Wandering the information superhighway, he came upon the last refuge of civilization, PoFo, the only forum on the internet ...
ckaihatsu wrote:So basically you're all critical of the science *industry* -- the *institution* of how science is manifested. Is that it?
Rancid wrote:
That's the gist of it.
I would add that a big part of it is the media's reporting on science is one of the big problems. They tend to misinterpret research papers and report on them incorrectly/poorly. My belief that it is not done intentionally as some sort of conspiracy as many believe. I think it's just incompetence.
wat0n wrote:
As a tl;dr has this thread dealt with the replication crisis?
Potemkin wrote:Meh. Most scientists are not selfless searchers after eternal truths; they're actually just selfish careerists (like most human beings, in fact), and their careers are best served by publishing as many research papers as they can in as short a span of time as they can. The result is what we see.
The real geniuses, of course, publish little or nothing. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein published only one slim volume in his lifetime, which he later disowned. Newton waited twenty years before publishing his Principia Mathematica, and Darwin sat on his research on evolution through natural selection for two decades before finally publishing his theory. To the modern careerists, this is simply incomprehensible.
Rancid wrote:
Good point.
Now, I need another feather on my cap. OFF TO WRITE PAPERS!
GPT-3 can create anything that has a language structure – which means it can answer questions, write essays, summarize long texts, translate languages, take memos, and even create computer code.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmar ... ff9cc7481a
ckaihatsu wrote:So you're saying we *shouldn't* use condoms?
x D
wat0n wrote:
No, but really, has it dealt with the issue that many scientific research isn't quite replicable?
Looking at how we get to know about something, let us have in mind some moral panic, some epidemic or other threat to our health, some political scandal, local swindle or threat to national security, some bold new plan or scientific discovery or technical innovation, some heroic deed or worthwhile project – the kind of idea that can change the social landscape and change the nature of subjectivity everywhere.
First of all, we get to know about a thing and accept its reality through the symbolic register, when an eminent scientist or other expert or teacher – someone with a position in or certificate from an appropriate scientific institute where the socially determined practices of the relevant branch of science (or theology or whatever) are regulated and socially guaranteed – verifies the truth and nature of the thing. The question is not whether something happened or exists, but what it is. We are not ourselves experts (if we are, and we participate in the relevant regulated practices, discourses and institutions, then the relationship is somewhat different) so we only know the symbolic truth of a fact by the testimony of a person or group of people who act as symbol for the fact. This is the process, for example, whereby various talking heads appear on the television screen and present the fact to us as verified in the symbolic register, when we learn something in school, or read it in a textbook. We don’t ourselves ask to see the images from the endoscope, or the completed survey forms, computer print-outs or the relevant papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals, but a certain recognisable type of person is able to represent the thing to us as a Symbol.
I hasten to add, that there is nothing of cultural relativism or scepticism in this idea. The scientific practices necessary to verify a fact are socially regulated and verified for the general community by certain kinds of images, words, certificates, practices, discourses, hierarchies, regulations, laws, etc., etc., and it is through this specific network of relations which I call the ‘symbolic register’ that this kind of knowledge is made available outside the institutions which constitute the symbolic register and is put into general circulation.
I mentioned that the semiotic activity within the relevant expert discourse or professional institute is somewhat different. It is in fact this context which Peirce had in mind when he devised the concept of semiosis, and in such a context, the categories of sign must be taken just as defined by Peirce.
What is of interest in a study of the subject is how knowledge, established within an expert discourse, forms the subjectivity of its representatives and that of others outside that discourse and their relation to one another in collaborative activity. These relations and activity in the general community are not subject to the strictures governing processes within the institutions generating expert knowledge, and nor should they be. The idea that decisions requiring expert knowledge should be made in the general community by means of the normal political processes applying in the general community, is as absurd and dangerous as the idea that the truth of things should be established within a scientific institution by the kind of cultural and political processes which operate in the general community.
But of course, the testimony of experts and official wisdom generally is never enough to either convince people of a fact or generate a real social response to a situation which is posed. Something more is always needed. Any number of warnings of global warming or flu epidemics make no impact, however many experts testify to their reality.
There is nothing like a human face; nothing testifies to the reality of something so well as a human face. The person who suffers from a disease, the victim of a crime or a natural disaster, especially if they look sympathetic, if they look just like ‘one of us’.
