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Stop Equating “Science” with Truth

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Meditato 9y ago
1. Please see a defense of Evo Psych here: https://evolution-institute.org/article/on-common-criticisms-of-evolutionary-psychology/ https://evolution-institute.org/article/on-common-criticisms... 2. Social justice authors are notorious for confusing explanation with advocacy. For example, Evo Psych is constantly reinterpreted by social justice warriors as advocating gender roles, as opposed to explaining that these roles arose and survived to present-ish day because they conferred advantages in particular evolutionary contexts. 3. Stop inventing your own "Truth" and ignoring science.
averagewall 9y ago
Eliminate structural biases in education, health care, housing, and salaries that favor white men and see if we fail. Run the experiment. Be a scientist about it. That experiment's been done and "we failed". India has greater structural biases against women than the US but a higher percentage of women in tech. And it's a pretty consistent correlation between bias and women's involvement across countries.
- TheLilHipster 9y ago
  Citations would be more convincing.
- xaa 9y ago
  Take a look at this: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger... Apparently, and paradoxically, greater eqalitarianism in a society can result in higher amounts of individual choice, which can actually exacerbate inherent differences between groups (if you believe they exist).
xaa 9y ago
Oh, boy. Yes, it is true, no one knows better than we scientists that science is flawed and bias-prone. You can say science is flawed but the best available source of truth we can have, or you can say science is too fallible to be more privileged than any other source of knowledge/belief. What you cannot do is have it both ways, to pretend science is infallible when you agree with it, and biased or problematic when you don't. This seems to be what many on the left are trying to do.
- peatmoss 9y ago
  A thousand times this. There is absolutely an institutionalist argument to be made against how science is practiced by fallible and biased humans. However, I've never heard of any method I'd trust more. Science seems to be the only fair process for adjudicating when factual claims are at odds. I'd hate to rely on rhetoric, as that certainly isn't less subject to human fallibility. At the same time, we need to be thoughtful about what are scientific questions and which are normative/ value questions. Science could help us figure out whether ground up humans make good plant fertilizer. Humans need to make a value judgement on whether or not to fertilize plants with ground up humans. Believing in the scientific method, recognizing the institutional ways that we can systematically fall short of its lofty platonic ideal, and understanding the limitations of science to tell us the "right" social policy is what I want.
geoffpado 9y ago
I was going to deride Slate for presumably being on the side of the people equating "Science" with truth at the March for Science just a few months ago, but it turns out they had the exact same issue then: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2017/04/the_march_for_science_was_eerily_religious.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201... I figure if I was going to smear Slate for assumed hypocrisy, I should do the right thing and praise them for their (IMO, correct) consistency when I was wrong.
gizmo686 9y ago
Yes, our institutions of science are flawed and subject to human biases. However, what alternative to we have? At the end of the day, we need to have some notion of what is "true". We could go with taking the dominate ideology as being "true", but this is literally political correctness. We could go back to using religion to tell us what is true [0]. Or we could realize that science is the best method we have invented to find truth. The question then becomes how much we trust our current scientific institutions. I will agree that the general public tends to put too much trust in any given finding (and often misunderstands the finding itself), but, in general, our scientific institutions are still doing some of the best science in our society. They are certainly doing better science than our political institutions are. [1] So what do we do when our scientific institutions findings do not align with our political findings? One option is to ignore the science entirely; but without the science, we will proceed along with an ideology that becomes increasingly divorced from reality. In the case of the Google memo, we have a disagreement about facts [2]. The question here is how to resolve this disagreement. I have seen two proposals: 1) Science and 2) Ideology and mob rule. Both sides can play in the science debate. There is a lot of science to support the "pro (gender) diversity" side, and we can have a discussion where both sides try to use science to arrive closer to the truth. In fact, if we look at the two sides of the broader diversity debate, the pro diversity side is far more represented in our scientific institutions [3]. [0] Although it is worth noting that, even if we accept religion as the correct arbiter of truth, our religious institutions also have a record of reaching a truth that supports the biases of the time. [1] Which is not a criticism of our political institutions; their job is not to do science. It is, however, a criticism of deferring to our political institutions for factual judgements. [2] Actually, in my opinion, most of the disagreement is about words; specifically one side not understanding what the other side is trying to say moreso than disagreeing with it. However, for the sake of arguement, I will assume that both sides understand what the other is saying and have a factual disagreement. [3] Again, talking about populations, not individuals.
- peatmoss 9y ago
  This is almost exactly my opinion. Where I'd differ on the Google case, is that I don't think science can ultimately tell us what is the correct level of diversity to strive for. That's a values question to be slugged out in society. Certainly science (especially if it's well-executed science with broad consensus) can help to inform how we might achieve our desired ends. There's no "right" level of diversity, and I can think of at least several incompatible standards of "fair."
kazinator 9y ago
Science aligns (or at least should, ideally) rather more with "honesty". "honesty" isn't "truth", so ...
ryebit 9y ago
One mistake that (easily) gets made is thinking science is a product, a body of knowledge. Science is a process, that (through repeated application) can take a body of knowledge, and improve it's depth and accuracy. You want to get close to "the full truth, and all the truth"? It'll take asymptotically more man-hours. At any point, there will be gaps and mistakes; but the nice thing about the process of "science" is that it's an algorithm, and exists as part of the body of knowledge it's acting on. So it can itself be improved, using it's own rules. That's the difference between a process, and a static set of facts, when even it the core tenets permit for the possibility of mistakes, and allow for their own replacement.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

