| ▲ | tlogan 7 days ago |
| The issue isn’t that Scientific American leans “pro-Democrat” and it is political. It always has, and that’s understandable. The real problem is that the modern Democratic Party increasingly aligns with postmodernism, which is inherently anti-science (Postmodernism challenges the objectivity and universality of scientific knowledge, framing it as a social construct shaped by culture, power, and historical context, rather than an evidence-based pursuit of truth). |
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| ▲ | wolfram74 7 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| We have such low standards for republicans, it's amazing. We complain that democrats are increasingly acknowleding that science is done by humans and humans will tend to ask questions based on what phenomena they've encountered and what explanations they've been given in their lives up til then, but totally give the republicans a pass on catering to groups that deny global warming, evolution or even that the world is more than 6000 years old. |
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| ▲ | Philorandroid 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Tu quoque; Republicans harboring fringe beliefs in some cases isn't a response to Democrats' mainstream acceptance of beliefs that the scientific method doesn't accurately reflect reality. | | |
| ▲ | BadHumans 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I think it is fair to say that through the nomination process, whoever is voted to run as the Republican nominee for president is considered to be the best representative for the party. Looking at the president-elect and all of the leaders of the party, saying they have "fringe beliefs in some cases" is severely downplaying it. | | |
| ▲ | umanwizard 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > I think it is fair to say that through the nomination process, whoever is voted to run as the Republican nominee for president is considered to be the best representative for the party. It is not fair to say that at all. The primary system is highly undemocratic, and what’s more, the people who participate in it aren’t statistically representative of Republican voters as a whole. | | |
| ▲ | BadHumans 7 days ago | parent [-] | | Even if you are voting against someone, the person who you voting for is the person you find the most palatable of the options presented. I also don't think you can look at the de-facto leader of the party and say "in some cases" as if the president isn't a big case. |
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| ▲ | Philorandroid 7 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | That's a naive way to see it. People vote _against_ the other candidate, against what they fear is worse. And, if the theory that the frontrunner is the best representation of the party holds true, it speaks quite poorly for the Democrats appointing Harris despite Biden winning the vote of his party, no? And, again, tu quoque; even if the GOP was exhaustively comprised of reality-evading lunatics, voters and all, it wouldn't excuse stooping to their level -- the DNC's _explicit_ support of racial identitarianism, benevolent racism, and biological denialism run in direct opposition to this supposed moral high ground they tacitly hold. | | |
| ▲ | BadHumans 7 days ago | parent [-] | | > it speaks quite poorly for the Democrats appointing Harris despite Biden winning the vote of his party, no? Yes it does. I agree fully. > the DNC's _explicit_ support of racial identitarianism, benevolent racism, and biological denialism run in direct opposition to this supposed moral high ground they tacitly hold. I don't think benevolent racism means what you think it means and no one is denying biology. Trans people aren't even denying biology. I would suggest you actually speak to a few trans people in real life. | | |
| ▲ | bongoman42 6 days ago | parent [-] | | umm.. Scientific American said that differences in athletic ability of men and women are not based in Biology. | | |
| ▲ | BadHumans 6 days ago | parent [-] | | I am definitely not the person to write a dissertation in support of trans people but the logic being used as I understand it is that male and female are not the same as man and woman. Whether I or anyone else agree with that is up in the air. | | |
| ▲ | oldnetguy 6 days ago | parent [-] | | Man by definition is an adult human male and woman by definition is an adult human female. So there is that. | | |
| ▲ | defrost 6 days ago | parent [-] | | Just sticking with actual science here; how do you define "adult human male", how do you define "adult human female" .. and what do you label humans that don't meet either of your definitions? I'm assuming you have a checklist of physical characteristics and genetic attributes in mind, sticking purely with that which can be measured, tested and observed and steering clear of fuzzy concepts. | | |
| ▲ | oldnetguy 6 days ago | parent [-] | | Males are females are biological sex labels. It's how our bodies develop so we can reproduce. Even if our bodies don't develop properly or if we have developmental sex disorders we are all either male or female. If you lookup biological adult, it's just someone who has completeled their reproductive development. So Boy, Girl, Man and Woman are also sex labels. Also we now know more about how sex is more then just genitalia. This is why we have Sex and a Biological Variable
https://www.nature.com/articles/npp2016215 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B97803...! | | |
| ▲ | defrost 6 days ago | parent [-] | | > Even if our bodies don't develop properly or if we have developmental sex disorders we are all either male or female. That's not what the actual developmental science says though. The strong all humans are either male OR female by { unprovided definition } is simply incorrect. > If you lookup biological adult, it's just someone who has completeled their reproductive development. Sure. Some are born and develop into biological adult males. Others are born and develop into biological adult females. And others yet again are born and grow into adults who are neither one nor the other. Look it up .. start with "intersex". See your own first link, for example, it's really sloppy, and yet: Although all cells have a sex, designated by the presence and dosage of X or Y chromosomes, which in most cases will be XX (female) or XY (male),