We are talking about an ‘icon’, a person who represents something by resembling it; it may be that the icon got to be an icon by virtue of having actually suffered the disease or experienced the disaster, but the point of the icon is that they represent the idea, the disease, the moral panic, the danger, the heroic project or whatever, by ‘resemblance’, or more generally by their form, which includes their biography, personality, moral character and so forth, as well as their image.
The icon is the role model, the personification of the project, Rosa Parkes or Nelson Mandela, the martyr or heroine, the Stakhonovite (model worker), the star patient or prototypical case, but also, the newly released paedophile who becomes the focus for a vigilante campaign, Osama bin Laden.
The mutual validation of the icon by the symbol and vice versa is important. The eminent doctor must verify that Lady Di suffered from bulimia and Princess Di needs to affirm her suffering as well. Then millions of young women recognise that they are just like Princess Di. As Fichte said, a subject can get to know themselves as a subject only by finding in the outer world another like themselves. It is one thing to read about a flood or a war or a strange new disease, but when you see someone, just like yourself, whose suffering you also recognise as your own, then you know this thing in a new way, as a reality for you.
But so long as it is just icons and symbols it is still not real. It is only when people actually recognise themselves in the icon and agree with the explanation provided in the symbolic register, the definition given to the condition, the idea, the form of suffering or aspiration for the future, when people actually put up their hand and say, in numbers, “Me too!” that you have something genuine and real. This is the index.
The index is the social movement that rallies around an idea and is summoned up by the actions of a hero, the victims of the epidemic or moral panic who all carry the symptoms of the prototypical star patient, the rank and file who put their lives on the line to follow in the footsteps of a martyr, or simply vote for the program represented by an iconic election candidate.
The most powerful signs are those who combine icon, index and symbol – the philosopher-revolutionary who is not only the iconic hero of the movement, but is also its foremost theorist, the doctor who has become a world expert in a disease they themselves suffer from.
This trichotomy discovered by Peirce correctly identifies, I believe, precisely the three elements required to give a flesh-and-blood reality to subjectivity. A person knows themself by knowing another like themself (an icon or role model), and by participating as a part of a movement, institution or group realising their identity (as an index), and by knowing that their subjectivity is validated as true (through a symbol). Being an icon or a symbol or an index of something (an ideal, a practice, a project or nation, etc.) are the various ways in which a person may relate to an idea and how they represent it as a subject, as well as how they relate to it in their relation to other people.
Wellsy wrote:
What is of interest in a study of the subject is how knowledge, established within an expert discourse, forms the subjectivity of its representatives and that of others outside that discourse and their relation to one another in collaborative activity. These relations and activity in the general community are not subject to the strictures governing processes within the institutions generating expert knowledge, and nor should they be. The idea that decisions requiring expert knowledge should be made in the general community by means of the normal political processes applying in the general community, is as absurd and dangerous as the idea that the truth of things should be established within a scientific institution by the kind of cultural and political processes which operate in the general community.
ckaihatsu wrote:This position is *problematic*, though, Wellsy, because it's basically *anti-democratic* and *elitist* -- it could be termed 'technocratic', since it implies a Stalinist-type bureaucratic elite as 'experts' who exclusively do the technical 'administrating', over the rest of society, wth society / community having to shoulder the burden of producing commodities (goods and services) for society (social-production), with its labor.
The 'general community' / society knows best what its own *needs* are, for consumption, which, historically has *not* been addressed, nor is *being* addressed, correctly / properly, by historical or present-day governing elites in the ruling class.
Are you a technocrat, Wellsy?
With the growing interest in “formative interventions,” that is, conducting social science research through intervening into social problems and trying to solve them, there has arisen a tendency to demand that Science abandon the charade of neutrality and be “flagrantly partisan.” The context in which this question has arisen is not one in which the demand for Science to be “objective” and nonpartisan is broadly respected, but on the contrary, at a moment when Science faces massive partisan interventions. In the United States in particular, questions like the efficacy of simple public health measures, the causes of wild fires and plain questions of fact are being decided by partisanship alone, and the very idea of “truth” dismissed. Under conditions of acute crisis resulting from the conjunction of the pandemic, dangerous climate change and political instability, this partisanship has been greatly to the detriment of the welfare of the great mass of the population, not only within the US, but internationally.
