Utopia Talk / Politics / Jesus lord save us from communism

Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sun Dec 24 07:59:53 Intellectual cancer, oh and famine and starvation. Merry Xmas :) http://www...ko-soviet-union-russia/548786/ Although it’s impossible to say for sure, Trofim Lysenko probably killed more human beings than any individual scientist in history. Other dubious scientific achievements have cut thousands upon thousands of lives short: dynamite, poison gas, atomic bombs. But Lysenko, a Soviet biologist, condemned perhaps millions of people to starvation through bogus agricultural research—and did so without hesitation. Only guns and gunpowder, the collective product of many researchers over several centuries, can match such carnage. Having grown up desperately poor at the turn of the 20th century, Lysenko believed wholeheartedly in the promise of the communist revolution. So when the doctrines of science and the doctrines of communism clashed, he always chose the latter—confident that biology would conform to ideology in the end. It never did. But in a twisted way, that commitment to ideology has helped salvage Lysenko’s reputation today. Because of his hostility toward the West, and his mistrust of Western science, he’s currently enjoying a revival in his homeland, where anti-American sentiment runs strong. Lysenko vaulted to the top of the Soviet scientific heap with unusual speed. Born into a family of peasant farmers in 1898, he was illiterate until age 13, according to a recent article on his revival in Current Biology. He nevertheless took advantage of the Russian Revolution and won admission to several agricultural schools, where he began experimenting with new methods of growing peas during the long, hard Soviet winter, among other projects. Although he ran poorly designed experiments and probably faked some of his results, the research won him praise from a state-run newspaper in 1927. His hardscrabble background—people called him the “barefoot scientist”—also made him popular within the Communist party, which glorified peasants. Officials eventually put Lysenko in charge of Soviet agriculture in the 1930s. The only problem was, he had batty scientific ideas. In particular, he loathed genetics. Although a young field, genetics advanced rapidly in the 1910s and 1920s; the first Nobel Prize for work in genetics was awarded in 1933. And especially in that era, genetics emphasized fixed traits: Plants and animals have stable characteristics, encoded as genes, which they pass down to their children. Although nominally a biologist, Lysenko considered such ideas reactionary and evil, since he saw them as reinforcing the status quo and denying all capacity for change. (He in fact denied that genes existed.) Instead, as the journalist Jasper Becker has described in the book Hungry Ghosts, Lysenko promoted the Marxist idea that the environment alone shapes plants and animals. Put them in the proper setting and expose them to the right stimuli, he declared, and you can remake them to an almost infinite degree. To this end, Lysenko began to “educate” Soviet crops to sprout at different times of year by soaking them in freezing water, among other practices. He then claimed that future generations of crops would remember these environmental cues and, even without being treated themselves, would inherit the beneficial traits. According to traditional genetics, this is impossible: It’s akin to cutting the tail off a cat and expecting her to give birth to tailless kittens. Lysenko, undeterred, was soon bragging about growing orange trees in Siberia, according to Hungry Ghosts. He also promised to boost crop yields nationwide and convert the empty Russian interior into vast farms. Such claims were exactly what Soviet leaders wanted to hear. In the late 1920s and early 1930s Joseph Stalin—with Lysenko’s backing—had instituted a catastrophic scheme to “modernize” Soviet agriculture, forcing millions of people to join collective, state-run farms. Widespread crop failure and famine resulted. Stalin refused to change course, however, and ordered Lysenko to remedy the disaster with methods based on his radical new ideas. Lysenko forced farmers to plant seeds very close together, for instance, since according to his “law of the life of species,” plants from the same “class” never compete with one another. He also forbade all use of fertilizers and pesticides. Wheat, rye, potatoes, beets—most everything grown according to Lysenko’s methods died or rotted, says Hungry Ghosts. Stalin still deserves the bulk of the blame for the famines, which killed at least 7 million people, but Lysenko’s practices prolonged and exacerbated the food shortages. (Deaths from the famines peaked around 1932 to 1933, but four years later, after a 163-fold increase in farmland cultivated using Lysenko’s methods, food production was actually lower than before.) The Soviet Union’s allies suffered under Lysenkoism, too. Communist China adopted his methods in the late 1950s and endured even bigger famines. Peasants were reduced to eating tree bark and bird droppings and the occasional family member. At least 30 million died of starvation. Because he enjoyed Stalin’s support, Lysenko’s failures did nothing to diminish his power within the Soviet Union. His portrait hung in scientific institutes across the land, and every time he gave a speech, a brass