Why punish a scientist for defending science? | Hacker News Reader

Why punish a scientist for defending science?

spectator.co.uk

62 pointsEvgeniyZh39 comments

I really don't understand the psychology of the woke who seem to like punishment more than dialogue and I don't see anything particularly troubling in the letter published in the Listener [1]. What's even more shocking is that Prof. Cooper is of Maori descent himself [2][3].

[1]: https://www.fsu.nz/in_defence_of_science_article

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garth_Cooper

[3]: https://www.fsu.nz/m_ori_professor_under_investigation_for_v...

Social media has turned everyone into a politician. People like it when other people they dislike get punished. By being punishing, people become more popular, and gain social power. Truth is irrelevant, because politicians don't become popular and powerful by being truthful.

This is a fundamental sickness that social media creates. It is not just the "woke", it is basically everyone attached to non-anonymous social media.

My theory is that the 'woke' have trouble distinguishing between the legitimately intolerant folks they oppose, who are not looking for any good faith expression of free speech, and other people who don't agree with them but are in fact making a good faith attempt to discuss it.

The situation isn't helped by the continued existence of bad faith 'free speech' trolls. That's probably by design.

I wouldn't assume good faith. There have been psych studies on virtue signallers and victim signallers, and they found much higher levels of narcissism and psychopathy than in the general population.

Sure, but I think assuming bad faith is a big contributor to how we ended up in this mess to begin with. So I assume good faith as much as I can, until I have a convincing reason to believe otherwise.

The study is convincing reason to believe otherwise. Not in any one specific case, but in terms of understanding where the phenomenon comes from in general.

And a response from one of the authors of the government working group material (see my other post ITT): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2021.1...

edit: the user above has made significant changes to their post since I replied initially; at first, the post above only contained a single link to the letter...

One somewhat cynical way of describing the mentality at play in more militant wokeism is to recognize that a lot of people consider social capital to be a zero sum game. A power struggle. In order for one faction to make advancement, another faction must be weakened. Dialogue from this perspective is not going to be productive if there is no common interest. This perspective on social power is by no means a recent invention. Even within science itself it's undeniable that there are power struggles. Plank famously said that "science advances one funeral at a time".

It's very jarring to find yourself on the receiving end of something that appears to be an unprovoked attack. And you might be totally justified in that belief. But it's worth considering for a moment if there might be some amount of truth in what they are saying. If you are living your whole life inside an exclusionary fortress of social power, you might be totally unaware of the battles happening outside the walls.

You don't understand it because you bring a scientific argument to a political fight for power.

I believe there's an easy explanation. The "woke" are usually thise nonconformant personalities who got ignored, mocked and often bullied in schools. They couldn't fight back, so they had to bottle up their anger and this anger has disfigured their personalities. They hate the archetype of their school bullies - conformant, often good looking and smart, but cruel white males. They can't reliably distinguish their bullies from an average white male, so they hate them all equally. Some people at the top have realised that if the woke's anger is released, it can be directed against political enemies. This is why they've been putting the woke in administrative positions and giving them some protection and publicity. So they are just a tool in a power struggle.

"As a defender of free speech"

This man is no defender of free speech. In fact, he lobbied to get himself a position to dictate what was allowed speech in UK universities. He has continually dressed up his own bigotry in psuedo-intellectual terms. Essentially, Toby is just a straight up controversy merchant, and I think it's important to understand that. this isn't about "the culture war" - Toby, and the Spectator have a long history of just staking out far right positions in order to draw controversy. You may think "Well. what's wrong with this, it stimulates debate" - that might be an interesting philosophical point, but in practice, what ends up happening is that The Specatator and its lackeys like Young continually just push mindless nonsense in the name of "stimulating debate"- at what point do you draw the line and say "Actually, this guy is just continually spouting inconsistent nonsense".

There's all sorts that just don't make sense in this article- the biochemist is "eminently" qualified to weigh in on education policy. I'm sure he studied public policy and civics in his spare time. Or

> Knowing about Rangi and Papa won’t get you into medical school.

Well sure, and knowing about advanced calculus won't get you into med school either, but that's not really the point is it.

I think in general I just want to highlight that this whole opinion peice - does a piss poor job of reporting the facts. I would suggest to you that you shouldn't be listening to a guy who peppers his reporting of details with insults for his subjects (let alonea a guy who publicly acknoledges even his own friends can't stand him, that's bye-the-bye).

I think the question really is - why is Toby Young in any way interested in what happens literally on the opposite side of the world. The answer is he's not, he needs to fill column inches with controversy and this is his taste of the week. I look forward to his fake accounts named after characters in his books attacking me (yes, that actually does happen).

Toby Young is an idiot and a thoroughly unreliable source. Can we find a better article covering this case and change the link?

