The Demise of Scientific American

Every partisan is perfectly happy to claim that they are following science and usually fail to modify their behavior when confronted with actual science. That holds across the political spectrum. The Trump crowd aren't anti-science, they simply tend to anti-authority. I guarantee you that they're highly pro-science on the issues where the science agrees with them.

I never met him and yet I knew. He is notorious for doing that.

I lived in my office for a few months, too, and the fact that you live there is pretty hard to hide from visitors. Starting with various small objects that do not fit into a normal office, ending with the fact that even with reasonable levels of hygiene the room tends to acquire a certain "human" smell, especially in the winter months when you can't just have the window open for most of the time.

RMS is a worldwide known weirdo. I can understand that his behavior in general might make people uncomfortable, but trying to label him as a rapist was way off.

Stallman's five stupid statements haven't impeded the free software movement in any way for decades. What actually harms the movement is corporate involvement by parasites and hypocrites, who are using social justice as a wedge to either take credit for projects they didn't write or to destroy the movement.

It astounds me that such arbitrary expectations are even considered. Should we invade Africa because some people don't cover up to our demands of decency?

I don't think doing something for others is a justification to behave badly, but this is out of line.

It seems to me that one of the most negative outcomes of modern communications is the leveling of the ability to be heard. These days, a person who would have normally earned respect through work and ability doesn't necessarily get heard or listened to, or commands more respect than any of the many empty vessels that frequent the internet and contribute to its cacophony of noise, and it's been especially so since the advent of social media.

It's this inability of many to differentiate between quality and junk that's largely at the heart of the Internet's problems. From my observation, it seems that rational logical thought has fallen to an all-time low and that misinformation, deliberate or otherwise, has reached such proportions in the online world that we're now seeing actual disruption to society in ways that we once would have thought impossible.

I'm of the opinion that one of the most important and central issues of recent times is the loss of factual accuracy along with the widespread lack of concern among many over integrity of information and that the consequential increase in entropy and disorder it's brought has been such that it has disrupted the normal discourse between humans to the extent that much of it has now become dysfunctional. We're now witnessing its effects: society has become so increasingly polarized over so many issues that we're starting to see the beginnings of societal breakdown and that this ought to be of great concern and thus a wakeup call.

What's at stake is nothing less than the cohesiveness of our society and that we humans need to tackle these undermining negative forces much more seriously than we have done previously by devoting considerably more time and effort into addressing them. Moreover, that will necessitate us doing so in smart and nuanced ways with degrees of sophistication that we've never previously applied to the problem.

The core issue is that modern communications and the internet have given many millions a voice that they would otherwise never have had - and that's a good thing, but unlike the media of yesteryear, that voice is largely unmoderated. Whilst the historical situation was far from perfect, at least in the past editors, et al, usually filtered out much of the dross.

Now that we've lost that first-line ability to filter we're left with the serious and difficult problem of having to filter out the 'idiocy' factor without disrupting or stopping the citizenry at large from having its say. Citizens still need to be able to put forward their ideas and points of view even if many are inaccurate or wacky. Any system that fails to let populace do so will be derided and marked with 'elitist' and 'censorship' flags, and thus it's ultimately doomed to failure.

Two key issues arise and need to be addressed:

1. We somwhow need to hold people responsible for statements they make online in that they need to be able to justify what they have said. Furthermore, the degree of accountability to which they should be subject should be commensurate with the scale and importance of their statements.

For example, someone who has made statements that defy all logic and sense or that are inconsistent with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and if widely believed could cause social disruption, would have to justify his/her position with solid evidence to the effect, and if unable to do so then he/she should be subject to sanctions. In essence, we need to foster a culture of accuracy and truthfulness and we need ways of enforcing them. For instance, someone who denies the holocaust would need overwhelmingly evidence to the effect and when [obviously] it wasn't forthcoming then he/she would be sanctioned accordingly.

That said, implementing any such scheme would be far from being simple and straightforward. For a myriad of reasons, many people genuinely hold whacky way-out ideas that are easily proven wrong by any reasonable analysis and simply sanctioning them from holding those beliefs isn't necessarily the best solution. Moreover, how we would go about differentiating between, say, a political activist who doesn't believe what he's saying but says it for political motives poses very significant problems.Thus, I'm under no illusion that by far the most difficult part of implementing any of these ideas will be in dealing with the fine minutiae.