* all cells will have a sex (okay ...)* most will be XX (female) OR XY (male) (... okay) * ... crickets ... Nothing said about those cells that are neither male nor female. All that aside, you have dodged the question. What definition do you have for male, for female, and what do you designate the remainder? Are you even aware that people are born who are neither male nor female by any of the generally accepted physical and genetic attributes? | | |
| ▲ | codocod 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The comment this subthread branched from was discussing the differences in athletic ability. From the intersection of developmental biology and sports science research we know how male physical advantage in competition arises, and which set of known "intersex" (DSD) conditions confer this. For example, 5-alpha reductase 2 deficiency does. Swyer syndrome does not. World Athletics' policy document Eligibility Regulations for the Female Classification does a good job of implementing this research into a workable policy:
https://worldathletics.org/download/download?filename=2ffb8b... Rather than trying to label all edge cases "female" or "male", this pragmatic approach optimizes for fairness in competition instead. | | |
| ▲ | defrost 6 days ago | parent [-] | | The comment I replied to was this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42190601 As you can see it made no mention of athletics. I was curious about the self referential circular definitions and enquired of a specific person what their understanding of development biology was. Thankyou for your response, it might be better directed toward the person who apparently hasn't yet realised that such a thing as intersex categories and conditions even exist. | | |
| ▲ | codocod 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Understood, the comment I was referring to was this one a bit further up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42188151 I responded to your comment because it was the most recent in the thread, but I agree that it would have perhaps made more sense as a reply to the other commenter. Anyhow the broader point I think is worth making is that there is often a more context-specific approach, of which eligibility criteria for competitive sporting events is one example. | |
| ▲ | 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | oldnetguy 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > What definition do you have for male, for female, and what do you designate the remainder? I didn't dodge the question, you just don't like my answer Here are the English definitions. Male: of or denoting the sex that produces small, typically motile gametes, especially spermatozoa, with which a female may be fertilized or inseminated to produce offspring. Female:of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) that can be fertilized by male gametes.
"a herd of female deer" Now I know what you are going to say, what if they cannot create gametes? That doesn't change anything because even if your reproductive organs don't develop properly nor function properly it doesn't make you neither male nor female. You still have many other characteristics that needed to be addressed. This is why we have Sex as a Biological Variable. > Are you even aware that people are born who are neither male nor female by any of the generally accepted physical and genetic attributes? That's not really true, people are either male or female but didn't develop properly. Doesn't mean that they are neither nor, people with DSDs are documented. I know there are groups trying to push away from the concept of DSDs but there is not a consensus. People have all sorts of development disorders, this is just one kind. Now even if there were people who were of no sex, it doesn't mean we start changing sex labels for fully developed people because we now consider it a social construct. The people who follow Gender Theory like to use people with DSDs to push the idea that fully developed people can change their sex and they can't. https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/33/2/in-humans-sex-is... Your playing with words to try and get the idea of Biological sex thrown out is not going to work here. | | |
| ▲ | defrost 6 days ago | parent [-] | | > That's not really true, Yes, it is true, whether you like it or not. "if the term intersex is to retain any meaning, the term should be restricted to those conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female"
~ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0022449020955213...> people are either male or female but didn't develop properly. How do you classify that which is unclassifiable by experts in the field? > Your [sic] playing with words to try .. I'm not any of the experts in the field looking at natal development and debating the breadth of variation. Your argument is not with myself but with the documented literature on the subject. | | |
| ▲ | oldnetguy 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > Yes, it is true, whether you like it or not. Some people disagree: https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/33/2/in-humans-sex-is... Why “Intersex” Conditions Do Not Invalidate the Sex Binary But what about “intersex” individuals? Unfortunately, confusion and misunderstanding reign when it comes to their existence. Humans are indeed born with a variety of “intersex” conditions at low frequency, but that does not mean that these conditions are part of normal healthy variation. Humans are also born with a great variety of devastating congenital deformities and diseases, and if alien exozoologists were to write a description of Homo sapiens based on extensive observations of the population, such a description would never feature, for example, anencephaly, and neither would it include anything else but binary sex. Extremely deleterious phenotypes, especially when their fitness is invariant with respect to environmental conditions, cannot be part of that description, as they are by definition actively eliminated from the population. The mathematics of natural selection is remorseless. For the human population, even an allele with an initial frequency as low as 0.01 and selection coefficient s = 0.05 is nearly ensured fixation. On the other hand, that should not be taken to mean that natural selection is all powerful. First, even if an allele is strongly deleterious, its frequency will not be zero, as it is constantly reintroduced by mutations at some rate µ. Second, alleles with small selective (dis)advantages