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Comment by imgabe | Hacker News Reader

> newly adopted requirement that everybody presenting research at the group's conferences explain how their submission advances "equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals."

Diversity is fine. But every single piece of research has to be related to diversity? Is it not possible to do research on anything else that maybe doesn’t have anything to do with identity issues?

This is not a statement about promoting diversity, this is a statement that identity issues are the only thing that matters and only research that has to do with identity will be considered (for presentation at this conference)

An ideological monoculture is not a healthy intellectual environment.

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It's not so much off-topic research. The research output of much of social psychology tends to hurt the cause of DEI. They want to stop that.

That sounds gross and corrupt.

Research should not be dependent on whether or not it hurts any cause.

If the research is poorly done, exclude it for that reason.

If not, maybe re-examine what your cause is in light of the research.

Copernicus's research into the Earth revolving around the Sun hurt the Catcholic church's cause of being the ultimate source of truth for all humanity. They wanted to put a stop to that...

Starting with the answer and rejecting anything that doesn't support it is not how research is supposed to work.

Copernicus and Galileo being harangued by the Church of their time, and stifling progress of the obvious, is more popular myth than historical fact. It has been debunked many, many times. Ironically, the fervor and persistence with which this story gets propagated ad nauseam feels almost ... religious.

I wish people would stop dropping it as the de facto example of interference with science when there are so many better ones (and also current ones). It's a bad analogy, evokes emotion, and ultimately it typically does a disservice to the argument intended.

> I wish people would stop dropping it as the de facto example of interference with science when there are so many better ones (and also current ones)

Could you provide some examples of better stories to use instead?

Astronomical books regarding heliocentric theory were on the banned book list for centuries.

The banned book list was compiled and maintained by the Church. We can split words whether Copernicus or Galileo were harangued in person and to what degree, but nascent modern astronomy was very much in the scope of Catholic censorship.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_authors_and_works_on_t...

> Copernicus and Galileo being harangued by the Church of their time, and stifling progress of the obvious, is more popular myth than historical fact.

I’m not sure why it has suddenly become so popular to claim that every single historical fact is a myth. Galileo’s prosecution by the Church is not only well-documented, John Paul II. officially apologized for it in 1992. He might have looked into their archives before doing that.

I swear, going around smugly claiming “Only sheeple still believe that theory” about random facts doesn’t make a person seem nearly as smart as they might think it does.

> It has been debunked many, many times.

Could you link some example of those many, many times?

Then Desi's cause should me adjusted, not science.

> The research output of much of social psychology tends to hurt the cause of DEI.

Demagogues will use any factoid for their own goals, and racists will use things to promote racism, but that's not an argument to stop research into biology, sociology, psychology, behavioral econ, etc.

You're sorta wrong. Most papers help it, but most papers are pretty shoddy...

The good ones do often hurt the DEI cause though.

> It's not so much off-topic research. The research output of much of social psychology tends to hurt the cause of DEI. They want to stop that.

This might be the most potentially fascinating comment in the thread. In what way is the research of much of social psychology hurting DEI?

As far as I know, based on my limited understanding of the field, there's not a lot of research that's performed/approved/funded in that field where people know that the research could yield some "politically incorrect" data or conclusions.

>> Is it not possible to do research on anything else that maybe doesn’t have anything to do with identity issues?

It's the Society for Personality and Social Psychology ...

You may as well ask is not possible to submit to the Association for Computing Machinery a piece of research unrelated to computing.

Are you saying there is not a single aspect of personality that is unrelated to race?

That seems pretty racist.

No, it's more like requiring everyone submitting papers to the ACM to explain how their research will result in a more equitable society. That'd exclude a ton of research topics: how is a faster rendering technique going to result in anti-racist outcomes? I guess you cant submit that paper.

Or you just bend over backwards to make it fit ideologically.

Faster renders favour people in socioeconomically deprived areas who lack higher-end resources and thus face a barrier to entry in the field.

Boom. Submit.

For somebody who was born behind the Iron Curtain, this has very strong Soviet vibes.

Back then, it was advisable to stuff quotes by Marx or Lenin into everything, even an article discussing milk production.

Don't worry, Marx is still fair game in Western academia! It has even become fashionable as of late to proclaim oneself a "socialist" (though generally some sort of "socialism with Scandinavian characteristics" is being implied).

Even though the larping socialist dummies here in the US don't know the history of socialism in scandinavia and how Sweden in particular famously abandoned it in the 90s after a 20 year experiment with it where they saw their GDP remain absolutely flat despite almost 10% population growth.

Swedes will proudly claim to be capitalists with healthy social welfare programs.

The tax rates of New Yorkers and Californians are very similar to those across Scandinavia except that the Americans are getting way way less bang for their buck in services for that tax money due to state and local governments that are woefully ineffective. That and Norway/Sweden/Denmark have close to 1/3 public sector employment.

Or alternatively, faster renders magnify the advantages of people who can afford graphics cards. After all, the most marginalized people don't even have GPUs, so this research is further oppressing the poor.

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