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From the I've-heard-enough-and-won't-take-it-anymore department, http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39024648
The BBC reports that former Congressman Rush Holt, now part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), is the spokesman for a movement "standing up for science".
His remarks reflect growing concern among researchers that science is disregarded by President Trump.
Scientists across the US plan to march in DC on 22 April.
[...] "To see young scientists, older scientists, the general public speaking up for the idea of science. We are going to work with our members and affiliated organisations to see that this march for science is a success."
Mr Holt made his comments at the AAAS annual meting in Boston as President Trump appointed a fierce critic of the Environmental Protection Agency as its head. Scott Pruitt has spent years fighting the role and reach of the EPA.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday February 21 2017, @01:57PM
The main problem is doublethink about the meaning of "science"
There's a lot of really butt hurt people defining science as being anything they say from their academic pulpit, so you end up with quantum computer scientists babbling about immigration law which is about as stupid as listening to a Hollywood star's opinions about the environment or my plumber's opinions about the impressionistic paintings in my office. "I'm holier than thou how dare they defy me in the smallest way, even stuff I clearly know nothing about.". A side dish is entire fields can go stupid when politics overrides science. Look how dumb soviet genetics got when the results were only permitted to fit marxist theory in the 30s. Or look how dumb psychologists look today when the primary criteria for participation is over 99% of themselves self identify as far left wing, therefore the entire existing academic structure is more accurately identified as far left wing psychology. K12 education and journalism schools have a similar problem where politics long replaced science.
Another fun doublethink definition is science is the feudalistic authoritarian academic system where everyone makes sure everyone else is loyal to the philosopher king tenured professors at the top while simultaneously aspiring to topple them and replace them with themselves. That whole corrupt pile of dung needs flushing. Trillion dollars of student loans, everyone has to go to college because high school was dumbed down, its all garbage. By analogy being offended by the stupid and antisocial antics of meth making bucket chemists doesn't mean one hates organic chemistry as a discipline or chemists as a people.
There's also the doublethink definition where science is merely a prop in political propaganda. Much like 70s/80s TV commercials always wrapped BS medical claims in a lab coat with a stethoscope. So the sine of a negative X equals the negative of a sine of X, and therefore because that sounded intelligent, the next logical step in my proof is the workers of the world should unite to defeat capitalism because when us progressives are in charge I'm sure we won't be like the pigs in the book animal farm at all LOL (which we probably need to ban now that we're in charge for a couple decades now). You see this a lot with environmental issues, also occasionally evolutionary biology issues.
AFAIK nobody in the Trump administration or the alt right in general or even the actual 1488 types is in any way in opposition to "science" as long as its conducted outside the three paragraphs of corruption described above. Frankly flushing the corruption would be a good idea regardless of one's political views, because the corruption listed above is highly non-productive, kinda like how a stupid march is going to be non-productive.
(Score: 5, Touché) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday February 21 2017, @02:22PM
And you are? Wait, I'll answer that: A nobody named VLM commenting on double think and science. You speak as if the plumber is an ignorant slob who lacks the intellectual ability to appreciate or criticize impressionist paintings. It also assumes that an actor has no ability to comprehend environmental issues or a scientist politics and human rights. The hypocrisy and arrogance in your post is stupefying.
Perhaps you should stick to your own little binary world and comment on what you know best and leave the politics to the politicians.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday February 21 2017, @02:56PM
no ability
No usefully better than average ability would be more in line with what I originally wrote. The "stupidly" part is in reference to listening to an authority on topic A about completely unrelated topic B with the assumption the information about topic B would be superior to a typically comical man in the street interview.
So more specifically a plumber is highly unlikely to appreciate or criticize impressionist paintings at a level beyond man in the street, so a logical fallacy appeal to authority (which in itself is a mistake) beginning with "my plumber says ... therefore I agree with my plumber" is highly unwise in all non-plumbing scenarios.
No I don't think a scientist has anything useful to say about politics and human rights more so than, well, a plumber. Or my HVAC contractor neighbor, for that matter.
I see you otherwise agree with the posted claims, which is cool.
I could go further with my claim in that intense life long focus on a demanding STEM field in order to become a famous authority in that specific STEM field is strongly likely to result via simple lack of spare time in someone even less informed, less in touch with reality, than the average joe 6 pack on the street. I don't mind doubling down like that although its not as strong of a claim. Some authorities in their field likely attained that stature via politics rather than skill, for example, and being experts at small group manipulation Might have insights, or maybe not.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday February 21 2017, @06:42PM
I can somewhat agree with your assertions. Though, it's still based on the black and white left vs right politics which I think is a disservice to academia, its sciences, and the country as a whole. Science itself isn't political. It's just a word for "knowledge of how the physical world works". Same for academia, which includes the sciences. It's just a collection of knowledge to be passed on and built upon. But there is a problem.
The problem (to me at least) is one that is eons old. Academia (well use this word to include sciences) has traditionally been the domain of people who are free thinkers. They ignored the structure of society which allowed them to dive into the inner workings of the world around them including philosophy, economics, politics, government and the physical sciences. This is a typical left or "liberal" way of thinking: open minded, freedom to share information, diversity, and the freedom to criticize all aspects society including government and religion.
This has been contrary to the ruling structure of society that is based on primal instincts of "only the strong survive", independent survival, and alpha dominance. This is the mindset of the right: structured, authoritarian, and conformity. This gave us the power hungry who desire to control people using law, punishment/violence, religion, class, money/economics, culture and nationalism. The goal: conformity through social conservatism. Change and outside influences are abhorred. Information can be seen as harmful and may be restricted. The truth isn't relevant, only control.
Though, this is a very natural way in which society has organized itself. Many other animals have social structures as well. Humans are not much different. At home when growing up we have structure through our superiors, aka our parents who we are expected to be obey. This becomes an issue during adolescence when we begin to yearn for freedom from those bonds. Many are full of angst and become rebellious. It's a natural reaction for humans who desire to be independent. And right about that time is when people become curious and explore the world either on their own or through academia. And that is where the so called leftist liberals, the free thinkers, have found their common ground and have gathered.
And this brings me to my point:
The liberalism of academia is natural. The conservatism of rule (government/religion) is also natural. They are the yin and yang of a healthy society. If you go full liberal, you have anarchy. If you go full conservatism, you have tyranny. What this country needs is a little more liberalism. After all, liberalism is responsible for the constitution, the foundation of the USA, and the liberties granted to us within. Full conservatism (aka authoritarianism) seeks to destroy this. Liberalism is the patriots friend.
The problem you describe is what happens when you keep politicizing and attacking a group of people, they become more zealous. The more you accuse academia of being too left the more left they move and the conservatives of academia are rejected. The same goes for the conservative right which has pushed out the liberal thinkers and desire more conformity. We have weaponized thinking and it's at the point where it has reached absurd levels on both sides. This is why we have a new resurgence of white nationalism, racism, sexism, and bat shit christian conservatism on the right and absurd lunacy of extreme political correctness of the left such as you cant say mean things, censorship, safe spaces, white guilt, and extreme femnazism (not to be confused with actual feminists). We have pushed each side to the extreme which has made them almost indiscernible. It is incredibly unhealthy for society and can even lead to the end of it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @08:01PM
You seem to be combining the liberal/conservative axis with the authoritarian/anti-authoritarian axis. Although using two axises is still simplifying political views, it is much better to characterize perspectives with two axises than one.
There are big differences between libertarianism (right and anti-authoritarian) and fascism (right and authoritarian); anarchist (left and anti-authoritarian) and socialism (left and authoritarian).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum#Other_multi-axis_models [wikipedia.org]
https://www.politicalcompass.org/analysis2 [politicalcompass.org]
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday February 21 2017, @11:23PM
A 1D line is plenty explanatory. It's a mix of liberty and rule. Liberty is individual freedom and rule is restraint. Social conservatism is just another part of rule as it demands conformity. To me, I don't see how you can be anti-authoritarian yet promote social conservatism as is the case with libertarianism. You can't desire individual liberty while simultaneously rejecting social liberalism, social justice and ultimately, change. You either have liberty and evolve or you don't and you die. A libertarian is simply a conservative who wishes they could be more openly liberal (sorry libertarians). Though in reality, the few people I have met who claim to be libertarians are democrats who don't want to admit they are democrats among conservatives. As for the left-anarchist, anarchy is the definition of selfish extremism which includes lawlessness and eschews the altruistic goals of the left. An anarchist follows no laws and therefor respects no other man but himself. Again, that can't exist. I haven't met any true anarchists because everyone believes in some form of cooperation which implies some rule is necessary to keep the peace. Even the drifter punk I met who doesn't pay taxes and lived on peoples couches or park benches respected the law to an extent that he was not completely lawless (e.g. he didn't steal and worked for his money).
I look at it like this: a single axis with a person on each end. To the extreme left is an individual devoid of rule, an anarchist. To the extreme right is an individual who is the rule, a tyrant. Both only care for themselves. The middle is a person who has both liberty and is ruled evenly. Moving left from center the individual is granted more liberty and distributes rule among more people until you have anarchism where each individual is their own rule. To the right the individual is granted less liberty and rule is concentrated to fewer people until we reach the individual ruler, the tyrant. More ideally, you want to be just left of center and have more liberty and distributed rule, aka a democracy. This benefits the people and ensures that the rule will favor the people. Of course it also establishes boundaries such as basic law and a justice system. It is also a compromise between more extreme liberties (bordering lawlessness) and rule where there has to be some sort of control and organization.
