4 ms·

How has this so-called culture war invaded your family life?

by gsk22 6y ago

da39a3ee 6y ago
I (late 30s) am unable to talk to younger members (late 20s) of my family about science in western society because they believe that academic science is inherently corrupted by patriarchal and racist power structures, whereas I believe that there is no need to be anywhere near so cynical about academic science and that it is in fact one of the areas of society that we can be proud of. The younger members have grown up taught by many university professors who have pushed postmodernist, power-structure analyses in any different subject areas, to the extent that they find it more important to think of science from the sort of postmodernist cultural theory point of view, than to actually think about the science itself.
- 8fGTBjZxBcHq 6y ago
  I'm more your age but I think I agree with your family members here. Thinking about the technical details of science is not very important to lay people like me. But the cultural questions involved like who is doing science? for what reasons? under what constraints? what practical applications are there and who will they be applied to? Those potentially matter quite a bit to me. Sounds like your family are attempting to be active and well-informed and have chosen to become informed in a part of the domain where they can have useful opinions, rather than a part where they can't.
  - da39a3ee 6y ago
    > I think I agree with your family members here. Thinking about the technical details of science is not very important to lay people like me. It's not just the "technical details". It's the entire scientific outlook and scientific method! We all agree that building the fair and healthy societies that we want is a very hard task. So when we have hard tasks to do, we don't want to turn away from a scientific/engineering mentality, quite the opposite! For example, we see that we have a lot of unfairness in society that we want to fix. Perhaps studying game theory and mathematical economics would allow you to contribute to human efforts to create incentive structures and legislation that will promote fairness. Presumably studying statistics and decision theory will help understand the challenges we face as a society needing to make decisions in the face of uncertainty and complex costs. But studying these things is HARD; it requires effort over a long time span to climb the mountain. It does NOT help at all if young people are encouraged to mill around at the base of the mountain wittering about power structures and unfairness in academia.
- gsk22 6y ago
  So in other words, it _hasn't_ invaded your family life. "Some of my family disagrees with my views" is different than "my family life has been upended/invaded".
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - da39a3ee 6y ago
    Did you miss the part where I said "unable to talk to younger members of my family about science"? Which part of that do you not find particularly significant? You don't think "talking about science" is an important thing for family members to be able do do? You think "science" sounds like a narrow, nerdy sort of conversation that one wouldn't need to have often? You don't think that arguing every time the topic comes up could damage relations with people that I want to get on with? You don't think that us mutually disrespecting each others positions could damage relations? I'm really at a loss for what goes on in your family; do enlighten us.
- throwawaygh 6y ago
  "inherently corrupted by patriarchal and racist power structures" is a quite strong and specific (but I'm assuming also a bit of a strawman on your part). But "extremely misaligned incentives and pretty abusive to the foot soldiers in a way that compromises personal integrity" is a fair characterization of a lot of modern academic science. Everything about the way the system is designed incentivizes Out of curiosity, do you have a STEM PhD? How many millions of dollars in grant money have you raised? How many 100+ citation papers have you published? Are you TT @ an R1 or are you a group lead industry research lab? I ask because I find that the people who are most excited to defend "academic science" from these sorts of structural criticisms often don't actually have much experience working within the system they are defending. People who actually work in the system know there's plenty to critique. We should be proud of what academic science has accomplished in the last ~70 years, but not blind to how the extremely poor treatment and high pressure put on grad students and early-career professors warps incentives, creates the conditions for abusive behavior, attracts the wrong sorts of people into management positions, etc.
helen___keller 6y ago
Not the usual culture war, but my wife and I live with my mother-in-law and after she got addicted to a certain conspiracy youtube scene she's started taking (or almost taking) increasingly drastic actions. 1. (pre-covid) asking us to cancel a family trip to her home country because her youtube channel says the police are just randomly shooting americans for being american 2. Refusing to go outside at all for months post-covid. In the first few weeks she tried to convince us not to even open the windows! 3. Having family members send us HCQ as a "just in case" even though we literally are more cautious about covid than probably 99% of households 4. Trying to convince us that she should take the HCQ as a preventative even though she goes outside the house for maybe an hour a week and takes no significant risk of exposure Anyways, I think the easy part is avoiding discussions about politics and world events. Ultimately it matters very little to me why she thinks democrats are evil and which boogeyman she thinks secretly controls the world's finances. It becomes problematic when it leads to irrational behavior. I'm concerned what her youtube channel is going to convince her to believe or to do should Joe Biden win the election.
- monoideism 6y ago
  Excellent example. I have mostly the same problem at the opposite end of the political spectrum, and then one extended family member on the other end who is a lot like what you describe. They all are disruptive to family life. And the media has covered the many revolts/disagreements of activist employees at Facebook, Twitter, Coinbase and elsewhere. I'm sure people have seen the coverage?

