4 ms·

Even more interesting exercise. Let's assume - for the sake of the argument - scientists have managed to scientifically prove some unpopular theory. Pick your

Even more interesting exercise. Let's assume - for the sake of the argument - scientists have managed to scientifically prove some unpopular theory. Pick your favorite one: working women do not benefit the society, some races are smarter on average than others or - god forbid - vaccines cause autism. What's next? What are we going to do with these results? P. S. And for those looking to reply "this cannot happen because it can never happen" - remember, this is just a mental exercise. (EDIT) > What are we going to do with these results? Okay, now I know. We'll just downvote them.

dale_glass 5y ago
Those are impossible because such questions can't be scientifically asked in the first place. Like, what does "benefit society" even mean? By what parameter? You can definitely make a scientific conclusion of the order of "religious conservatives really hate it when women work", but... duh? I can agree with that and not care one bit. Second one, impossible because there's no such thing as race scientifically, in the sense the common person uses that word. You could make such a conclusion about groups with particular genetics, but you can't tell those by eyesight.
- AlexTWithBeard 5y ago
  > Like, what does "benefit society" even mean? Oh, this one is easy. Imagine we managed to create a good enough model of the society. Kinda similar to what engineers use to design bridges or combustion chambers. Then we create a target function - minimize the number people below poverty level, minimize the weighted number of crimes, maximize productive life longevity - and so on. All good things. We run it and the model tells us: (1) mandate every woman have three kids by age of thirty (2) promote currently elected president to the king and make it a lifetime hereditary post and (3) make sure everyone goes to the church every Sunday (4) sell Alaska to China. We shrug, check things here and there - and no, there's no mistake, the solution is stable and whatever we thought were unresolvable problems of monarchy actually do have simple solutions which noone thought about before. So, what's next?
  - dale_glass 5y ago
    Impossible, we'll never agree on the target function. Eg, "minimize people below poverty level" -- this isn't universally wanted. Some people believe in fact that it's fundamentally impossible and that if anybody is brought up, that can only happen by bringing somebody down, and at best this is achievable by averaging everything to mediocrity, and they hate the idea of that.
    - AlexTWithBeard 5y ago
      Well, at the very minimum the target function can be something like "make sure everyone is not worse than right now and as many people as possible are better". For the definition of "better off", see [1] [EDIT] Here's another option. Imagine, people come to you and say: hey, dale_glass, you're smart we trust you. Please pick the target function. You can put there whatever you want with whatever weight you want. The caveat: you will have to unconditionally accept the outcome. You cannot keep tweaking and rerunning until the result matches your ideas of perfect society. Your move? [1] https://worldhappiness.report https://worldhappiness.report
      - dale_glass 5y ago
        > Well, at the very minimum the target function can be something like "make sure everyone is not worse than right now and as many people as possible are better". Not everyone wants that either. Some enjoy having inferiors. > Here's another option. Imagine, people come to you and say: hey, dale_glass, you're smart we trust you. Please pick the target function. You can put there whatever you want with whatever weight you want. What does that have to do with science or what we were talking about? That's extremely subjective.
  - andrepd 5y ago
    What's the point of this? If/when those things would hypothetically be found, we'd have to come to terms with it. However, we found that (1) reproductive freedom (2) constitutionalism and democracy (3) religious freedom, are all conducive to a better society. It's impossible we'll ever find otherwise.
michaelmrose 5y ago
If you didn't want downvotes you could have left out the particulars especially untimely is the inclusion of vaccines cause autism. The whole debacle was fueled originally by a lying sack of garbage who was drummed out of the medical profession for faking his results and just took off from there.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jackothy 5y ago
  Well, I mean, he makes it clear enough that those are just examples for the sake of argument. I found the examples useful to understand the scenario he was proposing.
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
But we had just that... we had scientists and doctors telling us just last year (at the beginning of "the plague") that masks are useless for healthy people, and that they even present a higher risk to wearers, because they touch the mask and their face more. And then, one random saturday (in my country atleast), masks became mandatory, along with gloves to enter the stores. Some media outlets have even removed the previous newsstories (not edit and say "whoops, now we know better", but remove completely), and everybody acts as if that didn't happen. Same with trump + wuhan lab theory... at first it was a bannable offence on facebook to promote such idea... and now after trump, there are serious inquiries if that really happened, and we're allowed to discuss this again. Basically, whoever is in charge (government, media platform, moderator,...) will moderate, censor and ban, until the preferable (for them) reality is set.
- sofixa 5y ago
  > But we had just that... we had scientists and doctors telling us just last year (at the beginning of "the plague") that masks are useless for healthy people, and that they even present a higher risk to wearers, because they touch the mask and their face more. > And then, one random saturday (in my country atleast), masks became mandatory, along with gloves to enter the stores. Some media outlets have even removed the previous newsstories (not edit and say "whoops, now we know better", but remove completely), and everybody acts as if that didn't happen. sigh There are nuances for that. First, there weren't enough masks and other PPE for medical personnel; second, there was already hoarding going on. Making masks mandatory at the beginning would have been disastrous and likely resulted in the deaths of many medical personnel, who were among the main limits of how many cases a country can take. Then, you're missing a big difference between the initial "don't use masks" and later "everyone should mask up" guidances. The initial one was that you shouldn't wear a mask to protect yourself because untrained people were unlikely to wear them properly and would just touch themselves too much, thus wasting the precious resource. And of course, there was little certainty about how the virus spread and when ( do you spread it only when you have symptoms? do you spread it only if you have a positive test? ) The later one was due to knowing much better how the virus propagates, we can now conclude that wearing a mask stops people from spreading it, so everybody should wear a mask to stop community spread. There's a huge difference between wearing a mask to protect yourself from getting infected, and to stop unknowing sick people from spreading the virus via the main way it spreads. And of course, when that came about, there were just about enough masks in most countries to actually be able to do that. Yes, it should have been handled better. Is it normal for such guidance to evolve considering the many known and unknown unknowns ? Absofuckinglutely. Would you have prefered for the guidance to stay the same for fear of looking stupid and wasting countless more lives? > Same with trump + wuhan lab theory... at first it was a bannable offence on facebook to promote such idea... and now after trump, there are serious inquiries if that really happened, and we're allowed to discuss this again. Again, nuance! What was bannable was claiming that China developed the virus on purpose. The lighter versions, like accidental lab leak, weren't banned ( that i recall; if you have a source stating otherwise i'd gladly retract that statement). In any case, any such discussion in the beginning seemed, to me at least, as deflections and excuses. We suck at handling a pandemic compared to just about anyone, but it's not our fault, China made this! What does it matter where the virus came from when people are dying left and right from it? Now that things are calmer, we can discuss and investigate. There is still zero proof on the matter, and i doubt there ever will be ( as if the CCP would admit a lab leak in China caused a pandemic with such proportions and consequences).
hutzlibu 5y ago
By your tone alone and the wording, I feel like downvoting you too, despite probably agreeing to your main point. That means, I agree we live in a time, that is pretending to be based on science - but the debates are way more about how all the people feel about certain things and words and happily ignore or fight against all the facts, if they don't fit.
potatoineyes 5y ago
Ditches filled with millions of dead bodies is the answer, that'd be what I expect any society to do with these "hypotheticals".

