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Once you know enough to know we barely know anything it pushes you towards extreme nihilism of anyone who uses their credentials to definitively state they know

Once you know enough to know we barely know anything it pushes you towards extreme nihilism of anyone who uses their credentials to definitively state they know anything. Seeing a headline about cow farts burning the earth down, breathing [or insert flavor of the month random daily behavior] linked to depression, and throw in a dash of chemical imbalance causes [problem only treated by highly profitable medication] is all enough to make me ask, maybe no one has the answers?

hinkley 4y ago
The anti intellectuals are unfortunately partially right. The best scientists are full of doubts. What you mostly get in the loud and certain set are emotionally scarred children who sought out science as a life raft, a way to control their environment by “understanding it”. We don’t understand shit, and the people who need you to think we do are broken. We mostly understand physical processes. The bits we do understand let’s us build trains, make them run on time, and stuff a supercomputer into your pocket that lets you argue with anyone in the world in real-time. That’s a lot. But it’s not comprehensive. Biology is just too complex to study by isolating a single variable. We are basically into linear algebra at this point to make any headway, are we not? Analyzing multivariate situations to isolate patterns.
- corbulo 4y ago
  It's the political enhancement of the intellectual class that is its downfall. Thats what compels them to force it on others 'we have the answers' for something they have a <10% understanding of. It does select for a certain personality, but the ultimate cause is creating the situation for those kinds of broken souls to flourish to the detriment of everyone else. Biology is really difficult to investigate when you get to the sophistication of humans. Thats before the perverse incentives brought on by funding sources.
  - _yb2s 4y ago
    I enjoy science for it’s own sake, and resent all of the careerists and scientismists(?). I often wish it were less lucrative and prestigious.
- _yb2s 4y ago
  This. I am an academic, and I run a bioengineering lab, but am also into fitness and health. I get infuriated when I see any kind of health related practice called “woo,” because science just isn’t advanced enough yet to offer useful advice on most real world health issues. Almost everything that works, that has a long history of actually helping people is still a mystery, and therefore “woo.” Even most of modern medicine remains a mystery in terms of actual mechanisms. People quick to call everything woo are almost never actually scientists themselves, and have made science into a sort of infallible religion, e.g. scientism. I also don’t like it when people claim these things are backed by mechanistic understanding when they are not. I guess that is partly what gets them labeled as woo. It’s okay to say “this seems to work really good but we have no idea why.”
  - hinkley 4y ago
    What happens though is people try to chuck the whole thing which also doesn’t work. You can’t make smart phones without eight hundred years of materials science. We know from science a whole lot of things one should definitely not do, we just don’t know the magic facts needed to do everything. Like make a 2100 era cellphone. Or cure cancer. Or predict the weather accurately.
orange_fritter 4y ago
Correct nobody has "the answers" but I don't really understand why this is new or cause for concern(not that your message totally indicated despair). It's not all-or-nothing, either-or. We don't have to have 100% confidence in an outcome to recommend action, there are gray areas. It's a false dichotomy to think we know either nothing or everything(Ignoring René Descartes for a moment). Politicians claim they are 100% certain they know how a policy will affect the economy or social environment in the future. They are lying and they know it, but humans rely on confidence as a cue for information reliability, so politicians, click-baiters, and advertisers use confidence as a rhetorical tool. This creates an environment where the simple act of saying "I'm not sure" is equivalent to saying "I'm wrong."

hinkley 4y ago

The anti intellectuals are unfortunately partially right. The best scientists are full of doubts. What you mostly get in the loud and certain set are emotionally scarred children who sought out science as a life raft, a way to control their environment by “understanding it”. We don’t understand shit, and the people who need you to think we do are broken. We mostly understand physical processes. The bits we do understand let’s us build trains, make them run on time, and stuff a supercomputer into your pocket that lets you argue with anyone in the world in real-time. That’s a lot. But it’s not comprehensive. Biology is just too complex to study by isolating a single variable. We are basically into linear algebra at this point to make any headway, are we not? Analyzing multivariate situations to isolate patterns.

corbulo 4y ago
It's the political enhancement of the intellectual class that is its downfall. Thats what compels them to force it on others 'we have the answers' for something they have a <10% understanding of. It does select for a certain personality, but the ultimate cause is creating the situation for those kinds of broken souls to flourish to the detriment of everyone else. Biology is really difficult to investigate when you get to the sophistication of humans. Thats before the perverse incentives brought on by funding sources.
- _yb2s 4y ago
  I enjoy science for it’s own sake, and resent all of the careerists and scientismists(?). I often wish it were less lucrative and prestigious.
_yb2s 4y ago
This. I am an academic, and I run a bioengineering lab, but am also into fitness and health. I get infuriated when I see any kind of health related practice called “woo,” because science just isn’t advanced enough yet to offer useful advice on most real world health issues. Almost everything that works, that has a long history of actually helping people is still a mystery, and therefore “woo.” Even most of modern medicine remains a mystery in terms of actual mechanisms. People quick to call everything woo are almost never actually scientists themselves, and have made science into a sort of infallible religion, e.g. scientism. I also don’t like it when people claim these things are backed by mechanistic understanding when they are not. I guess that is partly what gets them labeled as woo. It’s okay to say “this seems to work really good but we have no idea why.”
- hinkley 4y ago
  What happens though is people try to chuck the whole thing which also doesn’t work. You can’t make smart phones without eight hundred years of materials science. We know from science a whole lot of things one should definitely not do, we just don’t know the magic facts needed to do everything. Like make a 2100 era cellphone. Or cure cancer. Or predict the weather accurately.

orange_fritter 4y ago

Correct nobody has "the answers" but I don't really understand why this is new or cause for concern(not that your message totally indicated despair). It's not all-or-nothing, either-or. We don't have to have 100% confidence in an outcome to recommend action, there are gray areas. It's a false dichotomy to think we know either nothing or everything(Ignoring René Descartes for a moment). Politicians claim they are 100% certain they know how a policy will affect the economy or social environment in the future. They are lying and they know it, but humans rely on confidence as a cue for information reliability, so politicians, click-baiters, and advertisers use confidence as a rhetorical tool. This creates an environment where the simple act of saying "I'm not sure" is equivalent to saying "I'm wrong."