2. You have a very relevant point about the 'idiocy of mankind'. Whilst I'd suggest some would use a milder description, we've very real problems whenever people launch wayward, inaccurate and or dangerous memes in that counteracting or neutralizing them once they're on the loose and in the wild usually proves nigh on impossible - witness the many problems experienced counteracting wacky ideas re vaccines/COVID, faked moon landings, etc., etc.

I'm not a behavioral scientist but it's clear to me that there's a very undesirable aspect of human nature which is that it's very easy for rumors and false ideas to take hold and spread like wildfire even when there's little or no justification or foundation for them, and when they do then it's essentially impossible to extinguish them. We see similar behavior in crowds going wild and with the decisions of lynch mobs who collectively, like lemmings, make terrible decisions that, upon reflection, very few individuals would ever make in isolation.

It seems that when certain ideas get on the loose that the crowd - that is the herd's collective IQ drops to well below that of individual cognition and it begins to act irrationality. Perhaps such behavior once conveyed an evolutionary advantage in say the way wildebeest are spooked and flee on mass upon seeing a lion. Clearly, nowadays such behavior in humans is very counterproductive. Given that we're not going to change human behavior anytime soon then this has to be factored into any solution. No doubt, how we'd go about 'engineering' such a solution to this human behavioral problem would be open to much debate and argument. For starters, the very notion that behavioral change is necessary would immediately raise the ire of many.

Quo vadis! The current laissez faire situation where fake news, false and dangerous ideas are spreading like wildfire across the internet is now so out of control that it has so polarized and endangered society that we've no longer the luxury of sitting back doing nothing and just accepting the status quo. Like it or not, unfortunate events and circumstances have forced us to act.

By now, you're probably thinking that my suggestions of trying to achieve behavioral change are so unrealistic that I must be living in cloud cuckoo land. Perhaps so, but let me finish. Granted, this would be no easy task but given that the most common medium for most people is social media then this is the place where we should begin, and we should attempt to use a carrot-and-stick approach to achieve it.

It's obvious that those running social media would never introduce the many extensive changes necessary to effectively implement such policies as there's little doubt that they would have a negative impact on the financial bottom line. This means that if we're ever to achieve any worthwhile change then governments would have to intervene and mandate them. Getting this to happen is also likely to be a very major challenge.

Finally, if you think my views are authoritarian, radically paternalistic, elitist or even Orwellian then I tend to agree, but I've certainly no intrinsic desire to hold such views. In essence, they've been forced on me though circumstance. The fact is I'm most uneasy about having arrived at such views as my natural worldview tends to fall into the libertarian camp albeit the libertarian left (which is very different to the libertarian right). Thus it's with reluctance I've adopted such radical views but as I've said they are born out of the need to act. And I believe that it's only when we actually achieve a cultural consensus - one wherein people feel embarrassed and ashamed after they've been caught and exposed spreading misinformation - that we'll then have regained any semblance order.

These are my first-pass ideas and I claim no monopoly on them. I only wish that many more of those who are worried would - to use that now antiquated phrase - commit pen to paper and contribute towards developing a solution. However, let's not fool ourselves in that none of these solutions will come easy, and it's likely they will be a longtime coming.

The science is clear on this question, and has been for decades; there never has been any scientifically well-supported theory showing genetic causes for observable differences of IQ between ethnicities.

> One thing I wonder is what makes intelligence "special" so that there are no differences, as compared to other physical traits where you do see differences between ethnicities?

The position isn't even that there are no differences in IQ between populations; the well-supported scientific consensus is

a) IQ differences between individuals of a population are larger than between populations in the first place, and

b) IQ differences between populations are largely not caused by genetics.

Note that neither of these statements contradict the heritability of IQ, which a statistical effect.

IQ theory has the following problems:

1. Intelligence is not the same as height, as one of these is low-dimensional and mechanical, and the other is high-dimensional and very complex.

2. There are problems defining what intelligence is.

3. The "intelligence" as measured by IQ is problematic because it's engineered to follow a normal distribution. This then contradicts claims by IQ-ists that IQ predicts things which are very much non-normally distributed.

4. Many of the apparent successes of IQ theory can be explained by saying that low IQ relative to a surrounding population is indicative of a learning disability. This doesn't make higher-than-average IQ useful though.

5. People who score highly in IQ tests are interested in puzzles and seeing patterns in things. This is not necessarily a useful skill in real life, and may even be detrimental sometimes.

6. IQ-ists claim to be dispassionately following what the science says, but are generally incompetent at the fundamentals of science. For instance, they use measures of statistical association like Pearson Correlation Coefficient, which have been abandoned in all the hard sciences. These old-fashioned methods of statistical association are very brittle, and are easy to misuse. They appear to be ignorant of more modern and robust statistics. When their data has been checked using more modern methodology, their conclusions don't hold up.

7. IQ-ists claim to be dispassionately following what the science says, but their mistakes have serious consequences for people's lives. It can be used to justify racism and eugenics.

I know from practical experience that most of the points Fischer et al have made are often valid or the case including those about producing 'tailored' results for a specific target audience. Often one comes across most of them in one's own work and it's usually when one is tying to figure out whether one's actually deluding oneself given, say, that a set of results looks too good. Alternatively, one may have a dataset that's full of garbage and not yet realized it.

Then there are always those cases where most of the data fits within the expected distribution except for some wayward measurement or two, which if included, would throw the stats and make the overall experiential results look less precise. What does one do, ditch out the odd/atypical results or rerun the whole experiment again in the hope that those large wayward deviations don't reappear? Anyone who has done experiments is overly familiar with the problems of processing experiential data—as they say, they're just part of the territory.

Clearly, I've no hands-on expertise in Mendel's work so I can only make general comment which is that as Mendel is no longer around to defend himself or his work, as such we must be particularly careful about accusing him of doing something of which he may not have done. From that Wiki, despite the controversy, it seems that the passage of time has meant that Mendel's work seems to have been examined with reasonable rigor and care given that it's been re-examined and reanalyzed on multiple occasions by different personnel. In the absence of better and more accurate data there's little more we could reasonably do.

I suppose I'm overly sensitive to accusations of fraud because of an incident that happened eons ago back in my student days. This was when a chemistry tutor blatantly accused me of cheating in my write-up of an experiment and he did so in the presence of other students. What he objected to was that my experimental results (dataset) of a titration were too good to be true and that I'd worked back and substituted data from the theoretical/ideal model.

This wasn't the case at all as I had recorded the titration's dataset exactly as I'd measured it. Needless to say, I was furious at his unfounded accusation and I demanded that he say back over lunchtime and watch me whilst I reran the experiment, this he did. The results I obtained on the rerun were just marginally better than my first attempt.

I lay no claim to being an experiential genius—absolutely far from it. I'll just say this: some people are intrinsically much better at experimental work than are others and those who doubt their results are perhaps basing their doubt on their own less-than-optimal performance. That said, one's always right to doubt any claim or sets of results until they're independently verified.

Even if we accept the occasionally-made argument that meritocracy is an illusion, explicitly racist policies seems like a step down from at least attempting to evaluate individual merit. Attempts at race blindness in the institutions are much better ideas than the ideologies that currently seem to be incubating.

I used to trust most mainstream media outlets almost infallibly.

I trust none of them now.

I'm suspicious of every headline involving sensitive issues, and I believe that they are mostly manipulated to some extent.

In fact, when I watch the news, I'm now mostly curious about how they have spun the story, the nature of their bias, why they would spin it (i.e. personal view, relationships, audience, editorial, corporate sponsorship / pressure, 'election season', producers, click bait, playing for audience, emotional reasons etc..)

Erosion in trust of public institutions is a problem that can be measured in the 'division of the country' and likely even issues with vaccine uptake.

A headline in 2002 about something negative would have evoked my sympathy, but essentially I 'don't believe them anymore' and I'm not sympathetic until I've done my own due diligence to learn about a story.

Specific to this article: I have noticed this editorial problem as well. I used to read SA as a kid and was inspired by it, even if I never really understood it. Some of the editorial positions have been disturbing. It makes me doubt the integrity of the institution. I don't know if it is or not, but there's a cloud of suspicion in my mind.

It's everyone isn't it? The attacks on free speech, the erosion of our institutions, the lowering of education...etc.

This affects as all.

This is a Fortune 50 company.

Clearly the same effort wouldn't be expended for either males or whites.

I was taken aback by how blatant they were being. And the statement was likely illegal.

What is implausible about that? What you call the 'classic' type of racism has not been acceptable for half a century. Those racists have to hide or they are pushed out, sued, targeted by governments, boycotted, etc.

The new "good" flavor of racism is openly pushed, celebrated, encouraged by governments and academia and politicians. Of course many racists will openly boast about their racism, and they will be praised for it.

For one it's much more socially accepted to discriminate against white people in the name of equality of chances.

"Stealing" recipes from taco ladies? Come now, the recipe for a burrito is not intellectual property. You can learn traditional Mexican cooking on Youtube if you understand a little Spanish. Burritos arguably aren't even Mexican, for crying out loud! Go a hundred miles south of the US border and there's nothing that even vaguely resembles what Americans call a burrito. It's a border region phenomenon.

As if only brown people are allowed to use tortillas? The act of accusing someone of "cultural appropriation" is segregation, pure and simple.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Make a burrito (or taco, or nasi goreng, or pad thai, or whatever) and enjoy it guilt-free.

What does this mean? This applies to every single moral judgement, and that is perfectly fine and normal. That is what morals are.

Color me skeptical.

And i would certainly refute that "conservatives are Nazis" is someone made that statement. It's pretty easily falsifiable.

Can you falsify the OP's statement?

2. The usual reason given for not saying "blacklist" is because of supposed racism. Your argument is a new one, and seems to have been produced post-facto. Your comment is sophistry.

[edit] Removed some scathing remarks.

Even forgetting that many languages have exactly the same construction ("black list") with the same meaning, the thing you do as a non-native speaker with an unfamiliar word is to look it up in a dictionary, or guess its meaning from the context, not try and run some inverse etimology on it.

I mean, for years I understood what "paste" meant (as in "copy and paste") and used that word without having any idea about "paste" being some sort of glue. I still have no idea where the word "parkway" comes from, but understand the word and use it. (If I were to guess from its parts I would arrive to something like a "garden path":))

German is pretty close to English though, so I guess your argument could still hold for other non-related languages.

The fact that people's skin colour is sometimes described as white or black is a coincidence that doesn't relate to the origin of the word blacklist.

If people are offended by coincidences like this, it means that we won't be able to speak Spanish, Russian or Chinese. The Russian word for black (as in a black person) is negr; but note that this is not considered offensive in Russian.

whitewashing

white collar crime (why not “black suit crime”?)

You’re hallucinating an issue that doesn’t actually exist.

Why should I spend energy to try to gauge their motivations? And why should I care if I don't like the outcome of that estimation? I feel your criticism is refusing to admit a (low-priority, highly cosmetic) bugfix into an open source project because you don't like the political views of the committer.

To me, it's a pure calculation:

* To me, the words "master" and "main" equally well describe the most-important branch of my git repository.

* To some people, "master" is offensive. I don't understand this at all, but to these people, "main" is better.

* Someone else is offering to do the work.

So letting them is a net change for some people, and neutral for me. So why not?

> Bad politics (exclusionary, racist, destructive, forcefully equalising, speech controlling, bullying, anti-meritocratic - i.e. wokeism) need to be opposed.

Also by ignoring non-negative contributions from such people?

> If the change was proposed & made on technical merit, I wouldn’t oppose it. But it wasn’t - it was based on ideological bullying

That's the pointing: I'm arguing it has non-negative technical merits. So why care?

I'd be all on your side if "main" wasn't actually an equally good word! In fact, I think I'm driving people a little bit nuts by opposing things that have small negative impact all the time. I try not to compromise in that department. But I'm simply arguing that changing "master" to "main" here has no negative impact.