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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”

#771

Post by lodi »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #276
thisiscorrect wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ar…

> 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.

You're doing something bad in this hypothetical scenario, but it's not violence. Maybe it's "accessory to violence" or "willful ignorance" or some other immoral or illegal thing that you should be jailed for, but it's not literally "violence". Blurring this distinction is dangerous; people will start using actual violence against figurative "violence" in a kind of aggressive "self-defense".

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

#772

Post by al_mandi »

dkonofalski wrote: post #758
al_mandi wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God does not obey your or anyone else's whim. The Quran says: > He cannot be questioned about what He does, but they will ˹all˺ be questioned. -- https://quran.com/21/23 I posted this lecture in another post, it's a good starting point: https://youtu.be/If3cNUixEBM

This assumes the presupposition that god exists and is real which, as is the entire point of this thread, relies on a belief without evidence. You can't use the actions of a "god" as evidence for the existence of that god without evidence of those actions.

Did you watch the lecture before claiming presupposition without evidence?

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

#773

Post by [deleted] »

DrBazza wrote: post #35
alphabetting wrote: post #2

I posted this to garner some discussion but wanted to be clear it's not an endorsement. The new IRB ethics guidelines Nature is pushing here is absurd and would be a disaster in my opinion.

> Editors, authors and reviewers will hopefully find the guidance helpful when considering and discussing potential benefits and harms arising from manuscripts dealing with human population groups categorized on the basis of socially constructed or socially relevant characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, national or social origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, political or other beliefs, age,…

[deleted]

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

#774

Post by musicale »

buu700 wrote: post #336
DrBazza wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Editors, authors and reviewers will hopefully find the guidance helpful when considering and discussing potential benefits and harms arising from manuscripts dealing with human population groups categorized on the basis of socially constructed or socially relevant characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, national or social origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, political or other beliefs, age,…

Scientific language is terse and unambiguous for a reason. Efficient and precise transfer of ideas. "Go the shops and get a loaf of bread. If there are eggs, get a dozen". I can't tell if this was tongue-in-cheek, but I've only ever heard that as an example of unclear communication: https://old.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/2z83kl/a_wife_sends_...

I think it's a joke to illustrate the point.

This reminds me of the HN threads on programmer jokes. ;-)

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

#775

Post by prewett »

Animats wrote: post #350
slothtrop wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of the book Far From The Tree. The deaf have formed proud communities but have also spawned zealous subcultures that are effectively cults. Some seriously suggest that deaf children should be taken away from unafflicted parents.

There's a science fiction story about that, from before cochlear implants worked. Anyone know the reference?

Probably not what you're thinking about, but book three or four in the Ender's Game series (Orson Scott Card) has a community of very OCD people (women?), which are revered as being holy. During the book it is discovered that the cause is genetic, not from the divine. A cure is developed, which almost all of the community take, but the head priestess refuses to get the cure, insisting on believing that she is divinely touched and remaining enslaved to OCD compulsions.

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

#776

Post by mpalmer »

generj wrote: post #689
mpalmer wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a quality of leftish ideas and initiatives that people find discomfiting, even those with liberal values like myself. "Speech is violence" is an over-simplification of this quality. It is easy to dismiss in its sensationalism, and its lack of prominent examples. It's a special case of the real insidiousness - what you should really be looking for when people say things that don't sound right to you: You are…

From a non-legal perspective, aren’t we all responsible for what people do in reaction to our speech, if we reasonably knew the outcome of our speech at the time? The alternative is that we allow stochastic terrorism, where figures know statistically that if they keep denigrating a person long enough some unhinged person will take action. And legally we do allow this, as it isn’t incitement. But are we required to ig…

From a non-legal perspective, aren’t we all responsible for what people do in reaction to our speech, if we reasonably knew the outcome of our speech at the time?

Yep, I don't disagree with that in the slightest.

---

figures know statistically that if they keep denigrating a person long enough some unhinged person will take action

Guessing by "figures" you mean public figures, or otherwise someone with a platform. Yeah, absolutely there's a "who will rid me of this meddlesome priest" dynamic that's troublesome, and I believe anyone who uses their platform to do this is deeply unethical and irresponsible.

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Anyone talking about a Final Solution in 1938 was complicit in the violence

The same with Rwanda and even now with Russia

"it wouldn’t be so bad if something maybe happened to this group"

These are all examples of speech that advocates for or suggests there is value in violence, genocidal or otherwise. If the people who claim speech is violence are referring exclusively to speech like this, I would have to agree with them.

But that's not the full scope of what some people mean. Some people include in their definition unpleasant speech, speech that offends, shocks or otherwise stands in opposition to their strongly held beliefs.

---

Here's a couple of representative examples from a set of op-eds[1] justifying violent protest against a speech by Milo Yiannopolous at Berkeley in 2017:

"the ideology they peddle perpetuates ideas that urgently endanger members of our community"

(Given the subject of the protest, the ideas here are presumably about the rights of trans people and undocumented immigrants)

How do ideas endanger people, let alone urgently? Obviously we are excepting the direct advocation of violence, which I addressed above.

