3 ms·

What if it were hypothesized on the basis of some controversial observations say in optics, not proven mind you, but supposed based on related work, that we mi

What if it were hypothesized on the basis of some controversial observations say in optics, not proven mind you, but supposed based on related work, that we might be able to hit melanin molecules with certain types of radiation to allow people to change their skin color to those indistinguishable from another racial group? Would physicists be allowed to discuss and publish proposals for this? I'm not even talking IRB issues of human experimentation, just pursuing the work in vitro.

grey-area 9y ago
You can buy cream for that already. To address what I hope is your point (not really about skin colour, I assume that was simply an example of a no-go zone for your imagined liberal interlocutor), there are not many areas of research out of bounds because of social mores - there are always some at any given point in time in any given society (for example cloning or using fetal tissue in the US), and there are valid discussions to be had about whether research is ethical or not (which shifts over time). Those hard ethical issues on the edge of science and what it means to be human are unrelated however to: novel physics ideas, almost all startup ideas, ideas for a new currency like bitcoin, spacex etc. Of course to have good ideas you need to preserve some innocence, ignore all the naysayers (of which the internet has plenty, a never-ending horde we all participate in at times), you may need to stand apart from your society (as in the case of bitcoin) or reject its tenets but that is entirely unrelated to tolerance for intolerance, to tolerance for hatred, to a happy ignorance of ethics or moral boundaries. The writer mixes up simple cynicism and societal pressure which he experiences (which are as old as the world and easy to ignore), and real hatred leading to violence and seems to think they are somehow equivalent. Those are different categories of objection, different qualities of harm. Paul Graham or Sam feeling bad because people are dismissive, petty and wrong about good ideas he has, is simply incomparable to the real harm caused by the normalisation of the ideas in this essay (e.g. a given class of people are evil and subhuman - be that gays, jews, rich white men or something else). By giving those ideas credence, he's lending a hand to evil in the world. In short, you don't need to allow hatred of [insert your hated group here] to allow good science.

grey-area 9y ago

You can buy cream for that already. To address what I hope is your point (not really about skin colour, I assume that was simply an example of a no-go zone for your imagined liberal interlocutor), there are not many areas of research out of bounds because of social mores - there are always some at any given point in time in any given society (for example cloning or using fetal tissue in the US), and there are valid discussions to be had about whether research is ethical or not (which shifts over time). Those hard ethical issues on the edge of science and what it means to be human are unrelated however to: novel physics ideas, almost all startup ideas, ideas for a new currency like bitcoin, spacex etc. Of course to have good ideas you need to preserve some innocence, ignore all the naysayers (of which the internet has plenty, a never-ending horde we all participate in at times), you may need to stand apart from your society (as in the case of bitcoin) or reject its tenets but that is entirely unrelated to tolerance for intolerance, to tolerance for hatred, to a happy ignorance of ethics or moral boundaries. The writer mixes up simple cynicism and societal pressure which he experiences (which are as old as the world and easy to ignore), and real hatred leading to violence and seems to think they are somehow equivalent. Those are different categories of objection, different qualities of harm. Paul Graham or Sam feeling bad because people are dismissive, petty and wrong about good ideas he has, is simply incomparable to the real harm caused by the normalisation of the ideas in this essay (e.g. a given class of people are evil and subhuman - be that gays, jews, rich white men or something else). By giving those ideas credence, he's lending a hand to evil in the world. In short, you don't need to allow hatred of [insert your hated group here] to allow good science.