are not ensured fixation. Genetic drift can lead to fixation of alleles with small selective coefficients irrespective of their effects, as long as s < ~1/Ne (Ne is the effective population size). Therefore we cannot expect “perfection” from biological processes. Imagine that a biochemical reaction runs with a given accuracy in a finite population. The selective advantage of mutations improving its accuracy will generally be at most the fractional improvement that they confer. Thus it is not possible for selection to push the system towards absolute perfection as further fractional improvements are “invisible” to it if smaller than the selection barrier ~1/Ne. Errors are thus expected to occur everywhere, and indeed they do. This is why important genes get mutated, developmental processes get disrupted, and the results are newborns with very low fitness. These facts bear on how we are to think about “intersex”' people. The great diversity of such conditions cannot be explored here in detail. These include Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (feminization of males due to androgen receptor mutations), Klinefelter's syndrome (47,XXY karyotype), XX male syndrome (46, XX “males” due to translocation of the master regulator SRY to the X), Turner's syndrome (45,X0) and many others. These conditions present with a variety of phenotypes intermediate between typical male and female features, but they have one crucial commonality—individuals afflicted are almost invariably sterile;20 on the few occasions where fertility is possible, the phenotypes are mild and it is hard to even call them “intersex.” Their evolutionary fitness is therefore as negative as fitness could possibly be short of being stillborn (s = -1 for sterile individuals). Importantly, these fitness reductions are invariant to environmental variables. It is possible for a condition that is a debilitating disease under some circumstances to be beneficial under others (e.g. sickle-cell anemia and malaria). But this does not apply to the inability to produce viable gametes which makes one unable to reproduce under all circumstances. All “intersex” conditions, when examined, clearly arise from single-gene mutations or chromosomal aberrations on a genetic background that would have indisputably been producing male or female gametes had these mutations not occurred, and, rarely, due to chimerism (i.e. individuals made up of both male and female cells). True hermaphrodites possessing both sets of functional gonads and genitalia have never been observed in Homo sapiens. Therefore the “intersex” argument against the sex binary is simply not valid. Intersex individuals exist only because of continuous de novo reintroduction of the relevant mutations in the population, recessive genes becoming unmasked, or disruptions of normal embryonic development. Sex in mammals is on a fundamental level binary and immutable, and claims that “intersex'” individuals disprove that can only be made in the absence of any consideration of the biological nature of humans and how our evolutionary history has shaped our biology. Which brings us to the most worrying aspect of the widespread adoption of such denial This person is not alone. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10265381/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5824932/ I know there is a ongoing social debate about this, and there are people withing the field who disagrees. So it's not like you are showing me anything I haven't already seen. The idea that there is a consensus is not accurate. There are people who disagree and they have been writing about it. Expect to see more. | | |
| ▲ | immibis 5 days ago | parent [-] | | 404. But have you heard the term "bimodal distribution"? I'm sorry but the text you quoted is nonsense. Alien exozoologists could very well write about Homo sapiens "rarely they are born without brains, and die quickly." They would be correct to do so. However, this is quite a minute and usually irrelevant feature of the species. If they go into enough detail, they would write it. There are more transgender people born than anencephalic people (... if they can even be called that). And sterile people aren't non-people. They are people, so a very detailed description of the species would say that some people are sterile, sometimes because they are intersex. > All “intersex” conditions, when examined, clearly arise from single-gene mutations or chromosomal aberrations on a genetic background that would have indisputably been producing male or female gametes had these mutations not occurred so what? this is meaningless. This is searching for plausible sounding arguments to justify a desired conclusion. > Therefore the “intersex” argument against the sex binary is simply not valid. Intersex individuals exist therefore sex is not completely binary. It doesn't matter why. You are reaching for plausible sounding arguments, that on closer inspection still make no sense. Some people are male, some are female, and some are neither, therefore, it is not true that all people are male or female. QED. This is very basic logic. Defying very basic logic is nonsense. You might as well argue that 1+1=3, we just haven't seen it yet. > Sex in mammals is on a fundamental level binary and immutable What would it take to disprove this for you? I have a feeling that if someone designed a gender change ray that could convert a human male into a human female, in all aspects including cellular genetics, genitals, and brain structure, you'd still say sex was immutable and the ray didn't really do that. > claims that “intersex'” individuals disprove that can only be made in the absence of any consideration of the biological nature of humans Claims that sex is strictly binary, rather than bimodal, can only be made while looking the emperor in the eye and saying his clothes are gorgeous. Intersex people exist, and they are not male or female - that's the definition. But you don't want to hear it, and would rather pretend they somehow don't count. That's the denial here. Alternatively, perhaps you believe that sex is a property that is not shared by all people. That is, perhaps you believe that some people do not have a sex. Is this the case? Keep in mind: just because something is on pubmed, doesn't make it true. "Trust the science" is bullshit, right? | | |
