An Existential Threat to Doing Good Science

https://www.commonsense.news/p/an-existential-threat-to-doing-good

by curmudgeon22 • 4 years ago

97 95 4 years ago

NeverFade7• 4 years ago

We have a lazy tendency to judge complex phenomena by superficial external features. It's a mental shortcut.

The word "tyranny" evokes images of mid 20th century fascist soldiers marching through streets, in shiny black leather boots. Tyranny is seen as instigated by the known set of motivations that were in play at that specific time and place: hate, racist bigotry, intolerance, a sense of superiority.

We then fail to identify tyranny, even when it's the same phenomenon at its core, because superficially it looks different. It looks the opposite: where the fascist tyranny was instigated by racism, this apparently new and different phenomena is motivated by an extremely strong reaction to racism.

We fail to acknowledge that sometimes the reaction can be just as bad, and lead to the same pathology, as the problem that initially provoked it.

We ended up in a very similar position of hatred, intolerance, and sense of superiority. We just fail to realize it, because the flag-bearers of this new form of tyranny are entirely convinced they are "the good guys", and are only correcting the faults of the "bad guys": the fascists and bigots of yore.

Come to think of it: the fascists ideologues were probably certain of being "the good guys", themselves.

causi• 4 years ago

where the fascist tyranny was instigated by racism

When has that happened, though? It's more often the opposite. Hitler magnified racism as a tool to gather power. Racism against African-descended people grew out of the institution of slavery, not the other way around.

Come to think of it: the fascists ideologues were probably certain of being "the good guys", themselves.

One of the most tragic facets of human psychology is that being abused a particular way makes you more likely to abuse others in that same way, not less likely.

endominus• 4 years ago

If I may quote Orwell, who opined at length on the tendency of his countrymen towards authoritarianism in support of 'good' causes, "But how much of the present slide towards Fascist ways of thought is traceable to the ‘anti-Fascism’ of the past ten years and the unscrupulousness it has entailed?"

And in the words of Aldous Huxley, "The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats."

Of course, C.S. Lewis also had a good line on the matter; "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

NeverFade7• 4 years ago

The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.

This is exactly where this current tyranny is coming from:

The radical leftists who promote it are thereby granted the license to abuse all who oppose them, since those "reactionaries" must be bigots, racist, sexist, transphobes, homophobes - in short: evil people who deserve the abuse of good people like themselves.

Dissidents who reject this new tyranny aren't respected fellow citizens who hold differing opinions: they are evil people who must be silenced. If this trend is allowed to proceed to its logical conclusion, the dissidents will be silenced permanently, by eradication.

To be able to destroy with good conscience

Like those ignorant young students, barging into complex discussions they often fail to understand, to shut them down. To shut down thought, invention, investigation, and discussion. And to do all that primarily in the very academic institutions dedicated to promoting these projects.

to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation'

A succinct description of cancel culture, the radical left's mob justice that has become normalized.

nonrandomstring• 4 years ago

C.S. Lewis also had a good line on the matter; "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.

Which reminds me of this gem by Alexis De Tocqueville from "Democracy in America";

        "" That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and
        mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like
        that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood;
        but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual
        childhood: it is well content that the people should
        rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For
        their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it
        chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that
        happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and
        supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures,
        manages their principal concerns, directs their industry,
        regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their
        inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care
        of thinking and all the trouble of living?""

To me, this is the very essence of "convenience" and shrugging moral relativism that allows technology to act as am enabler of tyranny.

somesortofthing• 4 years ago

We fail to acknowledge that sometimes the reaction can be just as bad, and lead to the same pathology, as the problem that initially provoked it.

I think it's interesting that you speak in such abstract terms about this. What has the American far left or center-left actually done that's as bad as, for example, the recent attempted insurrection or the stripping of rights from women and LGBT people perpetrated by the right?

the fascists ideologues were probably certain of being "the good guys", themselves.

