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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”

#801

Post by rufus_foreman »

n4r9 wrote: post #799
wyager wrote: post #790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Humans do not have biological race" is correct if and only if you change the definition of "race" to whatever definition these academics have made up expressly to make the statement true. If you use any definition that wasn't specifically concocted to make the statement true (i.e. any definition used by normal people or by actual scientists doing real work, say prior to 1990), it remains false.

What is the implication here, that geneticists decided in 1990 to pack in "real work" in order to work up a grand conspiracy to wipe out an entire concept?

I think if you were doing scientific work in this area, you would want political cover.

"I'm just studying why people whose ancestors grew up in one area are more likely to have a certain gene than people whose ancestors grew up in a different area. It has absolutely nothing to do with race".

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

#802

Post by quoppers »

mpalmer wrote: post #792
LawTalkingGuy wrote: post #765

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And you have some feminists that exclude trans women. No "trans woman" is ever a woman. They're men, males. You're trying to take women's rights from females by denying them a way to uniquely identify themselves. This right here is why "trans rights", as activists choose to define it, can never happen. If you can take the words woman and female, Germany could redefine Jew and China can redefine Uighur, and everyone…

You're trying to take women's rights from females by denying them a way to uniquely identify themselves. Rights are not a zero-sum game or some kind of exhaustible resource; I have no idea what you're getting at with this. I challenge your contention that "a way to uniquely identify themselves" is a right of biological women or other groups. Never heard of any such right; it sounds totally made up. --- The meaning of…

> I challenge your contention that "a way to uniquely identify themselves" is a right of biological women or other groups. Never heard of any such right; it sounds totally made up.

See, for example, the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the United Nations Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners and Non-custodial Measures for Women Offenders. Both entirely meaningless if men can self-identify as women.

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

#803

Post by VerminOctopus1 »

ravel-bar-foo wrote: post #546
timr wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you effectively discuss, and communicate, that for example sickle cell anaemia or lactose intolerance affects people of African descent, or skin cancer is prevalent in people of European ancestry? And that poor and badly educated people are susceptible to bad diets, lifestyles and medical issues that are a consequence of that? Don't worry, it says in the guidelines that race and ethnicity aren't real: > Race…

> Race and ethnicity are sociopolitical constructs. Humans do not have biological races, at least based on modern biological criteria for the identification of geographical races or subspecies. The first sentence is a liberal shibboleth: it has no more meaning than "colors (of light) are social constructs", or "embryos are sovial constructs." People will go to war over whether and where the lines of "sociopolitival c…

The second sentence is a statement of fact in the world of genetics, phylogeny, and taxonomy. Your criticism of it tells me you are not adequately knowledgeable about these areas of science to participate in this conversation at the level required.

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

#804

Post by TulliusCicero »

LawTalkingGuy wrote: post #783
TulliusCicero wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 be…

> the hijab ban in France that's nominally a religious symbol ban A hijab is an extreme religious symbol, so it makes sense that it would be overrepresented in a ban of religious symbols. That's like an American calling a law racist because its impact is coincidentally not racially balanced.

The intent of the law was obviously to get rid of hijabs. That's the context, and nobody really disputes that, even though the text of the law doesn't explicitly target any particular religion.

I'm not sure I'd call it an extreme symbol, exactly, but I'm not a fan of the culture behind sexist cultural policies like that, where women are treated radically differently from men.

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

#805

Post by VerminOctopus1 »

mike00632 wrote: post #711
NotYourLawyer wrote: post #20

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

Imagine if we devoted a tremendous amount of resources to studying whether being left or right handed increased your chances of transmitting COVID. Then millions of people online start citing scientific papers saying that right handed people spread COVID more often. Then some left handed people attack right handed people (similar to how Asian Americans are being brutalized in public during the pandemic). The point is…

You could also become some kind of “hate researcher” if you wanted to. Pick a group of people you don’t like(ethnic, socio, political, whatever), and start hammering out publications on their IQ, epidemiology, sociopolitical beliefs, etc. Maybe do a bit of P-hacking to make the deleterious stuff really pop out. Eventually you’ll have a nice corpus of literature out there framing your target group as stupid, disease ridden and ignorant.

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

#806

Post by VerminOctopus1 »

nitrixion wrote: post #143
volkadav wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you'd probably benefit from reading and thinking about this wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism sadly, what is called a fact is a malleable thing in the hands of the ill-intentioned, and all too many bigots are more than happy to pass off pseudo-science as the real deal. "science" isn't some abstract thing, it's composed of people and their actions, and as i think every adult will recog…

Sorry, this is completely off topic. Why aren't you using capital letters? I've seen this trend starting to gain more traction and it makes no sense to me.

People have been writing like this for like 25 years. You see it on subcultures all over the internet. HN is a bastion of formal pedantry, so it’s a bit more uncommon here, but it’s been a thing for a long time.

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

#807

Post by edgyquant »

Banana699 wrote: post #782
edgyquant wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only bad faith actor reaching unintelligent definitions here is the one projecting them unto others. Hiding this knowledge from the world doesn’t make it not exist. It just makes people less prepared for when malicious actors use it against them. You promote ignorance as a solution to technical problems. I don’t.

Read what I wrote again, slowly this time, spelling each word.

See what I mean

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

#808

Post by edmcnulty101 »

bombcar wrote: post #355
edmcnulty101 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I also carefully delete anything I post after thirty days lest the science change and an old post of mine be found against it.

Good call! The scientific patriots will whisk you away for any sort of wrong think.

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

#809

Post by ksrm »

JBits wrote: post #463
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.

I genuinely don't understand what is so problematic about this article. Is the article's guidelines even binding in the first place? Many here seem to be saying that this editoral is promoting censorship, but that's not my interpretation at all. It just seems to be encouraging "respectful, non-stigmatizing language to avoid perpetuating stereotypes", avoid conflating different but similar terms and in particular aski…

It's Big Brain 200 IQ Hacker News, what did you expect

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

#810

Post by [deleted] »

llanowarelves wrote: post #435
hoppyhoppy2 wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

e.g. the eugenics movement, which led to forced sterilizations of people who many scientists of the time considered "unfit to reproduce." https://www.history.com/topics/germany/eugenics#section_3

Metrics like IQ also help establish merit instead of nepotism, and identify what level a person is capable of learning at. A group metric for your country becoming more successful and capable of maintaining what we call "democracy" -- 95 IQ and below can't really.

[deleted]
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