| ▲ | codocod 5 days ago | parent [-] | | > 404. It seems they were trying to link to this article, but mangled the link: https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/33/2/in-humans-sex-is... It's a thoughtful piece that discusses sex in a much broader and more fundamental biological context than just our human species. It would be worth reading the whole thing rather than just the quoted section. > Claims that sex is strictly binary, rather than bimodal, can only be made while looking the emperor in the eye and saying his clothes are gorgeous. I think you may be confusing sex with sex-linked traits. For example: testosterone levels. If you sample a randomly selected population of humans and plot this variable, it will show a bimodal distribution. But this is because the sample contains two discrete populations that have an average difference between them in that variable: males with higher testosterone and females with lower testosterone. | | |
| ▲ | immibis 5 days ago | parent [-] | | So you will invent a property called sex that is not always based on facts and observations, but sometimes based on your own opinion just for the sake of making it always binary even when the facts aren't? | | |
| ▲ | codocod 5 days ago | parent [-] | | No, I'm not saying that. How did you come to that conclusion from reading my comment (and the linked article)? | | |
| ▲ | oldnetguy 5 days ago | parent [-] | | That's because the person has no real answer. None of the people pushing this concept does. |
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| ▲ | 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | UncleMeat 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is not "some cases." This is core policy of the party. You can see major leaders within state and federal legislative and executive bodies actively denying climate change research on a daily basis. | | |
| ▲ | Philorandroid 7 days ago | parent [-] | | So biological denialism is a morally superior position to hold, then? Democratic leaders can't ever seem to acknowledge biological differences between the sexes, certainly not with regards to competitive advantages. As for it being "core policy", I'd need to a see a citation, otherwise it's conjecture. The 2024 GOP platform [1] doesn't mention climate change, global warming, IPCC, et al. once, whereas the DNC's platform [2] discusses it at length. [1] https://ballotpedia.org/The_Republican_Party_Platform,_2024
[2] https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/FINAL-MASTE... | | |
| ▲ | pfdietz 7 days ago | parent [-] | | > biological denialism What is this? I would have thought that the idea that some people who are outwardly one sex have brain wiring for the other sex is quite plausible. Development is very messy. | | |
| ▲ | exoverito 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The significant increase in non-binary gender identity and rapid onset gender dysphoria suggests there's a cultural factor at work. A 2021 systematic review found mixed results for transgender brain structures mirroring their self-identified sex, with most neuroanatomical measures mapping to their birth sex. Though I agree with you that development is messy. We should be much more concerned about exposing children to endocrine disruptors, micro-plastics, and bizarre social dogmas. | | |
| ▲ | seltzered_ 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Where is your worldview on ROGD coming from? It's been a rather contentious topic, and sciam has even written about some of the issues: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evidence-undermin... ( https://archive.ph/N1nAR ) "The American Psychological Association and 61 other health care providers’ organizations signed a letter in 2021 denouncing the validity of rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) as a clinical diagnosis" -> https://www.caaps.co/rogd-statement | |
| ▲ | pfdietz 7 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > a cultural factor at work For example, recognition of the existence of the syndrome and reduction in social stigma. Kind of like how the rate of homosexuality increases when you stop subjecting them to vivisection. | | |
| ▲ | the_why_of_y 6 days ago | parent [-] | | For historical precendent, rate of people in US identifying as left-handed went from 4% in 1900 to 12% in 1950, and remained constant since then. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FChMzOFVkAAKsgp?format=jpg | | |
| ▲ | Manuel_D 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | So a 3x increase over 50 years for left-handedness. By comparison there's been a 40-50x increase in gender clinic patients in just 11 years from ~100 patients in 2011 to 5000 patients in 2022: https://segm.org/images/280UK_22.svg | | |
| ▲ | the_why_of_y 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I'm arguing that there's a qualitative analogy of an increase in rates eventually leading to a plateau, and you're turning it into a quantitative argument? The point here is that if there's discrimination against certain characteristics, there will be individuals that will deny part of their identity to the outside world. | | |
| ▲ | Manuel_D 2 days ago | parent [-] | | But discrimination against trans individuals has by most measures increased. Bathroom bills, many states categorized gender medicine in minors as child abuse, etc. Polls asking people of they agree that gender can be changed has decreased over time: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2022/06/28/america... So whatever is causing trans identification to increase ~250x faster than left-handedness is happening despite increasing discrimination against trans individuals. | | |
| ▲ | siden a day ago | parent [-] | | These aren't intended to unfairly discriminate against the trans-identified. The purpose is to protect female spaces (which males really have no right to enter), and prevent medical harm to children by doctors with gender identity ideological beliefs. Actual discrimination would be things like, repealing laws that protect individuals with a trans identity from being refused housing or employment because of that identity (or expression thereof). As far as I know, no-one is pushing any bills that would do this. |
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| ▲ | pfdietz 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Nice example. |
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| ▲ | blueflow 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I do not believe a being could tell if it has a male or female wired brain without relying on some fictitious tropes (or call it stereotypes) about manliness or femininity. This is a constructivistic/social phenomenon. | | |
