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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29463 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

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Is Covid-19 still a thing anyone here is interested in? Anyway, Eric Winsberg of the Chronicle of Higher Education published this article entitled

We Need Scientific Dissidents Now More Than Ever (2023-08-10, archive link because the site is kinda borked)

Anyway, I'm not sure anything super new is said in here, but I found it to be an interesting meta-commentary on the clash between science and politics. It starts off by telling an abridged version of the story of Ignaz Semmelweis and then analogizes it to science discussion related to the Covid-19 pandemic. The analogy isn't exact but I think it's still relatively fair tbh.

My impression is honestly I agree with the article. Though I think there's a balance from being super close minded to having such an open mind your head falls out, the scientific consensus being at such odds with the political messaging seems... quite problematic indeed. So I think the question partially becomes... "how do you make sure that scientific consensus which is supported shines through, even when it may be politically inconvenient to do so?" My relevant concern seems to be less about "the science™ being wrong"1 and more about "the science being right but it becoming too politically inconvenient to do so" or the lack of even carrying out such studies in the first place in the worry that it might to inconvenient conclusions.

1. I recognize the problem of reproducibility of results. And while I do agree it's likely a larger problem than is known about, especially in light of the recent Stanford scandal, I do think there is quite a bit more malicious intent with regards to politically inconvenient conclusions.

Historically science flourishes best when you have motivated scientists that can devote multiple decades to learning everything about a problem.

Forget the name but there’s a book about one of the guys who ran Xerox PARC who talks about how this was his strategy. Just find scientists that seem brilliant and guarantee them 20 years to devote to a project, then sit back and let them do it.

The current scientific establishment is almost the opposite of this - in order to compete you have to publish quick and publish something important. And I don’t blame the scientists, most of them will lose their livelihood if they don’t get grants, and they typically don’t have skills to fall back on. Or much of a backup plan in general.

The current scientific establishment is almost the opposite of this - in order to compete you have to publish quick and publish something important. And I don’t blame the scientists, most of them will lose their livelihood if they don’t get grants, and they typically don’t have skills to fall back on. Or much of a backup plan in general.

I think this problem is even worse than you're describing. How many potentially brilliant scientists are now working dead end jobs or posting on 4chan from the basement because they made a few socially awkward and politically incorrect jokes early on in life, inadvertently removing themselves from the ability to navigate that system at all?

How many potentially brilliant scientists are now working dead end jobs or posting on 4chan from the basement because they made a few socially awkward and politically incorrect jokes early on in life, inadvertently removing themselves from the ability to navigate that system at all?

Not many - neither the physical sciences nor the funded-because-upstream-of-medicine majority of the life sciences are politically sensitive enough to make forensically examining someone's past for hidden wrongthink worth the effort, so people don't do it. To get cancelled, one of three things needs to happen:

  • You ignore prevailing (in the current year, woke, but in Oppenheimer's time anti-Red) social norms so spectacularly that it becomes impossible not to cancel you.
  • You make enemies who find it worth their while to go through your life looking for cancelbait (and with norms as vague as they are, someone who looks hard enough will find something - so this is cancellation for bad luck + having social-media-powerful enemies, not wrongthink).
  • You are prominent enough that people are willing to make an effort to take you down, and find something bad enough that your friends, mentees, collaborators etc. will no longer defend you.

Googling cancelled physicists (and the results are consistent with my own recollection), in the last few years we have

  • John Clauser, who was already 80 and long-since retired at the time he was "cancelled" (taken off a panel at an IMF-sponsored event). This was only newsworthy because it happened the year after he received a belated Nobel prize.
  • Alessandro Strumia, who was fired from CERN for giving a talk that was generally perceived as sexist - although cancelling him was an obvious violation of academic freedom it was the precise opposite of cancelling someone over a youthful indiscretion.
  • Lawrence Krauss, cancelled for weaksauce allegations of sexual harassment that probably would not have stuck had he not been a friend of Jeffrey Epstein.

That isn't many people, and they were all open and notorious heretics as adults. Their being cancelled isn't good (particularly Strumia, who is probably right), but it isn't the kind of cancel culture where a few socially awkward jokes as a teen can be dug up to end a career a decade later.

The attempts to cancel Neil deGrasse Tyson for sexual harassment and James Webb for homophobia failed. Ancient history now, but so did the attempt to cancel Matt Taylor (comet probe shirt guy).

I don't think you've actually grasped the point that I'm making.

You've provided an example of how there are very few prominent physicists getting cancelled - first of all, physics is the department of science I would expect to have the fewest issues along this line(Biology, psychology, anthropology and sociology would be bigger targets). But that's a minor aside compared to the main problem with your reply, which is that it doesn't actually have anything to do with what I was talking about. Notice how I said "early on in life, inadvertently removing themselves from the ability to navigate that system at all" - what this means is that I am talking about the people who never became prominent scientists, and as such the number of physicists who actually get cancelled isn't really relevant to the point I'm making. I'm referring to the chilling effect of social justice culture on the kind of people who could become brilliant scientists, and how the more complicated social demands required to navigate modern academia(not to mention resource conflicts) select against people who could have done great work if they didn't have to navigate the modern morass of invisible rules. To use a metaphor...

