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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”

#871

Post by paulryanrogers »

nomel wrote: post #854
paulryanrogers wrote: post #852

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

Perhaps you can ELI5 because I was under the impression Ukraine was a sovereign nation. Free to pursue any alliances it wishes. And that its 1991 borders were acknowledged in exchange for yielding nuclear weapons to Russia.

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

#872

Post by n4r9 »

timr wrote: post #816
n4r9 wrote: post #797

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is saying it has absolutely no meaning. They're saying that its meaning has its basis in culture rather than in biology. If you were to collect the DNA of every living human today and send the information to an alien species, would they say "aha, this clearly falls into five (or however many) pretty distinct categories"? Would anyone be able to tell them how to delineate those categories? Based on what I've re…

> No one is saying it has absolutely no meaning. They're saying that its meaning has its basis in culture rather than in biology. And that is 100% false. It's obviously biological in basis. It has useful meaning outside of "culture". We just don't have a reductive definition that satisfies the people who aspire to police our thoughts and language...and science. I'm not naïve about this. There's obviously this bad his…

The overwhelming impression that I'm getting every time I look into this is that the concept of "race" is outliving biological meaning or usefulness when applied to humans. Fine if you think that's "obviously" false, but science has a very long list of things that initially appear obvious but are dropped as understanding grows and/or terminology becomes more precise. Invoking obviousness isn't very convincing at this point.

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

#873

Post by freejazz »

wyager wrote: post #855
freejazz wrote: post #844

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well I don't think you'd find a dictionary that ever used that definition, because it's not the definition. And it has nothing to do with your allegation that dictionaries are woke and changing.

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

#874

Post by MrPatan »

bawolff wrote: post #591
drekipus wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This should be handled with care, and extra consideration should be given to whether the tenuous, fallible results from this research will result in violence. What is "results in violence" though? One person's violence would be another person's justice. I think trans activism with kids is a severe violence. Would research in allowing transgenderism for children be considered violence or not in your eyes? I'm sure t…

> I think trans activism with kids is a severe violence. You think trans activism is equivalent to shooting someone? I mean, i think most people are going to dismiss you as crazy if you think words and ideas of any form are equivalently violent to shooting someone in the head. At the very least you would need to back up such a radical proposition with some very compelling arguments.

>> I think trans activism with kids is a severe violence.

>You think trans activism is equivalent to shooting someone?

You missed a pretty important word there.

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

#875

Post by kbrkbr »

FabHK wrote: post #851
kbrkbr wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I got mich out of it, but only on the meta level also. Afair she never goes into technical detail of e.g. Neyman Pearson, but covers things like how to overcome the Quine-Duhem-problem with statistics, or how to stengthen Popper’s theory. But on that level I learned a lot, and it trickles down to what is important in actual experimental design and why.

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

#876

Post by s3r3nity »

austinjp wrote: post #670
emmelaich wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Information cannot cause harm. Harm is done by people.

That seems oversimplified. If an individual or organisation collects or creates "information", they could/should consider not only what a thief might do with the information, but what they're collecting it in the first place and why. If they know potential dangers, they share at least some responsibility for future damage. If they haven't considered the dangers, this is negligent (mitigated by the act of sincere cons…

> If they know potential dangers, they share at least some responsibility for future damage.

This line of thinking was used during the dark ages to argue against the spread of science vs. religion.

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

#877

Post by int_19h »

nomel wrote: post #854
paulryanrogers wrote: post #852

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

Speaking as a Russian who grew up in the 90s, NATO was never a real threat to post-Soviet Russia. Our "national patriot" political faction made it into a threat in its propaganda because they needed an existential enemy to build their ideology up on.

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

#878

Post by int_19h »

That's the inevitable consequence of political centralization. Orwell wrote this back in 1944, but it still applies:

"Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become official history. He can’t say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is the direction in which we are actually moving, though, of course, the process is reversible."

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

#879

Post by TMWNN »

throwawayacc2 wrote: post #174
bitwize wrote: post #168

We are converging on a new definition of truth which takes into account social harm. Claims which protect the marginalized and/or harm those groups deemed to be hate groups must be taken as true; claims which do the opposite must be taken as false. It kind of sucks if you believe in objectivity -- but the postmodernists taught us there is no such thing. Any pretense to objectivity is a means to trick your sorry ass a…

I cannot help feeling like what we see in things like this is the manifestation of a new religion. My only hope is, this woke/scientist religion doesn’t become a new christianity and instead dies sooner. But even if it goes the way of christianity my only happy though is there will be a point in the future when the wokes will be looked down with the same disgust and revulsion they look down on christianity now.

>I cannot help feeling like what we see in things like this is the manifestation of a new religion.

"Problematic" is the "blasphemous" of said new religion.

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

#880

Post by TMWNN »

remarkEon wrote: post #401
puffoflogic wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not allowed to talk about those any more.

Which is a weird phenomenon in and of itself right? The amount of political violence pre-internet is just an order of magnitude higher than today’s. Most young people (millennials, Gen Z) are completely unaware - unless you studied this stuff - that e.g. the Senate building was bombed in 1983 by a bunch of leftists upset over the US’s involvement in Lebanon. This is to say, I’m skeptical of the argument that the inte…

See also the pro-Puerto Rican independence terrorists who in the 1950s a) invaded the Capitol (!) to try to assassinate Congressmen, and b) invaded the temporary White House to try to assassinate Harry Truman (!!). Completely forgotten about in popular memory, despite their murdering law enforcement in the process.
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