The USA was founded left of center in contrast to the far right rule of the monarchy. This is free thinking liberalism in action. But it wasn't perfect. We had to make amendments and modify our laws and constitution as the liberal thinkers fought to fix the ills of society. We freed the slaves, gave women the right to vote, equal rights for all peoples, and marriage for the gays (to name a few). And we still have a long way to go as rule and its tools have sought to subvert liberty in favor of rule.
The problem is both the dems and the reps have both gone over the middle line to the right. Both seek more rule thanks to the corruption of capitalism which itself is a far right concept (rule through money and economics). This is why corporations have more power then the people and lobby for favorable laws. This is why we have corruption. This is why we have widespread surveillance. This is why we fight wars for oil. This is why our social programs are under attack. This is also why we have insane arguments over gun laws and conspiracies. This is why we have people pushing christian agendas into law. This is why women are denied the right to abortions. The ruling peoples have sought to subvert the people for decades in order to gain more control over them. They have unfortunately done a great job by demonizing liberalism, the very foundation of this country and its freedoms. It's time we recognized that liberalism is the true salvation of America. And not the demonized mess it has become but true free thinkers who made America great by advocating for change from the revolutionary war right up to today's fight for social justice and against the true establishment, the greedy, power hungry peoples of America.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 22 2017, @12:44AM
To the extreme left is an individual devoid of rule, an anarchist
First, Anarchy is not "without rules"; it's "without RULERS".
Anarchy is moving the making of rules as close as possible to those most affected by those rules.
Anarchy is NOT synonymous with "chaos"--as so many have been led to believe.
Next, your rotation of the political palate by 90 degrees from the standard notation [politicalcompass.org] isn't doing anyone any favors in understanding things.
The USA was founded left of center
In your twisted model, that would be "without rule".
That's nonsense.
USA was set up with a wealthy ruling class writing the rulebook (the founding documents).
You don't have to look very hard in those to see the celebration of Plantation Capitalism where a tiny few benefit and everyone else is subordinate; in some cases, people are even property of the landed gentry.
both the dems and the reps have both gone over the [here, had you used standard nomenclature, you would have said the horizontal center line].
I don't think that the majority of either of those parties was EVER on the other side of that line.
...well, maybe The Party of Lincoln when they got the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments passed.
...though there are exception in those that give me pause e.g. no slave labor except in prisons--which Jim Crow took advantage of bigtime.
Both seek more rule thanks to the corruption of capitalism which itself is a far right concept (rule through money and economics)
No. According to your twisted model that would make Capitalism a **governmental** form instead of an economic form.
While those who embrace Capitalism often are -also- Authoritarian, your attempt to turn the political palate into a 1-dimension thing is a horrible, confusing notion.
Lamestream Media pulls this crap continually and some folks buy into their bogus 1-dimensional Left/Right terminology.
It appears that you are repeating their swill.
I suggest that you view Corporate Media with a jaundiced eye.
They are all too often trying to confuse you.
In this case, it appears that they have succeeded.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 22 2017, @01:19PM
The political scale is relative so, in the public's mind, the Democrats are "left" and the Republicans are "right". Simplifying things in this way enables both parties to become more authoritarian without the public really noticing as there is still their team "left" or "right" to vote for. Saying there is no difference between Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee, and Mitt Romney or Dennis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders, and Barack Obama just perpetuates more problems and allows the political spectrum to keep drifting to the upper right.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 21 2017, @09:29PM
Well, there's at least two parts, both where we mostly agree yet somehow find a way to disagree.
WRT
Science itself isn't political.
we are having this conversation in an article where the rabble rouser's strategy is explicitly to enforce or gaslight that "science" is in fact 100% unified as an anti-trump force. What he means is academia of course.
WRT liberal values, that's pretty well written although the drift has been so extreme that the left is no longer Liberal in your classical definition and after having power for so many decades has become the conservative force. Anti-white policy as a side effect of identity politics on the left results in the right not being anti-white which results in not being anti-white redefined as being racist while once everyone's racist then the actual 14/88 folks have free reign.
This is kind of a shake up period. My guess is in the '20s the left will be identified as the conservative baby boomer hippie ideal, and the right will settle out as a mixture of radicals. It'll be interesting to see how identity politics issue works out. Trump seems to be accumulating all the white people including the union members, and the left seems to be getting rid of the last of its white boomer and pre-boomer folks, it'll be interesting to see them cooperate (or not) and see how they can be worked against each other.
Aside from your stated liberal/conservative model and identity politics there are are patriarchal vs matriarchal attitudes and other stuff.
Future's gonna be interesting to watch.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday February 22 2017, @03:24AM
Another way to see the same basic idea you are using is anonymousconservative's r/K selection applied to human society theory. It also pops up in "the fourth turning" and several other places. The idea seems popular but only the r/K theory puts real evolutionary biology, i.e. Science, behind it.
The book is occasionally offered up for free at the blog but it isn't expensive on Amazon anyway. Anyway, basically imagine four phases and we just keep spinning through them on about an eighty year cycle for a full revolution.
When things turn K they are at maximum suck. Hard times make for hard men. Real manly men, real feminine women. Harsh ingrouping, monogomy, high investment parenting in a low number of offspring. Highly structured government, usually tribal then monarchy. These things bring stability and after much struggle, relative peace. This leads to plenty.
That puts us in "K into r" where the K types are still firmly in charge but r people are now somewhat valued again for their, as you put it, "open minded, freedom to share information, diversity, and the freedom to criticize all aspects society including government and religion" since it produces scientific advancement. This leads to wealth, enough wealth to allow things like universities where people can spend their whole lives thinking. More wealth, more resources. But trouble is brewing as the r types thing so differently. Preference for outgroups, sexual promiscuity, large numbers of offspring with low parental investment.
Finally we hit r. Full retard time. Resources are so plentiful the r types act as if they were free. Unlimited immigration? Why not! Here the men are pajamaboy or outright gay, the women are fighting in MMA... and probably gay. In previous times the population boom was quickly unsustainable but with birth control and abortion now, we are actually in decline. The women become manly because the girly men don't bond into families so they have to be big and strong enough to raise children alone. This phase has lasted longer than normal but we are nearing the breaking point.
Which will lead us to "r into K" which is the descent into pure chaos. The horsemen ride, plagues break out, wars start, famine due to overpopulation and maximum stupid.
Essentially large numbers of humans are hard wired to think in terms of r or K behavior and morality but most can, if the environmental pressure (hyperabundance or chaos) is strong enough can flip as needed. Which is why some people just do not fit their time.
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Tuesday February 21 2017, @03:51PM
"Perhaps you should stick to your own little binary world and comment on what you know best and leave the politics to the politicians."
You were so close!!!! YOU WERE SO FUCKING CLOSE!!!
You could have ended your comment before this sentence and had a watertight argument, but no! You go and reveal what you actually know to be right!
By your own admission, politicians should stick to politics, teachers should stick to teaching, scientists should stick to science, and actors/sportspeoples should stick to acting/sportsing—not politics!!!
(Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @03:59PM
Why, is irony and sarcasm lost on you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @06:32PM
Hey you! Leave humour to the comedians, ok.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @07:12PM
Don't worry its fake comedy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @02:36PM
opposition to "science"
The administration is opposed to scientific results that it doesn't like. The most important one in my mind is the vaccine safety issue. The motivated skepticism employed by these people is harmful to the public.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/robert-f-kennedy-jr-says-vaccine-safety-commission-still-works [sciencemag.org]
https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Motivated_skepticism [lesswrong.com]
(Score: 0, Troll) by VLM on Tuesday February 21 2017, @03:26PM
The administration is opposed to scientific results that it doesn't like
Seriously, you got there, from here:
“is exploring the possibility of forming a commission ... (to research the topic of the effect, no mention of researching the cause or the theoretical linkage between)"
You have to be rather open minded. The article correctly mentions that vaccines cause less death than no vaccines while refusing to consider they could cause even fewer deaths. You have to realize that anyone who's listened to the government for the last couple decades knows most of what is claimed is frankly a lie. Low fat high carb diets result in the same number of heart attacks and a hugely (LOL) obese diabetic population. Iraq really wasn't full of WMD. Big Brother really isn't looking out for you, you know?
Let me summarize the article:
We shouldn't have a commission to study the safety of vaccines because fewer people die with vaccines than without, implying the only possible result of a commission or thinking about the topic at all is banning all vaccines, which sounds really tinfoil hat-ish or straw dog-ish. Then a guy with an axe to grind about "X causes Y" who donated enough money yells at trump for a couple hours and a minor functionary says the result is the prez is thinking about the chance of maybe forming a commission to research Y, and the axe grinder claims that means 100% support of the whole axe-grinding line and the anti-trump at all costs crowd agrees, which is absolutely comical. Finally the article devolves in the latter half into word salad about the authoritarian party line we've heard for decades because the government has never lied and the more mercury you inject the better and questioning lower mercury alternatives or thinking that injecting mercury could possibly be bad is double plus ungood badthink which no good prole would ever consider and Big Brother has never told us a lie either. The article just stinks, the dude with an axe to grind is almost as hilarious as the "journalist".