Given that everyone knows that at least one party engaged in this hyper-partisanship will not be persuaded to step back, what are other parties to do?
Be partisan in equal and opposite measure, or pull back from the brink and concede as fact the bare-faced lies of one’s political opponents in Science? And is it just a question of one side not playing by the rules or is the issue deeper than this?
I think it is fair to say that Science has never before been so corrupted by politics than at the present moment, nor the need for Science in the application of public policy so urgent. But this is not the first time that ideology in Science has been an issue.
It seems to me that the counterfactual element of everyone’s word having equal sway and the force of argument only carrying weight needs to be given some consideration. In real life, the word of people who have greater experience or a proven record in some domain counts for more. Is this inherently elitist? I don’t think so. For example, I have a right to make claims about activities with which I am intimately concerned over the word of others who have no such involvement.
Ethical obligations arise only in relation to other persons; the question is: what kind of relationship can imply what kind of ethical obligation? The general rule has to be that we all have an obligation to decide what we should do together with those others who with whom we are doing it.
There must be a proviso, however, that the others are capable of forming a rational will and communicating that will. Others may participate in an activity or project without being able to participate in deciding upon relevant matters. Such others are dependents, such as children, or patients who do not have the medical knowledge to make a rational decision about their health treatment, or may be unconscious at the time. As human beings they have rights, and therefore participants in the project have obligations towards them, but it is irrational to treat as participants those who do not have the wherewithal to participate. Nevertheless, the anomaly that a human being is an object and not a subject of their own welfare, places an obligation on the participants to raise all persons acting in the project to consciousness of the project, so as to participate in deciding on the project. Thus parents must make decisions for their children, but carry an obligation to bring their dependent children to an understanding of family activity as effectively as possible. Doctors must treat patients in the interests of the patients, but have an obligation to do every possible to bring the patient to a condition of being able to participate in the treatment planning. All the same obligations apply in relation to inequality of technical knowledge or access to knowledge or material resources amongst participants in a common project.
“All participants” is a more precise specification than “all those affected,” because in the first place, we define the others as fellow participants, as subjects, rather than defining them as passively affected objects. Rather than dividing the world into actors on one hand, and on the other hand, those who are acted upon, but who then, as a result of being acted upon, are to be given a say, we accept everyone as participants who claims to be a participant, all equally to decide on what the project is.
A participant defines themself as a participant. A person who defines themself as “affected,” ipso facto places a claim for recognition as “participant.” The “all those affected” criterion raises the problem of who is to decide who is affected and who is not? Deciding on who are the participants in the project are to be, is the most crucial decision made in any project, a decision usually made at the highest level. For example, government may appoint participants in a project team or board of enquiry, or the CEO of a company; by nominating members of Parliament, the people exercise the highest authority over their own affairs. So if the “all those affected” criterion is to have any meaning at all, the claim to be affected must be tantamount to a claim for participation.
Bogdanov's philosophy is therefore like no other in holding on to those specific illusions of our century which have come to be called technocratic. The secret of these illusions is the idolisation of technology – technology of every type – from the technology of rocket design to the technology of dentistry, bomb-dropping or sound-recording. And with such an approach, the engineering and technological intelligentsia begin to resemble – both in their own eyes and in the eyes of others – a special caste of holy servants of this new divinity.
...
If you choose to be a functionary of the super-capitalist state, then carry out your functions honourably – this is what Bogdanov suggests to the reader through the image of engineer Netty. That is precisely why he sees the best solution to be the handing over of the functions of 'administrative control' (i.e. the resolution of all political problems connected with the grandiose building) to a lackey of the super-capitalists, while retaining for himself purely technical leadership, the resolution of purely engineering tasks.
The sagacious Martian super-engineers understood what no one on Earth is able to understand. They understood that all so-called social problems are in actual fact, fundamentally, engineering and technological problems. And they should be solved by engineers, representatives of the scientific-technological elite, for only they are truly capable of investigating them in a qualified manner.
