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The Hughes article is very strange, but the theme of the sentiment is remarkably (perhaps alarmingly) common among the university students I know who are not sc

by rohern 14y ago

The Hughes article is very strange, but the theme of the sentiment is remarkably (perhaps alarmingly) common among the university students I know who are not scientists, engineers, or mathematicians. This is enormously condescending to write, but I think this is born of frustration at not being able to make progress in discovery without the tools of mathematics and science. If you have not picked up and mastered these tools, you are left out of the game. Suddenly four years of college goes whoosh and you are no closer to the enlightenment you were seeking. To give one ridiculous example, I had a graduate student in anthropology suggest to me that science needs to be democratized and taken away from the scientists and verified and decided upon by the common man. I asked by what method the common man could do such verification and make any such decisions, as the obvious answer to both is Science. I do not think criticisms of this type are worth much, especially when they are written on a computer, posted on the internet, and then discussed on forums like this. In a dictum: "Science works, bitches."

chrisdevereux 14y ago
> To give one ridiculous example, I had a graduate student in anthropology suggest to me that science needs to be democratized and taken away from the scientists and verified and decided upon by the common man. I asked by what method the common man could do such verification and make any such decisions, as the obvious answer to both is Science The irony here is that your argument against the anthropologist is very similar to Hughes' argument against the institutional understanding of science. The point he's making is that if we reject the institutional understanding and take science to have a special legitimacy because of some property of the scientific method (say, theories are falsifiable by empirical data), the arguments of scientists, and the citing of empirical data don't provide this special legitimacy when the method employed doesn't possess that property. Yet when Hawking does metaphysics, the reverence for science as an institution leads people to treat it as they treat science. I don't know what sounds anti-science about having a problem with that. Being careful about what we call science is a defence against pseudoscience.
- rohern 14y ago
  > Yet when Hawking does metaphysics, the reverence for science as an institution leads people to treat it as they treat science. This simply is not true. If this sort of a priori judgement occurs, it occurs because Hawking is a famously intelligent and thoughtful person. Of course people take what he says seriously. However, he is also continually engaged in debates with other scientists, often publicly, and is in no way walled off from questioning by either the institution of science or his own fame. Additionally, I have heard the exact opposite of the sentiment you stated claimed. His biographer, Kitty Ferguson, ludicrously criticized Hawking's atheism as him going beyond his field. As if because one is not a theologian, one cannot discuss religion. What tripe.
  - 001sky 14y ago
    If this sort of a priori judgement occurs, it occurs because Hawking is a famously intelligent and thoughtful person. -- The famous "reverse" Ad-Hominem attack? WAT TLDR: Famously intelligent and thoughful people are frequently full of shit, evil, or amoral. Same rules apply. [1] _________ [1] Its worth noting [a] ad-hominem is not a per-se fallacy; And [b] its useful to questions motives. But since many serial killers, terrorists, and supporters of the hollocaust could be considered "famously intelligent and thoughtful people", it goes without saying that arguments should be evaluated on the merits.
    - rohern 14y ago
      In a word: duh. However, I do not for a second think that you would not listen more closely to someone like Stephen Hawking than you would a guy shouting "Praise Jesus" on a street corner. There is no fallacy involved here. If Hawking is speaking nonsense, his being Stephen Hawking is not going to save him.
      - 001sky 14y ago
        *If [a scientist] is speaking nonsense, his being [a scientist] is not going to save him. == Fixed that for ya. . . . Carry On.
ph0rcyas 14y ago
I beg to differ. What you are describing is scientific dogma, simply another kind of symbolism. Totally natural though: when confronted with too complex a situation, we seek abstractions so we are not overwhelmed with the enormity of the information. The kind of abstraction that works is greatly influenced by its surrounding context. In more complex issues (say in law), appeal to common sense is sometimes more preferable than using the most fashionable 'scientific theory'. You don't like your spouse? How about teaching her evolutionary biology/psychology? Dogmatism breeds the act of taking these out of context. Some parts of math works in their internal framework(i.e. math), but taking it out of context is at best, dumb, and at worst, harmful. Having theorems giving infinite-length messages yield certain events of probability one makes all 'realistic' outcomes probability zero. Same for theorems too sensitive to perturbation in axioms that removing a single point turns things upside down. We don't need 'institutional science', or dogma, or 'mathematics strictly contained in universities', all we need is science, is mathematics, is reason, and understanding their application context. Such debate often occurs with confusing science with 'opinions of the majority of scientists in academia of what's right'. No, science is not the latter. [TL;DR] Science and math are useful in a very specified context, and as such is a framework of thinking. Those who take some of their context-dependent results universally and urge everyone to accept it is dogmatic, not scientific.