I've personally never heard of a political movement--left, right, or center--that considered itself the antagonist in its own narrative

NeverFade7• 4 years ago

What has the American far left or center-left actually done that's as bad as, for example, the recent attempted insurrection or the stripping of rights from women and LGBT people perpetrated by the right?

This line of reasoning would just fall into the same error of justifying oppressive actions by the American left "because they are aimed at a group that is even worse".

I consider the examples cited in the article to be very alarming, for example:

Soon after that, a few colleagues and I attempted to pass the Chicago Statement—what I viewed as a very basic set of principles about the necessity of free speech on campus. My shock continued as students broke into a faculty meeting about the Chicago Statement screaming “free speech harms” and demanding that white male professors “sit down” and “confess to their privilege.”

This scene chillingly echoes the birth of previous oppressive tyrannies, in Nazi Germany, and Communist Russia and China. Its overt oppression and silencing of opposing views, its deliberate disruption and eradication of civil open debate, its ideological principled and fervent objection to civil liberties such as free speech, the identity politics (and motifs of divisive class/race warfare), the implied violence, the struggle-session public pressure on the sinful individuals to confess their sins...

The fact that the radical American left aligns itself with two of these past tyrannical regimes serves to increase this alarm.

But the worst of all concerns is that these aren't some shrill fringe radicals who are being ignored as such; no, this faction has become dominant to the point of controlling the policies of our academic, social, and cultural institutions.

The article describes leading academic institutions, publications, and even government institutions like the National Science Foundation and the NIH which are bowing to the radical leftist mob and its demand. All these key institutions are increasingly captured and controlled by this radical ideology, putting these oppressive, tyrannical radicals effectively in control of an increasing number of our important societal, cultural, and academic institutions.

(In a way that the small number of right-wing radicals who tried to storm the capitol are very much not; in fact, their magnification as an excuse to further promote oppression, tyranny, and institutional radicalism also evokes alarming echoes of the past.)

anon7725• 4 years ago

What has the American far left or center-left actually done that's as bad as, for example, the recent attempted insurrection or the stripping of rights from women and LGBT people perpetrated by the right?

The civil unrest of the summer of 2020 - 19 deaths, billions in damages. Accompanied by a heaping spoonful of apologetics from the media, academics and certain corporations.

I believe the overturning of Roe and the insurrection were terrible, for the record.

jraby3• 4 years ago

How do we as a society combat this oversensitivity? Since when is the use of the word “guys” a micro aggression?

Why is it so rare for someone to stand up against this type of behavior?

kens• 4 years ago

Since when is the use of the word “guys” a micro aggression?

As a serious answer, Douglas Hofstadter (of Gödel, Escher, Bach fame) wrote in 1982 about the problems of using "guys", which has a "default assumption" of maleness. This isn't a new issue, but something people have been discussing for 40 years.

See "Changes in Default Words and Images, Engendered by Rising Consciousness" in the book Metamagical Themas: https://archive.org/details/MetamagicalThemas/page/n143/mode...

kgwgk4• 4 years ago

On the other hand, 2022!=1982

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/07/07/guys-defen...

thefaux2• 4 years ago

Evidently by dismissing any of their concerns and calling them oversensitive snowflakes who are going to ruin America with their woke communism.

peanutcrisis• 4 years ago

Could you list some examples of legitimate concerns of theirs that does not involve misunderstanding or misrepresenting their opponents' position? As an outsider who's not from the west, these "oversensitive snowflakes" do seem to have goals in common with the left, but are fundamentally extreme in their motivations and reasoning (and transitively their causes).

JaimeThompson• 4 years ago

This sort of "oversensitive" stuff has been going on for decades in the US from most all corners of the political space.

I am curious how you are defining woke here.

Dig1t4• 4 years ago

I genuinely don’t know. One doesn’t encounter this stuff out at the grocery store, it’s confined mostly to professional settings like working at a company or at University.