| ▲ | pfdietz 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Well there's two questions. One is whether it's possible for "inner" sex and "outer" sex to be in conflict. There's no reason to think this is impossible. The other is whether a person suffering from this could tell something was wrong. They couldn't diagnose the problem in detail, but shouldn't they be able to tell, at some level, that something isn't right? Denying the latter just sounds like gaslighting to me. | | |
| ▲ | blueflow 5 days ago | parent [-] | | You misunderstood. I said "without relying on some fictitious tropes". If you have these tropes internalized (which is a common thing apparently) the conflict between the idealized gender roles and physical reality is bound to happen. |
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| ▲ | jandrewrogers 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I don't think I've ever seen anyone deny the plausibility of the brain being wired differently than the body. What I believe the poster is referring to, and which I've seen in the media many times, is denial that physiological sex-linked characteristics are fully expressed even if doesn't match the one the brain is wired for. If brain wiring can mismatch physiology, it demonstrably is not determinative of the biology the brain is attached to in any meaningful way. I understand the motivation for this denialism: most social institutions that segregate by sex are motivated by the practical effects of physiological sex-linked characteristics, brain wiring isn't a relevant criterion for determining "sex" for these purposes. It is currently impossible for the physiology to match the brain wiring in such case as a matter of science. Since the social institutions around sex segregation are widely viewed to exist for good reason, it motivates denial that physiological sex-linked characteristics actually exist for people that want to be segregated according to their brain-wiring sex. | |
| ▲ | Manuel_D 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | It is very common for left-leaning figures in the US to deny that trans women and girls possess any advantage over cis females in sports. In reality trans women still possess greater bone density, higher average height, higher red blood cell concentrations, higher VO2 max, more fast-twitch muscle fiber and more. | | |
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| ▲ | anigbrowl 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Democrats' mainstream acceptance of beliefs that the scientific method doesn't accurately reflect reality No such belief exists. Recognizing the existence of bias in a science (with biased input data having detrimental effects on the reliability of the results) or observing the existence of methodological shortcomings is not the same as repudiating the method. |
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| ▲ | umanwizard 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Nobody was talking about Republicans in this thread until you brought them up. Criticizing Democrats doesn't necessarily mean one likes Republicans. The two poles of the idiosyncratic US political system aren't the only ideologies or worldviews that exist. | |
| ▲ | know-how 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [dead] | |
| ▲ | decremental 7 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | kmeisthax 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Postmodernism isn't anti-science, it's anti-modernism. Postmodernism doesn't care about science aside from the fact that it happens to make claims to objectivity, which postmodernism disdains. This is sort of like arguing that relativity is anti-science because it denies the existence of a privileged "objective" or "universal" reference frame. To put it another way: if modernism was actually true and science was an inherently objective process that produced universal truths, then why do we have persistent and ongoing replication crisises in multiple scientific disciplines? Our answer has to come from postmodernism: the current scientific establishment values the production of papers as a way to fill magazines, and people with agendas to push (e.g. the American sugar lobby) will fund the production of scientific papers that produce the answer they want. If that makes sense to you, then you're a postmodernist. |
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| ▲ | Aunche 7 days ago | parent [-] | | Science has been rewarding politics (e.g. securing funding) over achieving objective truths. Objectivity is a modernist value, and proposing ways how to systemically change society to advance modernist values is something we've been doing for hundreds of years. On the other hand, postmodernism tends to criticize the pursuit of objectivity while embracing subjectivity. |
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| ▲ | beezlebroxxxxxx 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It's reasonable to criticize people that take the ideas and concepts from postmodernism too far into nonsensical corners. But postmodernism, as a philosophical and larger historical/analytical approach, is not some evil boogieman. Lots of things have been done based on purported science knowledge that was, with historical context and with a proper critical eye, complete nonsense at best, and evil at worst. It was quite easy to make phrenology look like science. Postmodernism studies how it is possible to make something look like science. It's a complicated topic with consequences for the framing and development of scientific knowledge. There's no reason to discredit scientific endeavor in totality because of that though, and, to be honest, those people are far more fringe in academia, for instance, than people realize. And just as well, properly framed, there is no reason to wholesale discredit the critiques made by postmodernism of the uses and abuses of scientific knowledge by scientific institutions, governments, individuals, and the ways that arose out of culture and historical context. |
