Politicized Science

[fluffy]

Most science has nothing to do with politics, you simply learn it as it applies to whatever field it exists in. But somehow when it comes to politics people can Mark some fields of science as harmful. I recently read a book about how computers in the 1960s were seen as a huge threat to democracy because the were used in the Vietnam war.

Currently the big thing to discuss is genetics. Hereditarian is the new word for racism. It began with IQ tests in the 1960s again but because we now have technology to scan everyone's genes this is becoming a big issue. And we have A.I. to look into EEG data.

Instead of saying we should protect data privacy some people are saying "genes don't do anything", "intelligence does not exist", "a.i. can't think", "dualism is true so mind scanning is impossible".

This will not impead science but it will leave many people scared and confused when tech goes public. When people are scanned and everything is known about them. The real harm will be done but it will be done by ignoring the problem, calling computers racist instead of looking at what they really do. Profiling accurately what people do and doing it faster than at the speed of Moore's law. Any smartphone now has that computer power.

 

[fractalwalrus]

A Darwinian Left - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

California governor signs law banning all plastic shopping bags at grocery stores

“Paper or plastic” will no longer be a choice at grocery store checkout lines in California under a new law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

apnews.com

 

[fluffy]

A Darwinian Left - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Short article but I assume cooperation must be part of human nature as we have Dunbar number. And also people take care of each other, the mother gets support by her family and kids need care.

Societal issues grew beyond this. Civilization has subdivisions of labor and class structure.

Leaders then do need to plan some aspects of super large systems and that requires leaders to be different from just local monarchs.

People get upset with wealth inequality because one guy as leader usually is related to you but in a super system they are not.

How can a person relate then? Some commonality must exist.

With scientists, what if they are oppressors, that is the mentality people have about them if they won't explain things and exclude you from the Science club. They are privileged and want to take jobs away or they won't share power and fight among themselves. Work for big corporations but still most people don't understand the science. The inequality of knowledge make it a problem.

 

[LOGICZOMBIE]

"dualism is true so mind scanning is impossible"

 

[scorpiomover]

Currently the big thing to discuss is genetics. Hereditarian is the new word for racism. It began with IQ tests in the 1960s again but because we now have technology to scan everyone's genes this is becoming a big issue. And we have A.I. to look into EEG data.


Instead of saying we should protect data privacy some people are saying "genes don't do anything", "intelligence does not exist", "a.i. can't think", "dualism is true so mind scanning is impossible".

This will not impead science

Of course it will impede science. What happens when AI starts messing things up? AI researchers will find that their AIs are messing up their lives and their experiments as well.

but it will leave many people scared and confused when tech goes public.

Already gone public. Millions of people are already using AI. AI is learning through data sets based on what people have written on the internet about themselves.

 

[fluffy]

Currently the big thing to discuss is genetics. Hereditarian is the new word for racism. It began with IQ tests in the 1960s again but because we now have technology to scan everyone's genes this is becoming a big issue. And we have A.I. to look into EEG data.


Instead of saying we should protect data privacy some people are saying "genes don't do anything", "intelligence does not exist", "a.i. can't think", "dualism is true so mind scanning is impossible".

This will not impead science

Of course it will impede science. What happens when AI starts messing things up? AI researchers will find that their AIs are messing up their lives and their experiments as well.

but it will leave many people scared and confused when tech goes public.

Already gone public. Millions of people are already using AI. AI is learning through data sets based on what people have written on the internet about themselves.

Are you saying a.i. will mess up genetics research directly or are you saying the flood of fake papers will mess up science?

Whatever happens the models will get better at predicting people.

 

[fluffy]

I was saying that calling genetics and a.i. research fake and racist will not stop scientists from moving forward with it.

Soon people will have brain reading devices and gene tests will tell us many things about people.

