6 ms·

I have great sympathy for the position proposed in the article, with one major fear: those trained in science typically traffic in ideas that are either right (

by ta12121 14y ago

I have great sympathy for the position proposed in the article, with one major fear: those trained in science typically traffic in ideas that are either right (true) or wrong (false). I fear that this would dispose them toward authoritarianism, which is in fact the first word that comes to mind when I hear about Singapore. How does this compare to your personal experience?

ktizo 14y ago
those trained in science typically traffic in ideas that are either right (true) or wrong (false). Just make sure you have plenty of string theorists and perhaps some archeological geneticists and exoplanet meteorologists as well. That should even things out.
aswanson 14y ago
I share this fear as well. I love the raw honesty most technical people have, but this characteristic seems to be correlated with narrowmindedness, stubbornness, and extremism. Think about how many tech folk you know with nuanced political views. Almost every one I know is either a far left socialist or far right libertarian. Given the array of fuzzy issues civilization faces, it would seem that extreme mindsets are not suited to the political arena.
- enraged_camel 14y ago
  Those individuals are using science to support their pre-existing narrowmindedness, stubbornness, and extremism. Science is not making them those things. On the contrary, the fundamentals of science lie in questioning pre-conceived notions in the face of findings that conflict them. This is how scientific progress is made.
  - aswanson 14y ago
    Right. No point of conflict there. All I'm saying is that many technically trained and minded people, in the arena of dealing with human/political issues, seem to rely on idealizations, not unlike mathematical models, when in truth they are too complicated to be represented as such. Maybe the prediliction for mathematics and science betrays a deeper desire for a clean, concise, comprehensible truth, which rarely exists in the social/political realm.
    - enraged_camel 14y ago
      I think the main benefit is that a scientist elected to a political office would make decisions based on real data when possible. Obviously it is often times not possible - for example, you can't use science to determine whether you should take a pro-life stance or a pro-choice stance - but the insistence on using numbers would greatly simplify many decisions.
      - aswanson 14y ago
        Totally agree. There are benefits that a scientific stance would have in some circumstances, so it's a nuanced situation. :)
      - waterlesscloud 14y ago
        If a scientist made decisions based on real data, wouldn't they conclude that the approach used by the current politicians is superior for the purposes of politics? The data says it works, after all.
    - Daniel_Newby 14y ago
      This is particularly true in climate science, where the simple models that cannot possibly be wrong predict anthropogenic global warming, but the complex models that cannot possibly be right are treated as deterministic and used to make detailed political plans for the future. Science seems to leave the methods of rational thought far behind when it enters American politics.
    - HarryHirsch 14y ago
      Every physical scientist has learned very early in their career that nature does not care about what it ought to be like or what ought to work out. Hell, every experiment one designs ought to work fine the first time every time, and your pet theory ought to work out. But it isn't like that, in that line of work you have pragmatism beaten into you, and that is what is missing from contemporary American politics. Maybe it's different with computer scientists, who live up there in the realm of pure thought and can bend reality to their will.
  - csense 14y ago
    > questioning pre-conceived notions in the face of findings that conflict them In science, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. The bigger the claims a hypothesis makes, the more skepticism you should have about that hypothesis. In political terms, the bigger the policy you're talking about, the more skepticism you should have about that policy. This mindset leads toward literal conservatism -- always make small steps away from the status quo -- or libertarianism -- we need to be skeptical of government, so let's make it as weak as possible, and move powers as close to the bottom of the pyramid as possible (i.e. get the federal government's fingers out of housing, education and healthcare, and leave them up to state or local governments.) Why so many scientists are pro-big-government lefties has always completely baffled me.
    - eli_gottlieb 14y ago