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @04:42PM
lower mercury alternatives or thinking that injecting mercury could possibly be bad is double plus ungood badthink
All of the vaccines recommended for children under six have non-mercury containing options.
Trump has repetedly echoed concerns of a vaccine-autism link and, as president, he is giving increased credibility to these misguided groups and is in a position to directly affect government policy on the issue. The proposition of a “vaccine safety and scientific integrity" commission is disingenuous and appointing Kennedy to head such a group would be clearly pushing a biased agenda. There are already multiple governmental groups that report and regulate the safety of vaccines, but they apparently are not producing the results that Trump wants.
https://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/SafetyAvailability/VaccineSafety/UCM096228#t1 [fda.gov]
http://fortune.com/2017/02/16/donald-trump-autism-vaccines/ [fortune.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_Adverse_Event_Reporting_System [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 22 2017, @03:20PM
he is giving increased credibility
Seriously AC, did you read the article or look into the situation?
Someone pays for hours of lecture/meeting time and the only result is a minor functionary in the most polite manner possible doesn't entirely brush the guy off and the fake news claims that's a major alliance, LOL. Total fake news.
All of the vaccines recommended for children under six have non-mercury containing options.
Careful, even mentioning that might turn you into a target in the anti-anti-vaxxer witch hunt. Almost sounds like you're implying that maybe keeping mercury out of your body might be a good idea when possible, thats double plus ungood badthink, comrade....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 22 2017, @06:46PM
fake news claims that's a major alliance
Did you read the sciencemag article? There is no claim of a "major alliance" and I did not notice any false claims or unverified/unnamed sources.
The president personally meeting with someone and asking them chair a “vaccine safety and scientific integrity” commission is giving credibility to Kennedy and his views on vaccines (which happen to have some overlap with the president). Those views are not only unsupported by scientific evidence, but they have also been discredited by all the available evidence.
Careful [...] Almost sounds like you're implying
It's almost like the FDA is attempting to address possible concerns that people have by discrediting claims that originated from a fraudulent study.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMR_vaccine_controversy [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday February 22 2017, @05:51AM
Science is a huge, huge magnet and bane for propagandists. Science scored so big in the 20th century that nothing else compares. Religion is a distant second on authoritativeness. The nuclear bomb is in a league of its own in sheer power and destructiveness, and yet it was mere icing on the cake for winning WWII. The Axis had so thoroughly deluded their people that they mostly blinded themselves to the cold hard reality that their economies were no match for the Allies, and therefore the only chance of some success in their war was the unrealistic hoping that the Allies wouldn't have any stomach for a fight. What level of idiocy or insanity does it require to take on both superpowers at the same time? No one doubted the power of rationality and science after that, particularly not after such a dismal showing by the irrationalists who'd seized power in Germany. As if nuclear power wasn't enough, there's the moon landing. Probably the moon landing hoaxers are motivated by a desire to tarnish and weaken the pervasive respect society has for science. Those are just the tip of the iceberg. There's all kinds of more humdrum and practical advances that go more under the heading of engineering rather than science, stuff like the refrigerator, microwave oven, radio, TV, and telephone, and the computer and Internet.
Hate, fear, and jealousy of science is legion. Scientific training absolutely does make it harder to run a successful propaganda campaign. Propagandists hate it for that reason, yet they do not hesitate to use the trappings of science to push their own lies if it seems convenient. It's just sort of a bonus that their fake science casts doubt on the real thing.
So today, to have so many people talking trash about science and to see the propagandists rising is worrisome. We got a recent reminder of what it's like to have propaganda loving fools running the nation. The neo-cons drummed up lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq to justify a war, "spending" the good reputation of the US and trillions of dollars, and came away with nothing to show. It was a damn fool thing to do, treating trust and friendship as commodities to be spent, and then not even getting anything remotely worthwhile in return. They seriously damaged US credibility in the world. We can only hope those memories are still fresh enough that the current administration will not be able to trick the nation into supporting another stupid war, should they feel so inclined. No, we're going to be treated to some other lesson about why we should have respected science, facts, and truth. Vaccines doesn't seem a big enough issue, no. Probably will be Climate Change in the long run. In the short run, the idiotic wall on the Mexican border may well be started before bogging down in massive corruption and questions over its failure to stop illegal border crossings. Though there is the frightening possibility it could be war, even nuclear war. With such scary directions they might go, the more impotent the current administration is, the better. The wall is relatively tame. Let's hope that keeps them occupied thus preventing them from doing worse such as wrecking our public education system and bringing on an economic collapse by eliminating all the rules that strive to minimize cheating on Wall St.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @02:57PM
I have yet to hear a new quantum physicist use their scientific degrees to try and impose their will as somehow superior. You sure its not more about an insecurity complex from you or your family/friends?
(Score: 2, Troll) by VLM on Tuesday February 21 2017, @03:10PM
There's a rather famous quantum computing professor (well, normies have no idea who he is, but in the field he's well known) who gets like 10 blog comments per post on his real topic but occasionally social status signals by "bravely" supporting prog narratives usually political but occasionally white mans burden type stuff and he had a flare up about a week ago so he seems a natural topic. I don't know if he's involved in the march, but he would fit right in.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @03:16PM
That does not disprove my statement. So people can't run their personal blogs how they see fit? Just the mere fact of his profession makes him guilty? Your overuse of key phrases and vague epithets shows your real colors. Emotionally triggered on common topics laid out by media to make manipulation easy.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by VLM on Tuesday February 21 2017, @03:40PM
That does not disprove my statement.
Sorry I tried to respond to what I thought it meant as opposed to what was there. Sure, under your extremely specific criteria you're completely correct and I do apologize for not directly responding to the precise wording of your exact comment as it was written. I was... interpreting it, you know, like the constitution LOL. Certainly nothing personal. Turn about being fair play, I can understand the meaning of your off topic comments in response to that.
Back to your original statement:
I have yet to hear a new quantum physicist use their scientific degrees to try and impose their will as somehow superior.
Yes you are correct, the guy making the claim isn't a new quantum physicist at all, he's a washed up ex congressman turned anti-trump political activist. Whereas I was making fun of a a specific example of only one of three groups the washed up has been politician was specifically referencing:
To see ... older scientists ... speaking up for the idea of science.
That I only replied to 1/3 of the subject of his rabble of course in no way disproves any of the larger conclusions in my original post. Although by implication going extreme "sophistry police" in an irrelevant detail indicates my analysis was pretty strong if that was the lowest hanging fruit. Wasn't my finest hour but if that was the weakest part of my argument, it must overall be pretty strong.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday February 21 2017, @03:55PM
There's a rather famous quantum computing professor (well, normies have no idea who he is, but in the field he's well known) who gets like 10 blog comments per post on his real topic but occasionally social status signals by "bravely" supporting prog narratives usually political but occasionally white mans burden type stuff and he had a flare up about a week ago so he seems a natural topic.
Ah, thanks for explaining your first paragraph... I didn't see this before I submitted my previous post.
Though I still don't get it. Is this professor speaking about "prog narratives" using his official status as a quantum computing SCIENTIST? Or is he including some thoughts on his personal blog on issues other than his field?
If we criticize him, should we also criticize you, since you clearly reference your political opinions, as well as multiple fields and your opinions on them? Just wondering. Or do you get a "free pass" but a "professor" is never allowed to express personal opinions on topics outside his field... OUTSIDE the classroom, as on a personal blog? (FYI -- I'd completely agree with you about the inappropriateness of going into some detailed off-topic political discussion IN CLASS or if the guy was speaking at another event in his official capacity as a subject matter expert, but that doesn't seem to be what you're talking about.)
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 21 2017, @05:10PM
Is this professor speaking about "prog narratives" using his official status as a quantum computing SCIENTIST?
Well, yeah, that's kinda exactly the problem.
His blog is maybe 50% Feynman diagrams and bra ket notation and calculus and represents a strong effort at accurately presenting the most accurate and complete theory of quantum computing at the time, and scientific research being what it is, there's fits and starts and retractions but basically "generally accepted as best effort truth of the field at this time". It really is an excellent blog if you're into that field and in that field its well known. Intended or not, like it or not, its kind of in practice an edited journal of the field, professionally edited with professional commentary.
But... every year or two he descends from the best truth of an expert in the field to rather sophomoric and poorly written political rants. Much worse than standard SN fare. I mean, its pretty cringy stuff. Its dogmatic groupthink in academia which means its off the chart left wing in the real world, kinda out of touch with the general public. I mean... make 99 posts that would be fine as a letters to the editor of Nature, as if they could handle that publishing volume in that niche, and then feel the need in the very same feed to squirt out something that would be cringeworthy political rant even on a pseudonymous twitter account or on /r9k/ yet incredibly politically correct so its not even very brave of him. Perhaps its just to keep the campus activists off his back, "Hes a good German" like they would have said in the bad old days, and after his show of left wing loyalty to the local thugs, he can go back to real work.
Or do you get a "free pass"
LOL yeah I get a free pass on SN LOL LOL LOL.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday February 21 2017, @06:12PM
I guess I still don't see the issue here, but perhaps that's because I don't read this blog or know what you're talking about.