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| ▲ | tasty_freeze 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Like climate change? Like support of masking up when COVID was killing more than a 1000 people a day? Like believing "conversion therapy" doesn't work and is actually harmful? Like understanding sex and gender and two things even though we use the same words to describe both? Like voter fraud is minimal (pop question: after the 2016 election Trump claimed there were more than 3 million illegal votes cast. As president he had all the resources in the world to investigate it, had a personal reason to identify it, had the duty as president to root it out. He formed a commission ... and nothing. Was was because he was negligent in his duties, tried but was incompetent, or was simply lying?) |
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| ▲ | NeutralCrane 7 days ago | parent [-] | | > Like believing "conversion therapy" doesn't work and is actually harmful? Like understanding sex and gender and two things even though we use the same words to describe both? Like believing puberty blockers are an effective treatment for gender dysphoria despite historical evidence being extremely weak, ignoring or condemning more modern, rigorous studies [0], and refusing to publish your own studies when they don't confirm your preconceived position [1]. You don't need to convince anyone that Republicans don't care about science. But many of us also see the ways in which the "trust the science" crowd throw actual science out the second it contradicts their position. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/13/health/hilary-cass-transg... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/science/puberty-blockers-... | | |
| ▲ | thefaux 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The science of puberty blockers is clear to me: they prevent the unwanted development of secondary sex characteristics in adolescents and have a number of side effects that may or may not be tolerable for any particular individual. What would you suggest is the proper treatment for trans children suffering gender dysphoria if they are denied puberty blockers and/or hormone replacement therapy? Do you think that forcing them to develop unwanted secondary sex characteristics is going to reduce their dysphoria? Do you think that you should be responsible for telling another a parent what they should or should not allow their child to do? By what criteria should you or the state be able to overrule a parent? Should a child be allowed any agency at all over their own body? And if not children, should adults? I don't think that science can even begin to answer these questions and that it is a red herring to frame this debate in utilitarian scientific terms (e.g. science shows that puberty blockers don't statistically improve mental health and therefore should be banned). With this kind of science, we lose the unique individual human being which for me is the loss of everything that truly matters. | | |
| ▲ | aorn 6 days ago | parent [-] | | Many adults desist and detransition so why wouldn't children, if left to develop normally? The problem with blocking these dysphoric childrens' puberty, putting them on cross-sex hormones and, in some cases, surgically removing body parts, is that they're never given a chance to explore how they would feel as fully developed adults. Even referring to them as "trans children" comes with the assumption that this is some inherent and unchanging quality rather than a temporary state. Why assume this without evidence? |
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| ▲ | unethical_ban 7 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Were you to read the comments of that article about the unpublished research, You could see that many people who I am sure identify as liberals agree that the scientists took the wrong action. Though I admit that I understand why a researcher would hesitate, knowing that bigoted politicians and Evangelicals would use it as a cudgel against trans rights and trans people themselves. |
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| ▲ | miltonlost 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| ??? Postmodernism does not deny the Germ Theory of Disease or Newtonian physics. You have some very flawed, Jordan Peterson-tainted ideas of what Postmodern theory is, especially in regard to physical sciences. Sure, social sciences like anthropology and economics in which human actors are in play will have their "objectivity" challenged. |
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| ▲ | kenjackson 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The modern Democratic party doesn't believe that. Sure, there are movements in the party that probably believe that, but it's very much a minority view. Lets avoid trying to frame minority or fringe views as the mainline belief of either party. |
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| ▲ | thrance 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Let's be real here, if there's one side that has an anti-science stance it's the republicans. They are pandering to (when they are not themselves) climate change deniers, evolution deniers, flat earthers, qanons... Those people don't vote democrat. As for postmodernism, it is far from mainstream in academia, and you seem to have a very narrow idea of what it is. I can only recommend the following video (by an actual scientist!): https://youtu.be/ESEFUaEA7kk |
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| ▲ | smaudet 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I agree that postmodernism, or at least your definition of it, is so much nonsense (in the realm of hard sciences, at least - soft science unfortunately does suffer from human contextual bias issues). I don't read SciAm (maybe that's an issue), but I'm a bit suspicious that this could be a political hit piece. That being said, if any of the claims in the article are true (e.g. calling statistic normal distribution curves an affront to humanity), that would indeed be a travesty (that such makes it through editing). I think a less impassioned, more objective take would also present e.g. the number of times a needlessly conservatively minded piece made it through editing. I.e. is it that SciAm is suddenly biased unscientific drivel or is it that society representatively has become more extreme? |
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| ▲ | GoblinSlayer 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Postmodernism has a bit of relevance for hard sciences, because relativity is known to be counterintuitive, and as a consequence theories will have absolutist bias. Consider Roger Penrose's Andromeda argument, where he tries to reason about synchronism in the context of special theory of relativity, but ends up assuming Galilean absolute synchronism, because Lorentz synchronism is counterintuitive. | | |