It seems obvious to me that these ideas incubate in professional settings precisely because those are settings where they can’t easily be criticized for fear of losing a job or getting cancelled, etc.

hoseja• 4 years ago

So far the only thing that seems to work is genuinely existential external threat.

TexanFeller4• 4 years ago

If you work in big(or medium) tech you’ve probably been given a list of “say this not that”. Say folks rather than guys. Say blocklist instead of blacklist. Main branch, not master branch. Supposedly it’s to be more inclusive, but I’ve yet to meet an actual minority that feels excluded or offended by such trivialities. They can be rather exasperating too, I’ve been told to say “the candidate” rather than “he” or “she” in post interview round tables to avoid someone accidentally using pronouns the candidate doesn’t prefer.

eesmith10• 4 years ago

At https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23763739 I collected examples posted to HN, like one from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4617174 :

A coworker and I were de-duping records in a database. One of us said while pairing on the script "well, every slave needs a master."
An african american woman in the office turned to us and said "maybe it's the master who needs the slave?"
She wasn't really offend or anything and she said it with a sincere smile. She was just calling out our idiotic computer lingo for what it was.

So, neither excluded nor offended. But it was still in bad taste.

sureglymop• 4 years ago

Why is it so hard for some people to change their usage of some words? For me it seems pretty simple and technically speaking the alternative/new words are still understandable. It's not like in this industry it's uncommon to have to learn and adjust or dismiss prior solutions when new better ones arise. Big deal over mostly nothing imo.

kodyo2• 4 years ago

It isn’t oversensitivity. It’s the newest skinsuit worn by Marxists seeking perpetual revolution.

Stop treating these people with kid gloves and tell the DEI apparatchiks to piss off.

aradox663• 4 years ago

Anything that big companies are enforcing, as a rule, is not going to be in alignment with Marxism.

Animats2• 4 years ago

Well, we'll have to rely on the superior race - Chinese - to do work in those areas. Average East Asian IQ, 105, remember.

snapcaster• 4 years ago

That does seem to be the case already right? The united states has massive numbers of east asian people working in tech. What does it have to do with the article?

Animats2• 4 years ago

The work will take place in China.

reilly30003• 4 years ago

I value academic freedom and the integrity to pursue knowledge regardless of its outcomes. It’s the fruit of a just and wealthy society, it’s value endures across millennia.

Why then is OP scared of some kids. It’s as if he’s perceiving this generation of his students as an invasive species, upsetting an ecosystem of which he is the apex. He gives no voice to his interloper’s concerns or goals; simply that it is too much. This is classic form of a well-trodden, meaningless screed.

He feels somehow powerless in the face of ignorance of his students. Find a new career, or teach them. Learn from them. Offer some dignity to their humanity even when they don’t reciprocate. Model maturity.

I think that there are vast vestiges of academia which still don’t understand how completely their relationship with knowledge has changed in the past 30 years. Universities historically have “owned” knowledge and its artifacts. Now knowledge is universally accessible and rapidly growing. We need to train people to Integrate, Validate, and Develop knowledge. That takes personal, challenging work from all.

As a biologist it’s easy to fixated on the mechanics and metrics of reproduction. We’re seeing a decline in population growth and interest in reproduction in humans despite an overabundance of food. Young adults are facing economic turmoil, religious trauma, a doomed planet, and a bunch of regressive twats violently clinging to power. They perceive it as so futile that fertility is not viable. The way an organism perceives its environs dictates its behavior, not only the environment itself.

Baby Boomers dictated the environment of the generation you proclaim to fear. You are complicit in what formed their grievances, passively or actively. You can participate in their resolution, and help these powerful young people to mature into the tolerant, curious individuals they are capable of becoming.

This piece is not instructive. It’s as petulant as a toddler that has to share. It’s the same tenor as a small business owner trying to invoke pity and obtain material support from a governing body. It’s frankly pathetic. A bunch of teens aren’t going to destroy biology. Acknowledge your own ignorance of the lives of your patrons, their novel circumstances, and do what can be done to remedy it. Or retire.