 

[fractalwalrus]

what if they are oppressors

There are the cage owners, and then there are those who design the cages. If they wanted to "benefit" humanity rather than just pad their own pockets or engage their curiosity whilst massively benefiting those who benefit most from our current systems of control, it would perhaps be wise to think about the ramifications of their actions. Their choice of occupation has indicated that they have interest and at least rudimentary ability in the realm of thought. Why not use this thought in areas outside of their specialized field as well? Also, not every single person engaged in science directly contributes knowledge which can be used against people who do not wield the power, but a lot of scientific knowledge can.

The inequality of knowledge make it a problem.

I can learn just about anything online for free right now.

People get upset with wealth inequality because one guy as leader usually is related to you but in a super system they are not.

People will get upset when it is a super system, they just have less access to the individuals they are upset with in a super system. So the psychological checks that exist in the human mind to put a check on "always cheat" behavior in game theory, are rendered ineffective when those who cheat are separated from those who do not (with quite the elaborate system, I must say. This separation occurs due to factors beyond the mere physical.)

 

[fractalwalrus]

"dualism is true so mind scanning is impossible"

View attachment 8334

Cool, so rather than just, you know, not sending troops overseas that we will later be scared of when they come home damaged, we can just fix their damage so that it is one less piece of the trauma of war that disincentivizes is. If I pick a walking path to a destination that includes a pothole in its path, and I continuously incrementally damage my knee every time I step in the pothole until I can no longer walk, and then I get it x-rayed and it is determined that it is damaged and that I must rest it, take some meds, and let it heal, but then I refuse to change course and end up damaging it all over again, and then some scientist comes up with a way to insta-heal my knee for a great fee so that I may have the priviledge of having a my knee examined, is this progress?

 

[fluffy]

what if they are oppressors

There are the cage owners, and then there are those who design the cages. If they wanted to "benefit" humanity rather than just pad their own pockets and massively benefiting those who benefit most from our current systems of control, it would perhaps be wise to think about the ramifications of their actions. Their choice of occupation has indicated that they have interest and at least rudimentary ability in the realm of thought. Why not use this thought in areas outside of their specialized field?

Might it be that not all science is oppressive, that requires most if not all persons to be in constant state of oppression like in the hunger games. People benefit from science when they buy things or why not destroy the Walmart.

The inequality of knowledge make it a problem.

I can learn just about anything online for free right now.

Even with my high intelligence I lack the ability to learn everything and I see people cannot even learn simple things. In school they divide you into groups, those going to college and those not. And some like my brother play Minecraft instead of getting a tech job. Setting up a tv is hard for some people even. So people are not equally able. Why learn in the first place, to do what? Training requires time and money to pay people with the high level concepts to get skills if you lack autodidactism and some barely can keep a job at a retail store.

People get upset with wealth inequality because one guy as leader usually is related to you but in a super system they are not.

People will get upset when it is a super system, they just have less access to the individuals they are upset with in a super system. So the psychological checks that exist in the human mind to put a check on "always cheat" behavior in game theory, are rendered ineffective when those who cheat are separated from those who do not (with quite the elaborate system, I must say. This separation occurs due to factors beyond the mere physical.)

Yes, but then where would that happen. And in what contexts. Prisons are made for repeat offenders that must cheat all the time. Most people just watch tv when they get home. A simple job is fine, they do not want anything more in life. This keeps people in line. A mass society of normality. As long as jobs exist they have no need to learn. Those at the top got promoted by the bureaucracy because they passed hard tests to manage others effeceintly. Those who could output the technologies got sent to the research centers.

 

[fractalwalrus]

I was saying that calling genetics and a.i. research fake and racist will not stop scientists from moving forward with it.

Soon people will have brain reading devices and gene tests will tell us many things about people.

Yup. Privacy concerns won't stop this either. Most people are WAY too trusting. Zuckerberg talked of this. Now, racism was used once as a tool of slowing the deployment of facial recognition systems in San Francisco. https://sfstandard.com/2024/07/18/san-francisco-police-facial-recognition-violations/

Americans, (and the rest of the world to an extent) have decided that their privacy is worth the price of some cleverly arranged pixels on a screen and the ability to send messages quickly. Maybe to get them to care you have to frame things in a way they would be more apt to act upon (such as how facial recognition as an issue was racially framed in the Bay Area), but I fear the racist facial recognition algorithms angle may dissipate at some point.