dale_glass 5y ago

Those are impossible because such questions can't be scientifically asked in the first place. Like, what does "benefit society" even mean? By what parameter? You can definitely make a scientific conclusion of the order of "religious conservatives really hate it when women work", but... duh? I can agree with that and not care one bit. Second one, impossible because there's no such thing as race scientifically, in the sense the common person uses that word. You could make such a conclusion about groups with particular genetics, but you can't tell those by eyesight.

AlexTWithBeard 5y ago
> Like, what does "benefit society" even mean? Oh, this one is easy. Imagine we managed to create a good enough model of the society. Kinda similar to what engineers use to design bridges or combustion chambers. Then we create a target function - minimize the number people below poverty level, minimize the weighted number of crimes, maximize productive life longevity - and so on. All good things. We run it and the model tells us: (1) mandate every woman have three kids by age of thirty (2) promote currently elected president to the king and make it a lifetime hereditary post and (3) make sure everyone goes to the church every Sunday (4) sell Alaska to China. We shrug, check things here and there - and no, there's no mistake, the solution is stable and whatever we thought were unresolvable problems of monarchy actually do have simple solutions which noone thought about before. So, what's next?
- dale_glass 5y ago
  Impossible, we'll never agree on the target function. Eg, "minimize people below poverty level" -- this isn't universally wanted. Some people believe in fact that it's fundamentally impossible and that if anybody is brought up, that can only happen by bringing somebody down, and at best this is achievable by averaging everything to mediocrity, and they hate the idea of that.
  - AlexTWithBeard 5y ago
    Well, at the very minimum the target function can be something like "make sure everyone is not worse than right now and as many people as possible are better". For the definition of "better off", see [1] [EDIT] Here's another option. Imagine, people come to you and say: hey, dale_glass, you're smart we trust you. Please pick the target function. You can put there whatever you want with whatever weight you want. The caveat: you will have to unconditionally accept the outcome. You cannot keep tweaking and rerunning until the result matches your ideas of perfect society. Your move? [1] https://worldhappiness.report https://worldhappiness.report
    - dale_glass 5y ago
      > Well, at the very minimum the target function can be something like "make sure everyone is not worse than right now and as many people as possible are better". Not everyone wants that either. Some enjoy having inferiors. > Here's another option. Imagine, people come to you and say: hey, dale_glass, you're smart we trust you. Please pick the target function. You can put there whatever you want with whatever weight you want. What does that have to do with science or what we were talking about? That's extremely subjective.
- andrepd 5y ago
  What's the point of this? If/when those things would hypothetically be found, we'd have to come to terms with it. However, we found that (1) reproductive freedom (2) constitutionalism and democracy (3) religious freedom, are all conducive to a better society. It's impossible we'll ever find otherwise.