I could be writing YAML right now, but I’m writing this with the hope that someone voluntarily does what the author of this piece missed to understand that you are the solution, not the victim. Every adult needs to learn this, every mentor needs to teach it. We face challenges of unprecedented scale which test the limits of our evolutionary progress, especially around our ability to collaborate in increasingly vast numbers. We face the practical limits of human empathy, where global 24/7 news brings a deluge of tragedies to mourn and mend. We are seemingly incapable of stopping ourselves from destroying our own environment.

The weight of it all has given rise to extremes. If those extremes threaten the things you hold dear, please do what you can to reduce the standard deviation. That means welcoming unpleasant extremists into your spaces and lives, and engaging with their beliefs. It involves seeing them as whole people, valuable and vulnerable. I feel so very strongly that it is the responsibility of our leaders and literati to model and advance the cause of cooperation. If for nothing else than our own survival.

boxed4• 4 years ago

You can't teach to a mob that are charging you with pitch forks. You need to realize the difference between the situation of a mob vs a single student. The single student can be handled. The mob not at all.

gaze4• 4 years ago

What mob? What pitchforks? The authors hold all the institutional power.

NeverFade7• 4 years ago

Have you read the article? These aren't just "kids".

OP is describing how major institutions, including research universities and other research organizations, publications, and even government institutions such as the National Science Foundation and NIH are now supporting this ideology.

reilly30003• 4 years ago

I certainly did, but I'm having a hard time pinning down what 'this ideology' is. I don't see a monolithic ideology that is constraining academic freedom. There has ALWAYS been limits on what research is considered ethical, and those limits came to exist because of grave abuse. The savagery of early science is well-documented and results in material limits on what is funded and published. After 40 years of denying syphilis treatment to African-American males in Alabama "For Science" are were more limits on human research methods. We stopped letting researchers inject hepatitis into institutionalized children. NIH and NSF have been systematically denying funding for phrenology and eugenics. Is that a causing a crisis in academic freedom - or - is a reasonable policy to prevent bad science being used to further racial supremacy narratives?

Let's be clear here: OP's material complaint is that NIH gated access to some genetics datasets. That's the 'crisis', yet he manages to bundle in all of these groups he dislikes into a narrative.

federal agencies, such as the National Science Foundation, now offer a surplus of grants with the purpose of “broadening the participation of members of groups that are . . . currently underrepresented”—instead of funding research to answer scientific questions.

Allow me to translate: "Give money to minorities" OR "Do Real Science". So minorities can't so real science???

(implicitly, "minorities aren't doing real science" - "real science came from people like me, so keep giving data access and money to my team, then you'll see I deserve the ability to say and do anything I want because I'm quantifiably superior and they are a waste of resources.")

As an example: The NIH now puts barriers to access to the important database of “Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP).” The database is an amazing tool that combines genomes (the unique genetic makeup of each individual) and phenotypes (the observable characteristics of each individual) of millions of people. These phenotypes include education, occupation, health and income and, because the dataset connects genetics with phenotype at an individual level, it is essential for scientists who want to understand genes and genetic pathways that are behind those phenotypes. The NIH now denies scientists access to this data and other related datasets. Researchers report getting permits denied on the grounds that studying their genetic basis is “stigmatizing.” According to one researcher, this happens even if the research has nothing to do with race or sex, but focuses on genetics and education.