 

[fractalwalrus]

Might it be that not all science is oppressive, that requires most if not all persons to be in constant state of oppression like in the hunger games.

Sure, science itself alone is not a problem, but it could become one if the regime it serves is oppressive. Not all oppression is directly Hunger Games-esque (see the rising rates of mental illness).

So people are not equally able.

Exactly. It is deeper than economic inequality.

Prisons are made for repeat offenders that must cheat all the time.

Have you ever seen the numbers on just who is in prison? Or have you ever wondered why the US is home to the world's largest population of prisoners as a share of its population? Are they all cheats? Is there something about those darned Americans that just makes them more likely to be criminal deviants?

 

[fluffy]

I know that it is an endless cycle of corruption, prisons make money off the state, mostly it has more mentality ill people that can't support themselves than the general population, can you give me more details?

 

[scorpiomover]

Are you saying a.i. will mess up genetics research directly or are you saying the flood of fake papers will mess up science?

Both.

Whatever happens the models will get better at predicting people.

Do you have a solid proof of that, or is that wishful thinking?

 

[fractalwalrus]

I know that it is an endless cycle of corruption, prisons make money off the state, mostly it has more mentality ill people that can't support themselves than the general population, can you give me more details?

Why are so many people in U.S. prisons? Key findings from the National Research

2014 report from the U.S. National Research Council presenting key data, findings and recommendations about the country's prison and criminal justice systems.

journalistsresource.org

"

• In 2012 the U.S. penal population was 2.23 million adults, the largest in the world, with an incarceration rate of 707 per 100,000. That year, nearly 25% of the world’s prisoners were held in American prisons, yet the United States constituted just 4.5% of the global population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
• “During the 1980s, the U.S. Congress and most state legislatures enacted laws mandating lengthy prison sentences — often of 5, 10, and 20 years or longer — for drug offenses, violent offenses, and ‘career criminals.’ In the 1990s, Congress and more than one-half of the states enacted ‘three strikes and you’re out’ laws that mandated minimum sentences of 25 years or longer for affected offenders. A majority of states enacted ‘truth-in-sentencing’ laws requiring affected offenders to serve at least 85% of their nominal prison sentences.”
• “From 1980 to 2000, the number of children with incarcerated fathers increased from about 350,000 to 2.1 million — about 3% of all U.S. children. From 1991 to 2007, the number of children with a father or mother in prison increased 77% and 131%, respectively.”
• “Among white male high school dropouts born in the late 1970s, about one-third are estimated to have served time in prison by their mid-30s. Yet incarceration rates have reached even higher levels among young black men with little schooling: among black male high school dropouts, about two-thirds have a prison record by that same age — more than twice the rate for their white counterparts. The pervasiveness of imprisonment among men with very little schooling is historically unprecedented, emerging only in the past two decades.”

And as for the why : https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp

 

[fluffy]

Are you saying a.i. will mess up genetics research directly or are you saying the flood of fake papers will mess up science?

Both.

Whatever happens the models will get better at predicting people.

Do you have a solid proof of that, or is that wishful thinking?

If even a small fraction of scientists have competency then there will be improvement.

Look at what they can do now with DNA analysis:

Upload Raw DNA Data & Get Free Analysis | Genomelink

Ancient ancestry and 312+ unique traits like nutrition, personality, intelligence, fitness. If you have an existing DNA report, upload it to Genomelink for more traits!

genomelink.io

 

[ZenRaiden]

I feel like science is greatest thing since ever, and worst thing since ever.
A lot of simping from NTs is mostly fantasy LARPing pretending to understand science.
Science is really a big solution to our future, but not all science is equal. A lot of science is plane and simple rubbish, and lot of it will wither away as people get smarter.
I watch a lot of science related to human biology like Huberman podcast and I have to tell you science is waaaay overrated.