band would play and a chorus would sing a song written in his honor. Outside the U.S.S.R., people sang a different tune: one of unwavering criticism. A British biologist, for instance, lamented that Lysenko was “completely ignorant of the elementary principles of genetics and plant physiology ... To talk to Lysenko was like trying to explain differential calculus to a man who did not know his 12-times table.” Criticism from foreigners did not sit well with Lysenko, who loathed Western “bourgeois” scientists and denounced them as tools of imperialist oppressors. He especially detested the American-born practice of studying fruit flies, the workhorse of modern genetics. He called such geneticists “fly lovers and people haters.” Unable to silence Western critics, Lysenko still tried to eliminate all dissent within the Soviet Union. Scientists who refused to renounce genetics found themselves at the mercy of the secret police. The lucky ones simply got dismissed from their posts and were left destitute. Hundreds if not thousands of others were rounded up and dumped into prisons or psychiatric hospitals. Several got sentenced to death as enemies of the state or, fittingly, starved in their jail cells (most notably the botanist Nikolai Vavilov). Before the 1930s, the Soviet Union had arguably the best genetics community in the world. Lysenko gutted it, and by some accounts set Russian biology back a half-century. Lysenko’s grip on power began to weaken after Stalin died in 1953. By 1964, he’d been deposed as the dictator of Soviet biology, and he died in 1976 without regaining any influence. His portrait did continue to hang in some institutes through the Gorbachev years, but by the 1990s, the country had finally put the horror and shame of Lysenkoism behind it. Until recently. As the new Current Biology article explains, Lysenko has enjoyed a renaissance in Russia over the past few years. Several books and papers praising his legacy have appeared, bolstered by what the article calls “a quirky coalition of Russian right-wingers, Stalinists, a few qualified scientists, and even the Orthodox Church.” There are several reasons for this renewal. For one, the hot new field of epigenetics has made Lysenko-like ideas fashionable. Most living things have thousands of genes, but not all those genes are active at once. Some get turned on or off inside cells, or have their volumes turned up or down. The study of these changes in “gene expression” is called epigenetics. And it just so happens that environmental cues are often what turn genes on or off. In certain cases, these environmentally driven changes can even pass from parent to child—just like Lysenko claimed. But even a cursory look at his work reveals that he didn’t predict or anticipate epigenetics in any important way. Whereas Lysenko claimed that genes didn’t exist, epigenetics take genes as a given: They’re the things being turned on or off. And while epigenetic changes can occasionally (and only occasionally) pass from parent to child, the changes always disappear after a few generations; they’re never permanent, which contradicts everything Lysenko said. Epigenetics alone, then, can’t explain Lysenko’s revival. There’s something more going on here: a mistrust of science itself. As the Current Biology article explains, Lysenko’s new defenders “accuse the science of genetics of serving the interests of American imperialism and acting against the interests of Russia.” Science, after all, is a major component of Western culture. And because the barefoot peasant Lysenko stood up to Western science, the reasoning seems to go, he must be a true Russian hero. Indeed, nostalgia for the Soviet era and its anti-Western strongmen is common in Russia today. A 2017 poll found that 47 percent of Russians approved of Joseph Stalin’s character and “managerial skills.” And riding on the coattails of Stalin’s popularity are several of his lackeys, including Lysenko. On the one hand, this rehabilitation is shocking. Genetics almost certainly won’t be banned in Russia again, and the rehabilitation effort remains a fringe movement overall. But fringe ideas can have dangerous consequences. This one distorts Russian history and glosses over the incredible damage Lysenko did in abusing his power to silence and kill colleagues—to say nothing of all the innocent people who starved because of his doctrines. The fact that even some “qualified scientists” are lionizing Lysenko shows just how pervasive anti-Western sentiment is in some circles: Even science is perverted to promote ideology. On the other hand, there’s something depressingly familiar about the Lysenko affair, since ideology perverts science in the Western world as well. Nearly 40 percent of Americans believe that God created human beings in their present form, sans evolution; nearly 60 percent of Republicans attribute global temperature changes to nonhuman causes. And while there’s no real moral comparison between them, it’s hard not to hear echoes of Lysenko in Sarah Palin’s mocking of fruit-fly research in 2008. Lest liberals get too smug, several largely left-wing causes—GMO hysteria, the “blank slate” theory of human nature—sound an awful lot like Lysenko redux. Like the Soviet Union itself, the “science” of Trofim Lysenko has been consigned to the dustbin of history. Yet the dangers of Lysenkoism—of subsuming biology to ideology—continue to lurk.