      Because the hypothesis of surplus-value extraction is easy to see and experience: find out how much work it takes to produce your salary and benefits in revenue, and then start refusing to work more than that. You will be fired. Therefore, your boss is extracting surplus value from you. If you are a right-wing proprietarian, you might not object to that, on grounds you consented. If you're not that, you will feel exploited. The fact that the USA has the OECD's worst governmental working-condition laws that completely fail to make the extraction process feel more like a normal, bearable part of human life doesn't help.
      - csense 14y ago
        I don't understand how this relates to my previous comment. As for your rant about surplus-value extraction: Presumably your boss isn't just taking your surplus for free; they're providing things that helps you work more efficiently. For example, if you're a steelworker, your employer provides a very expensive steel mill; without access to that equipment, your steelmaking skills are fairly useless. In industries that have little capital requirement, like software development or web design, the things an employer might bring to the table to enhance their employees' created value include: A product vision, an already-existing codebase, brand or website, a talented team, support services such as marketing, accounting, legal... Also, working for an employer lowers risk for employees who work on uncertain ventures. If you spend half a year developing a new product for an employer, you still get paid for those six months even if it's a total flop and nobody ever buys it. But if you'd built it on your own time and bootstrapped it into a startup instead, yes, you'd keep the entire profit if it went well -- but you'd get nothing (financially) from those six months of work if it flopped. This "insurance" against product flops is part of what the employer's portion of your created value pays for. If you feel you're being exploited -- your employer is taking too much of the value you're creating -- then you're free to negotiate with them, change employers, change industries, or build your own startup.
wheels 14y ago
You're probably not a scientist. Mathematics mostly traffics in things which are right or wrong; science rarely does. That's one of the criticisms that the peanut gallery often lobs at it: that it's just based on theories. When ideas are actually being trafficked -- that is when they're new and struggling for breathing room, they're rarely clearly right or wrong. Consensus forms over a fairly long amount of time. With luck, and a lot of verification, over the course of a decade or three theories elide to the canon of science's best understanding of a given problem space. There we might broadly refer to theories as "true", but that's just everyday conversational shorthand, not the language of science. The problem in the intersection with pop culture is that it's generally only well after those couple of decades of a theory working its way into the canon of scientific understanding that it begins working its way through pop culture. This is the critical point where there's a lot of naysaying from the general public and a lot of rolled eyes from scientists. It's at this point that science transforms into politics: each side hardens their positions, begins stating them in absolutist terms and tries to win the other side over, usually based on an appeal to authority. Science itself is, in fact, a slow and reasonably democratic process. It is at times dogmatic, but far less than, say, American politics.
- Sniffnoy 14y ago
  Going by anecdotal evidence[0], there does seem to be some of the tendency ta12121 worries about among engineers, though. [0]See e.g. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Engineers_and_woo http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Engineers_and_woo
  - photon137 14y ago
    Not really. Engineers venture out into the grey even more than scientists do - they solve problems of interest to humans - their job requires them to be grounded in reality and be sensitive to human needs and constraints (well, at least the good ones are). I often think that while a purely technical background and education might be really powerful and enable one to analyze and predict well-behaved things better than others - which could lead to better decisions, it is extremely important to be receptive to the "inexplicable-until-experienced" stuff like music or business or relationships - to know that there are things that can't be controlled and shouldn't be controlled - that some things should evolve of their own accord - the chaotically evolved imperfect being more beautiful than the mathematically-designed perfect. (Edit: a combination of both works quite well, in my experience - some of the best businessmen, economic and political advisers I know of have engineering backgrounds - and no, they aren't unreasonably conservative or dogmatic). In my opinion, the fear of "what will happen if I let go?" can lead to authoritarianism via technocracy (aside from the fact that anyone can get drunk on power) - not one's profession.