If you think I am wrong, just remember in the 1950s there was a guy who convinced people that is OK to do lobotomies.
Lots of science is pretty bad, and science most of all is BLIND. Which many smart people don't like to hear.
But what I mean by that is that discovery and working of science is mostly about luck rather than IQ and effort. Although lot of intellect does play role in science at the end of day science is about experimenting.






You can be scientist too. Just set up a hypothesis and make an experiment and you are officially knighted as scientist. Just follow the method and that is all.

 

[fractalwalrus]

I feel like science is greatest thing since ever, and worst thing since ever.
A lot of simping from NTs is mostly fantasy LARPing pretending to understand science.
Science is really a big solution to our future, but not all science is equal. A lot of science is plane and simple rubbish, and lot of it will wither away as people get smarter.
I watch a lot of science related to human biology like Huberman podcast and I have to tell you science is waaaay overrated.

If you think I am wrong, just remember in the 1950s there was a guy who convinced people that is OK to do lobotomies.
Lots of science is pretty bad, and science most of all is BLIND. Which many smart people don't like to hear.
But what I mean by that is that discovery and working of science is mostly about luck rather than IQ and effort. Although lot of intellect does play role in science at the end of day science is about experimenting.






You can be scientist too. Just set up a hypothesis and make an experiment and you are officially knighted as scientist. Just follow the method and that is all.

Imagine constructing your entire worldview off of a series of incorrect pieces to a puzzle. That is science, but it is also not science. Not science and science conspire to give us not the truth and sometimes the truth. What if it isn't just the NTs who are LARPing? What if it is all of us?

 

[fluffy]

The best thing about it is that you don't have to take anyone's word for it. LARPing is extremely fun. You learn so much and can discover things for yourself. But then trying to convey it makes you look crazy. That is what makes it disappointing seeing peoples criticisms though.

"Fire Bad" - Frankensteins monster

 

[LOGICZOMBIE]

 

[scorpiomover]

Do you have a solid proof of that, or is that wishful thinking?

If even a small fraction of scientists have competency then there will be improvement.

What goes up, must come down.

Just as some scientists will come up with ideas that will improve things, other scientists will come up wih ideas that will worsen things.

Look at what they can do now with DNA analysis:

Upload Raw DNA Data & Get Free Analysis | Genomelink

Ancient ancestry and 312+ unique traits like nutrition, personality, intelligence, fitness. If you have an existing DNA report, upload it to Genomelink for more traits!

genomelink.io

I remember when lots of people were taking about twin studies. I looked some up, and in the process discovered a couple of things:

(a) the difference in IQ between students from rich families and students from poor families was about 20 IQ points.

(b) Some twin studies measured genetic IQ, by looking at poor families where one twin had been adopted by a rich family, and one was not adopted and raised by the poor family he was born into. By the time they finished school, the adopted twin had an IQ that was 20 points higher than his non-adopted twin, and matched the IQs of his non-genetic siblings in his adoptive family.

So I really don't believe that they'd discover your genetic potential and be truthful about it, not unless they say that your potential IQ is mostly determined by the IQ of the family you were raised in, and not your genetics.

OTOH, people born into families where there is a history of sickle-cell anemia, are usually immune to malaria. So that's a plus. But I imagine that wouldn't be inclined to mention that sort of thing.

As I said, do you have a proof, or is this wishful thinking?

 

[fractalwalrus]

I know that it is an endless cycle of corruption, prisons make money off the state, mostly it has more mentality ill people that can't support themselves than the general population, can you give me more details?

What if I told you, that not everyone in prison has actually violated a law? What if I told you that not every law that has been violated is just or about reducing harm? What if I told you, the state is not your friend, and that if you are not liked, you could one day unwittingly become a drug possessor? What would you think about prison, then?

 

[fluffy]

I know that it is an endless cycle of corruption, prisons make money off the state, mostly it has more mentality ill people that can't support themselves than the general population, can you give me more details?

