6

Yet, people can be harmed indirectly. For example, research may — inadvertently — stigmatize individuals or human groups. It may be discriminatory, racist, sexist, ableist or homophobic. It may provide justification for undermining the human rights of specific groups, simply because of their social characteristics. [..] Advancing knowledge and understanding is a fundamental public good. In some cases, however, potent…

Well connected - and I think this comparison is becoming more apt each passing day. These statements and policies are just so… egotistical … for lack of a better word. What happens when we stop agreeing on what the “good” is? How can you claim to respect all humans when you don’t respect the human cognitive ability to disagree? Thanks for posting.

Q: What happens when we stop agreeing on what the “good” is?

A. I am right and you are evil. Age old conflict resolution method.

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

#393

Post by bhelkey »

devindotcom wrote: post #315

Quoted post unavailable.

> People keep asking about examples of work that exemplifies "potential harms [that] outweigh the benefit of publication

This is a proposed change in policy. People are asking for examples that were previously allowed but now would be forbidden.

> How about large scale human vivisection?

An example of something that was previously forbidden and is still forbidden is not helpful.

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

#394

Post by Faark »

monkeydreams wrote: post #302
psyc wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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. I disagree. We didn't have it figured out - it just did not get on many folk's radar because of the differences in network effects prior to the internet. If you were a lonely kid in a farming town who want…

Yes, outcasts used the internet to find and support each other online. And we noticed this great thing quite a while ago. But it seems only more recently did we also become aware of the other side... it similarly boosting toxic communities, isolated echo chambers, etc.

If someone wanted to, lets say, "make love with toasters", he'd be looked at weird and gotten over it in the days before the internet. Now he'll find supporting communities and guidance on how to do so...

So yeah, we didn't "have it figured out" and in many aspects, online communities do provide great benefit. But i wonder, if they still are, once all is added up.

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

#395

Post by scythe »

Banana699 wrote: post #244
AlanYx wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that the linked policy says almost the exact opposite of Fermi's statement, implying that ignorance is sometimes better than knowledge: "...considerations of harm can occasionally supersede the goal of seeking or sharing new knowledge, and a decision not to undertake or not to publish a project may be warranted."

I know the people behind statments like these are coming to it with extremly unintelligent and bad faith definitions and intentions, but the actual words are actually correct. If you had the option to delay humanity's discovery of atomic bombs to late 20th century or after, and therefore delay any substantial deep understanding of the atomic physics beneath, you would probably do it. If you had the atomic bomb, you p…

>If you had the option to delay humanity's discovery of atomic bombs

Humanity's discovery of atomic bombs wasn't published, though. It was demonstrated in terrifying fashion when they were first used. Worse, the first atomic bomb project was actually carried out by Nazi Germany, not the United States, and might have succeeded if not for sabotage campaigns and the collapse of the German economy. And weapons research is a well-known risk since the invention of the arquebus around 1400, when early gun manufacturers jealously guarded their secrets with state encouragement. It's true that we avoid research into novel biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons, with a possible fourth "computational" coming into focus, but we do this by avoiding the research itself, wherein the ends are obvious from the beginning, not refusing to publish a finding because you don't like what it said.

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

#397

Post by rafaelero »

geoduck14 wrote: post #379
rafaelero wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a totally different level. Believing a shitty product will make a successful entry on the market does require some level of self-delusion, but nothing like believing a cluster of extremely low probability hypothesis about the world. The closest comparison to that, again, is a schizophrenic.

He isn't predicting the future , he is reflecting on the past. Is it likely that all of those unlikely events will happen to the next person born? Definitely not. Is it possible that they happened to one of the billions of people who lived? Yes. Even more so if that person happens to be God incarnate who created the universe . In fact, the chances of these highly unlikely events actually goes up if you consider the p…

> highly unlikely events is the exact thing you would expect from someone proving to be God

That's circular reasoning. "I believe a extremely low probability event because that's what we should expect from the entity I believe in". If I go with that, I can create any weird belief.

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

#398

Post by rowanG077 »

tarakat wrote: post #6

Yet, people can be harmed indirectly. For example, research may — inadvertently — stigmatize individuals or human groups. It may be discriminatory, racist, sexist, ableist or homophobic. It may provide justification for undermining the human rights of specific groups, simply because of their social characteristics. [..] Advancing knowledge and understanding is a fundamental public good. In some cases, however, potent…

Very frightening that something like this is posted on Nature.com. Burying the truth because it might be inconvenient.

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

#400

Post by dkonofalski »

geoduck14 wrote: post #379
rafaelero wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a totally different level. Believing a shitty product will make a successful entry on the market does require some level of self-delusion, but nothing like believing a cluster of extremely low probability hypothesis about the world. The closest comparison to that, again, is a schizophrenic.

He isn't predicting the future , he is reflecting on the past. Is it likely that all of those unlikely events will happen to the next person born? Definitely not. Is it possible that they happened to one of the billions of people who lived? Yes. Even more so if that person happens to be God incarnate who created the universe . In fact, the chances of these highly unlikely events actually goes up if you consider the p…

>Even more so if that person happens to be God incarnate who created the universe.

Allegedly. No evidence to support this claim exists.

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