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

nature.com

851–860 of 883 posts

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

#851
post #671
post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed on the first half of your comment. Philosophy of science, however, is a well established, important, and fascinating field. Keywords: Positivists/Viennese circle, Karl Popper and falsification, Feyerabend and Against Method, Thomas Kuhn and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, W. V. Quine and the Two Dogmas of Empiricism, the Science Wars.

To add to that: the new experimentalists, Mayo‘s Error statistics and the rise of Bayesianism

Thanks for the Mayo recommendation. I am currently going through her Statistical Inference as Severe Testing, and find it very tiring. So far very little is about actual statistics and the meat of disputes, but rather about meta questions and the he-said, she-said of those disputes. Maybe the prior book Error and the Growth of Experimental Knowledge is a better exposition of the ideas?

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

#852
post #823

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> 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 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. I can't understand the logic here. The progress of science isn't somehow dead. The problem is our priorities. For an example, the US just sent $50 billion to Ukraine. Imagine what 50, $1,000,000,000 science grants could accomplish.

> For an example, the US just sent $50 billion to Ukraine. Imagine what 50, $1,000,000,000 science grants could accomplish.

Not sure your example is clearly bad priorities. (Though generally I think the US wastes too much on the military.) What's the worst case scenario when the money is defending Ukraine instead of science?

Science funding won't as help much if there's an unchecked bully marching across Europe.

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

#853
post #809
post #463

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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

Free Speech is obvious, doesn't require 200 IQ by a long shot, I regret to inform you it's you who are just a dumbass.

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

#854
post #823

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I can't understand the logic here. The progress of science isn't somehow dead. The problem is our priorities. For an example, the US just sent $50 billion to Ukraine. Imagine what 50, $1,000,000,000 science grants could accomplish.

> For an example, the US just sent $50 billion to Ukraine. Imagine what 50, $1,000,000,000 science grants could accomplish. Not sure your example is clearly bad priorities. (Though generally I think the US wastes too much on the military.) What's the worst case scenario when the money is defending Ukraine instead of science? Science funding won't as help much if there's an unchecked bully marching across Europe.

I think you’ve simplified things.

Here’s the president, himself, explaining what’s going on: https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-resurfaced-clip-russia-ba...

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

#855
post #788

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You mean one of the politically activist dictionaries like Webster, which have lately frequently changed the definition of words like "racism"? I'm sure if it becomes an issue they'll change their definition of "race" too, if they haven't already. And sure, not all races correspond directly to a specific HG, but all races have clear genetic differences which can be identified and classified purely mechanically. Multi…

It was your choice of dictionary! No need to respond like that.

I read your comment as a snarky version of "read a dictionary" - apologies if that was not the intended meaning.

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

#856

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You need to read “The Beginning of Infinity” by David Deutsch. It will help clear up all the muddled thinking I see going on when I read those lines of yours.

Edit: You can also go here and watch this: https://youtu.be/lX-K63pVPTM I still recommend the book though.

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

#857
post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IQ tests are also unreliable by design. They might work once, but you get different results depending on the test subject was challenged by questions and problems of similar design. Highlighting that fact would be helpful and expose such tests as nothing but maybe a rough estimate. Your education is probably more important for that than your capacity to solve problems. Additionally those that focus on these numbers s…

> IQ tests are also unreliable by design. I doubt that they are specifically designed to be unreliable.

Perhaps unreliable is the wrong description. There are significant limitations and these are generally acknowledged. You can do different IQ-Tests and you will notice a steady increase in your score over time, because you learn about the structure of problems they ask about.

Ideally IQ-Tests are systematically different that this would not apply but it isn't possible to create them this way. Your training about similar problems in the past will have significant influence on the score. That does not mean that your intellectual capacity is higher/lower to someone with a different score.

Another weakness is the focus on speed or solved problems per time unit. This is also just an estimate and to latest discoveries about intellectual capacity a very rough one. For example there is a corridor of a certain reading speed that correlates with intelligence. But especially at the upper end which also includes more or less average reading speed this correlation vanishes. Same is true with the comparatively easy problems of IQ-Tests.

The score might be an estimate, but as it I would call it an unreliable estimate. The limitations of them are intrinsic to the way they work.

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

#858

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Delaying puberty isn't "transitioning". You mentioned hormone blockers so you seem to have some knowledge which makes me think that you are intentionally misrepresenting what is happening in order to deny medical care to trans children. Despicable.

How do children who exhibit behaviors that the doctors and parents stereotype as opposite-sex benefit from having their natural development blocked with and/or overwhelmed with opposite-sex hormones? Most parents are fine with gender non-conforming children (in the parent's mind of course - the kid is just being themselves). It's not a panic for them to ask why modifying their child's body to match their toy choice i…

1. Many parents are not fine with trans children. By suggesting that trans children are welcome you are ignoring the very real problems that the Conservative monsters are currently inflicting on them.

2. They benefit from having extra time to make a decision. When you (unnaturally, via the force of law) block children from receiving medical care then you cause them to develop sex characteristics that don't belong to them. If you think about it, you are doing to these children much worse than anything you are suggesting trans advocates are doing.

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

#859
post #767

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Delaying puberty isn't "transitioning". You mentioned hormone blockers so you seem to have some knowledge which makes me think that you are intentionally misrepresenting what is happening in order to deny medical care to trans children. Despicable.

> Delaying puberty isn't "transitioning". I never said it was. As you probably know, for a minor, transitioning is a process with very real time requirements. For many minors, and > 98% of minors [1] that take puberty blockers, it is the first step, the start , in completing the process of transitioning. > in order to deny medical care to trans children. Despicable. See the data backing Sweden's decision. "Medical ca…

You had to cite an obscure Swedish article to characterize medical care for children as negative? Pathetic.

Why not just trust doctors? Let medical professionals make the decision? How about considering the children you want to hurt instead of your feelings about whether trans people are icky.

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

#860
post #770

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you know that more people came out as left handed when the condition stopped being stigmatized? I don't share your "concerns" about there being more LGBT people in the world because they were always there; now they are just being recognized (by both rights groups and bigots who are currently focusing on them).

I don't see how left and right hand matches the fact that there are 5x more 13-17 than 65 year old identifying as trans, unless you're suggesting that gender is learned, like right handedness was, and like all those older people, who should be trans, are now comfortable the way they are. But, I'm nobody, looking at numbers I probably don't understand. The problem here is that Nature is saying that these numbers shoul…

Trans people are literally being murdered. Kids are kicked out of their homes for being trans. The Republican party is currently centering their platform on hatred towards trans people, blaming them for all societal woes. There are now laws being enacted that ban trans people from public places. Yet you not see how this could discourage people from coming out as trans?
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