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Comment by z5h | Hacker News Reader

Any group/person/movement with any agenda other than promoting science and reason must necessarily be against science and reason at points. Any “agendaism” must be prepared to attack science and reason as well as proponents of science and reason. I’m not suggesting other agendas aren’t important. Rather that they can incur a science-debt, and don’t typically have the motivation to pay it off.

Edit: I should be clear that I’m speaking about the scientific process: admit you may not have full understandings, devise experiments to test/expand understanding, execute, interpret, repeat.

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I think you are spot on. I also think much of the "anti-science" right is a reaction to the "anti-science" left, which has lots of ideologies that cannot be defended by pure reason alone, and need to be defended instead by online angry mobs. Whether it's to do with social issues (crime, racial issues, gender issues, abortion, immigration, etc), pop ideas today are defended by a "how dare you" if you are not in the movement. Note also how they leave no room for moderates: Someone with balanced views on abortion, for example, is as bad as a catholic fundamentalist. Someone with mixed views on immigration is a neo nazi. Etc

I'm also reminded of the near daily episodes on reddit, which constantly has threads highlighting outrage over police brutality, criminal injustice, etc. Then, when it's someone they don't like getting crushed by the system, it's a party of joyous triumphalism.

More than a reaction. Any agendaist who opposes science also makes it easier for other agendaists to oppose science. Their methodologies are essentially open source! I get in many arguements with friends and loved ones, not because I disagree with what their agenda represents, but because their methods are problematic. It’s very hard for someone not to take it as an attack of their values.

I may misunderstand, but I read it this way: The "pro-science" team is so obviously and transparently hypocritical and self-serving in their use of logic, become extremely defensive to any kind of criticism, and basically resort to name-calling ("they're stupid") anyone out side of the bubble.

This basically sets the scene that anyone can make any logic work and no one really needs to really think anything through - it's all just window dressing for the agenda. We act like it's only Trump that does it but he's just goofiest-looking, that's all.

I thought it was really funny in the picture accompanying the article, an anti-vaxer waved a sign that said something like "Respect my bodily autonomy" - we know where that kind of logic came from. Also, since that group was clearly anti-abortion, we knew it was just really poking fun at the "window dressing" logic that of pro-choicers that it is really about "autonomy".

I believe at the end of the day we've entered the phase of words mean nothing any more, we all just have our agendas, we want what we want, and we'll all just wrap it in whatever bullshit we want.

“Scientists” and “pro-science” aren’t immune to forgetting the process. Which is why I clarified that the process is important. I agree with your conclusion. We choose our agenda and rationalize it. Something not too far off might be: pay attention to what one is naturally sensitive to, and feed one’s experience into a common data set, and feed that into a scientific process.

One can dream.

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