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James Watson: Scientist loses titles after claims over race
Nobel Prize-winning American scientist James Watson has been stripped of his honorary titles after repeating comments about race and intelligence.
In a TV programme, the pioneer in DNA studies made a reference to a view that genes cause a difference on average between blacks and whites on IQ tests. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory said the 90-year-old scientist's remarks were "unsubstantiated and reckless". Dr Watson had made similar claims in 2007 and subsequently apologised.
He shared the Nobel in 1962 with Maurice Wilkins and Francis Crick for their 1953 discovery of the DNA's double helix structure.
Dr Watson sold his gold medal in 2014, saying he had been ostracised by the scientific community after his remarks about race. He is currently in a nursing home recovering from a car accident and is said to have "very minimal" awareness of his surroundings.
Previously: Disgraced Scientist is Selling his Nobel Prize
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @01:22AM (12 children)
Socialist programs such as food stamps will help. Something like a UBI would be wonderful, because that could address the financial stress of the whole family (factors beyond nutrition). We must also replace lead pipes that may leech into potable water lines.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Sulla on Monday January 14 2019, @05:18AM (11 children)
We have talked about this on soylent several times recently with results from different countries. The Norway and Denmark trials both found that it reduced peoples desire to seek out work, instead deciding to make due with what they have. There were studies done by universities in the States in the 70s and 80s that showed the same thing. A problem our society already has is people being able to vote for their own wages, additional forms of welfare are not going to help. Bread and circus' are good for keeping people fat and happy, but they do little so soothe the soul or advance the species. There are some among us (I imagine the vast majority of soylentels) who would see the UBI as a great extra bit of money and keep working and providing for continued society, but I presume we also tend to be smarter than the average person.
I am all for short term safety nets, but I am not going to pay for someone to do nothing when they are perfectly able to do something. WIC is nice for helping families out and helping with good child development and nutrition, food stamps are nice for making sure someone doesn't starve between jobs, unemployment insurance is good for making sure a family doesn't lose their house because they lost their jobs, but only for short periods of time.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Kell on Monday January 14 2019, @05:51AM (6 children)
I don't see UBI as a panacea for getting people into work. I rather see it as a solution to future social strife caused by automation. Consider this: as companies replace workers with automation, the costs of goods will decline, but so too will workers' ability to pay for them. The low cost of goods is meaningless if you have no money at all. This is further exacerbated when real estate cartel behaviour locks low-earners out of owning property. If your workers cannot gain employment because they are incapable of being retrained (either from being too poor or too old), then that person is basically cut out of the market for labour and thus have no way to support themselves. They cannot afford land, and thus cannot even subsistence farm. Desperate unemployed people - especially young ones - are a perfect formula for social strife.
The wealthy have their needs met by automated services and high-income technical professionals who can still demand a livable wage; they have no need or motivation to share the massive productivity of automated factories with people outside of the economic system. As a society, we have a choice: we can either share our productivity with people who cannot (and who maybe never will) contribute economically, or else let them starve/riot/etc until they die out. Just as with people too sick or injured to work, we use tax money to provide welfare to give them a means to live. A form of governmental charity. So too, when automation eventually renders people unable to work we will be obliged to provide for them. Hand-wringing moralising how "if we don't make them work, they'll be lazy" is puritan nonsense that only values someone because of their utility. We should help people not because they 'earned it', but because to do otherwise is monstrous. Otherwise, we are tacitly accepting that their own humanity is by itself no merit to live.
So, to me UBI is more about providing a means for non-wealthy people to be supported and have a fraction of the industrial output of society. An alternative approach, if you prefer, is to require that some minimum fraction of all corporations be publically owned and that fraction of productivity or dividends be used to support the population. There is no argument I can think of that can justify why, in an age of almost limitless production capacity, only a handful of humans should benefit at the expense of the rest of mankind.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Monday January 14 2019, @06:42AM (3 children)
Who automation thing is pretty terrible. In around a decade some 30 million truck drivers are going to need new jobs.
Me I'm trying to buy land so at least my kids can be dirt farmers.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday January 14 2019, @07:13AM (2 children)
"Fucking you, got mine" at the wannabe stage.
Good luck, eminent domain laws are there to make sure those who can pay more for that patch of dirt will get it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Oakenshield on Monday January 14 2019, @03:26PM
The way I see it, OP is allocating his resources based upon long term needs as opposed to short term gain. Your vitriol is unwarranted. Would you be happier if he had said, "fuck the future, I'm buying a new iPhone" instead?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @04:04PM
I always felt that using eminent domain for private sector things was a HUGE mistake. That precedent should have never been made.
I understand that the government must sometimes have a specific plot of land for a public works projects (discontinuities in roads are not great), but unless the land will become public, eminent domain should not be allowed to be invoked.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @11:43PM (1 child)
What is the way out of a UBI if it doesn't work as advertised. As is the fate of so many good intentioned programs?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 15 2019, @02:08AM
Are you suggesting that if people are given free money they will adjust their lifestyle to the lowest income bracket and never search for work or have a job and be on holiday for the rest of their lives just sitting at home watching Netflix or camping forever?
Nooooooooo
say it ain't so
surely humanity is better than that
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Monday January 14 2019, @09:04AM (3 children)
That sounds suspiciously like code for "people will only put up with so much shit unless they have no choice.
Let's face it, hold a gun to someone's head and many will clean the bathroom floor with their tongue. If instead you offer them an extra serving of ice cream after dinner they'll tell you to fuck off.
That doesn't make holding them at gunpoint the better option for society.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @03:36PM (2 children)
Instead you would rather hold someone else at gunpoint to take their money and pay for that "free lunch". Why should I be obligated to support someone who refuses to make any effort to support himself?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @08:15PM
Seeing as how those same people would have no qualms about using those guns to prevent me growing my own food and building my own shelter the "wrong" way, yes, I have no problem taking some of their extra money to support others. And at this point in time, I'd be one of those whose money they'd be taking to support UBI.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday January 16 2019, @11:32PM
While talking about the government holding you at gunpoint, consider that the poor, once they become a large enough group, may well commit a somewhat chaotic armed rebellion, and the results of that will likely be as unpredictable as the outcomes of other revolutions, such as the Russian revolution now and the French revolution earlier. You may be one of many to die instead of merely having a predictable amount of takes taken away.