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This makes me think of the difficulties of using scientific ideas as a basis for policy. This has become very apparent during the pandemic where I repeatedly he
by brutusborn 5y ago
This makes me think of the difficulties of using scientific ideas as a basis for policy. This has become very apparent during the pandemic where I repeatedly hear people say "just follow the science." But policy is fundamentally philosophically based. For example, Sweden did not lock down and many places in the UK locked down for more than a year. Surely science cannot be different in different locations, so the philosophy must be different. Therefore "following the science" by itself is meaningless.
- ChainOfFools 5y agoscience = descriptive until predictive, at which point it is compatible with policy, which implicates the predictive to form the prescriptive.
- brutusborn 5y agoCan you elaborate on this a bit? I think you are saying that policy is prescriptive and can use predictions from science, but I don't understand the use of "descriptive".
- poetically 5y agoFollow the science means gather data and see what works, it's not about philosophical differences about whether lockdowns are good or not from a philosophical perspective but whether they actually have their intended outcomes, i.e. reduction of infections and deaths. It would be idiotic to think lockdowns don't make a difference for a highly contagious airborne virus. The fewer people there are out and about the less chances the virus has of jumping from one host to the next. That's not even following science, that's just basic logic. But people don't have logical skills anymore because they keep consuming nonsense from their internet connected pocket supercomputers.
- brutusborn 5y agoUnfortunately I've seen it used in a variety of contexts. I agree that it should mean what you think it means, but that is not how it is always used.