Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nature.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

571–580 of 883 posts

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

#571

Post by Jensson »

AgentME wrote: post #569
bglazer wrote: post #485

This 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…

It frustrates me how in many discussions people act as if certain controversial research is always obviously correct and objective science up against inherently anti-science people tearing it down. Not at all! Plenty of it is of science specifically known to be done badly, presented badly, in a field with regular systematic issues. If a field is regularly producing these inaccurate results with bad social side effect…

If it is bad science then just reject it for being bad science. Don't reject it for not catering to your special interests group.

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

#572

Post by paganel »

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…

> e.g. if climate is already worsening beyond human limits it's always good to know even

Climate wouldn't have been worsened as much as it did without the technological advances provided by science. It's really, really difficult to cut the Amazonian forrest down using just axes and horse-drawn carts, but once you got mechanised stuff (with the help of science) then it becomes exponentially easier to do it (think just how much science went into the fabrication of bitumen/asphalt, once you have bitumen roads going into and out of the Amazon things get exponentially easier for those who are in the business of cutting trees in there).

Which is to say that I fail to understand how come some of us still believe science and technology can get us out of this mess when it was science and technology that brought us here.

To be clear, I also fully acknowledge that without science and technology our lives would have been way harder, for most of us life wouldn't have been possible at all: without science we would have had no green revolution, which means we still would have had famines around the world, never mind that the green revolution caused a lot of environment-related nasty things, so it's not always black and white.

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

#573

Post by nubero »

cetahfh14615 wrote: post #556
nubero wrote: post #21

Enrico 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…

Well, I for one think “the goal of equality” should be discarded. People are to be treated equally and we already have the declaration of universal human rights as a foundational and international document for that.

If you want people to end up all “being equal” to one another you will just end up on the farm, where all animals are equal but some are more equal than others.

Also, I think it quite amusing that you call what Fermi said “a strong claim” and a “moral judgement” and a few lines down you have the audacity to say that certain “ideas need to be discarded”. First of all, some of the “ideas” you talk about are indeed facts. And then who on earth do you think you are to tell other people what they may think of?

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

#574

Post by dcow »

Retric wrote: post #509
jwarden wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The statement from Nature has been very carefully worded. The quote in the parent comment seems to suggest that perfectly valid scientific findings should be withheld if there is a possibility that bad people would misuse them. The consequence of this of course would be a complete victory of "Blank Slate"[1] Dogma (because any scientific finding that finds differences between social groups could be misused to undermi…

“Researchers should be free to pursue lines of inquiry and the communication of knowledge and ideas without fear of repression or censorship. At the same time, they have the ethical obligation to uphold intellectual integrity and avoid preventable harms that may arise in the course of research or its communication.” Alternatively, it could be saying a lot of bullshit gets published because people are incentivized to…

My charitable interpretation is that Nature is just reminding the academic community that you can’t research social constructs because they’re all made up and the points don’t matter, use more “scientific” terms, plz.

But then why write what was wrote? Why build up a “science can be socially harmful” thesis and then argue that may and could should govern is and does? Science should always be accurate. Nature didn't just learn this, that’s been the status quo all along.

The only reasonable interpretation is that Nature is defending a change.

To your example: you don't need social constructs to explain the replication crisis (“studies that leverage socially constructed ideas can be replicable). You don’t need social harm either (non-replicable studies that are socially good exist).

You said it best yourself: if you assume the worst interpretation possible, you can be offended by anything.

Nature is asking researchers to assume the worst interpretation of their results and, if it would be socially harmful, please not to publish them. And BTW you were wrong to ask the question in the first place since social constructs are post modern and reject western liberal interrogation.

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

#576

Post by [deleted] »

nubero wrote: post #573
cetahfh14615 wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Well, I for one think “the goal of equality” should be discarded. People are to be treated equally and we already have the declaration of universal human rights as a foundational and international document for that. If you want people to end up all “being equal” to one another you will just end up on the farm, where all animals are equal but some are more equal than others. Also, I think it quite amusing that you cal…

[deleted]

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

#577

Post by cetahfh14615 »

nubero wrote: post #573
cetahfh14615 wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Well, I for one think “the goal of equality” should be discarded. People are to be treated equally and we already have the declaration of universal human rights as a foundational and international document for that. If you want people to end up all “being equal” to one another you will just end up on the farm, where all animals are equal but some are more equal than others. Also, I think it quite amusing that you cal…

you're sort of assuming what I mean by "equality"

I'm not talking about leveling, I'm talking about something more like job applications that are completely race-sex-etc blind, where that signal isn't even allowed into the mix. I think that in a truly meritocratic system you'll see a diverse representation. No, it might not be perfectly diverse, but it would lead to more (and fairer) diversity and not less

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

#578

Post by yes_really »

bglazer wrote: post #485

This 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…

IQ research is the one area in social sciences that does not suffer from reproducibility crisis. You're clearly not against it because of reproducibility; you are against it because it goes against your ideological worldview.

> Second, research results in population group differences are social poison. They are memetic viruses that fuel violent extremism.

We had a full summer of violent riots because of the "Black Lives Matter" ideology. Are we going to ban research that studies police treatment of different races too?

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

#579

Post by cetahfh14615 »

donatj wrote: post #562
cetahfh14615 wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The knowledge of how to tie a noose hurts no one. Knowledge in and of itself is harmless at rest. As with all knowledge it’s what you do with it. Keeping people in the dark is an immoral solution to evil.

What knowledge is "in and of itself" means nothing because it exists in a context, the only thing that matters in the case of knowledge (or anything) is what's done with it and how it is useful

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

#580

Post by bowsamic »

bigcat12345678 wrote: post #150

I am getting dumb-funded by the obvious senseless thinking in the title: Science is about the mechanisms of natural worlds. It's the foundation of human civilization. It's the basis of human thoughts and the ideology etc. To say Science must respect dignity and rights of all humans, it's like to say nature must respect the dignity and rights of all humans. But Science is the rendition of natural world's mechanisms, t…

Science is built in the minds of the humans though. You should read Kant. It’s never going to be possible to get away from our synthetic a priori constructions of space, time, causality, etc. and no, Hegel doesn’t solve this either
Post reply on HN