Still, from your description, I don't exactly see how this is at all confusing the identity of "science" in some sort of Orwellian fashion. The guy apparently has views on topics outside of his field. Sometimes he posts them on his personal blog. So? Does he claim that his views on immigration or whatever should be respected AS "SCIENCE"? I would sincerely doubt it. And if you don't like these posts, why not just stop reading them? Or argue with him if you want, or whatever. Or if it offends you so much to even see such posts, I guess unsubscribe to his feed or whatever?
As you yourself said in replying to my other post, there's a pretty clear and obvious dividing line between scientific research that appears to be legit vs. stuff that's overtly politically biased. It sounds like this guy has two very different things -- one is "science" and the other is just his personal rants or whatever. But your initial post in this thread was claiming that some sort of confusion ("doublethink") could result in misunderstanding what "science" is due to guys apparently like this one. I still don't get that.
I get that the guy posts some stuff you don't agree with and wish he wouldn't. But it's his own blog, so I don't see the problem. And you clearly seem to believe his actual research is interesting and free enough from whatever bias might theoretically leech over that you still respect it and want to read the research.
Lots of public figures use their personal platforms to allow them to comment on stuff outside of their fields. Heck, we see actors and other miscellaneous folks doing this all the time on Twitter. But until someone steps over the line and says something like "You must believe my views on immigration because I'm a scientist!" or "If someone doesn't agree with me on immigration, they must be a bad scientist!" or whatever (which would obviously be inappropriate and trying to exert overt bias WITHIN science), I really don't see the connection between rants on a personal blog and the definition of "science."
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday February 21 2017, @07:48PM
My interpretation of this "problem" about scientists talking outside their field:
The premise is that being a Scientists affords someone social status. Calling yourself a Scientist (or cargo culting the appearance of one, i.e. I'm not a doctor but I play one on TV) gives your opinions an authority based on your audience's love of Science. Therefore, Scientists shouldn't abuse their authority to influence opinions outside of their field.
If that is indeed the problem people have with this...well that's not a very big problem. It would only affect people who both like science and don't understand it. That's because anybody who understands science knows that validity comes from your evidence, not your authority.
You'll never be able to get people to stop proclaiming their opinions anyway. The best you can do is to make the gullible people to actually understand how science works. It shouldn't be hard, because the only gullible people you need to educate are the ones who already like science.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 21 2017, @09:10PM
By analogy the dude we're discussing has a PHD and its quite legit to call him "doctor".
Now if he parrots D party line politics while under cover of academic authority and achievement, well OK whatever.
Lets try an experiment and put the good doctor in a labcoat (I don't think theoretical physicists wear lab coats, but whatever) and give him a stethoscope and have him make a commercial for tobacco companies explaining how smoking is really healthy for people and he's a doctor so he should know.
I think people would rightly get wound up about that, as part of the reason we give people like that status and authority and titles of nobility (the degree granting system) and enormous amounts of taxpayer support is we trust them not to mislead us.
And with respect to quantum computing, the dude we're talking about does a hell of a great job upholding that moral and ethical deal. But when he starts pimping obsolete political views, or making misleading TV commercials about the health benefits of smoking, well, thats kinda breaking the deal.
AK, if I read him right, is promoting the idea that if the dude was just a random schlub on the internet it wouldn't matter. But he's not. He's a taxpayer supported, grant of nobility holding, authority figure representing "science". So that's a problem.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday February 21 2017, @09:13PM
Therefore, Scientists shouldn't abuse their authority to influence opinions outside of their field.
I wish someone would actually post a link to whatever blog is being discussed here, because it's kind of meaningless to discuss this all in the abstract.
But what I'm really confused about is why Scientists (now they get a capital 'S') should be held to any different standard for a personal blog, compared to any other profession. If a medical doctor had a personal blog and mostly pointed to interesting medical research he was reading that week, but then once in a while he went into a rant on immigration, I wouldn't assume that such judgments should given additional weight because he's a doctor, anymore than if he posted his favorite wines in his blog that we should assume his opinion is better "because he's a doctor" or if he posted a movie review of something he saw recently that we should give it greater weight "because he's a doctor."
Why should someone's opinions on politics be any more problematic on a personal blog than opinions on wine or movies or their favorite brand of dress shirts? NONE of that has to do with Science, so why are we so concerned about political opinions specifically?
If we're really talking about a personal blog here, I really don't get this AT ALL.
But, you're right that Scientists shouldn't "abuse their authority" -- that would happen if a Scientist in an official capacity made a statement. If the university CS department has a blog, and he posted a rant on immigration there, that might be construed as abusing authority. If he was hired to give a science lecture and included a rant on immigration, that might be construed as abusing authority. But if he expresses personal opinions on his blog or Facebook or in a private conversation at a bar, how exactly could he be abusing his authority as a Scientist?
From VLM's description, it sounds like this blog may be 95% hard science and 5% rant. In that case, I might agree that maybe it's a poor choice to mix the two, just because it seems to be going after different audiences. Perhaps he could set up some division and have two different blogs or whatever. But that's purely to make it easier to communicate with specific audiences, not because I find anything unethical about it.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 21 2017, @09:47PM
But if he expresses personal opinions on his blog or Facebook or in a private conversation at a bar, how exactly could he be abusing his authority as a Scientist?
Ah it took awhile but I think we're finally coming to a meeting of the minds. Or maybe you're gonna be really pissed off at me. Well whatever anyway:
Think late 80s, Joseph Campbell, "The Power of Myth"
That stuff isn't just for weird far away long ago civilizations. All civilizations have archetypes. Including ours.
Our culture has a science archetype. "The professor" from gilligans isle lets say. Or some steampunk stereotype. That hero archetype knows more than most, can predict the future (using scientific models mostly) always tells the trust, and is a little crazy poor monk-ish and in exchange we cut him some slack and trust him utterly on all technical questions and let him think further than most and let him explore some weird ideas and technologies. Thats what being a prof means in the western civilization. I'm sure its different during the Islamic caliphate or in ancient Greece, whatever.
So if the professor has some peculiar ideas about wrapping wires around coconuts to make a radio or whatever, as long as he stays in his comfortable mythos, well the profs gotta do what the profs gotta do and we can trust him implicitly. The problem is he loses trust when he goes on a way out of mythos inappropriate rant about political topics like moving the island to the gold standard instead of having a federal reserve or we need hiring quotas to get more women in science on Gilligans Island etc.
Maybe the lesson of the post-internet world is we all LARP and you can't archetype 24x7x365x"a lifetime". But you still gotta follow the rules reasonably well and just like a knight in shining armor playing with a cell phone is inappropriate, someone LARPing as an archetypal Prof is going to get pushback if he switches gears and slides right into conniving merchant mode or BS artist politician mode while still wearing his Gilligans Isle Professor Costume.
Its really bad to have conniving businessmen LARP as professors, thats how you get crappy TV commercials about fake doctors saying tobacco smoke is healthy. Or having slimy politicians LARP as professors results in the Challenger explosion where the slimey folks naturally wouldn't listen to the prof's advice about launching in the cold. I mean, they're not having their turf violated very much, so they need to stay out of other archetypes turf or there's gonna be sparks flying.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Tuesday February 21 2017, @10:00PM
Very good points except that last bit. Scientists have their turf invaded all the time! Journalists that report a preliminary study as near-fact, Corporations that pay for bullshit science, Politicians that cherry-pick or flat out lie, Politicians that shouldn't be in charge due to criminal lack of education, Layman that think there basic common sense is trustworthy, religious entities claiming basic proven science is just wrong. Pretty much everything since science is the study of the universe!
The sparks are already flying, Trump is making very unscientific decisions out of greed and partially out of his promises to bring jobs back to the US. The last one is admirable and does not require gutting the EPA or attacking all government institutions as "fake science" who are the "enemy of the people". This rhetoric of his is beyond messed up, its a level of unreality most people cannot comprehend, and no matter what profession you are in you should be standing up too. I was cautiously optimistic that Trump wouldn't do too much damage and might pull through on some of his promises, but that hope is quickly fading into sheer horror.
No I am not a butthurt Hillary supporter mad just because she lost (screw her), I am a mostly rational human being that sees Trump as the liar and conman he is, and I do not like that he is piling mud back into the swamp. The evidence is there for all to see, and it comes directly from the White House (and some tech company, so weird) so no crying about "fake news". So, is your "strong man" worth sacrificing the country and what few values we have left?
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 21 2017, @10:35PM
The meta point about the first paragraph is we're both pretty annoyed at those misbehaviors. Most people are. Thats fantastic. The only thing worse than that misbehavior would be if the culture just shrugged its shoulders and went "eh".
I'll toss out an archetype... journalist as court jester, some crackpot to laugh at while he does funny monologues. A lot of people go into journalism to "change the world" and a lot of people say journalists exist to inform. But when the rubber meets the road in a post-internet post-broadcast culture, journalists mostly exist as outsourced PR firms and humor.
As far as Trump I'd just chill. The thing about that old orange dude is he has spent decades acquiring property, figuring out whats wrong with it, and fixing it. I mean sure old people go nuts sometimes or they screw up occasionally but he has a good track record. I'd trust him.
WRT "gutting the EPA" dude... dude... wake me when the Cuyahoga River is on fire again LOL. What has he actually done in a concrete sense, not a mass media fake news fake urgency sense. I think he selected a boss who doesn't kiss leftist butt and sent some tweets. I'm just not seeing a problem.
