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Yes, I’m saying that. You are a scientist but imagine what the space of skepticism in the general public actually looks like. Anybody with a political motivatio

by turzmo 4y ago

Yes, I’m saying that. You are a scientist but imagine what the space of skepticism in the general public actually looks like. Anybody with a political motivation can ‘take down’ climate change, vaccines, or even a tound earth.

tokinonagare 4y ago
> Anybody with a political motivation can ‘take down’ climate change, vaccines, or even a tound earth. And this is a good thing because the first two things on that list, given the impact it has on the living style population, must be discussed publicly. Politics exist precisely to address those kind of broad impact topics. The last and lasting blow done to scientific credibility was precisely about the so-called vaccines. A barely tested medical product based on a tech that never worked previously released by a big company known for corruption was decreed to be "science", all while changing the definition in dictionaries to make it a "vaccine". No discussion on the subject even by experts was tolerated, the big internet companies erased opposition and some governments went as far as stripping basic rights (movement, expression, business) to citizens, all in the name of science. The fact is, this isn't a data-based or scientific approach at all. It's only power-tripping. A data based-approach would have shown clearly about 3 months in the crisis that the population at large isn't even at risk. Explaining to the population the risk ventilated by age would have been 100 times more scientific than the fear-mongering broadcasted continually on TV. Science needs to be used as a justification carefully, and using it dogmatically for pushing something that was ironically not even scientifically proven to be effective nor without risks (I'm pretty sure the newspapers in my country never reported the thousand or so dead directly imputable to it) is the exact opposite.
- turzmo 4y ago
  I agree science needs to be used as a justification carefully, and pushing COVID vaccines out quickly may or may not have been a good use of that power (consider other diseases though). But I still believe that science needs that credibility in order to have a fighting chance of influencing policy because science is so difficult and in places counterintuitive that a public "debate" about it will inevitably end up with a worse truth. Politics doesn't exist precisely to address those topics, politics exists for people to obtain power. Discussing those topics may be a route to power. Without a respect for science as a more objective truth than rhetoric, power will be secured by the most appealing rhetoric, whether or not that voice conflicts directly with the science that we know.

by turzmo 4y ago

tokinonagare 4y ago

> Anybody with a political motivation can ‘take down’ climate change, vaccines, or even a tound earth. And this is a good thing because the first two things on that list, given the impact it has on the living style population, must be discussed publicly. Politics exist precisely to address those kind of broad impact topics. The last and lasting blow done to scientific credibility was precisely about the so-called vaccines. A barely tested medical product based on a tech that never worked previously released by a big company known for corruption was decreed to be "science", all while changing the definition in dictionaries to make it a "vaccine". No discussion on the subject even by experts was tolerated, the big internet companies erased opposition and some governments went as far as stripping basic rights (movement, expression, business) to citizens, all in the name of science. The fact is, this isn't a data-based or scientific approach at all. It's only power-tripping. A data based-approach would have shown clearly about 3 months in the crisis that the population at large isn't even at risk. Explaining to the population the risk ventilated by age would have been 100 times more scientific than the fear-mongering broadcasted continually on TV. Science needs to be used as a justification carefully, and using it dogmatically for pushing something that was ironically not even scientifically proven to be effective nor without risks (I'm pretty sure the newspapers in my country never reported the thousand or so dead directly imputable to it) is the exact opposite.

turzmo 4y ago
I agree science needs to be used as a justification carefully, and pushing COVID vaccines out quickly may or may not have been a good use of that power (consider other diseases though). But I still believe that science needs that credibility in order to have a fighting chance of influencing policy because science is so difficult and in places counterintuitive that a public "debate" about it will inevitably end up with a worse truth. Politics doesn't exist precisely to address those topics, politics exists for people to obtain power. Discussing those topics may be a route to power. Without a respect for science as a more objective truth than rhetoric, power will be secured by the most appealing rhetoric, whether or not that voice conflicts directly with the science that we know.