As for the military apparatus, it is a part of the bureaucratic apparatus, in no way distinguished in qualities from it. It is enough to say that in the years of the civil war, the Red Army absorbed tens of thousands of former czarist officers. On March 13, 1919, Lenin said to a meeting in Petrograd: “When Trotsky told me recently that, in the military sphere, the number of our officers was several tens of thousands, then I had a concrete picture of what is meant by the secret of using our enemy: how to have communism built by those who were formerly our enemies; build communism with bricks collected against us by the capitalists! And we have no other bricks!” These cadres of officers and functionaries carried out their work in the first years under the direct pressure and surveillance of the advanced workers. In the fire of the cruel struggle, there could not be even a question of a privileged position for officers: the very word was scrubbed out of the vocabulary.
Wellsy wrote:
Given that everyone knows that at least one party engaged in this hyper-partisanship will not be persuaded to step back, what are other parties to do?
Be partisan in equal and opposite measure, or pull back from the brink and concede as fact the bare-faced lies of one’s political opponents in Science? And is it just a question of one side not playing by the rules or is the issue deeper than this?
Wellsy wrote:
And in fact, the existence of experts I think is not elitist in some problematic manner other than that those most involved in some area do have greater say than those who have little relation to it ie not everyone's voice should be equal in matters of science.
Wellsy wrote:
“All participants” is a more precise specification than “all those affected,” because in the first place, we define the others as fellow participants, as subjects, rather than defining them as passively affected objects.
Wellsy wrote:
Although I don't entirely opposed representational forms against direct democratic approaches as I worry that this is an extreme of anarchism's anti-hierarchy which I don't necessarily share. Having representational authorities in itself isn't inherently oppressive although such figures can often be corrupted and do great wrong. But this can emphasize the need for the people to be strong and organized in such a way as to maintain clear accountability of representation. They can't be trusted when they're not accountable to the public.
As for the military apparatus, it is a part of the bureaucratic apparatus, in no way distinguished in qualities from it. It is enough to say that in the years of the civil war, the Red Army absorbed tens of thousands of former czarist officers. On March 13, 1919, Lenin said to a meeting in Petrograd: “When Trotsky told me recently that, in the military sphere, the number of our officers was several tens of thousands, then I had a concrete picture of what is meant by the secret of using our enemy: how to have communism built by those who were formerly our enemies; build communism with bricks collected against us by the capitalists! And we have no other bricks!” These cadres of officers and functionaries carried out their work in the first years under the direct pressure and surveillance of the advanced workers. In the fire of the cruel struggle, there could not be even a question of a privileged position for officers: the very word was scrubbed out of the vocabulary.
ckaihatsu wrote:Sure, I agree that science shouldn't be made into a political 'football', but at the same time, science itself is never 'pure', or cleanly detached from societal / socio-political concerns.
In the diagram / framework below, I have 'science / knowledge' as being very high-level, yet still premised on a *lower* level of 'empiricism / information'. The Trump Administration has blatantly shown us that even basic *information* important to many can be lied about and football-ized just for the sake of making political hay and/or economic markets for 'outrage' and emotional-factional buy-in to the bourgeois political machine.
But, going *higher* than science is 'cognitivism / wisdom', which implies *individual discretion* over everything below / lower-level -- given the totality of current science at our fingertips (through the Internet, more-or-less), which *aspects* or *kinds* of science would one select as being worthy of attention? Perhaps the *practical*, *applied* aspects of science -- consumer and infrastructural technology -- to begin-with, for more comfortable modern living, that is.
I really don't see how science / technology *can't* be politicized, or *shouldn't* be popularly politicized, for a mass prevailing casual consensus as to what's worthy in people's lives generally, and what's not. In this way people can at least have *experience*, and a *voice* regarding popular technologies and implementations, rather than a technocratic Stalinist bureaucratic-elitist top-down type of system in which *all* decisions are made via socio-political authoritarian separatism, and *handed-down* / *imposed* on everyone, with no feedback loops possible. Please recall that Stalinism is a *bastardization* of the original soviet / workers-council vehicle, for *positive* centralized administration.
philosophical abstractionsSpoiler: show
Sure -- I can agree with this at the 'empiricism / information' level, and even at the 'science / knowledge' level, but science shouldn't be a strictly *institutional* concern -- its functioning has unavoidable knock-on effects on the larger society so there *has* to be some interplay there, as with anti-nuclear-weaponry, etc.