So, is your "strong man" worth sacrificing the country and what few values we have left?
Sure, to the extent that the Cuyahoga River is currently on fire, to an equal level I'll sacrifice the country.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Tuesday February 21 2017, @11:12PM
I prefer my environment to NOT be on fire before I take steps to protect it thankyouverymuch.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 22 2017, @03:34AM
This will probably be lost in the noise since I'm late to this thread, but here goes:
> As far as Trump I'd just chill. The thing about that old orange dude is he has spent decades acquiring property, figuring out whats wrong with it, and fixing it. I mean sure old people go nuts sometimes or they screw up occasionally but he has a good track record. I'd trust him.
You need to look deeper, perhaps read a few chapters of "The Making of Donald Trump". Then you might realize that what Trump has done is very much like other large developers, many of whom have been tried and found guilty. Trump got other people to fix up his property, meanwhile figuring out how to hire cheap labor, work with the mob (through connected lawyers) to control construction unions, and in many cases not pay his suppliers. He's also avoided taxes for many years, lied to casino regulators and on and on. IMO, developers as a class are about as sleazy as it gets, using bully tactics to get their way at all costs.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday February 21 2017, @10:19PM
Our culture has a science archetype. "The professor" from gilligans isle lets say. Or some steampunk stereotype. That hero archetype knows more than most, can predict the future (using scientific models mostly) always tells the trust, and is a little crazy poor monk-ish and in exchange we cut him some slack and trust him utterly on all technical questions and let him think further than most and let him explore some weird ideas and technologies.
Sorry, but is the audience of Gilligan's Island reading this prof's blog on quantum computing? Or is this blog -- as I suspect -- mostly read by specialists who know better and clearly can see the difference between, "Oh, Jim posted on CS again -- interesting..." and "Oh, Jim's off on one of his barroom rants again." (I'm using "Jim" as a stand-in here because you still haven't revealed the blog you're talking about.) If the general public is at risk of encountering your mystical scientist figure pontificating on high, I guess MAYBE I could understand your point.
thats how you get crappy TV commercials about fake doctors saying tobacco smoke is healthy.
Yeah, see that's a completely different standard. In another recent post you said:
Lets try an experiment and put the good doctor in a labcoat (I don't think theoretical physicists wear lab coats, but whatever) and give him a stethoscope and have him make a commercial for tobacco companies explaining how smoking is really healthy for people and he's a doctor so he should know.
That's a good standard. Does your CS guy literally say stuff like, "You should believe in my views on immigration because I'm a scientist, so I should know"?? I explicitly asked this in a previous post. IF he's doing that, I'll happily join you in condemning him, because he is clearly misusing the word "science" and abusing his status a "scientist." Short of that, I'm not sure why anybody should give his views on immigration any more credence than they should on what wines are good or what movies he likes... and certainly not anybody in the audience of a personal blog that mostly posts on very technical stuff.
But let's step out of the mythos (and the shrouded figure/blog you apparently don't want to reveal to the rest of us) and talk about a real person, perhaps?
Neil deGrasse Tyson has made a lot of political commentary in the past year, including some Trump jokes. And then there's his radio show, with celebs, etc. There's a lot of crap said there about all sorts of topics, and Tyson frankly acts like a buffoon on many occasions. I don't endow any of the crap he says with a lot of significance "because he's a scientist," nor do I see him as some great "mouthpiece" for Science itself. He's just a dude, sometimes entertaining to listen to, sometimes (in my opinion) annoying. He happens to have credentials and knowledge about science, so when he speaks on an area of expertise (like astronomy), I might pay attention. On just about any other topic (even science areas outside of his field), I don't really care what he says. Why should we?
But at least with Tyson, you could at least make an argument that he SHOULD be a little careful what he says, because he's somewhat known as a "public figure" representing science in general. Maybe he's a little like your mythical Campbellian "Scientist" archetype. But unless your mystical CS prof is giving interviews on talk shows on science, I don't think anyone could reasonably conclude that he is representing "science" in any meaningful way to the general public. At best, he's apparently posting a bunch of technical stuff on his blog that only specialists are likely to read. And specialists (unlike the general public) are probably even better equipped to recognize that when a dude speaks out of his field, nobody has to listen to him.
Maybe the lesson of the post-internet world is we all LARP and you can't archetype 24x7x365x"a lifetime". But you still gotta follow the rules reasonably well and just like a knight in shining armor playing with a cell phone is inappropriate, someone LARPing as an archetypal Prof is going to get pushback if he switches gears and slides right into conniving merchant mode or BS artist politician mode while still wearing his Gilligans Isle Professor Costume.
I said before and I'll say it again -- if the blog is really like 95% hard science and 5% rants, I think segregating posts might be a good thing just to target different audiences more clearly. But if another mythical scientist has a personal blog with 25% hard science he found this week, 25% politics, 25% wine reviews, and 25% cat videos, it's just the dude's personal blog. Why should I care about his opinions on politics anymore than I care about his opinions on wine or the cutest cats?
Frankly, I think the Scientist archetype is complete BS and the faster we can get rid of it, the faster we can actually educate the public on what science really is. And I'm actually more concerned here about the suggestion here that people's free speech as private people should be curtailed because someone from the audience of Gilligan's Island might accidentally stumble on a hard science blog where they can't understand most of the posts, but for some bizarre reason will then conclude, "OH -- this guy has views on immigration! Honey, come quick -- look: a SCIENTIST has views on immigration! No, I don't understand a damn word of the rest of this stuff. But this post -- We should pay close attention; go get my notepad, so I can write down what I'm supposed to think from a SCIENTIST!"
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 21 2017, @10:45PM
Well, maybe we're just not destined to agree. But one last point is you're seeming to disagree with me about
nor do I see him as some great "mouthpiece" for Science itself. He's just a dude, sometimes entertaining to listen to
When the whole point of this article is some rabble rouser is trying to speak for all of science as one against Trump. Not some random bunch of people who happen to merely coincidentally be STEM grads or merely coincidentally happen to be employees of some university, but "all of science"
I'm kinda over using that prof's physics blog as an individual concrete example, when we're not agreeing on overall larger scale topics like what the mythos are in our culture.
I mean fundamentally we're never going to agree because I see "the scientist as archetype" right outta Campbell as being a great thing, a technological enabler, a step forward for division of labor. Isn't it cool to have a soothsayer who's always accurate and true? Yeah I'm sure on a personal level its quite annoying sometimes. That's the thing about myths the "winner" is often pretty screwed and almost like a well balanced RPG like DnD or pathfinder, every archetype has something that sucks.
And if you do downsize the archetype of the scientist, well, OK, and your plan going forward once its flushed for equal or better societal outcome is .... and you better not say the general public will just have to think harder and have better taste, because that ain't happening. Maybe you have an idea where things will be better without that archetype. I don't think so, but if you win, I sure hope you do!
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday February 21 2017, @11:40PM
Isn't it cool to have a soothsayer who's always accurate and true?
No. Because it places Scientists as Priests in a new religion. The scientific method is meant as a way to move beyond authoritarian belief systems, not reinforce them. And it is fundamentally antithetical to science to view ANYTHING as "always accurate and true." The danger of false beliefs in inerrancy are already making their marks in many fields -- people returning to voodoo "folk" medicine because medical science is revised over time and therefore "doctors aren't to be trusted," anti-vax folks, etc. Science CHANGES as new research is done -- it's foundational to the nature of the endeavor, and anyone who teaches that a Scientist is "always accurate and true" is not only anti-science, but will likely lead to more public distrust of science when scientists change their views as new research arrives.
And if you do downsize the archetype of the scientist, well, OK, and your plan going forward once its flushed for equal or better societal outcome is .... and you better not say the general public will just have to think harder and have better taste, because that ain't happening.
I'm not saying we should "flush" the idea of science as a valuable endeavor which is likely the best method humanity has so far uncovered to make progress. I'm saying creating a mythos around scientific figures and raising them up as the new "prophets" or even gods is a really bad idea. Science is done by flawed, real human beings. And they aren't always right -- for all sorts of reasons. And they are biased sometimes and they do let things influence them.
I agree with you that the general public is probably never going to quite get the details of science, but we can do better about giving them the sense of a more realistic portrayal of how science works and who scientists are -- so that they can not lose "faith" in science when they see conflicting preliminary studies come out. Or so they understand the difference between two preliminary studies that disagree in their findings vs. when there's 99% scientific consensus on a topic after rigorous evidence has been collected. We CAN do at least somewhat better about educating people on science. Part of my personal research is on the history of science, and I've learned a LOT about the realities of science by looking at historical controversies.
But we don't generally do that in science classes. We don't talk about how scientists are frequently wrong -- because they have incomplete data, or they aren't quite seeing the whole picture. If we did so, more people might become interested in science and realize they too can discover stuff about the world (even mundane stuff, not completely new discoveries for humanity). They might get a sense of how ideas evolve, how we can collectively work together to understand the world, rather than just being dictated facts from a science teacher/priest.