| ▲ | smaudet 7 days ago | parent [-] | | Bad interpretations of data or theories are always a possibility, however that's only relevant to the interpretation. Unless the data itself is fabricated, i.e. unscientific, the hard sciences are "hard" because they don't suffer from these flaws of interpretation (as much). There of course issues with observability, replicability, however these are issues that can be dealt largely without invoking any societal biases, aka through the scientific method. Rejecting the scientific method completely because humans are involved at any step, is a form of absurd-ism, yes, we are not perfect, but our methods are a lot better than a) nothing b) your choice to reject hard science because it doesn't match your personal belief (hard bias). | | |
| ▲ | GoblinSlayer 6 days ago | parent [-] | | It doesn't reject scientific method completely, but you also can't trivially ignore social dynamics, because scientific method routinely deals with issue simply by waiting for the old generation to go extinct, then consensus can be naturally reached. | | |
| ▲ | smaudet 6 days ago | parent [-] | | I think you'll find upon inspection the hard sciences are based on consensus reached and not overturned for centuries, not generations. If you were arguing with me in the 11th century perhaps you'd have a valid concern, at the point at which we've been successfully doing this for almost a whole millennia, I strongly disagree with your assertion(s). | | |
| ▲ | GoblinSlayer 5 days ago | parent [-] | | In the past science waited to overturn a consensus, today it waits to reach a consensus. |
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| ▲ | kmeisthax 7 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | >but I'm a bit suspicious that this could be a political hit piece. Reason is right-libertarian and has to occasionally shoot at least a few bullets in the direction of the opposing front on the culture war lest the conservative barrier troops[0] shoot them. Likewise there's a lot of right-wing authoritarians who try fishing for new suckers in the right-libertarian pool. This weird interplay between libertarians and authoritarians on the right side of the political compass has been a thing since at least when capital-L libertarian figures were talking about "paleoconservatives" and Ron Paul was paying ghostwriters to write all those hilariously racist newsletters back in the 90s. [0] Barrier troops are soldiers in an army whose job it is to shoot at their own deserters. | | |
| ▲ | mindslight 7 days ago | parent [-] | | As a libertarian whose thinking has gone through the whole spectrum of left-right and back again, the fundamental problem is that [pure] right libertarianism is inherently contradictory, despite its simplicity making it extremely attractive. A core principle of rightist thinking is an assumption that there is some bedrock of moral axioms, and as long as we follow them then the resulting situations must also be morally right by construction. This directly clashes with Gödel's famous results in logic, which show that complexity itself creates new logical contradictions. Rightest libertarians (eg the bulk of the Libertarian party, Constitutional fundamentalists, etc) are still running off the failed ideas from the 1910's that produced efforts like the Principia Mathematica. The way I've come to see it, left and right essentially correspond to two modes of reasoning, inductive versus deductive - they are both required to get anywhere worthwhile. The current highly divisive political environment is essentially making everybody think with only half their brains. This is both lucrative (it feels good to have lazy answers validated rather than criticized), as well as disempowering (it keeps individuals from agreeing on substantive political opposition to ever-growing corporate authoritarianism). |
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| ▲ | pinecamp 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Can you give an example of an evidence-based pursuit of truth that was not in any way shaped by culture, power, or historical context? |
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| ▲ | malwrar 7 days ago | parent [-] | | The discovery of the atom? Huge cross-continental diverse group of humans of varying levels of power and privilege running successive experiments that led to our current atomic model. | | |
| ▲ | pinecamp 7 days ago | parent [-] | | It seems to me like a lot of historical context would go into that discovery. You also mention power, privilege, and collaboration across continents. All of these factors shape the process of doing science. I think it's an amazing (and beautiful!) thing that we can collaborate on such a scale. Science is done by people, and I think it's silly to pretend that people can somehow operate in a way that's entirely removed from history and culture. | | |
| ▲ | malwrar 7 days ago | parent [-] | | > It seems to me like a lot of historical context would go into that discovery […] it's silly to pretend that people can somehow operate in a way that's entirely removed from history and culture. Certainly in terms of who was able to participate in the discovery, but I doubt the actual discovered structure was shaped much by the discoverers. Put another way, I would be absolutely fascinated to see other accurate greenfield formulations of an atomic model that do not resemble our current one which could have been invented by another set of possible discoverers enabled by fortune to pursue them. I think that the ideas defining the model comprise the “shape” of the discovery more than the discoverers themselves, who merely stumbled upon them and investigated. |
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| ▲ | drawkward 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Now talk about the crowd size at Trump's first inauguration, and the birth of the term "alternative facts". |
