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> these debates have begun to look more like a prelude to the post-truth era in which society as a whole is presently condemned to live. The past decade has see

> these debates have begun to look more like a prelude to the post-truth era in which society as a whole is presently condemned to live. The past decade has seen a precipitous rise not just in anti-scientific thinking Enough of this nonsense. Scepticism is a cornerstone of science itself. Perhaps if the "scientific consensus" had not led to the disasters of 2008 in USA and the EU crisis, people would be less skeptical. It would be nice if the NYtimes writers stopped rubbing their intellectual superiority all over us and instead think a little deeper about the rise of skepticism. Oh, and let's remember that, despite their claims, their walled garden doesn't hold a monopoly to the truth. > Latour believes that if scientists were transparent about how science really functions — as a process in which people, politics, institutions, peer review and so forth all play their parts — they would be in a stronger position to convince people of their claims. I 'm not sure if this would lead to stronger trust, considering the amount of politics inherent in the processes of funding and publishing.

seanhunter 8y ago
In what sense was the 2008 crisis anything to do with scientific consensus? I'm not sure I follow that.
- holstvoogd 8y ago
  yeah, that seems to be complete bullshit. that crisis was 100% greed and bad governance
- buboard 8y ago
  Economies have been led technocracies since at least the 80s. There are numerous ways the academia failed to predict the financial crisis, and on the contrary facilitated it: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/22a9/5fc8524947c1b7f985bd75aee2ce604d6fea.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/22a9/5fc8524947c1b7f985bd75... The 'greed and bad governance' claim is bogus: one the one hand, it was was academically-approved 'greed', and 'bad goverment' had little to with the collapse of private institutions that the US government had to save.
  - resonanttoe 8y ago
    You're making claims that are entirely unsupported by anything you've provided or said. The paper linked makes the claim towards the failure of academic economics failing to predict the Financial crisis of 2008, not science. (This also completely ignores that it seems to be a book passage rather than a review and well cited article in a Journal). You've imposed your own narrative on the article written about Latour here and bought up wild claims about 2008 with no relevance to the discussion at hand. I actually don't know what your point is other than to rally against the NYT and it sniffs of personal bias the whole way down. I doubt you've read the article. And I'll just leave this selected quote here from the article you did link. "* This opinion paper is the outcome of one week of intense discussions within the working group on ‘Modeling of Financial Markets’ at the 98 th Dahlem Workshop, 2008. "
- pjc50 8y ago
  Economics is not such a robust science as physics. A famous example is from 2010 and affected the response to the crisis: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/opinion/krugman-the-excel-depression.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/opinion/krugman-the-excel...
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  Peripherally some Wall Street companies involved had an insatiable hunger for physicists and mathematicians. There was bemoaning that the brightest minds were going to Wall Steeet instead of research. The company thinking that they could apply all of the scientific modeling to markets. It worked until the 2008 crisis hit and then it didn't and they lost their shirts and were living out of their Lexuses. Personally I suspect the underlying issue is a fundamental lack of concern for truth and its origins just wanting to make money so they throw resources at it without concerns about the why and how to get what they want to hear short term. That trend is repeating itself in other sectors with misuse of neural networks - and I mean that in a functional sense as opposed to an ethical one. Regardless of the ethics of facial recognition in law enforcement it simply doesn't scale to huge data sets and is being treated as "has to be right" instead of viewing it as the coarse filter it is will lead to problems unless one is sociopathic enough to consider that a feature.
- cvwright 8y ago
  Wall Street quant bros thought they had analytical models for prices that were based on reasonable math and science. Turns out, their models vastly under-estimated the probability of a big crash. Apparently there was even a big hegdge fund based on these ideas, Long-term Capital Management, which went bust in the late 1990's, but still the "consensus" ignored it and moved on. N.N. Taleb writes about some of this in "The Black Swan", which I'm sure most readers here already know about. I would also recommend Benoit Mandelbrot's (yes, that Mandelbrot's) "The Misbehavior of Markets". https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/665134.The_Mis_Behavior_of_Markets https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/665134.The_Mis_Behavior_...
holstvoogd 8y ago
> Scepticism is a cornerstone of science itself. Yes, definitely, however, so is accepting empirical evidence. And as much as claims have to be supported by evidence, so has skepticism of those claims. We seriously have people running around claiming the world is flat. That is not skepticism, that is retardation.
- buboard 8y ago
  There is increased skepticism throughout the hierarchy. the flat-earthers and creationists are caricatures, but focusing on them misses or disguises the bigger picture. Many people believe that science, and especially the part of it that often informs public policy, is not scrutinizing itself enough , and is often led by groupthink and popularity rather than rigor.
  - posterboy 8y ago
    There's enough people running around claiming the world is a sphere, which is not really true either. At least the flat earthers understand that most people know less than they think they need to.
    - extra88 8y ago
      It's true enough, it's less than one percent wider around the equator. Calling it an oblate spheroid or something isn't relevant it most situations.
      - posterboy 8y ago
        See, I didn't even know that?!
  - jhbadger 8y ago
    Do you know how people become successful scientists? By "scrutinizing" science and coming up with better and more predictive theories. This idea that science isn't "scrutinizing itself" fundamentally misunderstands how science works. This misunderstanding not only affects the "caricatures" like creationists but supposedly "more sophisticated" critics of science such as "alternative" medicine devotees.

