“Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans” • Hacker News Board

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

#421

Post by TulliusCicero » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 1:21 AM UTC

reb wrote: post #358

TulliusCicero wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do, and I understand that something this blatantly unconstitutional (and widespread enough to be notable) would get slapped down by the courts super hard before being actually acted on. Do you understand how things work in this country? When's the last time there was a statewide policy like this that explicitly targeted people of one particular religion? Especially kids going to state schools?

It wouldn't target a particular religion, it would be a general policy protecting all children's right to education. LDS people being impacted would be an unfortunate side effect, not the promoted intention of the policy. I genuinely can't tell if you're being disingenuous here. I'm not personally stressed about the rights of LDS people, but the procedural scenario I'm describing isn't even remotely far-fetched.

> It wouldn't target a particular religion

This makes it sound like it is indeed targeting a particular religion:

> An anti-LDS government official in control of education in some state (say, California) could take those findings and use them to justify a new policy that all LDS children are required to attend sex-ed classes in school

If what you meant was "all children, including LDS children" I think it could've been phrased a bit more clearly, because it sounds very targeted. That's the part I objected to.

But yeah if you mean, "secretly/implicitly targeting" like the hijab ban in France that's nominally a religious symbol ban, I could see that happening.

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

#422

Post by rubyist5eva » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 1:26 AM UTC

“Science is more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking; a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility.

If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then, we are up for grabs for the next charlatan (political or religious) who comes rambling along.”

-- Carl Sagan

First thing that comes to mind. The Demon Haunted World changed my life but it seems like the one thing that got wrong isn't that external forces are a threat to "making progress via the scientific method to determine what is true" but science has instead been weaponized from within to push an agenda. This is much more terrifying to me.

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

#423

Post by rufus_foreman » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 1:28 AM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #117

NotYourLawyer wrote: post #20

No, science must pursue the truth, no matter where it leads. There is no such thing as a hate fact.

I think there is a lot more nuance than people admit. Lets take an example of we have a deadly disease spreading through the population (much more deadly than covid) . Let's say a scientist finds out that the disease is primarily (exclusively) spread by red haired people. Should they just publish the finding? The fact becoming openly known might lead to mobs of people chasing red hairs and locking them up or even lyn…

>> A better way is likely to quietly talk to the authorities first

Which ones?

The church? Trump?

People have different authorities.

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

#424

Post by nomel » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 1:31 AM UTC

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #52

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…

Science must always report the truth. What was the old saying? "That which can be destroyed by truth, should be"? Whenever science attempts to prop up political regimes by obscuring the truth, then tragedy and travesty occurs.

> Science must always report the truth.

The only way I can interpret their statement is that harmful truths actually do exist, they're known, but we must ignore them.

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

#425

Post by deepdriver » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 1:35 AM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #325

_9xrb wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideology can remain inconsistent longer than you can remain fed and housed while opposing it.

You go underground as many have had to in the past.

"Become the Taliban" is not a great solution.

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

#426

Post by llanowarelves » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 1:37 AM UTC

_9xrb wrote: post #224

nathanaldensr wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you've identified, they've tied themselves into knots with inconsistencies and hypocritical positions. There is no logic to be found here, only insanity masquerading as such. Luckily for everyone else, the scientific method will remain, even if it is temporarily suppressed.

Ideology can remain inconsistent longer than you can remain fed and housed while opposing it.

People talk about "the pendulum swinging" as if there an automatic balancing mechanism that will correct things (low-agency, wishful thinking), but Russia took almost a century to get back to normal. And Dark Ages last many centuries.

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

#427

Post by wrp » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 1:39 AM UTC

Reading the 395 comments so far, I see a lot of reference to the history of church censorship, but surprisingly, nothing at all about culture under the communist regimes of the 20th century, which I think is a much closer analogy.

I spent a lot of time on the history of intellectual culture in the USSR back when it was a hot issue. The academic environment in the West today is giving me intense deja vu. Scholars are promoted/demoted based on their social origins. Scientific fact-finding is ruled to be subservient to the upholding of ideological truths. We face constant exhortation to adhere to correct thinking and be intolerant of those who don't.

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

#428

Post by geoduck14 » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 1:39 AM UTC

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…

You do realize that in verse 40 the unbelievers were slaughtered, right? Can I pick a miracle with less severe consequences?

Let's do Luke 5:4-8

Jesus tells fishermen to cast their nets and catch 2 boat loads of fish. Before you discount this miracle, I'll point out that Simon believed Jesus was God after this - but watching Jesus heal people is Ch 4 didn't convince him.

Great. Now for the miracle. It's at the nearest grocery store. In the fish department.

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

#429

Post by gweinberg » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 1:40 AM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #305

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have a pretty good way of predicting the sex of the fetus and somehow our misogynistic and sexist society doesn't have a mass problem of aborting females. But we do... > The natural sex ratio at birth is approximately 103 to 106 males for 100 females.[37][38] However, because of sex-selective abortions, the sex ratio at birth in countries with high proportions of missing women have ranged 108.5 in India to 121.2…

>But we do.. Who is 'we' here? USA? Canada?

Obviously not. In those countries it's the male fetuses that are more likely to be aborted.

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

#430

Post by asoneth » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 1:45 AM UTC

goethes_kind wrote: post #157

i_love_limes wrote: post #112

This has garnered quite a lot of reactions from the comments. I'd like to ask a genuine question about this, from the perspective of assuming that Nature is acting in good faith about this. Let's say someone has calculated the polygenic scores (PGS) of Heteronormativity, meaning that a model, can predict with a decent level of accuracy that someone will or will not be straight from their DNA. This, in an ideal world,…

I never understood this perspective, that aborting fetuses whose prospects are guaranteed to be worse, is somehow wrong or even oppression, and somehow oppression of a whole group of other people completely unrelated to the family. If me and my wife are planning a baby, that's between us. There is no outside group that has a say or is somehow being oppressed when we decide that we do not want a child who is going to…

> If you knew that a couple were going to have a baby with whatever problems, and you did not inform them of this because in your mind, their decision might then somehow upset some other group of people who are neither the mother, nor the father, nor even the close family, then I would find that morally unacceptable.

In addition to the question of morality and autonomy, I think it's also worth considering the practical second-order effects we are likely to see once this kind of libertarian eugenics inevitably becomes easier. Industries like engineering and math will change once parents can avoid having children on the spectrum. Not to mention theater and fashion when parents can choose to have only heterosexual children.

Reminds me of the message at the end of Gattaca.

The biggest real-world example of societal change is probably the sex-selective abortion someone else mentioned which results in an excess of males in several regions of the world. A gender imbalance where males outnumber females by a significant margin seems to result in societal instability so it's not surprising governments work so hard to crack down on it.