by ta12121 14y ago

ktizo 14y ago

those trained in science typically traffic in ideas that are either right (true) or wrong (false). Just make sure you have plenty of string theorists and perhaps some archeological geneticists and exoplanet meteorologists as well. That should even things out.

aswanson 14y ago

I share this fear as well. I love the raw honesty most technical people have, but this characteristic seems to be correlated with narrowmindedness, stubbornness, and extremism. Think about how many tech folk you know with nuanced political views. Almost every one I know is either a far left socialist or far right libertarian. Given the array of fuzzy issues civilization faces, it would seem that extreme mindsets are not suited to the political arena.

enraged_camel 14y ago
Those individuals are using science to support their pre-existing narrowmindedness, stubbornness, and extremism. Science is not making them those things. On the contrary, the fundamentals of science lie in questioning pre-conceived notions in the face of findings that conflict them. This is how scientific progress is made.
- aswanson 14y ago
  Right. No point of conflict there. All I'm saying is that many technically trained and minded people, in the arena of dealing with human/political issues, seem to rely on idealizations, not unlike mathematical models, when in truth they are too complicated to be represented as such. Maybe the prediliction for mathematics and science betrays a deeper desire for a clean, concise, comprehensible truth, which rarely exists in the social/political realm.
  - enraged_camel 14y ago
    I think the main benefit is that a scientist elected to a political office would make decisions based on real data when possible. Obviously it is often times not possible - for example, you can't use science to determine whether you should take a pro-life stance or a pro-choice stance - but the insistence on using numbers would greatly simplify many decisions.
    - aswanson 14y ago
      Totally agree. There are benefits that a scientific stance would have in some circumstances, so it's a nuanced situation. :)
    - waterlesscloud 14y ago
      If a scientist made decisions based on real data, wouldn't they conclude that the approach used by the current politicians is superior for the purposes of politics? The data says it works, after all.
  - Daniel_Newby 14y ago
    This is particularly true in climate science, where the simple models that cannot possibly be wrong predict anthropogenic global warming, but the complex models that cannot possibly be right are treated as deterministic and used to make detailed political plans for the future. Science seems to leave the methods of rational thought far behind when it enters American politics.
  - HarryHirsch 14y ago
    Every physical scientist has learned very early in their career that nature does not care about what it ought to be like or what ought to work out. Hell, every experiment one designs ought to work fine the first time every time, and your pet theory ought to work out. But it isn't like that, in that line of work you have pragmatism beaten into you, and that is what is missing from contemporary American politics. Maybe it's different with computer scientists, who live up there in the realm of pure thought and can bend reality to their will.
- csense 14y ago
  > questioning pre-conceived notions in the face of findings that conflict them In science, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. The bigger the claims a hypothesis makes, the more skepticism you should have about that hypothesis. In political terms, the bigger the policy you're talking about, the more skepticism you should have about that policy. This mindset leads toward literal conservatism -- always make small steps away from the status quo -- or libertarianism -- we need to be skeptical of government, so let's make it as weak as possible, and move powers as close to the bottom of the pyramid as possible (i.e. get the federal government's fingers out of housing, education and healthcare, and leave them up to state or local governments.) Why so many scientists are pro-big-government lefties has always completely baffled me.
  - eli_gottlieb 14y ago
    Because the hypothesis of surplus-value extraction is easy to see and experience: find out how much work it takes to produce your salary and benefits in revenue, and then start refusing to work more than that. You will be fired. Therefore, your boss is extracting surplus value from you. If you are a right-wing proprietarian, you might not object to that, on grounds you consented. If you're not that, you will feel exploited. The fact that the USA has the OECD's worst governmental working-condition laws that completely fail to make the extraction process feel more like a normal, bearable part of human life doesn't help.
    - csense 14y ago
      I don't understand how this relates to my previous comment. As for your rant about surplus-value extraction: Presumably your boss isn't just taking your surplus for free; they're providing things that helps you work more efficiently. For example, if you're a steelworker, your employer provides a very expensive steel mill; without access to that equipment, your steelmaking skills are fairly useless. In industries that have little capital requirement, like software development or web design, the things an employer might bring to the table to enhance their employees' created value include: A product vision, an already-existing codebase, brand or website, a talented team, support services such as marketing, accounting, legal... Also, working for an employer lowers risk for employees who work on uncertain ventures. If you spend half a year developing a new product for an employer, you still get paid for those six months even if it's a total flop and nobody ever buys it. But if you'd built it on your own time and bootstrapped it into a startup instead, yes, you'd keep the entire profit if it went well -- but you'd get nothing (financially) from those six months of work if it flopped. This "insurance" against product flops is part of what the employer's portion of your created value pays for. If you feel you're being exploited -- your employer is taking too much of the value you're creating -- then you're free to negotiate with them, change employers, change industries, or build your own startup.

wheels 14y ago

You're probably not a scientist. Mathematics mostly traffics in things which are right or wrong; science rarely does. That's one of the criticisms that the peanut gallery often lobs at it: that it's just based on theories. When ideas are actually being trafficked -- that is when they're new and struggling for breathing room, they're rarely clearly right or wrong. Consensus forms over a fairly long amount of time. With luck, and a lot of verification, over the course of a decade or three theories elide to the canon of science's best understanding of a given problem space. There we might broadly refer to theories as "true", but that's just everyday conversational shorthand, not the language of science. The problem in the intersection with pop culture is that it's generally only well after those couple of decades of a theory working its way into the canon of scientific understanding that it begins working its way through pop culture. This is the critical point where there's a lot of naysaying from the general public and a lot of rolled eyes from scientists. It's at this point that science transforms into politics: each side hardens their positions, begins stating them in absolutist terms and tries to win the other side over, usually based on an appeal to authority. Science itself is, in fact, a slow and reasonably democratic process. It is at times dogmatic, but far less than, say, American politics.

Sniffnoy 14y ago
Going by anecdotal evidence[0], there does seem to be some of the tendency ta12121 worries about among engineers, though. [0]See e.g. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Engineers_and_woo http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Engineers_and_woo
- photon137 14y ago
  Not really. Engineers venture out into the grey even more than scientists do - they solve problems of interest to humans - their job requires them to be grounded in reality and be sensitive to human needs and constraints (well, at least the good ones are). I often think that while a purely technical background and education might be really powerful and enable one to analyze and predict well-behaved things better than others - which could lead to better decisions, it is extremely important to be receptive to the "inexplicable-until-experienced" stuff like music or business or relationships - to know that there are things that can't be controlled and shouldn't be controlled - that some things should evolve of their own accord - the chaotically evolved imperfect being more beautiful than the mathematically-designed perfect. (Edit: a combination of both works quite well, in my experience - some of the best businessmen, economic and political advisers I know of have engineering backgrounds - and no, they aren't unreasonably conservative or dogmatic). In my opinion, the fear of "what will happen if I let go?" can lead to authoritarianism via technocracy (aside from the fact that anyone can get drunk on power) - not one's profession.