jergul large member	Sun Dec 24 09:02:45 TL:DR Peer review of studies and publications saves lives.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sun Dec 24 11:26:07 Peer review is meaningless if your peers have drunk the same koolaid and have a vested intrest (research, grants, status, income etc) in the status quo (dogmas). Then the mistakes of a few becomes the mistake of institutions. The way out is polarization, diversity of political ideology. Hence why the STEM fields deliver while the humanities are in a crisis, churning out leftwing activists who go out and ”report news” and sell solutions to problems they have failed to even understand at a fundamental level. In the other thread sam and seb were discussing, I interjected. Disagreeing over thermodynamics is not trivial, you know. When academic disciplines either insinuate or explicitly deny the irrelevance of genes in explain our species behavior, this is not a trivial disagreement.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sun Dec 24 16:26:48 ”After the publication of the paper, other researchers were unable to reproduce Wakefield's findings or confirm his hypothesis of an association between the MMR vaccine and autism,[8] or autism and gastrointestinal disease.” It only took 12 years for this peer reviewed directly harmful garbage to get retracted by The Lancet. Muh peer reviewed! Here is an article explaining why you are an idiot from 27 years ago! http://www...603/pdf/westjmed00111-0058.pdf Please take note that these examples are from the politically diverse STEM fields, the tradition and reliance on empiricism and the nature of these subjects actually make them less prone to ideologically motivated reasoning. Self correction is forced because we have effect studies in medicine for instance, we have to _deal with reality_ as we apply the solutions. It is just greed and status at play here. But if you work in the institute of pedagogy (humanities and gender theory) in Sweden for instance and one of the leading professors there says that meassuring the effects of different teaching methods are _inhuman_ and that research into pedagogy needs _less_ empiricism (indeed) because humans are ”so complex”. Well peer review will not help you. As a consequence 50% of Swedens 130 professors (this is a lot) in pedagogy, have not been cited once in the last 10 years outside Sweden. That my dear lulzgul is a national echo chamber, an intellectual cancer that has infested an entire nation. #krossasocialismen
jergul large member	Sun Dec 24 17:46:20 Nimi Peer review is an acknowleged system that has checks in regards to the concerns you raised. The inability to reproduce or confirm findings casts huge doubts on the validity of a study. Which is what peer review does. Retraction is a different kettle of fish. Published papers are not retracted simply for being wrong (the nature of science eventually debunks all theories). There would have to be huge irregularities. Like a researcher fabricating data for example. Peer review does not detect fraud, it simply notes a finding was not duplicatable (which is damning). From your article: "Even at its best, the peer review process has inherent limitations, all of which I have tried to make clear. Despite its limitations, we need it. It is all we have, and it is hard to imagine how we could get along without it." Nimi fails to understand an article he posts again. Colour me surprised. You are arguing creationism, or climate denial. Demanding that stupid be taken seriously. If you want that, then follow the publish format.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Thu Dec 28 11:21:53 Ah yes, tell lulzgul that peer-review is not magic and will not solve the problems you are talking about and lulzgul reads this as "peer review is worthless, let's scrap it". Keep trying lulzgul you will eventually calibrate to what is being said. Have something worthwhile for me next round. I am father to a 4 month old and energy and time are in short supply.
Sam Adams Member	Thu Dec 28 14:44:29 Genetics is less important than feelings? Lol that dudes name must have been seb.
jergul large member	Fri Dec 29 04:53:25 No one ever said peer-review is magic and solves all problems. It does however provide a quality assurance platform for anyone wanting and able to publish studies they want to be taken seriously. 80 000 000 studies have been peer reviewed. This indicates that independent thought is alive and well. Leaving creationists and their ilk to meritless whines about lack of equal access. Have less stupid ideas perhaps?
