Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is harm?
Physical or mental pain and anguish
A lot of devout believers experienced mental anguish when hearing the earth wasn’t the center of the universe.
And yet it moves.
“Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans”
551–560 of 883 posts
Re: “Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans”
#552This is in Nature Human Behavior. This is a social science/psychology journal, a field which is suffering from the reproducibility crisis, perhaps worse than any other field. So, any result in this field should be viewed with significant skepticism. This is true for research into population group differences, and extremely true for IQ research into race, which is almost hopelessly noisy and confounded. It is a simple…
Rather than suppressing research, wouldn't a simple primer on "why the paper shouldn't be used for hate" suffice, similar to the warning label on a pack of cigarettes? (Unlike cigarettes which are universally harmful, it's unlikely these papers do any real harm to an educated reader. They are only harmful when used completely out-of-context by a moron.)
There is some grand irony that hate groups point to racial differences in "intelligence" specifically. I doubt the members of these groups are in the upper tail of the bell curve...
Re: “Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans”
#553This is in Nature Human Behavior. This is a social science/psychology journal, a field which is suffering from the reproducibility crisis, perhaps worse than any other field. So, any result in this field should be viewed with significant skepticism. This is true for research into population group differences, and extremely true for IQ research into race, which is almost hopelessly noisy and confounded. It is a simple…
So instead of debunking or raising the bar of research into race, gender, sex, and more we should just not have any research into it?
Isn't this just going to fuel that kind of "research" in other places but then stand uncontested?
Might sound good in a meeting but doubt this is the way to go...
Re: “Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans”
#554This is in Nature Human Behavior. This is a social science/psychology journal, a field which is suffering from the reproducibility crisis, perhaps worse than any other field. So, any result in this field should be viewed with significant skepticism. This is true for research into population group differences, and extremely true for IQ research into race, which is almost hopelessly noisy and confounded. It is a simple…
Ah yes, because the best way to get groups to not spout misleading rhetoric is to unabashedly bias the publications in the other direction. Giving validity to the claim that a particular perspective is being actively suppressed historically works out great in reducing that viewpoint... Maybe they'd be better off restricting publishing to studies reproducing earlier results or meta-analysis, encouraging more rigorous…
Extremists may use whatever they want to justify their means, but shody science can make people become radical, radicalized, and then extremists.
It's a gradual change that can be enabled by many things.
What the article says is not to make science, and especially the field in question, one of those triggers.
Re: “Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans”
#555Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, there is no universal "good" otherwise wars would not occur. The American Civil War and WW2 are pretty classical examples of massive disagreements over the legitimacy of certain classes of humans. Had those wars not ended the way they did, black people would still be property, and Jews, Romani, and LGBT people would have been exterminated. There are still people who wish that we lived in that alternative history.…
One small note: LGBT people can not be exterminated in the same sense as other minorities, since new LGBT people will always born, regardless of how many of us would be exterminated, up to and including 100%.
Cold comfort to those of us who didn't survive.
Re: “Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans”
#556Enrico Fermi comes to mind: “Whatever Nature has in store for mankind, unpleasant as it may be, men must accept, for ignorance is never better than knowledge.” I guess he wasn’t talking about the magazine…
> ignorance is never better than knowledge
this is a moral judgement and a strong claim. I can think of a few types of knowledge off the top of my head that aren't making the world a better place
Something like learning how to tie a noose: this is (in most cases) bad knowledge. This isn't something anyone should learn unless they need it for something that isn't its best known purpose
when it comes to something like race/gender/etc, I can't think of one positive usage of that kind of knowledge, if we can even call it that. I'd argue that even the idea of race/gender/etc is against the goal of equality and if we want true equality these ideas need to be discarded
Re: “Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans”
#557I'm pro trans rights, pro LGBTQ, and also very much value free speech. 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) >Academic content that undermines the dignity or rights of specific groups >We commit to using this guidance cautiously and judiciously, consulting with ethics experts and advo…
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Re: “Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans”
#558This is in Nature Human Behavior. This is a social science/psychology journal, a field which is suffering from the reproducibility crisis, perhaps worse than any other field. So, any result in this field should be viewed with significant skepticism. This is true for research into population group differences, and extremely true for IQ research into race, which is almost hopelessly noisy and confounded. It is a simple…
> This should be handled with care, and extra consideration should be given to whether the tenuous, fallible results from this research will result in violence.
What is "results in violence" though? One person's violence would be another person's justice.
I think trans activism with kids is a severe violence. Would research in allowing transgenderism for children be considered violence or not in your eyes? I'm sure there's people on both sides of the fence, so who would be the one to gatekeep?
Most transgender studies come from the same "reproducibility crisis" and largely the same branch of social/psychology science.
So to put in effect that "we are allowed to suppress science depending on who it affects" would be a bad precedent for when "the other side" gets in power.
Or do you not agree?
Re: “Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans”
#559This is in Nature Human Behavior. This is a social science/psychology journal, a field which is suffering from the reproducibility crisis, perhaps worse than any other field. So, any result in this field should be viewed with significant skepticism. This is true for research into population group differences, and extremely true for IQ research into race, which is almost hopelessly noisy and confounded. It is a simple…
The Orwellian bit comes once the quality gates are in place and get subverted for political means. But even if that doesn't happen, I disagree strongly. Extremism doesn't need scientific backing and never has. They'll take it if convenient, but they can quite easily justify their actions without it. Truth and critical thinking are the solution, not the cause.
Extremism doesn’t need scientific backing to exist but it does need scientific backing to make the center complacent.
The shooting was a good example but a better example is an extremist takeover of the government buoyed by a complacent public swindled by flimsy science. It’s happened before, it’ll happen again.
Re: “Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans”
#560Earlier 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 known in 1990 that the WWW would be used to spread propaganda and track dissidents, you would have probably liked to delay it till more security and decentralization is built in from the outset
The premise is interesting, but at least decentralization was really there at the outset. It is just that market forces shrinked it. I honestly don't know what would have been the best medicine to prevent this. During the 90s I felt there was a larger emphasis on protocols, that almost disappeared during the 00's.