If we did so, we could literally show them why, for example, Aristotelean physics made so much sense to so many educated people for about 2000 years, and then why it was so hard when folks like Galileo came along for even educated scientists to be convinced by him. Instead, we create a completely false narrative (which itself is a construction of 19th-century historians) which places Galileo in the status of a demi-god, rising up like Perseus to combat the Pope and his minions and the ignorant Churchfolk, to rescue his new beloved "Science" from those monsters. And even though he loses the battle, he mutters "And yet it moves..." under his breath. The demi-god becomes martyr, offered as a sacrifice for our sins in not believing in the true Science. Utter BS for ALL sorts of reasons, but schoolkids learn it every year. On his Cosmos program, Neil deGrasse Tyson himself propagated a lot of myths from the history of science made up in the 19th century.
I'm not saying we can turn the general public into scientists. But keeping people ignorant and treating scientists as a substitute priesthood is just a bad idea and will backfire. Arguably, I think it already has. Americans are now probably more likely than they've been in the past few generations to view science as merely some sort of set of "competing views" like politics, rather than as an empiricism-driven enterprise that's always incomplete, always has some flaws, and sometimes takes detours before zeroing in on better and more accurate data. If the public has no clue of this process, but rather views Scientists as Priests dictating eternal truths, all of the conflicting studies they hear about now don't seem like a gradual quest toward a more complete picture, but instead merely a bunch of different opinions. Then, when a better, much more complete meta-study arrives and basically settles the question, the public still says, "Well.. maybe... but they were wrong before, so what makes 'em right this time?!"
If anything, THAT is a much better reason for more segregation of scientific views from other opinions from public figures or scientists, rather than just to maintain the mythical Scientist archetype. You may take that as an olive branch of agreement, I suppose, if you like. But I still would argue that we should insist on a better understanding for the general public of the separation of scientist speaking on science rather than other personal opinion... because that's pretty much essential to what I've just said in this post. In order to understand why Science is valuable, one needs to be able to understand how, for example, different assumptions about expertise should apply when a scientist speaks on his field vs. when he talks about politics. Political opinion is not subject to the rules of science, and rigorous scientific findings are not simply a "matter of opinion"; that's something we all need to teach people, not "sweep under the rug" by pretending that scientists can't actually have personal ideas or opinions.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday February 22 2017, @04:38AM
We agree that elevating Science to a perverted Priesthood is bad. The only difference is you refuse to see that is our current reality. You just described Moldbug's Cathedral far too accurately to have never thought about it, even if you have never encountered a word of his writing. Look again and see this time. Then read a few old books (it is the generally accepted initiation ritual) and your journey to the Dark Side will be complete.
One word of warning, the world you will see with the Red Pill is a lot crappier than the illusion of the Blue one and you won't get to fly around and fight bad guys like Neo either because this ain't a movie.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 22 2017, @03:06PM
We agree that elevating Science to a perverted Priesthood is bad.
And my rather optimistic point is if we can keep the priesthood of Ohms Law focused on Ohms Law and via the mannerbund or whatever strongly discourage them from anthropological meddling outside their areas of expertise, that's sorta kinda OK.
I see jmorris and I have read the same things with microscopically different conclusions and reasonings, turning any disagreement with jmorris into something like if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it... so regardless if the Cathedral is defanged or chemically tranquilized or a well trained puppy that doesn't show its teeth, or is replaced with a housecat, the end result of less dog bites is about the same although we could debate the exact solution method endlessly.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday February 22 2017, @03:43AM
Hmm, just a guess here but would your unnamed blogger be the one Moldbug^WBoldmug decloaked in the comments section of to administer a spanking to a few weeks (post is unclear as to exact date of first post but probably Jan 25) ago?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 22 2017, @03:15PM
We travel in the same circles, as you know. Probably lots of names we both know.
I didn't want to derail by turning the prof's relatively typical behavior into a referendum on that prof individually. That's an inevitable sophistry technique, that just doesn't matter to the larger debate.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday February 21 2017, @03:42PM
The main problem is doublethink about the meaning of "science"
You seem to identify 3 main problems. Let's consider them in turn.
[1] There's a lot of really butt hurt people defining science as being anything they say from their academic pulpit, so you end up with quantum computer scientists babbling about immigration law
Huh. Can you provide any citations of where this is happening, first of all? Actually, even if it is, could you provide ANY proof that ANYONE is calling this "science"? Sure, there are plenty of academics over the years -- mostly humanities folks -- who have aspired to become "public intellectuals," but I don't recall seeing CS people invited onto CNN to discuss immigration law. (Other that perhaps if new laws could directly impact people who work in their lab or something, I suppose -- in which case I think they have a personal stake in pointing out problems that affect them personally.) And even if somebody like Noam Chomsky pontificates on foreign policy, I don't think anyone actually calls his statements "linguistics," which is his actual field of expertise. So why would anyone call a CS expert's statements on immigration "science"? This makes NO sense.
[2] Another fun doublethink definition is science is the feudalistic authoritarian academic system where everyone makes sure everyone else is loyal to the philosopher king tenured professors at the top while simultaneously aspiring to topple them and replace them with themselves. That whole corrupt pile of dung needs flushing. Trillion dollars of student loans, everyone has to go to college because high school was dumbed down
Ok, first, I'll agree with you on the last point -- yes, we're encouraging too many people to go to college these days, and yes, we could improve our primary and secondary schools. But, setting aside your mixture of a bunch of different metaphors (e.g., "feudalism" generally doesn't make much sense with "philosopher kings"), you also have some non sequiturs, like the "trillion dollars of student loans." What does this have to do with professors? Seriously -- look at university budgets and studies on them. Universities are spending huge amounts on administration and infrastructure (new buildings to participate in the "arms race" of campus life). In many universities, the actual NUMBER of tenured faculty hasn't increased in decades, even as student bodies, administration, and other staff have grown significantly. Instead, they're hiring more and more adjuncts, because they're cheap and can be abused. And, particularly within your chosen STEM fields, tenured faculty at research universities very frequently pay for their own salaries a few times over in grant money they bring in.
That's NOT to say there aren't problems with academia. Certainly there are. But tenure is actually intended to isolate faculty a bit precisely from concerns you mention. Like, in your first point, you said:
A side dish is entire fields can go stupid when politics overrides science. Look how dumb soviet genetics got when the results were only permitted to fit marxist theory in the 30s.
I can see cases for reform in academia and within the tenure system. But if you remove tenure completely, you make everyone even more beholden to "fitting in" with the prevailing theories in order to keep their jobs. And when those theories are driven by external politics, as you rightly point out, bad things can happen.
[3] There's also the doublethink definition where science is merely a prop in political propaganda. [...] You see this a lot with environmental issues, also occasionally evolutionary biology issues.
Ah yes, we've finally got to the rantings of the climate change denier. Yes, let's all just admit it: AGW must be a vast conspiracy to ruin capitalism. I'm not going to even bother responding to that nonsense, because I just did last night here [soylentnews.org]. The conspiracy theory makes no sense, and it vastly overstates the ability of PhDs in academia, government-run labs, independent research organizations, etc. to coordinate for some purported "Leftist" agenda. As for "evolutionary biology issues," I really don't even WANT to know where you're going with that... creation "science"??
AFAIK nobody in the Trump administration or the alt right in general or even the actual 1488 types is in any way in opposition to "science" as long as its conducted outside the three paragraphs of corruption described above.
Okay, let's take your perspective seriously for a second. We get rid of academic scientists. We get rid of scientists who ever do an analysis that might have policy implications we don't like. And we get rid of any scientist who might speak up on a political issue that directly impacts them but might not tow the "party line" (like a CS guy who is concerned about his lab workers and their ability to travel freely... I guess; otherwise, I can't make any sense of your first paragraph).
I think I see what we end up with. The only "scientists" left by this definition are government scientists (since we threw out academia) or corporate scientists (who are known at times to skew presentations of research findings to favor their employers) who are selectively promoted or fired based on their ability to be loyal, sycophantic "yes men." Okay, sure, now I can see why "AFAIK nobody in the Trump administration ... is in any way in opposition to 'science' as long as it is conducted outside the three paragraphs." Your argument now makes perfect sense.
By the way, you forgot your QED at the end.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 21 2017, @04:43PM
That was a pretty well written response. I enjoy good natured debate with you. No sarc.
The first topic from a sophistry standpoint was a major strategic error, in that I know "probably the leading mind in quantum computer science at this time" is probably not a public consumption blog but I figured I wasn't the only reader on SN. So assuming "you guys" read all his papers and blog posts like I do was a sophistry error on my part. Rephrased there is a common game play where a scientist takes something in their field, slaps a typically rather juvenile political conclusion on the end, and hides behind any criticism of the political conclusion using science as the shield. So CFD simulation of atmosphere this, radiocarbon dating that, therefore workers of the world unite you have nothing to lose but your chains, and anyone disagreeing with the usually idiotic political conclusion is a denier who hates all of science and doesn't believe in calculus and pretty much anything except defending the political conclusion itself. It is unprofessional conduct, like a PE stamping a civil engineering bridge project with his seal and a rant about white privilege, or a boiler engineer stamping a boiler design with "workers of the world unite" and answering any criticism of the Political sloganeering as a Hookes Law denier of metallurgical Science. Its weak and tiresome and unprofessional conduct.