TJ Member	Fri Dec 29 11:15:56 If you dig too many holes for others, you are bound to fall into one. Good and bad filtering is action/reaction. It is human to error.
jergul large member	Fri Dec 29 11:44:24 TJ Research builds on research. One of the points of studies is to illuminate and resolve issues in earlier publications. The format is very useful. For those willing to pay their dues and follow procedure. We live in a lucky age where any idea with merit will be scientifically explored by the magnitude qualified and willing to do so. But that leave crackpot, tinfoil, paranoid, CT, and just plain stupid feeling left out alas. This is why science has a liberal bias.
jergul large member	Fri Dec 29 11:46:18 I forgot batshit*
TJ Member	Fri Dec 29 12:10:14 Responses shed light on perception. Is that a genetic, educational, or a complex response when considering merit? I'll be the filter on the furnace collecting as much dust as possible, but some of it escapes my grasp.
Pillz Member	Fri Dec 29 13:22:30 Peer review process is broken though, and peer reviewed journals now accept personal diary entries and worse. Example: http://jou...3460717716581?journalCode=sexa
jergul large member	Fri Dec 29 16:03:09 Pillz I did not read the article, but feel intuitively that it is a paper with merit. The topic is methodology (or the study of methods). It raises some interesting method points in the abstract. The point is: we can actually evaluate the merits because form has been followed. TJ We are speaking from an academic pov, so following academic standards is the way to go. Other POVs allow for other standards, but it would not be science.
Pillz Member	Fri Dec 29 17:37:50 You feel that a gay man writing a sex journal of his gay sex experiences in Spain has merit and belongs in a peer reviewed journal? You should just jump in a river and save us from your retardation.
jergul large member	Sat Dec 30 00:08:14 Pillz Way to fail at reading comprehension. I feel that revisiting why certain data is highly troublesome can be revisited in peer reviewed journals. Yes, the researcher probably gained insights that would otherwise not have been available. The context would still be ethically questionable (informed consent would by definition be missing) and I would question if that kind of data was replicable in any meaningful way. My position would be that that author's experience may frame the thesis questions and help formulate the thesis statement, but cannot be used as data unless the researcher is also the subject of the study. Self-inquiry being a relevant topic of study, but hard to pull off well and with quite limited relevance.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat Dec 30 11:58:30 ”No one ever said peer-review is magic and solves all problems” No one ever says anything is actual magic, they just talk and behave like a religious nutbag. Secular religion is real. Science is more than a quality assurance process at the end lulzgul. What you put in (human capital) matters. Quality assurance can only verify that you have delivered according to specification, it says nothing about how well the specification maps to reality. They used to say, you produce ISO 9001 certified lifejacket made of concrete. Social sciences do not map onto reality at all since application of the theories is more or less non existant. If your ideas only float around in academic ”peer reviewed” articles and it can not be studied or applied in the world with measurable effects, it is nothing more than sophistry,
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat Dec 30 12:24:40 maybe interesting or intriguing sophistry (I enjoy this when I do drugs), but practically inseperable from other contradicting interesting sophistry. Political values are crtitical to how we view, value and give weight to different problems, it also informs our thinking in how we go about solving said issues. When 80% share the same values, that will limit the collective effort. Peer review doesn’t make you question whether what you are doing is correct and when most of what you study stays within the wall of tour institute confined to theory, you are also lacking a very important feedback mechanism, is this shit actually real or the result of drug induced psychosis? The fact that you can get a stamp approval from people that share your delusions is meaningless. Read up on clinical trials to get a clue as to how a real science works from theory to solving real human problems, HINT the last stage is trials on actual real human beings. Social sciences are useless right now because they lack what every other field helpful to our existance has, application in the field.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat Dec 30 12:59:42 Don’t know if I have posted this on UP or elsewhere, but it sums up the sitution pretty well. http://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-016-0015 Over the past 100 years, social science has generated a tremendous number of theories on the topics of individual and collective human behaviour. However, it has been much less successful at reconciling the innumerable inconsistencies and contradictions among these competing explanations, a situation that has not been resolved by recent advances in ‘computational social science’. In this Perspective, I argue that this ‘incoherency problem’ has been perpetuated by an historical emphasis in social science on the advancement of theories over the solution of practical problems. I argue that one way for social science to make progress is to adopt a more solution-oriented approach, starting first with a practical problem and then asking what theories (and methods) must be brought