That sound you just heard was nishi’s head being, er, unpacked.
Whoops!
(thanks to Darleen)
Search
Archive Calendar
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | |
Archives
Categories
- A Government That Can Force You to Buy Health Insurance Can Make You Do Anything (3)
- a protein wisdom philosophy primer (3)
- academics (25)
- armadillo (8)
- Friday Fiction 100 Word Challenge (51)
- from the protein wisdom conceptual series (136)
- identity politics (33)
- If Republicans Win the Senate in 2014 (1)
- in which celebraties comment on current events (67)
- language / intentionalism (88)
- legal (6)
- My brief conversations with inanimate objects (130)
- NSA / FISA (46)
- One Term to Serve, the 2012 Revival (6)
- Overheard in a Fallujah bunker (27)
- Poems from 196x, Revised by the Ghost of Richard Brauti (27)
- protein wisdom's DNC coverage (30)
- protein wisdom's RNC coverage (29)
- protein wisdom: the movie Lists (20)
- Provocateurism (16)
- real-time empirical observations (51)
- red pills found behind the sofa cushions (42)
- Scenes from my driveway (61)
- Talking back to 80s music (41)
- The Martha Stewart Chronicles (58)
- The protein wisdom interviews (10)
- The protein wisdom original poems (142)
- Uncategorized (20,046)
- Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, abridged (34)
Recent Comments
- In The Mailbox: 02.28.23 (Afternoon Edition) : The Other McCain on Hey, longtime pw readers…
- In The Mailbox: 12.23.22 : The Other McCain on Patrick J. Carroll truly IS a sad, embittered psychopath
- Danger on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
- Danger on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
- In The Mailbox: 07.18.22 : The Other McCain on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
I predict she will double-down on the theory. I’m pretty sure that’s the only response she is capable of.
I giggled my whole way through the article.
Again, would-be rulers using Science!1!!1! as their unassailable reason for power.
This topic, evolutionary psychology, has been an odd thing to watch from a distance. When it first hit the scene it was immediately attacked from the left of the political spectrum, as a threat to establish that there is a human nature, whilst the left was claiming there is no such thing at all. And here now, we have a sort of reversal of field, with the left cheering the thing on and the right scoffing at it to beat the band. Just odd.
He and his colleagues, Mr. Hauser proclaimed, were developing a new “science of morality.”
That alone should be setting off BS alarms everywhere. I confess that mine didn’t; not only do I not follow psychology, my BS meter has been going off several times a day since 20 January 2009.
So, y’know, information overload is a killer.
Darleen, I really liked what Mr. Felten had to say at the end of that paragraph you quoted from:
Would it be such a bad thing if Hausergate resulted in some intellectual humility among the new scientists of morality?
Nope. In fact, it would be a major improvement. Not that I expect it to happen; if a “scientist” with the seniority of Hauser is cooking the data, he’s lost to the world. He sold his soul long ago. And for a low price, at that.
But the graduate students who turned him in? There’s the bright spot in all of this.
“They are the scientists to celebrate.” Indeed, Mr. Felten. Indeed.
I’m sure nishi will find another category error to stumble into even if this one looses its sparkle.
At the same time, the only real lesson of this story for me is that bad (non)science is, well, bad and some people will always tempted by what Dennett calls “greedy reductionism”.
Loses not looses.
Mitochondrial Eve, the genetic progenitor of every woman alive, lived approximately 200,000 years ago.
Every woman alive. Black, white, brown, yellow, red. Square that DNA based fact with the religious tenets of evolution. Lawdy, but that there E-Vo-Lushin sho’ do work fas’!
The science! It burns my carefully constructed post-modern belief structure!
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100817122405.htm
Liberals, feel free to cling to your rationalized fables about how the human race got here (aliens, lightning in a puddle, The Monkees, etc…) in the face of DNA evidence.
It’s one of your Natural Rights!
Since the studies were funded, in part, by government grants, the university has sent the evidence to the Feds.
Sounds like the perfessor may be facing an inquiry into his own moral behavior.
The perfesser won’t be doing time. He reached the approved conclusion. How he got there is no matter for concern.
Example? See: AGW
And that is how you get tenure!
Hey, hey, we’re the Monkees,
and we don’t monkey around…
There is much to doubt in Ev. Psych. (like, for instance, pretty much the whole field), but it didn’t go off the rails until, as Felten notes, the PC brigade intimidated it into abandoning the original “nasty, brutish, and short” conclusions and cherrypicking data (meerkats and mole rats and bonobos, O my) to support backdating Historical Inevitability(© K. Marx).
There appears to be a sub rosa movement among a minority of scientists to reclaim the original ideals of their system. I will believe it effective when and if they abandon “peer review” wholesale in favor of posting their work directly on the Internet, with links to the references, for anybody with an interest to snipe at. That is, after all, an updated version of how the Royal Society worked.
Regards,
Ric
I really like that idea, Ric. A lot. A lot a lot.
I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, Ric, but the internet has such a low signal to noise ratio that I’m not sure if it would be helpful. However, in computer science at least, most people post their work online if possible (sometimes there are copyright issues), though finding the links to references is up to the reader.
