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I came from the Soviet Union and these kinds of debates smell like 1937, like Lysenkoism, like Soviet doctors trials, etc etc. On one hand we have scientists th
by mudil 5y ago
I came from the Soviet Union and these kinds of debates smell like 1937, like Lysenkoism, like Soviet doctors trials, etc etc. On one hand we have scientists that are probing the nature of reality and on the other we have politically opportune believers slash do-gooders, ready to paint the science on a political canvas, hurting the science, the scientists, and the progress itself.
- mannerheim 5y agoIt is reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution. Liu Cixin lived through that period, which inspired one of the scenes he wrote in the Three Body Problem. In it, a physics professor is submitted to a struggle session by his students for teaching counter-revolutionary science (relativity and quantum mechanics) and beaten to death. While this story is fictionalised, it certainly was no exaggeration of the climate at the time.
- no_butterscotch 5y agoThat scene really stuck out to me when I read it. It enraged me. It reminds me of some of the "softer" floggings going on today when Professors won't adhere to the new collectivism of our University system.
- jahnu 5y agoI find these comparisons unhelpful. What happened in China during the Cultural Revolution is on such a different level of awfulness it just isn't even the tiniest bit comparable to anything controversial or problematic happening in West right now. Even today what is happening in China, and even the freer parts like Hong Kong, is still far removed from issues in the West. Even as a "thin end of the wedge" argument it's just weak. It hurts legitimate and necessary criticism of actual authoritarian countries and it hurts legitimate and necessary criticism of real issues (such as that raised in the article above) in free, Western countries.
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago[flagged]
- elefanten 5y agoI don’t support or agree with the far left, or any of the identity culture warrior / critical theory / wokeness or whatever other adjacent thing you wanna roll up in that. But this comment is just unhinged nonsense. This is akin to the claims that Jan 6 was a coup attempt. “The left” is not a homogenous organized force (rofl, come on, the trope is that the left eats itself) which has organized militants on standby. Antifa and Patriots are both larping idiots alike. It’s the contagion and mutation of bad ideas that’s a bigger problem. A semantic pandemic.
- mannerheim 5y agoThe Red Guards were mostly larping idiots, too. Many were literal children. The difference is they had substantial support both societally (either out of fear or ideology) and from the top by Mao, who saw them as a weapon he could harness. America isn't at that point, but we do ourselves no favours by pretending that it can't happen here. The ingredients are available, even if the execution isn't yet.
- bangkoksbest 5y agoUhhh China has centuries of history of peasant movements rising up in improvised make-shift revolts. I don't think you understand how real revolution was for people in China. It was absolutely not a LARP. Just looking from 1850 to Mao, there was: The Taiping Rebellion (30m dead), 2nd Sino-Japanese War (20m dead), Dungan rebellion (15m dead), Miao rebellion (5m dead), Red Turban rebellion (1m dead), Panthay rebellion (1m dead), Punti–Hakka wars (1m dead), Nationalist purges (1.5m dead), various Warlord Era conflicts (500k dead), 1911 revolution (200k dead), Boxer Rebellion (100k dead), and 1st Sino-Japanese war (50k dead). Not to mention residual deaths from the two World Wars not directly attributable to the conflicts above, but which would still number more than the losses the USA suffered in both wars. The American Civil War was about ~750k dead. There is absolutely no comparison between the traumatic social conditions of 1940s China with even 21st century China let alone the United States. They were definitely not "role playing".
- fastball 5y ago> It is reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution. Which is not at all surprising given how many young people in the West like to style themselves as Marxists.
- hownottowrite 5y agoThe end of that chapter had me in tears.
- publicola1990 5y agoNot just that, see how Louis Aggasiz's reputation is being hounded down in recent years. Renaming schools and pulling down statues of him.
- throwoutway 5y agoIf you’re going to mention that then Id also have to mention these “do-gooders” renaming Abraham Lincoln schools… of all the presidents to cancel..