What if I told you, that not everyone in prison has actually violated a law? What if I told you that not every law that has been violated is just or about reducing harm? What if I told you, the state is not your friend, and that if you are not liked, you could one day unwittingly become a drug possessor? What would you think about prison, then?

If you are trying to get me to talk about your previous thread about immigration I will say that I am no expert on why humans created governments. And furthermore you assume things about me I would appreciate you make explicit instead of trying to make me look like I have positions I do not have.

 

[fluffy]

@scorpiomover

I am not sure what "proof" you are looking for.

Genetics as a science has advanced considerably to my knowledge and so have computer profiling programs. I do not see why more advancements will not happen and why they could not become more widely distributed. My cellphone was a flip phone, now I can go to this forum on a new more advanced phone.

 

[fluffy]

Most definitely this knowledge has been put into the computer profiling programs.

Dopamine addiction: click bait Mark Zuckerberg called it.

 

[fluffy]

When looking on the Internet I must be careful. Many times my feed got corrupted by doom scrolling. Because the algorithm sends you click bait. On this phone I never click on articles with evil contents.

 

[LOGICZOMBIE]

(b) Some twin studies measured genetic IQ,

so the theory seems to be you should marry someone with high IQ not because of genetics, but because you want your offspring to be raised by someone with a high IQ

 

[fluffy]

(b) Some twin studies measured genetic IQ,

so the theory seems to be you should marry someone with high IQ not because of genetics, but because you want your offspring to be raised by someone with a high IQ

It helps out a lot to increase executive functioning in early development.

 

[scorpiomover]

@scorpiomover

I am not sure what "proof" you are looking for.

Genetics as a science has advanced considerably to my knowledge and so have computer profiling programs. I do not see why more advancements will not happen and why they could not become more widely distributed. My cellphone was a flip phone, now I can go to this forum on a new more advanced phone.

There have been some advances. But there have also been a lot of things that have changed with no improvement, and some things have got a lot worse.

I work in IT. A lot of my work consists of changing code for new updates, that do little more than change the names of the functions, which breaks the existing code, even thought there's no real improvement.

Access 97 does things as a database that no other database does, and is the reason why it is still being used today all over the world, despite that it's been out of support for decades.

Visual Basic 6 is much better as a developer's app than Vb.NET or C#. You just can't write a program as easily or as quickly as you can in Vb6.

An 80s PC could run an entire business by itself. Your average modern laptop runs at over 1,000 times as an 80s PC, and with 1,000,000 times as much memory, but could not run even 50 businesses on its own.

Lots of things like that.

"New" does not always mean "better".

 

[scorpiomover]

(b) Some twin studies measured genetic IQ,

so the theory seems to be you should marry someone with high IQ not because of genetics, but because you want your offspring to be raised by someone with a high IQ

It helps out a lot to increase executive functioning in early development.

Yes. But it still means that genetics don't really count for much when it comes to IQ.

 

[LOGICZOMBIE]

"New" does not always mean "better"

this is true and your examples are great

it would seem that "marketing" and "busywork" and "monopoly"

are the main obstacles preventing a real "meritocracy of function"

at least right now

the automatic generative systems are platform agnostic

and purely results driven

 

[fluffy]

I never said all new technology would make our lives "better". I said calling a science racist or fake will not diminish what it can do. Genetics advancements and psychological profiling using computers and a.i. will become more advanced and widely distributed just like phone apps. The danger is not in a fake technology but in the real ones.

 

[fractalwalrus]

I never said all new technology would make our lives "better". I said calling a science racist or fake will not diminish what it can do. Genetics advancements and psychological profiling using computers and a.i. will become more advanced and widely distributed just like phone apps. The danger is not in a fake technology but in the real ones.

Yeah, it would be a shame the government were to collect everyone's DNA and tools of analysis were misused. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-biobank-dna-babies-who-has-access/

 

[LOGICZOMBIE]

"New" does not always mean "better"

 

[fractalwalrus]

"New" does not always mean "better"