I’m guessing that CS research is really not a problem, though.
I left an important phrase out, bh: …to the references and all the data, with provenance…
cranky-d, life has a s/n in the negative three digits dBe. Organization is of course necessary. The post-Transcendance version of a “scientific journal” as I envision it would look a whole lot like a vastly extended version of Anthony Watts’s place, with just enough moderation to keep the most blatantly disruptive trolls out.
Regards,
Ric
olesale in favor of posting their work directly on the Internet, with links to the references, for anybody with an interest to snipe at. T
Even the hoi polloi? Shit, that’s what ruined journalism. Amiright?
Conceding your signal to noise point, cranky, I suppose what I like about it is that many more smart and skeptical people would review the output overall. And it’d definitely avoid the (often poor) filter of the journals and what they discount as heterodox.
From the comments at the WSJ link:
Nishi, is that you?
I assumed you meant as much, Ric.
Ric’s idea should be a required condition of accepting government funding for the purpose of research. We paid for it, it is ours.
Man, with the exclusion of some military R&D, I really like that idea as well, Thomas. Might even be the way to get the ball rolling.
The thing about evolutionary psychology, as with any other turd from the fad-science sphincter, is that it was being used to try to change the way people should approach everyday life — without explaining precisely why such change is necessary or desirable.
Over the years I’ve seen people use quantum theory as a basis for trying to redefine social institutions. To me it always seemed akin to removing all the walls from people’s houses because somebody has a new theory about weather.
R&D is not “science” in my lexicon, bh. It’s not “what’s going on?” or even “does this work?”, it’s “how do we make use of that?”, and as such has lapped well over into the category “engineering”. Mixing the two up causes tragic errors.
Implicit in that is “science -> physics”. Science must lead to robust, reliable, predictive descriptions of things and their interactions, or it’s useless except as a form of Solitaire. Given such descriptions, R&D can figure out which are useful; from that, engineers can build useful stuff.
Regards,
Ric
Agreed bh, some stuff probably needs an exemption. Most, if not all of that can probably be tagged to the specific source of funding.
But for all else the simple argument is that, if you do not require a security clearance to perform the research then there should be no reason why your results cannot be posted on the web.
You’re right, I stand corrected.
Suppose the immediate thought that popped into my head was the actual scientific work of Oppenheimer and Teller. Or any research we do with an eye towards potential biological attacks. Stuff like that.
27 was to 25.
Or any research we do with an eye towards potential biological attacks.
Even that can be too braod a brush. Consider for example some basic reasearch on how contagion spreads in a given population – possibly useful for weaponizing a disease vector, but also valuable to anyone interested in maintaining public health.
More specifically my concern is that much medical research (which is quite often more R&D than science) could be closed off, not so much because of legitimate security concerns, but because security concerns would be conjured up in order to hoard information that might be economically valuable to the involved parties.
#27 bh: watch out. That path leads to the same bog that mires “young Earth” creationists and other anti-science wackos, including the entirety of Islam. It’s shallower on your side, so the worst you’ll need is new shoes if you take the proper steps, but don’t go farther: Hear Bee Allygaters…
Physics is the separation of “is” from “isn’t” within the perceptible Universe, and, as I said, all true science leads eventually to physics. The Sun shineth upon the evil and the good alike, both of whom can observe it and draw conclusions. There are, ultimately, no secrets in physics: whether you think of it as the work of an omnipotent Creator (who, being omnipotent, had no trouble getting it exactly the way he wanted it) or the ultimate result of impersonal forces, it is all before all of us, waiting only to be investigated.
It is, of course, possible to delay exposure of any particular result, at least until others investigate the same phenomena. I suppose it’s because I have a soft spot in my heart for “open source” (or maybe the entropy arrow goes the other way) that I think potentially dangerous results should be placed before as many eyeballs as possible; if it’s the end of the World as we know it there’s no point in delaying the inevitable, and if it’s not I want the maximum possible number of people seeking preventives and palliatives, even at the expense of enabling ill-intentioned opportunists.
Regards,
Ric
#30 addendum: There is no way to know if the ill-intentioned opportunists have reached the same conclusions and have better OPSEC.
Regards,
Ric
Heh, I stand corrected again.
Perhaps I should have created a theoretical to shield myself from these irritating details of reality.
Thank you Eric Felten.
Monkey Cognition
And all that that implies.
Polite dinner conversation with my liberal “betters” will never be the same.
God, I love this place.
I should start using names every time.
32 was to 29.
Ric, I hear what you’re saying in summary, but I’m not entirely sure I agree with it. Small groups with grudges don’t have the resources to observe and draw conclusions that we do. In fact, many of them don’t even pursue the course. Why give up the enormous asymmetrical advantage? I think you’re acknowledging this notion with “possible to delay exposure of any particular result”. Perhaps I see the delays to be worthy in themselves if we’re talking about a particular time period when I might be alive, on the planet, and someone else’s enemy.
When it was assumed and science proved that mankind was, “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society,” to use Chief Justice Earl Warren’s phrase”, governmental guidance was needed to ensure that the process leading to the moral utopia on Earth was not hindered by those regressive throwbacks to an earlier state of evolution.