I cannot explain this one better than Harvard can:

By the early to mid-20th century, polygenism and biology-based racism were widely disproven, and racism in social science had gained popularity. Studies showing high rates of imprisonment among Black Americans were used as proof of innate criminality, while pseudoscientific intelligence testing claimed the mental superiority of white people. These flawed, biased studies failed to account for political and social factors such as poor housing, poverty, lack of healthcare, and virulent racial oppression. But they provided the so-called evidence needed to fuel systemic forms of anti-Black racism, like segregation. And, for many Americans looking for objective reasons to justify racist beliefs and behaviors, studies like these were more than enough. source: https://library.harvard.edu/confronting-anti-black-racism/sc...
The censors and gatekeepers simply assume—without evidence—that human population research is malign and must be shut down. The costs of this kind of censorship, both self-imposed and ideologically based, are profound. Student learning is impaired and important research is never done.

"Important Research" SMH. I hope it's clear why I am so incensed about this article. In my first comment I complained about his distain for students that push minority narratives rather than seeing them as children who can be shown and taught civility. Here, he's worried about the students ability to learn if they can't have full freedom to combine demography and genetic data.

I hope it's clear why I am so incensed about this article.

This is red-pill content, full stop.

stevewatson3012• 4 years ago

What I would like to see more of, is a good faith response that directly addresses the concerns of the article.

Unfortunately, as it stands, your response is simply arguing that articles bringing attention to a particular issue are not worthy because they don't bring up a solution, and dismisses the concerns as "petulant", which does convey your frustration but not what the article misses out on in its quality of arguments.

reilly30003• 4 years ago

I hope this will suffice: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33531436

gaze4• 4 years ago

It’s annoyingly the same cadre of people giving these vacuous speeches over and over —- Bari Weiss handing the microphone to Dorian Abbott or whoever. Your post really nails it.

The only thing I can add is that when you try and dig a bit at how they see this group of people, it’s always a “mob” and not an aggrieved group of future scholars who might have legitimate complains. They’re always, always infantilized.

devwastaken• 4 years ago

Every generation believes their Ronald Reagan is progressive and moral.

From reviewing their other articles this site is clearly a republican news source. It's likely this story is significantly altered from the truth.

Dig1t4• 4 years ago

Rather than addressing the content of the article, you are just dismissing the entire thing because it is associated with people you don't like. Republicans do this same thing with information that comes from Democrat sources. If we as a country continue to have this mindset, we are completely screwed.

For the record, I am not a Republican and I am not a Democrat.

squillion• 4 years ago

The anecdotes in this story sound perfectly plausible to me. I've been hearing this kind of stories for years now, and no, not from "republican" sources.

By the way, there's no shortage of anti-woke leftists. Just one example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqV3ARvuymY

rbop• 4 years ago

My favourite conspiracy theory is that this push for 'woke' activism on the political left was done as a means to undermine it, and distract away from more pressing labour and economic activism that would actually be a threat to the wealthy and powerful, if implemented.

While the purportedly left-wing activists sit there arguing if math is racist, and so on, exploitation of working people continues as it always has, largely ignored.

MrJohz3• 4 years ago

I don't want to correct a biologist on a subject that they're clearly an expert on, but the discussion on sex seems like it's missing a lot of context. I wonder if they are making the mistake of thinking everyone is referring to the word "sex" in the same way?

The author seems to be talking about sex in terms of gametes - i.e. sperm and eggs. They make the claim that there is an absolute sex difference between male and female sexes in terms of this gamete structure. I am happy to take them on their word on this point.

But this is obviously not the only definition we have for sex. Individuals in a gonochoric species have a sex that in most cases corresponds to the gametes that they can produce, but this is not absolute. In humans, we know that intersex and possibly even hermaphroditic individuals can exist: these people certainly do not conform to a perfectly binary sex distinction. So clearly there is a definition of sex - and a widely used one at that - where the author is incorrect, and human sexes are more complicated than a perfect binary split.

This obviously doesn't invalidate the rest of the article, but it does suggest that some of the issue may lie in communication rather than oppression. For example, the author links to the "gender unicorn" model, but this fairly plainly discusses sex as a medical phenomenon (where it is typically assigned at birth, corresponds to reproductive organs, and where some people will not clearly fall in one category or another). This is presumably not being used by the same people studying evolutionary biology, where sex is an expression of gamete-based reproduction and - at least at a population level - binary. (Or at least, if it is, I imagine it will be within a specific context.)