In the context of present-day *class* society, though, aren't 'participants' mostly the technical workers, their financial bosses, and bourgeois government -- ? The larger public certainly isn't a part of the active-participation over what technologies are rolled-out, and even those who can afford to be *consumers* of various technologies have, at best, *indirect* 'participation' in technological matters, and mostly by voting with their wallets.
It is worthwhile to look at just what an individual-as-subject would mean. The individual subject would be a person who exercises such control over their own body, their own psyche and their social position, that they are able to command the entirety of culture insofar as it hinders or facilitates their achievement of ends self-consciously formulated in the light of existing culture; it is further presupposed that social relations prevail which provide social positions in which a person is able to freely collaborate with others as equals so as to exercise collective self-determination without the exploitation or oppression, and that the prevailing culture provides the opportunity for all the relevant conditions to be transparent to the individual.
The notion of ‘subject’ does not entail god-like freedom-to-do-anything, or even to be free of the constraints imposed by respecting the self-determination of other subjects. What is entailed is neither more nor less than is entailed in the notion of self-determination when applied to a nation-state, within a regime of international law. It does not imply god-like omniscience, but rather sufficient knowledge to use the existing culture, free of manipulation by others. It does not entail infinite command of the forces of Nature, but only freedom from the deliberate or inadvertent domination of other subjects.
That such an ideal is utopian is self-evident. Nevertheless, it is sufficient to see how a free citizen of modern capitalist society is the embryo of a subject, that is all. The question as to how and to what extent individuals, in concert with others, exercise rational self-determination is subject to empirical investigation.
My standing critique of representational forms of democratic-type processes is solely on *logistical* grounds -- today we have the mass capability to *hash-out* things for *ourselves*, both collectively and individually, as here at PoFo, to the extent of *not needing* representational forms anymore, whatsoever.
While it may initially sound like tedious and redundant efforts, I truly think that *everyone* should be actively grappling with *all* socio-political and technical issues, as much as possible, so as to have a solid popular *base* of knowledge and informed-opinion regarding *policy*, to enable bottom-up forms of political aggregation. This would be *preferable* to any slightly-substitutionist-or-greater forms of conventional political representation.
Since I'm not an anarchist I'm not against the structure of hierarchy itself, in all contexts, and especially since we're currently living under a global *bourgeois* class hierarchy which needs to be neutralized by international *working class* organizing efforts, which then requires hierarchy to match and *defeat* such bourgeois class hierarchy.
But, on *principle*, I'm far more for *equality*, both civilly and social-productively, and 'hierarchy' conventionally implies / invokes the connotation of *institutional*, *fixed* hierachies of power, as that of bourgeois 'governance' through its nation-states.
3-Dimensional Axes of Social RealitySpoiler: show
Wellsy wrote:
And I agree, people should have a voice in how technologies are implemented rather than simply be objects to be subjected to it. We are seeing such concerns with technology and social media companies who have incredible influence. Its been a pressing need to have some sort of international regulation in regards to such companies.
In fact, part of the problem of them is their lack of transparency as they collect all sorts of data on the general public which is then used for marketing. We just become objects for consumption.
Wellsy wrote:
And I think we'd agree that scientists don't necessarily know what's best simply because they understand their field, as expert and specialize knowledge doesn't translate to intelligent understanding in general. Many experts show themselves idiots when they go beyond their bounds with out putting in the work to understand things beyond their specialization.
Wellsy wrote:
A concern I have is how many people are actually interested in politics? Even on here, how much has to do with the institutions and practices of politics in even it's very dry written bills and so on as opposed to the dramatic spectacle on TV and in the media?
Just a concern I have and even here on a forum, it's not exactly a decision-making procedure and how would one on a greater scale, not everyone can meaningfully talk to one another and rationally either. NOt everyone can have their say as in a small classroom.
I think there can be greater inclusion and processes for giving voice to people but there is inherent limitations in time and such depending on how one expects people to participate.
I can see that more in the small scale and local in which people have their say but even at a board meeting for a school, there are rules in what time and relevance the public can speak of their concerns.
In fact a lot of such discussion are hashed outside of formal processes but can be enacted through them later.
Maybe PM your thoughts on this as sidetracking the thread topic somewhat.
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