1. Please see a defense of Evo Psych here: https://evolution-institute.org/article/on-common-criticisms-of-evolutionary-psychology/ https://evolution-institute.org/article/on-common-criticisms... 2. Social justice authors are notorious for confusing explanation with advocacy. For example, Evo Psych is constantly reinterpreted by social justice warriors as advocating gender roles, as opposed to explaining that these roles arose and survived to present-ish day because they conferred advantages in particular evolutionary contexts. 3. Stop inventing your own "Truth" and ignoring science.

averagewall 9y ago

Eliminate structural biases in education, health care, housing, and salaries that favor white men and see if we fail. Run the experiment. Be a scientist about it. That experiment's been done and "we failed". India has greater structural biases against women than the US but a higher percentage of women in tech. And it's a pretty consistent correlation between bias and women's involvement across countries.

TheLilHipster 9y ago
Citations would be more convincing.
xaa 9y ago
Take a look at this: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger... Apparently, and paradoxically, greater eqalitarianism in a society can result in higher amounts of individual choice, which can actually exacerbate inherent differences between groups (if you believe they exist).

xaa 9y ago

Oh, boy. Yes, it is true, no one knows better than we scientists that science is flawed and bias-prone. You can say science is flawed but the best available source of truth we can have, or you can say science is too fallible to be more privileged than any other source of knowledge/belief. What you cannot do is have it both ways, to pretend science is infallible when you agree with it, and biased or problematic when you don't. This seems to be what many on the left are trying to do.

peatmoss 9y ago
A thousand times this. There is absolutely an institutionalist argument to be made against how science is practiced by fallible and biased humans. However, I've never heard of any method I'd trust more. Science seems to be the only fair process for adjudicating when factual claims are at odds. I'd hate to rely on rhetoric, as that certainly isn't less subject to human fallibility. At the same time, we need to be thoughtful about what are scientific questions and which are normative/ value questions. Science could help us figure out whether ground up humans make good plant fertilizer. Humans need to make a value judgement on whether or not to fertilize plants with ground up humans. Believing in the scientific method, recognizing the institutional ways that we can systematically fall short of its lofty platonic ideal, and understanding the limitations of science to tell us the "right" social policy is what I want.

geoffpado 9y ago

I was going to deride Slate for presumably being on the side of the people equating "Science" with truth at the March for Science just a few months ago, but it turns out they had the exact same issue then: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2017/04/the_march_for_science_was_eerily_religious.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201... I figure if I was going to smear Slate for assumed hypocrisy, I should do the right thing and praise them for their (IMO, correct) consistency when I was wrong.

gizmo686 9y ago

Yes, our institutions of science are flawed and subject to human biases. However, what alternative to we have? At the end of the day, we need to have some notion of what is "true". We could go with taking the dominate ideology as being "true", but this is literally political correctness. We could go back to using religion to tell us what is true [0]. Or we could realize that science is the best method we have invented to find truth. The question then becomes how much we trust our current scientific institutions. I will agree that the general public tends to put too much trust in any given finding (and often misunderstands the finding itself), but, in general, our scientific institutions are still doing some of the best science in our society. They are certainly doing better science than our political institutions are. [1] So what do we do when our scientific institutions findings do not align with our political findings? One option is to ignore the science entirely; but without the science, we will proceed along with an ideology that becomes increasingly divorced from reality. In the case of the Google memo, we have a disagreement about facts [2]. The question here is how to resolve this disagreement. I have seen two proposals: 1) Science and 2) Ideology and mob rule. Both sides can play in the science debate. There is a lot of science to support the "pro (gender) diversity" side, and we can have a discussion where both sides try to use science to arrive closer to the truth. In fact, if we look at the two sides of the broader diversity debate, the pro diversity side is far more represented in our scientific institutions [3]. [0] Although it is worth noting that, even if we accept religion as the correct arbiter of truth, our religious institutions also have a record of reaching a truth that supports the biases of the time. [1] Which is not a criticism of our political institutions; their job is not to do science. It is, however, a criticism of deferring to our political institutions for factual judgements. [2] Actually, in my opinion, most of the disagreement is about words; specifically one side not understanding what the other side is trying to say moreso than disagreeing with it. However, for the sake of arguement, I will assume that both sides understand what the other is saying and have a factual disagreement. [3] Again, talking about populations, not individuals.

peatmoss 9y ago
This is almost exactly my opinion. Where I'd differ on the Google case, is that I don't think science can ultimately tell us what is the correct level of diversity to strive for. That's a values question to be slugged out in society. Certainly science (especially if it's well-executed science with broad consensus) can help to inform how we might achieve our desired ends. There's no "right" level of diversity, and I can think of at least several incompatible standards of "fair."

kazinator 9y ago

Science aligns (or at least should, ideally) rather more with "honesty". "honesty" isn't "truth", so ...

ryebit 9y ago

One mistake that (easily) gets made is thinking science is a product, a body of knowledge. Science is a process, that (through repeated application) can take a body of knowledge, and improve it's depth and accuracy. You want to get close to "the full truth, and all the truth"? It'll take asymptotically more man-hours. At any point, there will be gaps and mistakes; but the nice thing about the process of "science" is that it's an algorithm, and exists as part of the body of knowledge it's acting on. So it can itself be improved, using it's own rules. That's the difference between a process, and a static set of facts, when even it the core tenets permit for the possibility of mistakes, and allow for their own replacement.