Looking through some of the evidence linked by the article, this seems to be the case. For example, the article links statements from scientific groups claiming that sex is a continuum, but the statements are very clearly in response to decisions that would affect medical care for humans (where it would be incorrect to assume a strict distinction - if anything, medicine is the study of exceptions to the norm), and do not in principle disagree with that continuum being bimodal in respects to gamete-based reproduction.

Similarly, the author cites another article that they believe restricts discussion on reproduction to species that don't have binary sex. But my reading of the same article is (a) that it is exclusively focused on educating students (rather than wider scientific discussion), and (b) arguing for more examples rather than fewer to help students understand that reproduction can be much more complex than the traditional "sexual/asexual" model that they are often taught before university.

I am not in academia, so ultimately I can't tell the author that what they're experiencing isn't true. But as someone reading their article, I came away with the impression that the author would do well to read through some of the sources they cite with a more open mind, and attempt to understand why some people are concerned about biological gender in humans being restricted to a binary state.

rocketraman2• 4 years ago

Communication and honest debate about facts and details, such as the ones you bring up yourself, is impossible when the people you are attempting to communicate with don't care about the truth -- they only care about how the words you are using make them feel.

Which is the whole point of the article: when feelings take precedence over truth and knowledge, science is at threat.

MrJohz3• 4 years ago

That's a cop out though, a "dog ate my homework" type argument. "I don't need to make a solid argument because they'll just ignore it if I do."

The problem with this logic is that it can't be disagreed with. If I accept the premise, then you're off the hook for evidencing your claim - like you say, honest debate is now impossible. If I don't accept the premise, then I'm clearly wrong, and therefore part of the group who put feelings over truth and knowledge, and therefore reasoned discussion with me is pointless.

But in neither scenario can I get a reasoned debate. Ironically, you've built a situation where your feelings trump logical argument. You only need to say "I believe science to be at threat" (or perhaps just "science is at threat", because "I believe" is always implicit in these sorts of statements without argumentation), and any response I give to you, positive or negative, will only confirm your position.

To me, the central claim here is that it is now unacceptable to teach that sex is purely binary. But as far as I can tell, medically speaking, sex isn't binary (although heavily bimodal), and biologically speaking sex as a binary is a useful model as long as you recognise the caveats. So I don't think the author's central claim holds true. Which to me breaks apart most of the argument. The rest of the article seems to be examples of students doing things that other people disagree with, which is surely the greatest prerogative a student has, and has been happening for millennia. If science is at threat because students are uppity then I think we have different definitions of the word "threat" (as well as, potentially, the word "sex").

yetin3• 4 years ago

The author seems to be talking about sex in terms of gametes - i.e. sperm and eggs. They make the claim that there is an absolute sex difference between male and female sexes in terms of this gamete structure. I am happy to take them on their word on this point.
But this is obviously not the only definition we have for sex.

It's the only definition that matters when it comes to the field of biology.

The people who insist that sex is a continuum of some sort are getting confused with sex and sex-linked traits. As an example of the latter, consider testosterone levels. If you sample a random population of humans and plot this, it shows a bimodal distribution.

Some will argue that this demonstrates sex is a continuum, but what it really shows is two discrete populations that have an average difference between them: males and females.

As an example: a man with lower testosterone than most other men is not less male, or more female. He's just a male with below-average testosterone levels. The value of this hormonal trait doesn't define or alter his sex.

MrJohz3• 4 years ago

But sex by that definition is a question of gametes, which cannot really apply to individuals within a species. Some people produce male or female gametes, but others develop the organs for both or for neither - they are truly intersex. That seems to be the point of, for example, the "gender unicorn" model that the author disagrees with: that, at the level of an organism, sex already is more complex than a simple binary state.

An Existential Threat to Doing Good Science

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