4 ms·

That sounds like a suspect take. If someone's studying how some plant cells work, or discovering new stars, they're discovering information for the long-term o

That sounds like a suspect take. If someone's studying how some plant cells work, or discovering new stars, they're discovering information for the long-term of humanity's collective knowledge. Everything is political, you can't sit still on a moving train, etc. The fascists said that this or that art or science was Jewish art or Jewish science. The Marxists said that this or that art or scientific take was bourgeois art or bourgeois science. What you said about everything being politics reminds of Foucault's arguments, comrade.

kennywinker 4y ago
The goal of science is to seek the closest possible approximation of the truth. But if I publish a paper about some detail of how brains work, and someone starts using my work to justify oppression of some group - i have a responsibility to the truth that I am seeking to at VERY least publicly say “my paper doesn’t say any of that you prejudiced dingbats”
- mancerayder 4y ago
  I mean I support that view that a misrepresentation may need to be called out. I'm not convinced that this is evidence in favor of 'all science is political', the stance of postmodernists. It's all ideology, it's all political, there are institutional trappings in society that are unavoidable, etc is the crux, and it's far-reaching, as no one can escape a political position. It's a suffocating viewpoint we're seeing played out painfully in the culture wars: you're either with us or against us, state your position, etc.
  - kennywinker 4y ago
    I guess how I understand the “everything is political” thing is that every idea has a political angle. Maybe that is a helpful distinction. Like… the discovery of penicillin isn’t political - it’s the result of someone exploring the biological world looking for medically useful things - but the fact that we paid someone money to do that was the result of a bunch of political choices like money for hospitals and schools, a system of government and taxation to supply that money. And the consequences of it’s creation had geopolitical consequences like a change in the cost in lives of waging war, or changing some sexually transmitted infections from deadly to treatable which in turn changed our social values around sex. The truth isn’t political. But what we choose to study, and what we do with the things we learn is political. Politics is just a second-order phenomenon. There is what is happening, and politics is how we feel about what’s happening and what we’d like the collective humanity to do about that.
gopher_space 4y ago
For example, a social scientist might submit a range of articles to HN in order to record, quantify, and study the personalities drawn to different topics. A board owner might use this information to attract the conversational tone they'd like to see.
- rdtwo 4y ago
  Social science isn’t science.
  - kennywinker 4y ago
    Speaking of memes, this is one. Social science includes: "academic disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, economics, human geography, linguistics, management science, communication science, political science and psychology.[1]" Now if you're saying that you have issues with some of the common methodologies or lack of repeatable experimentation in anthropology or political science - that's one thing, but if you're saying that linguistics, economics, and archaeology are not science? I do not agree. Something is science if it uses the scientific method to generate knowledge. The fact that the knowledge generated is highly dependent (e.g. "in mid-century european society, we've found that A and B are likely result if C and D are present") doesn't make it not science. That's a limitation on the conclusions, not a built-in invalidity of the knowledge. There is plenty of knowledge generated by physics, biology, etc. that is highly dependent too.

kennywinker 4y ago

The goal of science is to seek the closest possible approximation of the truth. But if I publish a paper about some detail of how brains work, and someone starts using my work to justify oppression of some group - i have a responsibility to the truth that I am seeking to at VERY least publicly say “my paper doesn’t say any of that you prejudiced dingbats”

mancerayder 4y ago
I mean I support that view that a misrepresentation may need to be called out. I'm not convinced that this is evidence in favor of 'all science is political', the stance of postmodernists. It's all ideology, it's all political, there are institutional trappings in society that are unavoidable, etc is the crux, and it's far-reaching, as no one can escape a political position. It's a suffocating viewpoint we're seeing played out painfully in the culture wars: you're either with us or against us, state your position, etc.
- kennywinker 4y ago
  I guess how I understand the “everything is political” thing is that every idea has a political angle. Maybe that is a helpful distinction. Like… the discovery of penicillin isn’t political - it’s the result of someone exploring the biological world looking for medically useful things - but the fact that we paid someone money to do that was the result of a bunch of political choices like money for hospitals and schools, a system of government and taxation to supply that money. And the consequences of it’s creation had geopolitical consequences like a change in the cost in lives of waging war, or changing some sexually transmitted infections from deadly to treatable which in turn changed our social values around sex. The truth isn’t political. But what we choose to study, and what we do with the things we learn is political. Politics is just a second-order phenomenon. There is what is happening, and politics is how we feel about what’s happening and what we’d like the collective humanity to do about that.

gopher_space 4y ago

For example, a social scientist might submit a range of articles to HN in order to record, quantify, and study the personalities drawn to different topics. A board owner might use this information to attract the conversational tone they'd like to see.

rdtwo 4y ago
Social science isn’t science.
- kennywinker 4y ago
  Speaking of memes, this is one. Social science includes: "academic disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, economics, human geography, linguistics, management science, communication science, political science and psychology.[1]" Now if you're saying that you have issues with some of the common methodologies or lack of repeatable experimentation in anthropology or political science - that's one thing, but if you're saying that linguistics, economics, and archaeology are not science? I do not agree. Something is science if it uses the scientific method to generate knowledge. The fact that the knowledge generated is highly dependent (e.g. "in mid-century european society, we've found that A and B are likely result if C and D are present") doesn't make it not science. That's a limitation on the conclusions, not a built-in invalidity of the knowledge. There is plenty of knowledge generated by physics, biology, etc. that is highly dependent too.