Comment by revel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by revel | Hacker News Reader

> Now, imagine the uproar that might ensue from some corners today if a textbook made this sort of direct comparison between two groups, with one group happening to be white and the other black. Some social justice warriors would no doubt raise an outcry. The book would be branded as Eurocentric, racist, and white supremacist, since it doesn’t give equal space to describing the intellectual achievements of the Zulu or to recognizing the validity of indigenous ways of knowing. The picture of the African witch doctor might be described as a “culturally insensitive caricature”. The book would also be criticized for not describing ways in which Zulu society is more healthy than contemporary American society.

This textbook is from 1929 and was probably being written at the exact same time as the Snopes monkey trial (1925). You're reading science hype because science was under attack; and not from "social justice warriors" but from conservative Americans. Notice that the single most transformative discovery in all of biology, evolution, isn't mentioned.

That attack on evolution is still taking place. In Texas there was an attempt to strike all references to evolution and climate change from the curriculum, along with other attempts to introduce biblical references. When did that take place? That was this year; oh, and in 2023: https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/texas-education-board-...

Getting mad at "social justice warriors" for an imagined reaction while ignoring the actual attacks on science is... well, it's what I've come to expect.

I still thought that passage was interesting. It is a totally reasonable prediction of how much of public health would read it.

The post and your comment emphasize how the impact of science depends more on the public than the handful of scientists who create it. Roughly ~0% of people understand any given scientific topic. It will always be completely asymmetric. It will always involve stuff like belief in an ideology, struggles for political power, (relatively blind) trust in a movement or leader, etc. As a result, there is no world in which scientists don't regularly harm whoever follows them, the same as any leader in an uncertain/asymmetric environment (by getting stuff wrong accidentally, or actively abusing their power for personal gain).

The part about social justice warriors is actually interesting because that view will come across as "we hate science!" to some people but the real idea is somewhere between "successful science requires exerting some political power over other people" (obviously true) and "western science was built on a foundation of coercion and oppression, making lots of technological progress and causing some unavoidable tragic effects." Whatever the "truth" is, it's really complicated ethically.

> as the Snopes monkey trial (1925)

It's the Scopes trial.

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

Hi.. original post author here.

Interesting point RE the Snopes trial. You are right, evolution is not mentioned in the book as far as I can tell. Even though it is foundational to understanding the human body (in particular some weird features it have which any half-good creator would never design that way.)

The SJWs / woke cult are a bit of a personal hobby horse for me. I think it is important to mention, since woke ideology comes from academics at top universities, as well as journalists at top media outlets -- people who have a lot of power to shape the public discourse and influence public policy. The power of Christian fundamentalists over society and culture, on the other hand, has been waning, if one looks over the past few decades. Yes, they are in the ascendancy at the moment with the 2024 election and whatnot, but overall their influence is waning. Of course, both anti-science from the left and from the right are issues we should worry about -- I'm just giving an argument why we might want to be a bit more worried about anti-science from the left. How much either issue is discussed probably greatly depends on what circles you run in.

Note I did mention how there is no discussion of sexual health or women's health in the book. That is an issue with health textbooks that has been improved a lot but still exists to some extent today due to Christian conservatives.

When will you feel like you all have won the war here? What is it that you need to happen? Is it simply a matter of removing academics you deem too woke from their positions, or is it more a matter of public opinion becoming less woke? Just really at this point trying to get a gauge for how long we have to live inside this particular discourse.. Because it just structurally is such that it cant last forever, for I hope at least to you somewhat obvious reasons... (Although I wouldn't be too surprised if this is truly a gnostic battle against darkness for you personally. There are some variants here.)

I just miss when yall were simply libertarian and talked about taxes! We can go back to that one day right?

> When will you feel like you all have won the war here? What is it that you need to happen?

I was involved in a previous iteration of the culture war (religion vs atheism) pretty heavily. If this is anything like that, it'll start fading once people feel like the cultural dominance of the group is broken.

If you want a rule of thumb, hollywood being considered non-woke and universities not requiring diversity statements (cultural conservatives consider these to be roughly isomorphic to the old loyalty oaths) would be generally what to look for.

Edit: These institutions losing their influence would probably also be sufficient. There's nothing inherently important about hollywood, so if another locus of entertainment gains prominence, and it has different cultural views, that would also qualify.

Ok the diversity statement thing seems pretty actionable. Hard to say about hollywood I guess bc its feels very subjective: one guy's "woke" is always going to be another's "fun/wholesome" or whatever.

But for the universities ok, this is at least a thing we can hold onto. It's a little rough to implicitly associate the "diversity" considered in hiring/enrolling at a school with the evil professors, because the entire argument then quite easily contracts down to: "there are too many non-white academics, and that is the real problem." But I guess the whole point is to free ourselves from such silly concerns like racism, institutional or otherwise.

Either way, I just hope they/you get what you want. I used to be worried that this whole thing would spiral too much into violence, but its easy to see now that all the people who care about the "wokeness" are, yeah, exactly like creationists: they just want to feel represented, they just want the blurb in the textbook; its not so much about the world outside, but just how they feel about it; that its ok for them to be angry about the kids sports team or whatever. People want to be principled!

I am truly hopeful at this point they will eventually find some peace while still allowing everyone to live with some self-determination and everything else. Its a little long in the tooth now, but hopefully the recent political ascendency will temper it a bit.

> Hard to say about hollywood I guess bc its feels very subjective

It definitely is. But so was my iteration. A good chunk of the previous iterations of the culture war have been as well. A lot of my generation really didn't like how conservative the small towns we grew up in "felt", it felt oppressive and dumb.

> Either way, I just hope they/you get what you want.

Yeah, I'm not participating in this one. I missed a few years of the culture war during a raging alcoholic phase and both sides feel really foreign nowadays and kinda confusing. But I do occasionally like to pop a bag of popcorn and watch people fight.

> I used to be worried that this whole thing would spiral too much into violence

My guess is probably not much more than the 70s (and we're still a long way from that, there were ~2500 bombings in an 18 month period in 71 and 72), but it seems really unlikely to advance to civil war levels.

Both things can be true, and there are real world examples of attacking western science as eurocentrist and what not. The imagined reaction is based on those criticisms.

What far-end conservatives learned and what sjws are starting to discover is that mainstream exposure is a trap. You can get Walmart to say "Merry Christmas" (instead of happy holidays) or "Black Lives Matter", but that doesn't actually translate to any material church attendance or racial equity. All it does is create the illusion that your side is more of an oppressive force than it actually is, which alienates moderates like the author who can potentially be allies.

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