4 ms·

It reminds me of tobacco industry. Check out this article: https://pandodaily.com/2015/06/30/tobacco-industry-will-kill-billion-people-century-read-how-they-pl

It reminds me of tobacco industry. Check out this article: https://pandodaily.com/2015/06/30/tobacco-industry-will-kill-billion-people-century-read-how-they-plan-do-it https://pandodaily.com/2015/06/30/tobacco-industry-will-kill...

lordnacho 4y ago
Tobacco is a good one actually. A legendary statistician, IIRC Fisher(?), came up with a bunch of reasons why the statistics might not show causality. As in, how do we know it isn't just people who were at higher risk of dying that smoked? He had a whole bunch of these statistical critical thinking type objections that are all very valid from an epistemological point of view. Climate change actually has the same. There's a bunch of stats and a bunch of "yeah but what if" things that have been dealt with over the years.
- wahern 4y ago
  > very valid from an epistemological point of view Philosophers can be dangerous creatures (if unwittingly), perhaps some of the most dangerous. It's incredible how you can draw a straight line from many of the most destructive political narratives (across the spectrum) to reasonable seeming scholarly papers and debates. There's a near universal consensus today regarding the horrible, unacceptable presumptions behind Social Darwinism and related theories from the turn of the 20th century. Mid-century philosophers, particularly structuralists and post-structuralists, led the charge in attacking those earlier theories. (By first identifying the underlying cultural presumptions, and then "deconstructing" them.) And yet you can draw a straight line from, say, Putin's whataboutism and ethnoreligious rhetoric--not to mention all the culture war narratives (from both the left and right)--straight to those philosophical ideas and debates--i.e. structuralism, post-structuralism, etc. I mean, Putin's rhetoric has always existed in some form, but those and other philosophical schools absolutely supercharged the rhetoric and its intellectual resilience. If there is no objective truth, and if even older moral pillars of Western philosophy, like the exaltation of individual dignity, can be just as illegitimate as any other principle, then Putin supporters can argue the legitimacy of his viewpoint and it would be dishonest to outright reject absolutely everything about it. (There are obvious and time-tested counterarguments, but they're in tension with favored moral norms in the West, such as victim culture. The left birthed victim culture, linking moral worth to membership of a persecuted minority, but the right has embraced it for all its worth.)
LarryMullins 4y ago
American propagandist and inventor of "PR", Edward Bernays, is infamous for convincing American women to smoke cigarettes. But privately, he wanted his own wife to quit.
- moistly 4y ago
  And then there are the people who sell phone/tablet devices, and child-oriented apps and games through their walled-garden stores — and at the same time have banned the devices for their own children.
acdha 4y ago
It's an apt comparison because many of the science deniers started their careers with the tobacco industry. For example, this guy is on Fox News a lot — he started with tobacco but moved on to things like claiming banning DDT killed people (funded as part of the tobacco industry's opposition to public health agencies in Africa whose anti-smoking campaigns were cutting into sales), climate change denial, and COVID-19 misinformation and skepticism about vaccines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Milloy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Milloy
- mdp2021 4y ago
  > skepticism This whole picture some will read as an invitation to skepticism. «Science» does not exist in a vacuum - as this very submission re-shows.
nunez 4y ago
Wow; this is insane.

lordnacho 4y ago

Tobacco is a good one actually. A legendary statistician, IIRC Fisher(?), came up with a bunch of reasons why the statistics might not show causality. As in, how do we know it isn't just people who were at higher risk of dying that smoked? He had a whole bunch of these statistical critical thinking type objections that are all very valid from an epistemological point of view. Climate change actually has the same. There's a bunch of stats and a bunch of "yeah but what if" things that have been dealt with over the years.

wahern 4y ago
> very valid from an epistemological point of view Philosophers can be dangerous creatures (if unwittingly), perhaps some of the most dangerous. It's incredible how you can draw a straight line from many of the most destructive political narratives (across the spectrum) to reasonable seeming scholarly papers and debates. There's a near universal consensus today regarding the horrible, unacceptable presumptions behind Social Darwinism and related theories from the turn of the 20th century. Mid-century philosophers, particularly structuralists and post-structuralists, led the charge in attacking those earlier theories. (By first identifying the underlying cultural presumptions, and then "deconstructing" them.) And yet you can draw a straight line from, say, Putin's whataboutism and ethnoreligious rhetoric--not to mention all the culture war narratives (from both the left and right)--straight to those philosophical ideas and debates--i.e. structuralism, post-structuralism, etc. I mean, Putin's rhetoric has always existed in some form, but those and other philosophical schools absolutely supercharged the rhetoric and its intellectual resilience. If there is no objective truth, and if even older moral pillars of Western philosophy, like the exaltation of individual dignity, can be just as illegitimate as any other principle, then Putin supporters can argue the legitimacy of his viewpoint and it would be dishonest to outright reject absolutely everything about it. (There are obvious and time-tested counterarguments, but they're in tension with favored moral norms in the West, such as victim culture. The left birthed victim culture, linking moral worth to membership of a persecuted minority, but the right has embraced it for all its worth.)

LarryMullins 4y ago

American propagandist and inventor of "PR", Edward Bernays, is infamous for convincing American women to smoke cigarettes. But privately, he wanted his own wife to quit.

moistly 4y ago
And then there are the people who sell phone/tablet devices, and child-oriented apps and games through their walled-garden stores — and at the same time have banned the devices for their own children.

acdha 4y ago

It's an apt comparison because many of the science deniers started their careers with the tobacco industry. For example, this guy is on Fox News a lot — he started with tobacco but moved on to things like claiming banning DDT killed people (funded as part of the tobacco industry's opposition to public health agencies in Africa whose anti-smoking campaigns were cutting into sales), climate change denial, and COVID-19 misinformation and skepticism about vaccines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Milloy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Milloy

mdp2021 4y ago
> skepticism This whole picture some will read as an invitation to skepticism. «Science» does not exist in a vacuum - as this very submission re-shows.

nunez 4y ago

Wow; this is insane.