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"the people who devote so much of their time to ethical and moral purity, and searching out failings in others, probably do not have the time to develop the tec

"the people who devote so much of their time to ethical and moral purity, and searching out failings in others, probably do not have the time to develop the technical competence required to comment on the underlying data and science used to draw the immoral conclusions." I'm not sure what you're trying to say here but I can assure you that ethics and morals underpin societies, without them they would fall apart. It's hard to see how you can come to the conclusion that one cannot hold both moral views and still be a good scientist or technical person. Some of the greatest scientists have held extremely moral values and they've commented on them widely in public. Take Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard for instace. They were great scientists and they held very strong moral principles - specially over the Atom bomb. On the other hand, one of their colleagues, an equally brilliant scientist, Edward Teller, one of the developers of the hydrogen bomb, thought little of morals and by many accounts was a rather despicable person. (BTW, he also shafted his equally famous colleague Robert Oppenheimer who never fully recovered from Teller's slander.) Another despicable bastard was the brilliant chemists, Fritz Haber. He got the Nobel prize for the fixation of nitrogen (production of ammonia) for fertilizer which went on to provide food for millions. However, Haber had SFA morals, he went on to develop chemical weapons in WWI and the day after his wife, also a chemist, shot herself out of desperation for what he had done, he went off to the Western Front to install those diabolical weapons. Lesson: don't generalize.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago
>I'm not sure what you're trying to say here but nonetheless you decided to write at length about it ending with a >Lesson: don't generalize. Ok then. >It's hard to see how you can come to the conclusion that one cannot hold both moral views and still be a good scientist or technical person. It's hard to see how you cannot be sure what I was trying to say AND reach such a definite and wrong conclusion as to what it was nonetheless. when I said >>the people who devote so much of their time to ethical and moral purity, and searching out failings in others I have to admit that I probably put too much work on that ', and searching' and I did use the word moralizer later which, I think in usage generally emphasizes the especially in the first entry here https://www.dictionary.com/browse/moralizer https://www.dictionary.com/browse/moralizer "to reflect on or express opinions about something in terms of right and wrong, especially in a self-righteous or tiresome way." but which obviously can also be used without the reference to self-righteousness. That is to say that people who expend a lot of effort not just in being morally correct, which I suppose everyone should give some consideration to, but also hunting out the flaws in other people are probably too busy to do much good in other things. I submit that Einstein was not a moralizer in the common understanding of that term, although he was concerned with morality, and he did not hunt out other people to spend his time correcting their morality, especially not in the years when he did his most important work. Lesson: only end with a lesson if you feel that you understand what is being communicated, and if you do feel that you understand it don't say otherwise as that is likely to create misunderstandings for others.
- hilbert42 5y ago
  "...people who devote so much of their time to ethical and moral purity, and searching out failings in others, probably do not have the time to develop the technical competence..." This a strong comprehensible statement which you do not negate. As you've not negated or otherwise qualified it elsewhere, then it's a reasonable assumption that this is an actual affirmation of what you believe. On this alone I'm justifified in making my comments. "...and science used to draw the immoral conclusions." This makes little sense to me (thus my 'not sure' point). What immoral conclusions can be drawn from science and how are they directly connected or relevant to the first part of your sentence? The only way I can read or interpret this is that you are making some general reference to some amorphous group who draws undefined immoral conclusions from science. In essence, the subject of your sentence has no predicate, instead it has some undefined and unrelated one from somewhere else (perhaps you studied APL and it's beyond my comprehension). It is not my intension to be confrontationist but my previous reply was based on what I read into (or perceived from) your first post. Sorry about that.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    >The only way I can read or interpret this is that you are making some general reference to some amorphous group who draws undefined immoral conclusions from science. did you read the article under discussion? I know we are supposed to assume that people have but as you are not reading or interpreting what I say that I think would be reasonably clear from reading the article, I sort of think I have to ask. So let's try to clarify my mysterious statement: "the people who devote so much of their time to ethical and moral purity, and searching out failings in others, probably do not have the time to develop the technical competence required to comment on the underlying data and science used to draw the immoral conclusions." searching out failings in others - quite clearly this means the moral failings of others. if someone has a 'moral failing' they are immoral. the article is addressing an attack against a famous scientist who recently died, the attack asserted he was immoral because of views or statements that they had based on reviewing the scientific output of said dead scientist. The attack in short asserted that he was an immoral man and that he had drawn immoral conclusions from his science. I would think a passing familiarity not just with the article but just the various comments in this post would lead one to assume that the 'immoral conclusions' under discussion are not those of some amorphous group but rather those of E. O. Wilson. I must now reiterate my opinion that Mr. Wilson was not immoral in case you decide that is what I am trying to communicate, and I must now do so because I am really uncertain as to what you would decide I meant about anything. If I told you the sky was blue I worry you might cry foul because there is no sky that has ever been diagnosed with depression. Finally the article that protected the reputation of Wilson found numerous technical and scientific inaccuracies in the attack, the attack was quite comprehensive but technically poor. Why would someone put so much effort into attacking a scientist's moral failings, using the science as evidence, but not have the technical chops to take apart the science. So the people who do the moralizing would be people who write attacks of the sort discussed in the article this post was about, the immoral conclusions of the science would be the conclusions attackers claim was drawn by the science under attack, and I state the supposition that these attackers 'probably do not have the time to develop the technical competence ' because the defense shows they did not have the technical competence but also because I feel, as was evidently the case here, that they do seem to expend a lot of effort on making these attacks and it is a well-known fact of reality that if one spends all one's time doing one thing, such as defending one's posts on HN, one cannot do other things, such as write the article on assistive technology glossaries I should be working on. on edit: changed amoral to amorphous, guess I wrote to quickly with a daughter complaining at me the whole time because she's on Roblox timeout.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago

>I'm not sure what you're trying to say here but nonetheless you decided to write at length about it ending with a >Lesson: don't generalize. Ok then. >It's hard to see how you can come to the conclusion that one cannot hold both moral views and still be a good scientist or technical person. It's hard to see how you cannot be sure what I was trying to say AND reach such a definite and wrong conclusion as to what it was nonetheless. when I said >>the people who devote so much of their time to ethical and moral purity, and searching out failings in others I have to admit that I probably put too much work on that ', and searching' and I did use the word moralizer later which, I think in usage generally emphasizes the especially in the first entry here https://www.dictionary.com/browse/moralizer https://www.dictionary.com/browse/moralizer "to reflect on or express opinions about something in terms of right and wrong, especially in a self-righteous or tiresome way." but which obviously can also be used without the reference to self-righteousness. That is to say that people who expend a lot of effort not just in being morally correct, which I suppose everyone should give some consideration to, but also hunting out the flaws in other people are probably too busy to do much good in other things. I submit that Einstein was not a moralizer in the common understanding of that term, although he was concerned with morality, and he did not hunt out other people to spend his time correcting their morality, especially not in the years when he did his most important work. Lesson: only end with a lesson if you feel that you understand what is being communicated, and if you do feel that you understand it don't say otherwise as that is likely to create misunderstandings for others.

hilbert42 5y ago
"...people who devote so much of their time to ethical and moral purity, and searching out failings in others, probably do not have the time to develop the technical competence..." This a strong comprehensible statement which you do not negate. As you've not negated or otherwise qualified it elsewhere, then it's a reasonable assumption that this is an actual affirmation of what you believe. On this alone I'm justifified in making my comments. "...and science used to draw the immoral conclusions." This makes little sense to me (thus my 'not sure' point). What immoral conclusions can be drawn from science and how are they directly connected or relevant to the first part of your sentence? The only way I can read or interpret this is that you are making some general reference to some amorphous group who draws undefined immoral conclusions from science. In essence, the subject of your sentence has no predicate, instead it has some undefined and unrelated one from somewhere else (perhaps you studied APL and it's beyond my comprehension). It is not my intension to be confrontationist but my previous reply was based on what I read into (or perceived from) your first post. Sorry about that.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  >The only way I can read or interpret this is that you are making some general reference to some amorphous group who draws undefined immoral conclusions from science. did you read the article under discussion? I know we are supposed to assume that people have but as you are not reading or interpreting what I say that I think would be reasonably clear from reading the article, I sort of think I have to ask. So let's try to clarify my mysterious statement: "the people who devote so much of their time to ethical and moral purity, and searching out failings in others, probably do not have the time to develop the technical competence required to comment on the underlying data and science used to draw the immoral conclusions." searching out failings in others - quite clearly this means the moral failings of others. if someone has a 'moral failing' they are immoral. the article is addressing an attack against a famous scientist who recently died, the attack asserted he was immoral because of views or statements that they had based on reviewing the scientific output of said dead scientist. The attack in short asserted that he was an immoral man and that he had drawn immoral conclusions from his science. I would think a passing familiarity not just with the article but just the various comments in this post would lead one to assume that the 'immoral conclusions' under discussion are not those of some amorphous group but rather those of E. O. Wilson. I must now reiterate my opinion that Mr. Wilson was not immoral in case you decide that is what I am trying to communicate, and I must now do so because I am really uncertain as to what you would decide I meant about anything. If I told you the sky was blue I worry you might cry foul because there is no sky that has ever been diagnosed with depression. Finally the article that protected the reputation of Wilson found numerous technical and scientific inaccuracies in the attack, the attack was quite comprehensive but technically poor. Why would someone put so much effort into attacking a scientist's moral failings, using the science as evidence, but not have the technical chops to take apart the science. So the people who do the moralizing would be people who write attacks of the sort discussed in the article this post was about, the immoral conclusions of the science would be the conclusions attackers claim was drawn by the science under attack, and I state the supposition that these attackers 'probably do not have the time to develop the technical competence ' because the defense shows they did not have the technical competence but also because I feel, as was evidently the case here, that they do seem to expend a lot of effort on making these attacks and it is a well-known fact of reality that if one spends all one's time doing one thing, such as defending one's posts on HN, one cannot do other things, such as write the article on assistive technology glossaries I should be working on. on edit: changed amoral to amorphous, guess I wrote to quickly with a daughter complaining at me the whole time because she's on Roblox timeout.