by rohern 14y ago

chrisdevereux 14y ago

> To give one ridiculous example, I had a graduate student in anthropology suggest to me that science needs to be democratized and taken away from the scientists and verified and decided upon by the common man. I asked by what method the common man could do such verification and make any such decisions, as the obvious answer to both is Science The irony here is that your argument against the anthropologist is very similar to Hughes' argument against the institutional understanding of science. The point he's making is that if we reject the institutional understanding and take science to have a special legitimacy because of some property of the scientific method (say, theories are falsifiable by empirical data), the arguments of scientists, and the citing of empirical data don't provide this special legitimacy when the method employed doesn't possess that property. Yet when Hawking does metaphysics, the reverence for science as an institution leads people to treat it as they treat science. I don't know what sounds anti-science about having a problem with that. Being careful about what we call science is a defence against pseudoscience.

rohern 14y ago
> Yet when Hawking does metaphysics, the reverence for science as an institution leads people to treat it as they treat science. This simply is not true. If this sort of a priori judgement occurs, it occurs because Hawking is a famously intelligent and thoughtful person. Of course people take what he says seriously. However, he is also continually engaged in debates with other scientists, often publicly, and is in no way walled off from questioning by either the institution of science or his own fame. Additionally, I have heard the exact opposite of the sentiment you stated claimed. His biographer, Kitty Ferguson, ludicrously criticized Hawking's atheism as him going beyond his field. As if because one is not a theologian, one cannot discuss religion. What tripe.
- 001sky 14y ago
  If this sort of a priori judgement occurs, it occurs because Hawking is a famously intelligent and thoughtful person. -- The famous "reverse" Ad-Hominem attack? WAT TLDR: Famously intelligent and thoughful people are frequently full of shit, evil, or amoral. Same rules apply. [1] _________ [1] Its worth noting [a] ad-hominem is not a per-se fallacy; And [b] its useful to questions motives. But since many serial killers, terrorists, and supporters of the hollocaust could be considered "famously intelligent and thoughtful people", it goes without saying that arguments should be evaluated on the merits.
  - rohern 14y ago
    In a word: duh. However, I do not for a second think that you would not listen more closely to someone like Stephen Hawking than you would a guy shouting "Praise Jesus" on a street corner. There is no fallacy involved here. If Hawking is speaking nonsense, his being Stephen Hawking is not going to save him.
    - 001sky 14y ago
      *If [a scientist] is speaking nonsense, his being [a scientist] is not going to save him. == Fixed that for ya. . . . Carry On.

ph0rcyas 14y ago

I beg to differ. What you are describing is scientific dogma, simply another kind of symbolism. Totally natural though: when confronted with too complex a situation, we seek abstractions so we are not overwhelmed with the enormity of the information. The kind of abstraction that works is greatly influenced by its surrounding context. In more complex issues (say in law), appeal to common sense is sometimes more preferable than using the most fashionable 'scientific theory'. You don't like your spouse? How about teaching her evolutionary biology/psychology? Dogmatism breeds the act of taking these out of context. Some parts of math works in their internal framework(i.e. math), but taking it out of context is at best, dumb, and at worst, harmful. Having theorems giving infinite-length messages yield certain events of probability one makes all 'realistic' outcomes probability zero. Same for theorems too sensitive to perturbation in axioms that removing a single point turns things upside down. We don't need 'institutional science', or dogma, or 'mathematics strictly contained in universities', all we need is science, is mathematics, is reason, and understanding their application context. Such debate often occurs with confusing science with 'opinions of the majority of scientists in academia of what's right'. No, science is not the latter. [TL;DR] Science and math are useful in a very specified context, and as such is a framework of thinking. Those who take some of their context-dependent results universally and urge everyone to accept it is dogmatic, not scientific.