michaelmrose 5y ago

If you didn't want downvotes you could have left out the particulars especially untimely is the inclusion of vaccines cause autism. The whole debacle was fueled originally by a lying sack of garbage who was drummed out of the medical profession for faking his results and just took off from there.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jackothy 5y ago
Well, I mean, he makes it clear enough that those are just examples for the sake of argument. I found the examples useful to understand the scenario he was proposing.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago

But we had just that... we had scientists and doctors telling us just last year (at the beginning of "the plague") that masks are useless for healthy people, and that they even present a higher risk to wearers, because they touch the mask and their face more. And then, one random saturday (in my country atleast), masks became mandatory, along with gloves to enter the stores. Some media outlets have even removed the previous newsstories (not edit and say "whoops, now we know better", but remove completely), and everybody acts as if that didn't happen. Same with trump + wuhan lab theory... at first it was a bannable offence on facebook to promote such idea... and now after trump, there are serious inquiries if that really happened, and we're allowed to discuss this again. Basically, whoever is in charge (government, media platform, moderator,...) will moderate, censor and ban, until the preferable (for them) reality is set.

sofixa 5y ago
> But we had just that... we had scientists and doctors telling us just last year (at the beginning of "the plague") that masks are useless for healthy people, and that they even present a higher risk to wearers, because they touch the mask and their face more. > And then, one random saturday (in my country atleast), masks became mandatory, along with gloves to enter the stores. Some media outlets have even removed the previous newsstories (not edit and say "whoops, now we know better", but remove completely), and everybody acts as if that didn't happen. sigh There are nuances for that. First, there weren't enough masks and other PPE for medical personnel; second, there was already hoarding going on. Making masks mandatory at the beginning would have been disastrous and likely resulted in the deaths of many medical personnel, who were among the main limits of how many cases a country can take. Then, you're missing a big difference between the initial "don't use masks" and later "everyone should mask up" guidances. The initial one was that you shouldn't wear a mask to protect yourself because untrained people were unlikely to wear them properly and would just touch themselves too much, thus wasting the precious resource. And of course, there was little certainty about how the virus spread and when ( do you spread it only when you have symptoms? do you spread it only if you have a positive test? ) The later one was due to knowing much better how the virus propagates, we can now conclude that wearing a mask stops people from spreading it, so everybody should wear a mask to stop community spread. There's a huge difference between wearing a mask to protect yourself from getting infected, and to stop unknowing sick people from spreading the virus via the main way it spreads. And of course, when that came about, there were just about enough masks in most countries to actually be able to do that. Yes, it should have been handled better. Is it normal for such guidance to evolve considering the many known and unknown unknowns ? Absofuckinglutely. Would you have prefered for the guidance to stay the same for fear of looking stupid and wasting countless more lives? > Same with trump + wuhan lab theory... at first it was a bannable offence on facebook to promote such idea... and now after trump, there are serious inquiries if that really happened, and we're allowed to discuss this again. Again, nuance! What was bannable was claiming that China developed the virus on purpose. The lighter versions, like accidental lab leak, weren't banned ( that i recall; if you have a source stating otherwise i'd gladly retract that statement). In any case, any such discussion in the beginning seemed, to me at least, as deflections and excuses. We suck at handling a pandemic compared to just about anyone, but it's not our fault, China made this! What does it matter where the virus came from when people are dying left and right from it? Now that things are calmer, we can discuss and investigate. There is still zero proof on the matter, and i doubt there ever will be ( as if the CCP would admit a lab leak in China caused a pandemic with such proportions and consequences).

hutzlibu 5y ago

By your tone alone and the wording, I feel like downvoting you too, despite probably agreeing to your main point. That means, I agree we live in a time, that is pretending to be based on science - but the debates are way more about how all the people feel about certain things and words and happily ignore or fight against all the facts, if they don't fit.

potatoineyes 5y ago

Ditches filled with millions of dead bodies is the answer, that'd be what I expect any society to do with these "hypotheticals".