The second topic is seeing politically active scientists and academia as one. Academia in 2010s is ... obsolete and needs replacement, and a lack of spring cleaning of the system results in ridiculous inefficiencies and obsolete groupthink behaviors. Its kind of like how businesses see occasional recessions as a good thing, wipe out the bad ideas. Or how all political organizations eventually fail and thats good because the only thing worse than replacing an org is being stuck with a stifling out of date org. Academia (connected to politically active science) is misbehaving and not wise to defer to authority to, because its obsolescent and out of date today. They may not be self aware of it, but a bunch of liberal academics marching against trump is support for trump among the other 99.9% of the population. This kind of thing happened a lot during the election, every time a SJW screamed or cried on camera about Trump, his poll numbers went up, which makes one wonder who's really supporting who. I'm just saying someone politically "woke" trying to get rid of Trump would tell these people to hide from the cameras not plan a march. Yet, "failing academia" being failing and counterproductive, is it really surprising that internal forces are pushing them to do something that helps their enemy? Not really.
We get rid of academic scientists.
LOL Naw. I mean academia isn't healthy in late 2010s. And some of the participants are questionable. But there's nothing inherently wrong with a ... monastic existence of poverty and research.
We get rid of scientists who ever do an analysis that might have policy implications we don't like.
Naw they're fine. Actually they're more than fine, they're important for good governance.
And we get rid of any scientist who might speak up on a political issue that directly impacts them but might not tow the "party line"
This is getting close to the downsizing line. I mean ... Chomsky. OK. You hire him to do political science commentary on international relations and related political topics, OK you're totally getting your moneys worth, I think thats just great. You hire Chomsky on the theory that hes mostly continuing his PHD linguistics work, well, thats skirting financial mismanagement. Just transfer him from Linguistics budget to Poli Sci and I see no problem. Or related to the article, you hire an EE prof to do EE stuff and instead all he talks about is political organizing, well, thats not really on his job description and having state funding of one political parties employees is legally questionable and theres EE out there who want that slot to do actual EE work not political party organizing. Some of that is pretty borderline...
The only "scientists" left by this definition are ...
The ones that have temper tantrums where any disagreement with the political component of their work (which is somewhat inappropriate to begin with) is exclusively responded to by attacks based on the science side of the work. Their only response to a political conclusion of "therefore we must replace capitalism with global plantation style socialism with all wealth concentrated at the top to prevent environment consequences of consumption" is "he's a trigonometric identity denier" "That heretic doesn't believe in Rolle's theorem of Calculus" "He denies the atomic theory of matter"
They are your example of "loyal, sycophantic "yes men."" but to weird left wing groupthink, not your examples of corporate thought or political thought to the right of Marx.
I admit that probably 99% of climate deniers are hard core trolling. "OK bro your science has all these ridiculous left wing conclusions, and we know left wing stuff is wrong, out of date, and obsolete, so logically that means your science must also be all wrong" and they laugh when the scientist guys head explodes. It is pretty funny trolling people who refuse to separate science from politics.
By a live example of "AFAIK nobody in the Trump administration ... is in any way in opposition to 'science' as long as it is conducted outside the three paragraphs." we've been discussing political activists who kind of moonlight as scientists for awhile. Lets look at actual science, not political activism masquerading as science and see what Trump opposes:
https://arxiv.org/list/cs/new [arxiv.org]
OK an interesting paper on modeling multi-order graphs. Thats kinda cool. Bet it could be applied to an internet routing protocol or mesh networking. Interesting. I like this paper. However it seems to be missing its quota of Marxism.
OK a rather mysterious image analysis paper on algos to analyze cervical cell cytoplasm WRT automated cancer screening. I like a good applied engineering challenge. Really lacking in Gloria Steinem quotes.
OK FaaS Function as a Service trying to more or less automatically transform java code into AWS Lambda code. Essentially a really cool crosscompiler. Huh. Thats a creative paper! I like creative papers! I don't see using this, ever, but for sheer creativity I think its interesting. But its missing "Workers of the world unite" as a tagline.
I could keep going but there is a distinct and fairly easy to detect difference between professionally done science by people having personal political beliefs and professionally done political propaganda done by people hiding behind a personal STEM degree.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday February 21 2017, @05:53PM
That was a pretty well written response. I enjoy good natured debate with you. No sarc.
Thanks. And I'll counter by saying that I appreciate what you wrote in response, which makes a bit more sense to me and adds context. I'd even agree with more of it (though of course certainly not all).
For example, I agree with you that there are lots of problems in academia (and admitted that in my original response). On the other hand, I think your post overestimates the political influence among STEM academics. I brought up Chomsky because I think he's a clear example of the sort of thing I assume you're talking about, but he's not a scientist. (And frankly, I'm not a big fan of his linguistics stuff either.) But if you start looking at science and engineering faculty, you'll find a lot more diversity in political views than among humanities profs (on average). Still, I'm not going to deny that there's generally a liberal slant, but if STEM folks are pushing agendas, I think it's usually about their own ideas and research -- they want to get attention for their findings, and that sometimes can blind them. But their pet theories on string theory or knot theory (in math, couldn't resist) or, I don't know... mechanical or chemical engineering designs aren't necessarily likely to be driven by Marxism or whatever liberal ideology you fear.
Lets look at actual science, not political activism masquerading as science and see what Trump opposes:
Yes, I take your point that a lot of scientific research seems to have little political connection mixed in. Which is the point I was just making in the preceding paragraph. And that's why I reacted so harshly to your initial post which seemed to lump together all of academia as if its scientific output was an example of "doublethink." Whatever the criticisms of the tenure system or other elements of academia, the vast majority of stuff coming out of it still doesn't fit your initial narrative. But you've clarified that, so let's move on.
I could keep going but there is a distinct and fairly easy to detect difference between professionally done science by people having personal political beliefs and professionally done political propaganda done by people hiding behind a personal STEM degree.
First off, I agree with this in general. My problem comes up because there are certain areas of science that appear to come into conflict with Trump's policy proposals -- and those are the ones that are going to likely be branded with whatever Trump's new moniker is going to be for the equivalent of "fake news" in science... "fake research"? Is that a phrase? Of course I doubt Trump is going to care much about multi-order graphs or cancer screening papers or other examples you gave... UNLESS they end up coming in conflict with a policy proposal. What if the cancer screening is related to abortion or to not receiving vaccines or whatever the political topic of the day is? In that case, I have little confidence in the Trump administration staying out of it, even if the researchers in question have no political agenda.
And of course the elephant in the room here is climate science. It is concerning when the new guy heading the EPA is a guy who publicly fought the EPA on numerous occasions and has received major donations from the industries he is now supposed to regulate. These are major conflicts of interest that have little to do with science. So even if you want to criticize the "climate science consensus" because you think it displays political bias or whatever, matters are likely not helped by bringing in someone else who has major conflicts of interest in this area. So no, I don't have confidence in the Trump administration in cases like this -- and it has little to do directly with their stance on science: it has to do with the potential for corruption when you put someone in charge who has major conflicts of interest. But yes, I do think that such conflicts of interest COULD impact the way researchers and scientists are pushed; it obviously does in many big businesses when DuPont puts out studies showing their chemicals are "safe" (without extensive testing) or Big Pharma puts out drug studies or whatever. Even if I believed that climate change was a giant hoax, I STILL wouldn't want Big Oil dictating U.S. environmental policy for all sorts of reasons.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 21 2017, @09:03PM
There is an interesting side issue that there is no China environment and no USA environment there's just one environment, and that muddies the waters such that if a local conflict of interest dude is none the less an arbitrary 100x stricter than China compared to the Obama dude who was 1000x stricter, it doesn't really matter in the big picture. Other than maybe we're getting a higher quality of life / better economy with the guy who's only 99% clean than the guy who was 99.9% clean, while something that isn't changing is virtually all our pollution comes from China regardless under either policy, we're just a wealthier nation with one option.
Much as it can be interesting to express global warming in terms of "miles toward the equator" or "miles per hour toward the equator" it would be interesting to specify a year. Yeah I don't think anyone is proposing a pre- '70 environmental policy. So we're talking about rolling back environmental protection from 2010s era to the filthy 90s or what? I mean, no one is proposing pollution the Mississippi river until it catches fire, or polluting the air until LA tomorrow is as bad as Beijing today. That can be an extremely hard political sell that its a crisis to roll all the way back to the 90s, perhaps, which weren't that bad really.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday February 21 2017, @09:31PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 21 2017, @10:56PM
See that's exactly the kind of distractor I wanted to avoid, that turning it into a debate about the Canadian You Know Who people who claimed You Know What and all kinds of opinions on that topic isn't going to help keep the main line of the conversation on track.
But yeah, yeah. He posts really good physics mixed with WTF politics. I remember a couple years back his weird WTF post about women and feminism happened like he got drunk and shitposted worst than I've ever shitpost in my entire life, and everything blew the hell up for that guy for days. Or his recent "now we're all Iranians" which means he implies I'm tossing my gay coworkers off the roof of my building to kill them while simultaneously oppressing all the women in my family while plotting the nuclear annihilation of Israel because after all that's what Iranians do. How can a guy that smart, be so stupid in another context? Like the dumbest thing I ever did in ... woodworking lets say, was never as dumb as this physicist talking politics. Ugh.