"I think that the public burning of witches has a chilling effect on research into sorcery and magic. Many people who could have become fantastic witches have instead been silenced and discouraged by the public treatment of others who take an interest in magic."

"But there aren't that many witches being actively burned - this isn't happening!"

Forget the name but there’s a book about one of the guys who ran Xerox PARC

Fun note: I've read a few popular books on the history of science which tell stories about places like PARC, Bell Labs, GE, and IBM funding pure research in the ~40-60's. Iirc companies got leaner, financialed, government funding expanded dramatically, more people went into academia, bureaucracy expanded at all levels etc. Walter Isaacsons recent "CRISPR" book talked about research labs spending weeks filling out 100 page forms for government approval/grants for some projects (possibly the recent mRNA vaccines). Lots of factors at play. It all sounds sad, but I can only hope its somehow closer to optimal.

Shustek: Let’s take a short diversion here. The Arpanet that you had worked on eventually becomes the Internet and the World Wide Web and is obviously something that’s changing all of our lives. I think I remember correctly reading that you politically tend toward libertarianism, the idea that small government is best. Yet all of this early networking work with ARPA was funded by the government. Do you think in retrospect that that’s a proper role for government? Should they have done that and if they didn’t would anyone else have done that?

Metcalfe: No, I think they should have. I think one of the few things government should do is finance research. I have learned, from many years, that the only companies that can afford to do research are monopolies. Real companies can’t afford to do research other than monopolies. There’s some famous ones, like the telephone monopoly, [AT&T] Bell Labs; the computer monopoly, [IBM] Watson Labs; the copier monopoly, Xerox PARC. And on it goes. In retrospect, the monopolies aren’t worth it for the research they do. It’s nauseating how much we hear about how cool Bell Labs is, or was. But other than the transistor, UNIX, and the Princess telephone, what did we get for all that money? And then for years AT&T as a monopoly sat on innovation, and IBM after that, and Xerox after that. It’s just not worth it.

http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_History/Metcalfe_Robert_1/Metcalfe_Robert_1_2.oral_history.2006.7.102657995.pdf

It’s nauseating how much we hear about how cool Bell Labs is, or was. But other than the transistor, UNIX, and the Princess telephone, what did we get for all that money?

This is "aside from that, what did the Romans do for us" territory. The transistor, Unix, C, the laser, the photovoltaic cell, the charge-coupled device, the entire field of information theory. The cosmic microwave background was also discovered there. AT&T's monopoly certainly held back telecom, but Bell Labs was as cool as its reputation.

So? Technology enables a better standard of living, and rent seeking is how our society does that. It’s just a tax to fund PMC lifestyles for people who aren’t good at STEM or willing to do physical work.

I would strictly speaking prefer that this wealth go to useful people, like the inventors of technology, or the people who maintain it. But it’s absurd to act like regulations and bureaucracy destroy wealth. They sometimes slow down its growth, but mostly they just distribute it.

But it’s absurd to act like regulations and bureaucracy destroy wealth. They sometimes slow down its growth, but mostly they just distribute it.

You're making Bastiat's broken window fallacy.

You see the resistributed money go to the bureaucrats and think "Look, GDP!", but you don't see how that money would have been better used for more GDP in the hands of not-bureaucrats.

That would be why I said it slows down growth, but doesn’t destroy it.

If you would have grown 5%, but due to X you only grow 4%, then 1% of growth has been destroyed.

They do destroy wealth. Regulations on appliances which make dishwashers and laundry machines take longer and not work as well directly reduce your quality of life, and therefore your wealth. Same with regulations on how much water can flow through your faucets. The time taken up filling out those 100 page forms regulation compliance is wasted; it is destruction of wealth.

Like an ideal gas, the bureaucracy will expand to fill the available space.

Yes, the only way we make progress is when technology is moving fast enough to outpace regulation.

Bullshit jobs are known phenomena.

We don’t need more dissidents. We need the establishment to change. Then more normie scientist will show up. Change the incentives coming from those in power.

I’ve flip flopped on this but now I think I’m down with jail Fauci. The actual crime is likely lying under oath.

Indirectly things like breaking DEI departments in schools should help too. Maybe I’m creating a boogeyman here but DEI just looks like the Ministry of Truth truth to me and the center of punishing wrong think. By normalizing dissent eslewhere it will likely help dissent everywhere.

I think that only when challenged do institutions actually change. That’s how most changes happened. If Diogenes doesn’t pluck the chicken, I don’t think philosophy would have developed as much. If Copernicus doesn’t challenge th3 establishment, we wouldn’t have gone to the moon. Even in government, if you want to improve a law you need it to be challenged.

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