Now that the evolutionary meme is out the window we will require even stricter guidance to reach that longed for state of progressive grace. The struggle will continue with increased frenzy.
A flaw in my argument is that it contains the assumption that some areas of investigation can predictably be “dangerous” and other areas can predictably be “safe”.
Probably a mistake. Some guy studying honey bees might be the one we all curse after the fallout and the guy studying death rays might cure cancer.
If headstarts are still valuable as headstarts, or something along those lines I take it, yet we can’t predict all vulnerabilities or benefits, this wouldn’t mean we would necessarily need to surrender those projects about which we have reliable predictions, would it bh?
My gut agrees with that, sdferr.
Monkey Cognition
And all that that implies.
Polite dinner conversation with my liberal “betters” will never be the same.
Or if they object too strenuously, Lamont, maybe you could simply agree with them that, yes, they themselves have been definitive evidence of “monkey cognition” – the whole freaking time!
He’s not the only one, or the first one. Heinlein sprinkled references to reducing moral reasoning to a set of equations throughout Starship Troopers, but I suspect that he poached the idea from E.E. “Doc” Smith, whose Lensman series is heavily reliant on the ability of a “really competent mind” to logically reason out all that was going to happen based on the idea that human nature and reactions were predictable.
I should also admit that my gut also says offense will conclusively beat defense in the end. That our only chance at some point will be scattering (running away) from each other. It’d be nice if we filled in our spaceship gaps before others fill in their Kaboom! gaps.
silly wingnutz!!!!!!!
pancakes don’t have bones and liquid soap is for losers…
don’t you see jeffy…
lulzezzzz…nyuk…shebang!!!
science…QED!!!
Isn’t Lulz Nyuk Shebang a third-world poet?
Which President is a wussy?
That’s the idea Trash. Every rebuttal will now begin with, “That’s just monkey cognition”…
I’m digging Ric, bh & sdferr’s, et all’s back & forth (though I don’t know I get it all)
As a dummy, I’d say that what’s missing today from the old school science is the fundamental cling to truth & honesty as it pertains to reputation in said community. The dedication to strict data and cold hard math back in the day was paramount. Not grants and peer pressure. “Science is a wonderful thing if one doesn’t have to earn his living at it.” That fits on a lot of levels.
And speaking of that Einstein fella, most of his relativity theory critics, incredibly credentialed & esteemed scientists, trotted the globe for the better part of a decade hunting lunar eclipses to prove him wrong, yet delayed mixed results as not to damage their honesty and character & credibility until, how ’bout that, the damn cold hard math just so happened to prove Einstein right. And then they championed him, admitted they were wrong, and continued doing fantastic work.
Today?
SCIENCE!!!!!!
Stem cells cure death, George Bush caused Katrina & a tree ring in Uganda told me to hide the decline.
Oh, and Michio Kaku has a TV show and Hawking thinks humanity is totally boned.
Also, Cialis. But that’s less science than a bunch of Eli Lilly chemists that got bored trying to cure cancer and instead spiked every guy in the lab’s coffee to try and make their dick hard for 3 hours & 59 minutes.
And it worked.
Disclaimer: I own stock in Eli Lilly
You crack me up without fail, LYBD.
– If it wasn’t for the potential harm to society, watching the various department heads vying for Le aide de stupid’<'i> opportunists of the year awards would be amusing.
– The fifth law of holes: “Truth, like oil, always rises to the surface” (even in the fringe sciences)
– HTML Fail!
Thanks bh. And thanks to you, Ric, sdferr, geoffb, et al for making me a bit smarter than I was before I
started drinkinggot here this morning.Football season baby!!!
“Scientists who study evolution say crying probably conferred some benefit and did something to advance our species.”
Yep, it signaled us who to kick off the iceberg.
As rumors swirled that Harvard was about to ding Mr. Hauser for scientific misconduct, prominent researchers in the field worried they would be tarnished by association.
Isn’t Lulz Nyuk Shebang a third-world poet?
Not sure, but if I was offered a bowl of it in Bangkok I wouldn’t know whether to slurp it or smoke it.
“I sit on the floor and pick my nose
and think of dirty things
Of deviant dwarfs who suck their toes
and elves who drub their dings.”
lulz
A: Lulz Nyuk Shebang.
Q: What do you get when you cross Nishi, Moe, and William Hung?
Floyd R. Turbo would be proud.
Mr. Hauser had boldly declared that through his application of science, not only could morality be stripped of any religious hocus-pocus, but philosophy would have to step aside as well: “Inquiry into our moral nature will no longer be the proprietary province of the humanities and social sciences,”
So is the real problem practicing bad science, or stepping on the toes of the humanities and social sciences?
“There are two ways of forming an opinion. One is the scientific method; the other, the scholastic. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all-important, and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything, and facts are junked when they do not fit theory.”
-Robert A. Heinlein
Oh, come on, have scientists learned NOTHING? Just hold an internal inquiry, forgive all, declare the science settled, and accuse everyone who criticizes of being a “denialist.”
Problem solved!
nishizononoshow