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

The purge of German science in 1933

privatdozent.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 262 posts

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#81

Post by silverquiet »

EnigmaFlare wrote: post #80
wongarsu wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a "climate alarmist". There is a band of climate science you can freely publish without reputational damage, but don't go over or under it. But that's probably nothing compared to the narrow band of tolerable science when it comes to questions of race or ethnicity. Anything that could be construed as people of some descent being "inferior" in any aspect is pretty risky to publish.

There's a dirty fashion in climate science to include political activism or call to action in their papers. Especially if they've found something that shows good news about climate change. They qualify it with "... but we must all make an effort to reduce fossil fuel use". I used to teach science and would tell students not to give life advice to the reader, because that's what we were supposed to teach them. But the…

[flagged]

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#82

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

ScoobleDoodle wrote: post #69
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps the real question is how much incrementally-better everywhere would be without old wars. Agreed. How many years does each war set us back? And are there hurdles in our future that we will be unable to clear if we too often let war impede our progress.

There's an alternative as unfortunate as it may be of: how many years does each war move us forward. Or how many years behind would we be without the war having occurred.

Hmm, yeah maybe it sort of breaks the before/after model. We're over here because the war happened, and would be over there if it hadn't.

Sorta depends if progress means being ready to repel a hostile alien invasion, or if it means being capable of large scale cooperation on geoengineering projects in the face of biosphere collapse, or you know... whatever other can-you-survive-this test comes our way.

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#83

Post by dmbche »

EnigmaFlare wrote: post #79
dmbche wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You got some of those edgy papers near? I keep hearing things like this, but at every turn the science being published is hot trash.

You're probably not searching with a genuine effort to find the good ones. There's the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study. The authors found a politically incorrect result and tried to cover it up by inventing a new hypothesis (which they hadn't tested) after they'd collected their data. I also read a fairly comprehensive secondary research paper trying to support the no-biological-differences theory and when it ca…

What's the conclusion everyone is missing?

I'm sure you know how unscientific IQ tests are, I'm surprised that's what you're bringing up here as being "good science" being shut down politically. Just trying to correlatw the two tests they used is absolutely subjective, I would take a step back and reexamine the parts of those studies that convinced you of whatever beliefs you have - it seems like a shoddy foundation.

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#84

Post by defrost »

EnigmaFlare wrote: post #79
dmbche wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You got some of those edgy papers near? I keep hearing things like this, but at every turn the science being published is hot trash.

You're probably not searching with a genuine effort to find the good ones. There's the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study. The authors found a politically incorrect result and tried to cover it up by inventing a new hypothesis (which they hadn't tested) after they'd collected their data. I also read a fairly comprehensive secondary research paper trying to support the no-biological-differences theory and when it ca…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption...

where the bulk of scientists agreed in various ways that the confounding problems made it exceedingly implausible that differences were either entirely genetically based or entirely environmentally based?

> This is an area where the science all points in one direction but popular opinion is in the other direction.

Or maybe an area where the science is inconclusive but personal opinion shades the reading and subsequent presentation?

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#85

Post by Vecr »

devjab wrote: post #57
xyzelement wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW in the current time we definitely encounter "wrong physics" in places where science and politics intersect. EG - a scientist can easily get smacked down for being "a climate change denialist" or an "antivaxer" or a similar unpalatable label way before the merits of their effort are evaluated.

There are no scientific merits for being an antivaxer though. You can certainly have egotistical reasons but the herd immunity created through general vaccination isn’t just a theory anymore. I’d be more curious as to how anti-vaccine agendas ever became a thing. With a lot of these things like climate change, there are clear economic forces which will pour “tobacco is healthy” amounts of money into pushing whatever…

It depends what you mean by "antivaxer", what is the subclinical myocarditis rate for ACAM1000 again? (Not ACAM2000, I'm very specifically talking about ACAM1000)

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#86

Post by greedo »

arp242 wrote: post #34
greedo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti-Semitism as a 19th century development doesn't seem historically accurate. While anti-Semites in the 19th century glommed on to racial theories as backing for their hate, the origins of anti-Semitism are millennia old.

It's not; anti-Semitism as we know today is very much rooted in racial science (well, "science") of the 19th century. Before that it was an anti-religious thing: anti-Judaism, which was a markedly different and similar to Anti-Catholicism, anti-Protestantism, and things like that. Especially in the context of the Nazi ideology, this really matters. Recall that the Nazis killed more Slavs than Jews, who were also cons…

But you're assuming Nazi ideology was coherent, when it clearly wasn't in almost anything. The "racial" anti-Semitism was merely a fig leaf provided by quack science of the times.

And yes, the Nazis viewed the Slavic peoples as "Untermensch", but didn't harbor as much animus towards them. They were simply in the way of the Nazi expansionist policy of Lebensraum. Whereas anti-Semitism was extremely widespread through German society and further inflamed by the Nazis.