to bear to solve it. Finally, I conclude with a few suggestions regarding the sort of problems on which progress might be made and how we might organize ourselves to solve them. As a sociologist who spends a lot of time in the company of physicists, computer scientists and other outsiders to my field, I am often asked a question of the sort: “What is the social science perspective on X?”, where X is some topic of interest. To a social scientist, the question sounds hopelessly naïve: for any topic X, social science has dozens, if not hundreds, of perspectives, but no single perspective on which there is anything close to universal agreement. Nevertheless, I would argue that it is worth taking the question seriously, if only because it highlights an important difference between the social and physical/engineering sciences. Physicists disagree of course — for example, about the best way to reconcile general relativity with quantum mechanics, or the best explanation for the ‘missing mass’ problem in cosmology — but overall there is tremendous agreement both on what physicists know about the universe (Newtonian mechanics, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, optics, special and general relativity, statistical mechanics, particle physics and so on) and where the remaining areas of uncertainty lie. By contrast, any representative cross-section of social scientists would have difficulty agreeing on almost any question at all, including which questions were the most important to be agreed upon. It could be argued that in economics there exist certain specialized subfields, such as mechanism design applied to auctions1,2 and matching markets3,4, that comprise cumulative bodies of self-consistent, empirically validated theory that have even proven useful in practice. But no such claims can be sustained for economics in general, let alone for problems of interest to the social sciences broadly. Comparing the social sciences unfavourably to physics is of course a game with a long and, I would argue, quite unproductive history5. However, my thesis differs from the usual critique that social science should strive to be more like physics by identifying general principles. I shall argue that the problem with social science is not so much that it has one theory for one thing and another theory for another thing6, but rather that it has many theories for the very same thing. Even worse, these theories — although often interesting and plausible when considered individually — are fundamentally incoherent when viewed collectively. I then argue that this incoherency problem arises not only because of a lack of appropriate data for evaluating social scientific theories, but also because of the institutional and cultural orientation of social-science disciplines, which have historically emphasized the advancement of particular theories over the solution of practical problems. Finally, I argue that one possible solution to the incoherency problem is to reject the traditional distinction between basic and applied science, and instead seek to advance theory specifically in the service of solving real-world problems. Before proceeding, however, let me clarify two points of possible confusion. First, I am not arguing that all, or even most, of social science should become solution-oriented. Social science can serve many purposes — for example, the field can challenge common-sense assumptions about the nature of social reality7,8,9, provide rich descriptions of lived experience10,11,12, inspire new ways of thinking about human behaviour13,14 and shed light on specific empirical puzzles15,16 — that do not directly address practical problems but can still provide valuable insight. My argument is not that social scientists should stop pursuing these other objectives in favour of solving practical problems; only that collectively we should pay more attention than we do to the latter. Second, I am also not suggesting that social scientists do not already devote themselves to solving practical problems: many do, especially in policy-relevant areas like education17, health care18, poverty19 and government20. Rather, what I am suggesting is that social scientists can profitably view the solution of practical problems as a mechanism for improving the coherency of social science itself.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat Dec 30 13:37:18 Google ”replication crisis” for further reading. Think back to when you posted that response someone made to the google memo (the one you donated money to) she referenced cognitive observational studies (social psychology) that had failed to replicate, but not failed to be spread to the winds so that my coworker are citing them back to me. Social psychology is probably hit the hardest from the replication crisis. Hint hint social psychology is 80-90% american liberal and something around 60-70% of studies fail to replicate. It should not be difficult to realize that a field that studies how we behave towards each other will suffer from a lack of diversity in POV. Replication failure is not uncommon in any field, but because of the activist agenda ”findings” like ”implicit bias” and other fashionable, to liberals appealing, social constructivist explanation get lots of traction in the (liberal) media, while say the erronous findings of some chemist does not... They quickly become the basis of consultant industry selling anti-bias training to further corporate social responsibility. Things I come into contact with IRL, snake oil vendors. Ideological motivations is then intertwined with good old economic incentives to keep up the charade. It is not rocket surgery how these things work.