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| ▲ | 65 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I wouldn't describe it as "pro-Democrat" - that would imply it embraces the Democrat governing agenda. For example, embracing more federal power compared to the Republican ideology of more state power. Which has nothing to do with science. It's more so caught up in the liberal cultural agenda. Which Democrats align with. A square is a rectangle but a rectangle is not always a square. I think _both_ conservatives and liberals have turned to postmodernist questioning of science. Just as conservatives question climate change science, liberals question biological sex science. Both are detriments to society and show how we're not exactly moving forward culturally. But it seems the liberals, who tend to embrace a panpolitical ideology (where everything is political) are actively hurting established science. Thus Scientific American would be a much more useful and enduring resource - especially in the social media age - if it kept to science and didn't cross into politics. |
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| ▲ | felixgallo 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| What in the holy hell are you talking about? Are you really saying But it’s the Democrats that reject science and reason? |
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| ▲ | tlogan 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes, a portion of Democratic Party leadership has appeared to move away from science and reason in some cases. One example that frustrated me as a taxpayer and parent with kids in school: here in California, it was Democratic policymakers who removed Algebra from high school curricula, arguing that it would help address disparities among minority students. | | |
| ▲ | UncleMeat 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | This is a pedagogy and social policy decision, not a scientific one. You can disagree with it, but it isn't like we have scientific research that incontrovertibly provides education policy recommendations to address social disparities. Changing math curricula isn't denying math and reason itself. | | | |
| ▲ | kenjackson 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Can you point me to the high school where Algebra was removed? I know they were doing work on when to introduce Algebra I, but I've never seen any mention of the class being fully removed from a high school. | |
| ▲ | blackguardx 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I don’t think high school math is on the Democratic party platform in California. In any case, no one was advocating cutting out Algebra. The debate was about moving Algebra I from middle school to High School and removing Calculus from High School. I think delaying Algebra for all students is probably a bad idea. Removing Calculus from high school only makes sense if they replace it with something like Statistics. | |
| ▲ | jellicle 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The California school curriculum includes and has always included algebra. | |
| ▲ | thrance 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Don't worry, you won't have to worry about what they teach your children in school anymore - Republicans are going to destroy the department of education. | | |
| ▲ | exoverito 7 days ago | parent [-] | | Can you tell me what the Department of Education has measurably accomplished since its establishment in 1979? Inflation adjusted spending per student has increased by about 3X since then, and test scores have not improved, even falling in recent years. Financial aid for college has perversely led to vastly overinflated tuitions, while subsidizing many useless degrees. These problems are not a simple matter of funding. One need only at California's High Speed Rail project. Costs have soared from early estimates of $15B to now more than $130B+, despite almost no track being laid over the last 15 years. This is in a one party state with complete Democrat control, so you can't blame Republicans. Bureaucratic mismanagement and inefficiency are the overwhelming problems now. | | |
| ▲ | thrance 7 days ago | parent [-] | | I'm not even American, but if you think you can simply cut a budget to solve your problems, you're delusional. Americans are on average much more educated and skilled (in the labor market) than in 1979, obviously. In my country, most colleges are state owned and free, I had an engineering degree for €600 per year. Skyrocketing tuitions in America is purely a result of profiteering, largely enabled by the republicans and not kept in check by the weak democrats. But if you still think gutting your public services will improve anything, just look at what austerity did to the UK. |
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| ▲ | felixgallo 7 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | There is definitely a small Faction of left wingers with unusual ideas. Generalizing that To a broader conclusion about democrats is wild. |
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| ▲ | PathOfEclipse 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | https://freedompact.co.uk/podcast/128-dr-gad-saad-the-war-on... "Professor Saad’s latest book The Parasitic Mind: how infectious ideas are killing common sense takes a wonderful look at some of the ideas which are so prominent in society today. We discuss the granddaddy of ‘idea pathogens’ as Gad calls it Postmodernism, we discuss the fear of biology, ..., the war on science, truth and reason that we all have a stake in and much, much more." | |
| ▲ | smaudet 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Filter bubbles are real. If you spend your time watching (low quality) videos with a bent (anti-feminist/transgender, e.g.) you begin to believe that is the majority discourse. Its similar to homophobia - a small (tiny) portion of the population expresses "nominal" preference towards homosexuality, however, there is an outsized fear among those who feel threatened by the concept... | | |
| ▲ | 331c8c71 7 days ago | parent [-] | | Well your argument holds all the same should you replace "anti-" with "pro-" etc. | | |
| ▲ | smaudet 6 days ago | parent [-] | | As it should. Those were examples, point was repeated exposure to something doesn't make it more true, just makes you more brainwashed. |
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| ▲ | dekhn 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | A subset of the progressive wing stretches science to meet its ideology. One of the opeds in SciAm is a good example of that. Centrists (both liberal and conservative) tend to be a bit more grounded in direct reality. | |
| ▲ | Philorandroid 7 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Unequivocally. Remember that the parties aren't diametric opposites, and are capable of evading reality simultaneously. |
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