And no, "anti-Semitism as we know today is very much rooted in racial science" is not accurate one bit. The majority of today's anti-Semitism is purely religious in nature. Oh, some white supremacists might try to invoke some bullshit the racial inferiority of the Jews, but the real hate is religious in nature. Combine that with anti-Zionism (which is often a mask for anti-Semitism) and it all falls apart.

And it's incredibly disingenuous to trot out the usual arguments about how the Nazis killed more Slavs than Jew, etc etc. These are part of the playbook that attempts to minimize the Shoah.

Finally, the bit about how the Nazis treated the Western countries much better, EXCLUDES the Jewish citizens of those countries.

I'm pretty sure you're not arguing in good faith at all, but you seem to be wanting to keep this going.

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#87

Post by greedo »

arp242 wrote: post #54
bsder wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, please explain The Merchant of Venice. c. 1600 in an England which basically had no Jews. Or the Edict of Explusion c. 1290. Or the Jews being under the direct whim and jurisdiction of the king. c. 1066 I can go further and further back ... Anti-semitism is old .

Again, anti-Judaism is not the same thing. This is just "normal" religious persecution that has been around since forever and that many (if not all) religious groups have experienced at some point or another. Does this matter? Well, in the context of discussing Nazi world-views it does. None of this is especially controversial among mainstream Jewish historians, as far as I know.

This is splitting hairs in an attempt to minimize both anti-Semitism and the acts of the Nazis.

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#88

Post by arp242 »

greedo wrote: post #86
arp242 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not; anti-Semitism as we know today is very much rooted in racial science (well, "science") of the 19th century. Before that it was an anti-religious thing: anti-Judaism, which was a markedly different and similar to Anti-Catholicism, anti-Protestantism, and things like that. Especially in the context of the Nazi ideology, this really matters. Recall that the Nazis killed more Slavs than Jews, who were also cons…

But you're assuming Nazi ideology was coherent, when it clearly wasn't in almost anything. The "racial" anti-Semitism was merely a fig leaf provided by quack science of the times. And yes, the Nazis viewed the Slavic peoples as "Untermensch", but didn't harbor as much animus towards them. They were simply in the way of the Nazi expansionist policy of Lebensraum. Whereas anti-Semitism was extremely widespread through…

> But you're assuming Nazi ideology was coherent

I very explicitly said it's not: "A lot of the Nazi rhetoric isn't even internally consistent and it was all a load of bollocks"

Are you even reading what I'm writing? Your unhinged ridiculous accusations which directly contradicts what I wrote suggests you're not.

I did not mention or talk about contemporary antisemitism. Don't try to twist things.

And yes, obviously "they treated the Dutch, English etc. better" excludes Jews. It also excludes communists, and gays, and some other groups. This is a boring "gotcha" type argument.

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#89

Post by greedo »

neffy wrote: post #38
xyzelement wrote: post #6

It occurs to me that anti-semitism is a disease that ultimately destroys its host. If Germany "simply" wanted to win WW2, it should have cultivated its Jewish scientists (and by the way, 100K Jewish soldiers served their country in WW1) instead of eradicating them as per this article. Not to mention, diverting scarce wartime resources towards the program of concentration camps and ethnic extermination is not just pur…

It's an interesting question, and on the face of it, yes, the Nazi's probably would have won with the Jewish people on board. Similar arguments can be made about their invasion of Russia, given the support they would have received against Stalin without their accompanying genocide. The big but in this, is whether they would have gotten there to begin with. Picking on the Jews was a huge cash/property grab, which was…

The only way the Nazis would have "won" is if they developed the atomic bomb before the US. Even with many of the emigres that helped with the Manhattan project, that might not have been possible. The Soviets were never going to surrender, same with the British, and once the Americans started supplying Britain with arms, they were safe. And then when Hitler declared war on the US, it was game over. The industrial might of the US alone was simply too powerful.

"You have horses! What were you thinking? Dragging our asses half way around the world, interrupting our lives... For what, you ignorant, servile scum!"

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#90

Post by greedo »

arp242 wrote: post #88
greedo wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you're assuming Nazi ideology was coherent, when it clearly wasn't in almost anything. The "racial" anti-Semitism was merely a fig leaf provided by quack science of the times. And yes, the Nazis viewed the Slavic peoples as "Untermensch", but didn't harbor as much animus towards them. They were simply in the way of the Nazi expansionist policy of Lebensraum. Whereas anti-Semitism was extremely widespread through…

> But you're assuming Nazi ideology was coherent I very explicitly said it's not: "A lot of the Nazi rhetoric isn't even internally consistent and it was all a load of bollocks" Are you even reading what I'm writing? Your unhinged ridiculous accusations which directly contradicts what I wrote suggests you're not. I did not mention or talk about contemporary antisemitism. Don't try to twist things. And yes, obviously…

You literally said:

"It's not; anti-Semitism as we know today is very much rooted in racial science (well, "science") of the 19th century."

So yes, you were talking about contemporary anti-semitism.

Post reply on HN