jergul large member	Sat Dec 30 14:17:23 80 000 000 peer reviewed studies indicate very clearly a deluge of diversity. If your ideas are too stupid to find a academic protagonist, then find new ideas. Your problem is your ideas are stupid, bro.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat Dec 30 15:55:04 This another instance of ”abrahamic faith” where you will not make distinctions in the quality and state of different and distinct disciplines. Full lulzgul mode. GG
TJ Member	Sat Dec 30 17:25:08 The wind is increasing the waves. Domination will always win when the direction has a consensus. Its natural that anything of merit which threatens will be diminished and ridiculed for the sake of protecting the consensus. Saturate any group or society in general with an ideological bias and the standard for the discipline becomes obvious. It really isn't rocket surgery. :) The academic standard can be manipulated, therefore, no discipline is immune from human bias. Fact of life, believe or not.
jergul large member	Sat Dec 30 17:41:17 Nimi Its a minimum standard that your ideas do not meet. Your speaking of religion is projection bro. Without peer review, all you are doing is howling at the moon. Which is pretty much what your family has done since Mohammed. So nothing new there. TJ 80 000 000 peer reviewed studies. If an idea does not merit peer review, then it is not science. But we spend most of our time not doing science, so fair enough. For as long as we do not think all ideas are created equal in an academic sense.
Seb Member	Sun Dec 31 18:49:06 Nim: You regularly cite "findings" from evolutionary psychology as robust and you are talking about repeatability.
Seb Member	Sun Dec 31 19:02:10 I mean Nims line of argument here is bizarre. He's the one repeatedly been arguing there's definitive proof for genetically based cognative differences, pooh poohing anyone pointing out that there's no strong statistical evidence for his ideas, now bizarrely arguing that the lack of reproducibility supports his position somehow. As if the absence of strong contradictory evidence means he can project what he likes.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sun Dec 31 21:33:34 Evo psych is a vast field seb. I have drilled down to ”social psychology” (a subfield) for the specific criticism of lack of diversity. When Asgard said psychology and sociology where all garbage I disagreed, there is good research and researchers there. These are important fields that are suffering from specific problems I am pointing to. The fact that they have issues is not evidence that cognitive functions are strongly influenced by genes, studies into the genetic influence on our cognitive traits are. This being a seperate issue from the ideological echo chambers that arise, the liberal creationism you spout is a symptom of this. Anyway, I have no time with you sebing the topic. Learn to read, understand the topic and people by using ?, think hard and fight the urge to _conflate facts with values_, before you press reply. Those are my rules for engagement. Not interested? Me neither.
jergul large member	Sun Dec 31 21:39:56 An echo chamber with 80 000 000 peer reviewed papers. So diversity exists. Leaving just stupid and batshit crazy feeling excluded from the academic discourse.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sun Dec 31 21:54:12 >The academic standard can be manipulated, therefore, no discipline is immune from human bias. Fact of life, believe or not.< Without a doubt! Some fields are just more prone and prone to more types of bias. It is for instance difficult to imagine that research into cancer will suffer from the type of political motivated bias like the social sciences. The resistance from the usual suspects to the concept of bias in a politically homogenous environment is interesting. It is their politics so *shrugs* right? I mean we have peers reviewing and confirming our bias!!! lulz :-)
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sun Dec 31 21:57:05 Jergul, I promise that 2018 will be the year of ”peer review lulz” the next stage at work awaits!
jergul large member	Sun Dec 31 22:11:55 Nimi Sort of missing the point, bro. I will try typing the same thing once more: There is tons of academic diversity. Quantified by peer reviewed studies numbering 80 000 000. An idea has to be pretty stupid not to have found a protagonist able to see it published in a peer reviewed journal. You should try formulating your pretty stupid ideas sometime.
jergul large member	Sun Dec 31 22:20:34 I eagerly await the lulz that will ensue as you showcase studies you have neither read, nor understand the abstract you try to digest. 2018 is truly shaping up to be a nice year.