How has this so-called culture war invaded your family life?

by gsk22 6y ago

How has this so-called culture war invaded your family life?

I (late 30s) am unable to talk to younger members (late 20s) of my family about science in western society because they believe that academic science is inherently corrupted by patriarchal and racist power structures, whereas I believe that there is no need to be anywhere near so cynical about academic science and that it is in fact one of the areas of society that we can be proud of. The younger members have grown up taught by many university professors who have pushed postmodernist, power-structure analyses in any different subject areas, to the extent that they find it more important to think of science from the sort of postmodernist cultural theory point of view, than to actually think about the science itself.

8fGTBjZxBcHq 6y ago
I'm more your age but I think I agree with your family members here. Thinking about the technical details of science is not very important to lay people like me. But the cultural questions involved like who is doing science? for what reasons? under what constraints? what practical applications are there and who will they be applied to? Those potentially matter quite a bit to me. Sounds like your family are attempting to be active and well-informed and have chosen to become informed in a part of the domain where they can have useful opinions, rather than a part where they can't.
- da39a3ee 6y ago
  > I think I agree with your family members here. Thinking about the technical details of science is not very important to lay people like me. It's not just the "technical details". It's the entire scientific outlook and scientific method! We all agree that building the fair and healthy societies that we want is a very hard task. So when we have hard tasks to do, we don't want to turn away from a scientific/engineering mentality, quite the opposite! For example, we see that we have a lot of unfairness in society that we want to fix. Perhaps studying game theory and mathematical economics would allow you to contribute to human efforts to create incentive structures and legislation that will promote fairness. Presumably studying statistics and decision theory will help understand the challenges we face as a society needing to make decisions in the face of uncertainty and complex costs. But studying these things is HARD; it requires effort over a long time span to climb the mountain. It does NOT help at all if young people are encouraged to mill around at the base of the mountain wittering about power structures and unfairness in academia.
gsk22 6y ago
So in other words, it _hasn't_ invaded your family life. "Some of my family disagrees with my views" is different than "my family life has been upended/invaded".
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- da39a3ee 6y ago
  Did you miss the part where I said "unable to talk to younger members of my family about science"? Which part of that do you not find particularly significant? You don't think "talking about science" is an important thing for family members to be able do do? You think "science" sounds like a narrow, nerdy sort of conversation that one wouldn't need to have often? You don't think that arguing every time the topic comes up could damage relations with people that I want to get on with? You don't think that us mutually disrespecting each others positions could damage relations? I'm really at a loss for what goes on in your family; do enlighten us.
throwawaygh 6y ago
"inherently corrupted by patriarchal and racist power structures" is a quite strong and specific (but I'm assuming also a bit of a strawman on your part). But "extremely misaligned incentives and pretty abusive to the foot soldiers in a way that compromises personal integrity" is a fair characterization of a lot of modern academic science. Everything about the way the system is designed incentivizes Out of curiosity, do you have a STEM PhD? How many millions of dollars in grant money have you raised? How many 100+ citation papers have you published? Are you TT @ an R1 or are you a group lead industry research lab? I ask because I find that the people who are most excited to defend "academic science" from these sorts of structural criticisms often don't actually have much experience working within the system they are defending. People who actually work in the system know there's plenty to critique. We should be proud of what academic science has accomplished in the last ~70 years, but not blind to how the extremely poor treatment and high pressure put on grad students and early-career professors warps incentives, creates the conditions for abusive behavior, attracts the wrong sorts of people into management positions, etc.

helen___keller 6y ago

Not the usual culture war, but my wife and I live with my mother-in-law and after she got addicted to a certain conspiracy youtube scene she's started taking (or almost taking) increasingly drastic actions. 1. (pre-covid) asking us to cancel a family trip to her home country because her youtube channel says the police are just randomly shooting americans for being american 2. Refusing to go outside at all for months post-covid. In the first few weeks she tried to convince us not to even open the windows! 3. Having family members send us HCQ as a "just in case" even though we literally are more cautious about covid than probably 99% of households 4. Trying to convince us that she should take the HCQ as a preventative even though she goes outside the house for maybe an hour a week and takes no significant risk of exposure Anyways, I think the easy part is avoiding discussions about politics and world events. Ultimately it matters very little to me why she thinks democrats are evil and which boogeyman she thinks secretly controls the world's finances. It becomes problematic when it leads to irrational behavior. I'm concerned what her youtube channel is going to convince her to believe or to do should Joe Biden win the election.

monoideism 6y ago
Excellent example. I have mostly the same problem at the opposite end of the political spectrum, and then one extended family member on the other end who is a lot like what you describe. They all are disruptive to family life. And the media has covered the many revolts/disagreements of activist employees at Facebook, Twitter, Coinbase and elsewhere. I'm sure people have seen the coverage?