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago> It is reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution. That's right. People are being beaten to death, locked up in labor camps, mysteriously vanished and worse, all because they don't bow down to people who think there are different metrics worth using at least some of the time when judging science (or anything else). It's absolutely terrifying!
- etangent 5y agoYou make an excellent point. Let's wait until people are actually beaten to death and imprisoned (and not just one, like a good few thousands of them!), and only then start complaining.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y agoThat's right! Because there are just 1 or maybe 2 steps from Scientific American publishing a godawful article about Wilson & refusing to print a rebuttal (+), to peole being actually beaten to death. We need to take action, right now. (+) and let's not overlook that UPenn is actively considering changing tenure rules just because a poor law professor made some actually racist remarks. Labor camps could be here by 2023!
- etangent 5y agoYou know, I started out thinking that very bad language should indeed be censored. But considering what I see -- how eagerly language is used to eliminate one's political opponents from the public sphere, and how expansive definitions become over time (e.g. what happened to "literally violence") -- I now believe in complete freedom of speech, even down to fully genocidal rhetoric (and yes, that includes freedom from civilian consequences, not just government-imposed consequences). As a free speech absolutist, I now believe that the government should perform a proactive role in ensuring that the 1st amendment is obeyed -- not just a passive one.
- SpicyLemonZest 5y agoI don’t think anyone’s gonna die soon. What we are a couple steps away from, I think, is an environment where this rebuttal would be considered hate speech and the signatories would be fired for endorsing it. (We might be only half a step away, honestly; I give it a 50% chance that one of the signatories faces a Title IX complaint about it by next week, although I understand that such an unconfident prediction doesn’t really mean much.)
- zozbot234 5y ago> It is reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution. It's quite literally a mindless zombie remnant of the actual Cultural Revolution ideology of Lin Biao and the criminal Gang Of Four. That whole ideological memeplex was taken up by young radical leftists throughout the West in the late 1960s and 1970s. A generation has passed, and now those leftist students have grown up and become respected "liberal" and "progressive" leaders. Do the math, it's not rocket science.
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- pron 5y agoThe debate around Wilson's ideas is not new, nor is it one of scientists on one side vs "do-gooders" on the other. E.O. Wilson was accused of lending support to scientific racism since the seventies, including by fellow distinguished scientists and Wilson't colleagues at Harvard, Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/12/06/specials/wilson-naturalist.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/12/06/s...
- slibhb 5y agoGould and Lewontin weren't debating. They were engaging in academic politics. Arguing that an idea is wrong because it "lends support to scientific racism" is unscientific. To argue against an idea, demonstrate why it's wrong or offer a better alternative. "That's racist" is neither a scientific argument nor a serious one.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago> Arguing that an idea is wrong because it "lends support to scientific racism" is unscientific. Since racism is itself not a scientific concept, arguments about this sort of thing are inherently never going to be scientific, but rather always political/philosophical. There's absolutely nothing wrong with Gould, Lewontin (or Wilson) engaging in such debates, which are as at least as important (and possibly more directly impactful) than the scientific ones. Political/philosophical debates do not involve questions of demonstrable "right" or "wrong", but rather are a stage for beliefs about the world and different notions of utility. You don't settle them by "demonstrating why it's wrong", or by "offering a better idea".
- slibhb 5y agoI agree with you. But if this isn't a scientific debate, why would it matter that Gould et al are "distinguished scientists at Harvard"? Shouldn't they separate their political-philosophical-religious views from their work as scientists? It isn't fruitful when one side is arguing science and the other is arguing politics.
- hilbert42 5y ago"I came from the Soviet Union and these kinds of debates smell like 1937, like Lysenkoism, like Soviet doctors trials, etc etc." I reckon you're correct. Unfortunately, it seems we are again entering an age when opponents of those with views or ideas attack the actual person rather than debate the ideas themselves. We could been forgiven for thinking that this was just a passing phase when such attacks ocured in social media, Facebook etc., but when an associate professor who holds a very prominent and responsible position in public life and who uses the pages of Scientific American to attack an eminent person who is now dead and who can no longer defend himself, then I'd say such attacks are here to stay. Most thinking people would find such attacks abhorrent. How we change the public discourse back to a more even keel is an unanswered question.
- VictorPath 5y ago
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago> Wilson wrote about that the white race is superior to the black race. Do you have a source for this?
- kgwgk 5y agoScientific American!
- hilbert42 5y agoReference please.
- kgwgk 5y agohttps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-complicated-legacy-of-e-o-wilson/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-complicated-l... I thought I could do without the /s tag
- hilbert42 5y agoSorry, that's the McLemore article. From the way you were talking I thought it was an article by E.O. Wilson himself.
- disgruntledphd2 5y agoI think that the person you asked the question of was talking about the Sci Am article, but I was hoping for some evidence that EO Wilson was a racist, from his published works. All I can figure out is that if you don't subscribe to a blank-slate approach to human behaviour (i.e. nurture >> nature) then apparently you are racist. Probably someone should have mentioned that to all the authors of the psychology textbooks I read in college, then.
- acdha 5y ago> On one hand we have scientists that are probing the nature of reality and on the other we have politically opportune believers slash do-gooders, This false dichotomy is key to the false comparisons with Lysenkoism, etc. E. O. Wilson did not represent all scientists even during his working career and many of the people criticizing him are also scientists using their scientific expertise. The author of the Scientific American piece is “an associate professor in the Family Health Care Nursing Department and a clinician-scientist at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco.” — hardly a political apparatchik. Some of the most outspoken criticisms of his work came from Richard C. Lewontin (a population geneticist) and Stephen Jay Gould (a paleontologist). Similarly, Razib Khan is someone who is at least comfortable using his expertise in forums which do not shy away from race politics — for example, he lost a contract writing for The New York Times when his regular contributions to Taki's Magazine, a very conservative venue which was at least neo-Nazi-adjacent (Richard Spencer was the managing editor). That doesn't mean that we should dismiss Khan's writing entirely but we should recognize that he's a human rather than the objective voice of science and his work also needs to be read with an understanding of how his political positions influence it.
- naasking 5y ago> The author of the Scientific American piece is “an associate professor in the Family Health Care Nursing Department and a clinician-scientist at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco.” — hardly a political apparatchik. Hardly Wilson's peer either, and the article shows this quite clearly. > Some of the most outspoken criticisms of his work came from Richard C. Lewontin (a population geneticist) and Stephen Jay Gould (a paleontologist). Yes, criticisms of the substance and inferences like any good scientist would focus on, not thinly veiled accusations of racism.
- acdha 5y ago> Hardly Wilson's peer either, and the article shows this quite clearly. Whether you find her politically correct isn’t relevant to the topic at hand: she’s clearly qualified to participate in a scientific discussion.
- afpx 5y agoLuckily, in the US, we have constitutional rights and a long history of open debate. But, I'm curious. What would have helped the Soviet Union from forming? Was there a solution?
- HideousKojima 5y ago>But, I'm curious. What would have helped the Soviet Union from forming? Was there a solution? Large-scale invasion by the rest of Europe in support of the White Army, potentially. Hard to imagine Europe having the stomach for it after WW1 though.
- YeBanKo 5y agoThe political opportune believer is this case is Associate Professor of Family Health Nursing at the University of California, San Francisco. UCSF is one of the top ranked in medical field. It does not merely smell like the Soviet Union, when ideology can be successfully used to attack scientific opponents and, maybe, even within top scientific institution, it is the Soviet Union. The so-called normal distribution of statistics assumes that there are default humans who serve as the standard that the rest of us can be accurately measured against. When she so casually misinterprets normal distribution in medical application in SciAm, what stop her from brining this notion into the classroom. And this is how we end up with Lysenkovschina, but in medicine instead of agriculture.