Pillz Member	Sun Dec 31 23:37:58 So 2018 is the year we introduce jergul to @realpeerreview? Lulz will ensue
TJ Member	Mon Jan 01 00:49:14 Edward->"There is tons of academic diversity." That doesn't seem to be Nim's point. From what I gather he is talking about sociology and social psychology. His isn't off the rails. Social Sciences are dominated by Liberals and progressives. Being so it is likely to be embedded with political and social bias that wouldn't constitute academic diversity. Sounds like Google to me.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Mon Jan 01 05:07:48 Heh. Me and jergul have gone through this in a prior discussion about Islam. Jergul would not make any distinctions beyond ”Abrahamic faith”, UNTIL one day it suited him to make a distinction for Norway with ”lutheran work ethic” :-) This is a new low though, whereby scientific progress in one domain/discipline through the laws of averages makes up for the deficiencies elsewhere. Say biochemistry and pedagogy. For 3 reasons: 1. Jerguls (and seb) would fall squarly into the cat. American liberals. 2. Jergul (and seb) has very poor communication skills. 3. Jergul has a strong opinion about _everything_ (as a function of his secular religion socialism) regardless of his level of knowledge. It is only fair I mention seb as well considering they both exhibit the same problems waving phds around and so on.. Here is a true story: Me: anyone here who can provide details into american judicial system? Lulzgul: what do you want to know? Me: Thanks I was thinking someone who works in it, we have a couple on UP. Lulzgul: suit yourself douchebag...
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Mon Jan 01 05:38:54 Pillz BEWARE though People like jergul are master bullshitters. Take note of his two posts after you posted the sage journal article. After he gargled his bullshit, the ending paragraph "Self-inquiry being a relevant topic of study, but hard to pull off well and with _quite limited relevance_." Ends up totally agreeing with the main thrust of the criticism again the social sciences and the problems that plagues it. LOL :) If someone is familiar with social science articles one will know that "quite limited relevance" describes large chunks of or entire disciplines. It is only fair for me to say that the topics social sciences try to cover are indeed complex, randomized studies that can establish causal relationship are difficult and virtually impossible in many domains. I don't really care that philosophers sit in institutes and navel gaze, I really do not. What I as the engineer working in the problem solving world care about is when the snake oil vendors try to sell me their solutions to the soft parts of the organization. You will not be allowed to use complexity to obscure and sell nonsense. Here is a truth the generally holds, technically educated people (specially people who spend a lot of time specializing) are often woefully unaware about the state of the world outside STEM i.e the "softer sciences". And with their scientific humility they walk in less critical, because they lack basic knowledge to be critical. I don't. I have the basic knowledge in behavioral science to be critical. If Jergul was not himself so sold on some of this bullshit he would see that I am requesting rigorous scientific basis for applied solutions. You know like when someone tells me they have a new building material, BEFORE we build the houses we ask for evidence, lest people get crushed to death.
jergul large member	Mon Jan 01 06:41:56 Pillz 2018 is the year I school you to peer review representing the minimum standard of what separates science from stupid and bat-shit crazy. See the example you posted for something with academic merit within the field of methodology. TJ There is tons of peer review within any field. Including sociology and social psycology. Diversity exists. We are not weighing studies in a wheel barrow to determine who wins. Any idea with academic merit can be published in a peer reviewed journal. Its not actually a flaw with the peer review system that so many conservative ideas lack academic merit and even one protagonist willing to see his or her study through to publishing in a peer reviewed journal. Its a pretty low bar to pass. Nimi Though it never is a bar you will pass using anectdotal evidence. Patom has worked in the criminal justice system btw. To answer your question. As an engineer you should probably try to embrace what the peer review process does: It quality assures and standarizes publications so they can be easily read for their merits or lack thereof. For raging against the machine. See research on "New Public Management" for example. Your fundamental problem is that you are lazy, so cannot really appreciate academic literature. By appreciate, I mean read.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Mon Jan 01 07:58:04 ”The minimum standard” lol it is amazing that they hand out degrees to people as stupid as you. I won’t help you wth this one! ”many conservative ideas lack academic merit and even one protagonist willing to see his or her study” Since you lack basic knowledge in these fields you are not qualified to make this assessment. Extrapolating from you discussion with sam about global warming is an another moment of leftwing hyspocrisy. Quick to point out christian creationism and global warming denial, but obvlivious to the social constructionist creationism and communists (without batting an eyelid this is up there with global warming denial) in their own ranks. