Comment by dcow | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dcow | Hacker News Reader

Most of this seems wildly unenforceable at a practical level. And yes that's all really bad and non-secular and society will be harmed because people, even with the best intentions, will try to filter facts. The two terminology clarifications they make I don't mind though: sex vs gender and race vs biological lineage. I think society would be better off with very clear and precise usage of those terms.

I mentally flip a table every time I hear someone colloquially say "sex is a social construct" (they mean gender) or get hesitant about describing the sex of their gestating baby because they want to leave it ambiguous or on the flip side want to have a "gender reveal" party. People care about the sex of your baby, not their gender. And it's totally fair to study the effects of biological lineage on modern humans instead of treating all humans as the same biological profile or reducing the question to tribally relevant characteristics like skin color (race is a social construct, but biological lineage is not).

Consequently this is why the zeitgeist is so weird. Everything is about e.g. racial identity but race is a social construct that by definition you can't apply based on biological attributes (just like gender) so... ... ??? ...

>Most of this seems wildly unenforceable at a practical level.

At a practical level, it's very enforceable. You just setup a a "science-must-respect-dignity-of-all-humans" committee at every major publication and university, and just block any violating papers from publication, prevent grants from going to 'bad' research and don't hire anyone who does subscribe to your orthodoxy.

We're well on our way to do that (if not already there).

I already recall reading about several instances of it happening.

> wildly unenforceable at a practical level

I suspect it will be enforced the way open source codes of conduct are enforced. Very, very selectively, by very, very suspiciously agenda-ed people.

It's trivially enforceable. Academic institutions have been absolutely ideologically and politically captured. The long march through not only the institutions, but especially the HR departments has achieved total victory.

As you've identified, they've tied themselves into knots with inconsistencies and hypocritical positions. There is no logic to be found here, only insanity masquerading as such. Luckily for everyone else, the scientific method will remain, even if it is temporarily suppressed.

Ideology can remain inconsistent longer than you can remain fed and housed while opposing it.

You go underground as many have had to in the past.

"Become the Taliban" is not a great solution.

People talk about "the pendulum swinging" as if there an automatic balancing mechanism that will correct things (low-agency, wishful thinking), but Russia took almost a century to get back to normal. And Dark Ages last many centuries.

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