He really is an excellent physicist worth the time to read. His political commentary... not so good.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday February 22 2017, @03:37AM
THANK YOU. Now I finally understand what VLM was talking about all this time. I've actually visited Aaronson's blog before, but it's been a couple years... and I'd forgotten about it. (It's not my main field.)
Anyhow, I really don't know what was so hard about identifying this. It's actually more casual in tone than what I was envisioning from VLM's description, so even after looking at it, I still don't get the controversy.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday February 22 2017, @03:29PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @05:45PM
There is that guy who was in charge of the Higgs boson project at CERN who thinks we need to take string theory as true on faith, just because they came up with a theory even vaguer than the god one:
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/ [columbia.edu]
(Score: 2, Disagree) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday February 21 2017, @05:21PM
So what you're saying is that actual scientists shouldn't have political opinions.
Unless they agree with yours, of course....
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @09:42PM
Unless they agree with [your opinions]
Yeah. He's got Marxism and the Soviet system all jumbled up.
By the 1930s, the Soviets had long-since abandoned worker empowerment (the core of Marxism).
Bt then, the Soviet leadership had adopted a Totalitarian governmental system and, starting in 1921, [google.com] had gone to a State Capitalism economic form.
They would still pay lip service to Marx, but their top-down system shit on his ideas daily.
...and when Lenin died in 1924 and Stalin took over, the Totalitarian thing went full-bore.
how dumb soviet genetics got
Marxism and Lysenkoism had zero overlap.
Again, the same holds true for Stalinism and Marxism.
As DeathMonkey has noted, VLM is making up shit to fit his agenda.
like the pigs in the book animal farm
There was a reason that Orwell chose the name Napoleon for one of the pigs (Totalitarianism).
Meanwhile, where actual Socialism is being practiced, thing are going swimmingly.
At Mondragon, the Worker-Owners hire (and fire) the managers--not the other way around.
If the Worker-Owners can't find someone within their own ranks with sufficient chops to fill the position, they hire-in someone.
The ratio of highest wage-to-lowest wage there is less than 10:1.
...and, to repeat myself once again, every Worker-Owner gets a vote and all votes are equal.
...and if you're not a Worker-Owner, you don't get a vote.
It's called Socialism AKA Democracy in the Workplace (since 1956 at Mondragon).[1]
...and, at the thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of worker-owned cooperatives in Emilia-Romagna, they have the same deal (since 1985).
[1] Marx's notion of DEMOCRACY EVERYWHERE has yet to be achieved at a national level, but it's coming along quite nicely in the region of Emilia-Romagna in northern Italy, where about a third of their economy is due to co-ops.
What VLM knows about Marxism would fit in a thimble with room left over.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 22 2017, @05:19AM
I am really interested in this idea and how it works in theory, day-to-day, etc. It is so simple of an inversion it may work. Is there a more general term for this, a book, essay, documentary, or anything else about it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 22 2017, @10:32AM
Worker-Owned Cooperative [google.com]
Democracy in the Workplace [google.com]
Democracy at Work [google.com]
Worker Self-Directed Enterprise [google.com]
I'm pretty sure Prof. Wolff originated that last term.
I have to go down to item #6 to see his hit, however.
He has a weekly hour-long broadcast on a bunch of Pacifica Radio affiliates where he talks about Comparative Economics (Socialism vs Capitalism).
He has a webcast of that as well. Economic Update [rdwolff.com]
A polymath who has spoken often on cooperatives is Gar Alperovitz. [google.com]
The Italians got their thing started in 1985 with the Marcora Law. [google.com]
The Wikipedia article is a pretty good quick once-over on Mondragon. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [wikipedia.org]
Step 1 is disregarding all you know about top-down operations and starting to think bottom-up.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @06:10PM
Quantum computing researchers are likely to have more personal experience* with immigration than the current crew of WASPs in the White House. Where does Trump get his expertise on immigration policy? Breitbart News and Steve Bannon? AFAIK, there were no good arguments for the recent Executive Order on immigration. It was a mean-spirited and/or incompetent directive that scientists, tech companies, universities, hospitals, (the whole knowledge economy) and the courts recognized as such. You may not know this, but top scientists are in general pretty smart and worth listening to. Of course, Rush Holt may not be among them.
*Many grad students and post-docs are foreign and have to deal with immigration to work in the US.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday February 21 2017, @07:28PM
So you are leaving the true definition of science alone: the pursuit of knowledge through observation and evidence, with the goal of constructing a body of knowledge that makes useful concrete predictions. But while I can put those words in your mouth, that doesn't mean you or anybody else in the alt right thought of them.
Trump represents a part of society that is fundamentally opposed to smart people. They are naturally skeptical of everything, not because of specific qualms about academia (although these problems you describe only push more people into this skepticism), but because they trust people, not ideas. Scientists come off as self-interested know-it-alls an awful lot of the time. Meanwhile, those with interest in swaying public opinion can adopt all the appearance of science to support a specific position, such as "my drug will help you" or "cigarettes are perfectly safe".
Ultimately it has nothing to do with the actual scientists or the science. It has to do with the messenger. And as is becoming increasingly apparent, Trump doesn't distrust all the messengers. He only trusts the crazy ones (but not the bland corporate ones or the social crusade ones).
Finding messengers worthy of trust is about as hard as finding root CAs worthy of trust. If you want your security done right, you have to examine for yourself the evidence that all of the devices you rely upon are secure down to the hardware level. Since that is impossible, you need to set up the incentives for everybody you are working with to align with your goals. Since that is tricky and hard, you trust that somebody smarter than you has set up those incentives correctly until proven otherwise. We occasionally have to stop trusting certain CAs because they have proven themselves unworthy of trust. That sort of works, because SSL is a relatively confined domain and there is an enormous multitude of providers. But it doesn't work for public policy, which literally defines everything about our society and about which fewer and fewer news organizations are capable of covering.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fritsd on Tuesday February 21 2017, @07:33PM
In his essay on "Ur-Fascism", Umberto Eco wrote:
which, to me, spells out that science can be depicted as an occupation for "the weak", whereas "the strong" already know all what they have to know,
except maybe for a good quality shoe polish to wipe the blood from their military boots.
I can't give a good link for the essay, however if you google "new york review of books" "Umberto Eco" "Ur-fascism" you'll probably stumble over it somewhere on the Internet.
I couldn't find it anymore at the original new york review of books website.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 21 2017, @10:22PM
Yeah I've read that too. I'm reminded of the old saying about generals and admirals preparing for the last war. I'm not sure its relevant anymore in the current year although aspects are interesting.
#2 is weird in 2010s with the embrace of identity politics by the left. Anti-white and anti-western civilization and anti-capitalism and anti-science (other than climate change and a few others) as a goal that is seen as its own reward in itself. In that way the only way for enlightenment and age of reason to continue is as a component of the right, like it or not, however poorly it fits. The left is going to turn Europe into a Caliphate and the USA into a white-free South America, and neither the Aztecs nor the Caliphate could pull off The Enlightenment or the industrial revolution or any number of western civ achievements. Like it or not, fans of those ideas can ally with the right or wait for the left to finish annihilating them. The whites in Zimbabwe are gone, going in south africa and Sweden and France. Germany soon enough. The left doesn't seem to understand the "goose that laid the golden egg" concept of once western civilization is finally annihilated, leftist values are doomed in the subsequent anarchy. Neither Saudi Arabia nor Somali are great places to be gay or women or trans, for example. Looking at all the raping in Sweden that's not a very nice place to be a woman anymore either. Well, they'll be a lot more of it unless they revolt, which they don't seem capable of.
#3 relates to the invention of the "nerd" by hollywood in the 1970s, professional sports culture in the TV era, the welfare state, to a lesser extent immigration policy to keep out higher IQ people while importing unlimited numbers of laborers, all of which happened with the left in charge not the right as would seem to be implied. The frequent expressions section misses the rise of the meme on the right and mass media sloganeering against anything to the right (every politician who isn't far left is literally Hitler for as long as I've been alive, so maybe he did nothing wrong, which is probably not the intended message of calling 50% of all politicians "Hitler")
#4 is now completely a left wing political correctness thing. There is no such thing as academic political speech freedom for anyone on the right. One party one rule one doctrine and that is far left ... That isn't even starting to change, not now, so far. We'll see how that survives the student loan collapse.
Eco may or may not have gotten into some Overton window commentary. Surely any engineer can see that a window that only exclusively and eternally moves far left will reach culturally unsurvivable levels of degeneracy eventually... extremes are never survivable, yet threatening to slow the move left, or worse, results in Soros funded riots in the streets. So given a claimed binary choice of intentional methodical self destruction of western culture or let others kill it in the streets and rural areas hurry up and die... Some will chose a third option, fight.
The main mistake I see on the left is Weimar Germany can't last forever, it has a certain baked into the cake next chapter. The left needs a better large scale plan than "we hate white people and their culture, and the more degeneracy unwillingly shoved into their culture the better" or the next chapter seems predictable. I mean its hard to feign surprise.
There are interesting analogies to the current world order and the fall of the Roman Empire. Eventually a couple guys have all the money while the general population sees the civilization has having nothing good for them, only bad for them, at which point its every man for himself...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @07:41PM
In your comment:
I think you meant "lysenkoism" [wikipedia.org] there. I'm only giving the wiki link because there might be others who read your interesting comment, but didn't got the reference.
Good point.