Say someone publicly announces their opposition to (for instance) DACA on the grounds of their belief that it will cause more illegal immigration, which they oppose. Someone hears this statement and is inspired to commit a violent act against a person of color. What (non-legal) responsibility does the speaker have for this?

I posit, and am curious whether you agree that in the general case, advocating for or against a particular law or policy is not and cannot be violence.

"asking people to maintain peaceful dialogue with those who legitimately do not think their lives matter is a violent act"

I find this a particularly distasteful example of semantic gymnastics, and one that seeks to use the concept of speech-as-violence to justify actual violence against the speaker or related entities.

"[A]sking people to maintain peaceful dialogue" is an evasive way of saying "requiring that people are not violent". "[People] who legitimately do not think their lives matter" are presumably people that deserve violence for having the wrong opinion and sharing it.

Granted: Milo Yiannopolous has frequently skirted the line you and I agree on, naming undocumented immigrants, outing trans people, etc. This is unacceptable behavior and an obvious example of the "meddlesome priest" dynamic.

BUT - the quoted author cares little for the specific context of Yiannopolous' past actions, making a sweeping statement that is unquestionably intended to draw a rhetorical line in the sand on what generally constitutes violence. Not sure about you, but I find this hypocritical, counter-productive in the extreme, and yeah, kinda evil.

[1]: https://www.dailycal.org/2017/02/07/violence-self-defense/

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

#777

Post by rleigh »

This is a terrible direction for one of the most well-known scientific journals.

That said, despite how terrible it is, it is merely mirroring the status quo in most of our universities. It's hard to understate just how far academia has fallen over the last decade. It's been going this way slowly but surely for far longer than that, but now this type of view has well and truly taken over. Science should be about describing the world we live in, dealing in facts only.

I left for industry, which for now is much less affected, but HR and the like are full of it.

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

#778

Post by flerovium »

This is repeating the history of AI research "safety":

1. Let us make sure our research makes the world better, not worse.

2. That's hard.

3. Instead, focus on race and gender as approved by Twitter.

4. Call (3) "safety".

5. Researchers previously focused on (1) rebrand to (3).

See the transition from (1) "safety/alignment" to (2) making sure that the prompt "doctor" generates images of women instead of just men.

People have a general sense that some science can cause harm. (See, the atom bomb.) Instead of thinking hard to prevent that, they run to "don't make Twitter angry about gender/race."

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

#779

Post by abeppu »

elefanten wrote: post #281
abeppu wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a pretty unreasonable comparison. There's a difference between religious dogma which makes claims about reality, and norms or ethics. Discrimination and harm as discussed in this document isn't about factual findings, but is about "superiority or inferiority of one human group over another" (i.e. a value judgement), "the rights and dignities of an individual or human group" (i.e. social norms and conve…

But that’s not what the quoted text is saying. It’s saying research whose outcomes could be “harmful” (where the definition of “harmful” is very broad) may have harms that “outweigh” the benefits… implying it shouldn’t be done. And now you’ve attached a high leverage handle to research allocation/gatekeeping and put it in deeply politicized hands that don’t care about the research.

I think that specific quote is actually ambiguous, as 'research' doesn't make a clear separation between the actual investigation and evidence vs the researcher's presentation of them. I think your characterization (about advocating that some research itself should not be done) is not actually what the document says.

So far as I can see, it's focused on _publication_ of particular _content_ (read: text) describing research.

> In some cases, however, potential harms to the populations studied may outweigh the benefit of publication.

> editors reserve the right to request modifications to (or correct or otherwise amend post-publication), and in severe cases refuse publication of (or retract post-publication)

So far as I can see, they're not advocating for new restrictions on what research ethically can be done, but they're saying that publication can on its own cause harms. And they seem to be focused on how findings are framed and communicated, rather than the objective content of the findings, with the implication that a suitably written article using respectful language would be considered publishable.

> authors should use inclusive, respectful, non-stigmatizing language in their submitted manuscripts.

> Biomedical studies should not conflate genetic ancestry (a biological construct) and race/ethnicity (sociopolitical constructs)

> Authors should use the terms sex (biological attribute) and gender (shaped by social and cultural circumstances) carefully in order to avoid confusing both terms.

So far as I can tell, e.g. one could study sex-linked difference in brain development, and find that one group is faster/more accurate/whatever on some task with subjects in an lab conditions, and so long as one (a) consistently distinguishes whether one is referring to sex or gender and (b) uses respectful and non-stigmatizing language, it would not be found to be unpublishable on these ethical grounds. But if in a conclusion section after having looked at sex differences, one throws out a broad gender stereotype "..and this validates the common belief that women are terrible at X", editors are entirely within their rights to insist on a modification.

This seems entirely reasonable, and is a kind of natural cover-your-ass stance for the modern era, where if they let through some great, ground-breaking research with a single racist or misogynist or homophobic statement tacked in somewhere, inevitably that part will be trotted out by trolls and politicians insisting that their weird stance is backed by science because of one line in a Nature article they didn't actually read.

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