This is a bit more detailed, but i don't know the Kiwi media landscape well enough to know what weaknesses it might have:

https://www.newsroom.co.nz/royal-society-investigation-into-...

The Scopes trial only settled things in the U.S.; presumably other nations and institutions needed at some point along the way to have their own equivalent. It's sad that New Zealand, normally regarded as a "developed nation" is nearly 100 years behind the U.S.

Scopes originally lost the trial too. It’s hard to see things as firmly settled in the US as well, “God says so” coming from another person’s lips is powerful to a great many people.

You're absolutely right--I had misremembered the outcome of the trial--but it set in motion the idea of separating religion from science education, which now seems obvious to most Americans. And while the U.S. does have a wide contingent of (mostly uneducated) people as you describe, I could not imagine a serious research institution in the U.S. today recommending giving Biblical creation equal time with science in the public schools; even less, the mobbing of a scientist who objects to it by thousands of his colleagues crying for him to be removed from the National Academy of Sciences--with his provost and the society itself in agreement!

I can't imagine that either, but only because that particular religion is out if favor in academia. But I can easily imagine it, and in fact think it has happened, to those offending against other religions. It’s just that these belief systems are not usually described as “religions”.

Strange? I wonder if this is an imitative of classic religions (which are fading everywhere) to create a support base for mysticism in general - what next? Astrology?

> While religiously unaffiliated people currently make up 16% of the global population, only an estimated 10% of the world’s newborns between 2010 and 2015 were born to religiously unaffiliated mothers. This dearth of newborns among the unaffiliated helps explain why religious “nones” (including people who identity as atheist or agnostic, as well as those who have no particular religion) are projected to decline as a share of the world’s population in the coming decades.

https://www.pewforum.org/2017/04/05/the-changing-global-reli...

As more women are freed from their own fecundity, the average age rises, fewer children with better lives and education, and less religiosity endures.

Sorry, but I don't think this rebuffs Pew.

Eight ball says, "future murky".

What do you mean by "classic religions"? If you mean faiths like Christianity and Islam, then they're not fading everywhere. Globally, they're growing. Only in the West do we see a decline in Christianity and the rise of various New Age-y mythologies and superstitions.

There exists a strange statistical effect - if you ask people a large number say they are religious, but if you put a meter on the pews, attendance is in free fall in most of Canada. Quebec, hitherto a staunchly Catholic province, now has one of the lowest rates in Canada. Ontario is similar. There was a huge abuse scandal all across Canada where priests and ministers had selectively chosen to work at schools where they and their female counterparts physically and sexually abused young boys and girls - in many cases to murder and death by suicide. This led to thousands of prosecutions and huge fines and many jail sentences both for the crime and abetting these crimes. Hundreds of them were awarded compensation and a huge number of church properties had to be sold, and the recruitment of new ministers and priests became impossible in Canada(there were a few areas that were spared by the presence of strong people who rid their parishes of bad people). To this day there is a near total absence of newly trained Canadian priests, nuns and ministers. Immigrants help, but tend to stay within their countrymen in the cities - leaving the country full of vacant parishes. The general populace cares little, most have moved on to a fully secular life and have not looked back. Recent immigrants are fading as they see nothing happens, the old time highly supervisory religious structure is gone. Muslims try the hardest to maintain the full supervisory panoply, but few workplaces have enough adherents to self-supervise, and if they are alone, they often meet and marry outside the faith and carry on in a near secular manner. These are observations. In areas of high numbers of faithful a social structure often keeps a faith going, whatever kind it is.

Growing only by virtue of sheer population growth (religiosity is well correlated with poverty[1] and thus a higher fertility rate).

Proportionally it is fading.

[1]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/142727/religiosity-highest-worl...

New Zealander here, not that it really matters.*

It appears that "...a proposal by a government working group that schools should give the same weight to Maori mythology as they do to science in the classroom" is a misrepresentation. The author of this article has taken up this issue because it appears to fit a political hobby horse of his.

One might read this article and conclude that The Woke Have Done It Again, they have Defied Science and Suggested that Mythology is Just As Important As Darwin.

However, one of the authors of the government working group material has also commented publicly about this and her take casts things in a slightly different light:

"The sentence quoted in the Listener letter as proof of the need to ‘defend’ science was from a section I largely wrote about the strand of the Pūtaiao curriculum that did not have a direct equivalent in the NZC Science learning area, on the history and philosophy of science. The sentence quoted was part of a description of the possible scope of studies of socioscientific issues, from a Māori perspective, by senior secondary students of Pūtaiao. To respond as fearfully as these seven professors, from the top science university in the country, to a single sentence that suggests taking a critical look at the involvement of science in colonisation of Māori, does the public face of science no favours at all. This failure in terms of academic standards explains the strong criticism of the letter that was expressed by the Royal Society as well as many leading scientists and academics (May, 2021)."[1]

Are those crazy (left-wing, out of touch, 'woke') government working groups really Denying Science?

Or did some scientists take something out of context and misunderstand it, then scream that they were being cancelled when other academics expressed disagreement with their ideas?

[1]https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2021.1...

* (Edit: actually, I thought about it, and I decided that it does matter: I'm not really comfortable with our politics, which are quite different from UK/US politics, being used for grist in northern culture-war mills.)

Let's say the guy did take her out of context and use the issue because it fits his hobby horse. Why is the appropriate response to someone taking you out of context opening an official inquiry into his behavior? Miscommunication happens all of the time, why are they forming an investigative panel?

>Or did some scientists take something out of context and misunderstand it, then scream that they were being cancelled when other academics expressed disagreement with their ideas?

Well, wouldn't the existence of the panel lend some weight to their claims they are being cancelled? I mean really, what did the guy that was so bad that the university decided it needed to take disciplinary action? He published a letter, and it was a pretty respectful letter at that. Is he being investigated for taking someone out of context?

> and use the issue because it fits his hobby horse.

I was talking about the columnist from the Spectator, not the scientist.

> I mean really, what did the guy that was so bad that the university decided it needed to take disciplinary action?

The university didn't take action (apart from the email from the VC, the full content of which we don't have to hand). It was the Royal Society of New Zealand that set up the panel. Totally different. I think your question here is answered by the text I quoted in my earlier post:

"To respond as fearfully as these seven professors, from the top science university in the country, to a single sentence that suggests taking a critical look at the involvement of science in colonisation of Māori, does the public face of science no favours at all. This failure in terms of academic standards explains the strong criticism of the letter that was expressed by the Royal Society as well as many leading scientists and academics."

edit: >Is he being investigated for taking someone out of context? I see what you are getting at, but I think the issue is more that the letter publicly misrepresented something in a way that was in itself not scientific.

I'll have to think about it, but I'm leaning toward thinking the Spectator columnist, at least, is badly misrepresenting what has happened.

Beyond that I actually don't really have strong feelings about this yet because it's honestly the first I've heard of it, even though I live in NZ.

not sure what the difference is, royal society vs not. According to news reports they face expulsion from the royal society.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newsroom.co.nz/royal-societ...

How is that not being cancelled?

See my edits in the comment above.

I will further note that understanding the royal society vs university distinction here is pretty important, but it seems that you've already made up your mind.

I won't be responding again here, thanks.

That doesn’t seem fair, I’ve not made up my mind. I just want to understand why you think people forming a panel to remove you from the royal society of New Zealand because you published a polite letter does not constitute cancelling.

Perhaps there’s something I’m missing?

That's really interesting and tells me that I need to do more research into this case before forming an opinion. (Don't I always?) Thanks for sharing.

Yeah, it seems step 1 is scream "I'm under attack" step 2 is people point out you aren't, and step 3 is to use step 2 to prove that you're under attack.

A statement from Jackie Talbot, an advisor to New Zealand's ministry of education, speaking about changes to qualifications attainable by NZ secondary school students:

"'It traces back to 2019 when the Government agreed to strengthen NCEA, with a commitment to explicitly reflect and promote mana ōrite mō tē mātauranga Māori, or parity for Māori knowledge, within the main secondary school qualification.

...

She said it means "making sure teachers are supported to design courses that include both what has become known as mātauranga pūtaiao and the scientific knowledge, skills and understandings that have traditionally been taught in New Zealand schools - which we have referred to at times using the phrase 'Western science'."

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2021/07/national-mp-...

That link you provide does not give any examples of how maori knowledge contributes anything valuable for science students.

> The sentence quoted in the Listener letter as proof of the need to ‘defend’ science was from a section I largely wrote about the strand of the Pūtaiao curriculum that did not have a direct equivalent in the NZC Science learning area, on the history and philosophy of science. The sentence quoted was part of a description of the possible scope of studies of socioscientific issues, from a Māori perspective, by senior secondary students of Pūtaiao.

It does not, it's about history. If you want to link it to science, its ethic and epistemology, or philosophy? Not STEM at least. That's why the comment is interesting, it is the same stuff than "woke people against classic letters at Princeton!!!1!". I seem to fall for it each time, then research (or in this case, read comments!) about context, and then i'm disappointed in myself, two years ago this would've tingled my bullshit senses, nowaday i fall almost every time. I should stop working for a bank

I'm also a New Zealander, and our politics seem very similar to UK/US politics to me.

Wasn’t the Scopes Trial a farce

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