seanhunter 8y ago

In what sense was the 2008 crisis anything to do with scientific consensus? I'm not sure I follow that.

holstvoogd 8y ago
yeah, that seems to be complete bullshit. that crisis was 100% greed and bad governance
buboard 8y ago
Economies have been led technocracies since at least the 80s. There are numerous ways the academia failed to predict the financial crisis, and on the contrary facilitated it: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/22a9/5fc8524947c1b7f985bd75aee2ce604d6fea.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/22a9/5fc8524947c1b7f985bd75... The 'greed and bad governance' claim is bogus: one the one hand, it was was academically-approved 'greed', and 'bad goverment' had little to with the collapse of private institutions that the US government had to save.
- resonanttoe 8y ago
  You're making claims that are entirely unsupported by anything you've provided or said. The paper linked makes the claim towards the failure of academic economics failing to predict the Financial crisis of 2008, not science. (This also completely ignores that it seems to be a book passage rather than a review and well cited article in a Journal). You've imposed your own narrative on the article written about Latour here and bought up wild claims about 2008 with no relevance to the discussion at hand. I actually don't know what your point is other than to rally against the NYT and it sniffs of personal bias the whole way down. I doubt you've read the article. And I'll just leave this selected quote here from the article you did link. "* This opinion paper is the outcome of one week of intense discussions within the working group on ‘Modeling of Financial Markets’ at the 98 th Dahlem Workshop, 2008. "
pjc50 8y ago
Economics is not such a robust science as physics. A famous example is from 2010 and affected the response to the crisis: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/opinion/krugman-the-excel-depression.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/opinion/krugman-the-excel...
Nasrudith 8y ago
Peripherally some Wall Street companies involved had an insatiable hunger for physicists and mathematicians. There was bemoaning that the brightest minds were going to Wall Steeet instead of research. The company thinking that they could apply all of the scientific modeling to markets. It worked until the 2008 crisis hit and then it didn't and they lost their shirts and were living out of their Lexuses. Personally I suspect the underlying issue is a fundamental lack of concern for truth and its origins just wanting to make money so they throw resources at it without concerns about the why and how to get what they want to hear short term. That trend is repeating itself in other sectors with misuse of neural networks - and I mean that in a functional sense as opposed to an ethical one. Regardless of the ethics of facial recognition in law enforcement it simply doesn't scale to huge data sets and is being treated as "has to be right" instead of viewing it as the coarse filter it is will lead to problems unless one is sociopathic enough to consider that a feature.
cvwright 8y ago
Wall Street quant bros thought they had analytical models for prices that were based on reasonable math and science. Turns out, their models vastly under-estimated the probability of a big crash. Apparently there was even a big hegdge fund based on these ideas, Long-term Capital Management, which went bust in the late 1990's, but still the "consensus" ignored it and moved on. N.N. Taleb writes about some of this in "The Black Swan", which I'm sure most readers here already know about. I would also recommend Benoit Mandelbrot's (yes, that Mandelbrot's) "The Misbehavior of Markets". https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/665134.The_Mis_Behavior_of_Markets https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/665134.The_Mis_Behavior_...

holstvoogd 8y ago

> Scepticism is a cornerstone of science itself. Yes, definitely, however, so is accepting empirical evidence. And as much as claims have to be supported by evidence, so has skepticism of those claims. We seriously have people running around claiming the world is flat. That is not skepticism, that is retardation.

buboard 8y ago
There is increased skepticism throughout the hierarchy. the flat-earthers and creationists are caricatures, but focusing on them misses or disguises the bigger picture. Many people believe that science, and especially the part of it that often informs public policy, is not scrutinizing itself enough , and is often led by groupthink and popularity rather than rigor.
- posterboy 8y ago
  There's enough people running around claiming the world is a sphere, which is not really true either. At least the flat earthers understand that most people know less than they think they need to.
  - extra88 8y ago
    It's true enough, it's less than one percent wider around the equator. Calling it an oblate spheroid or something isn't relevant it most situations.
    - posterboy 8y ago
      See, I didn't even know that?!
- jhbadger 8y ago
  Do you know how people become successful scientists? By "scrutinizing" science and coming up with better and more predictive theories. This idea that science isn't "scrutinizing itself" fundamentally misunderstands how science works. This misunderstanding not only affects the "caricatures" like creationists but supposedly "more sophisticated" critics of science such as "alternative" medicine devotees.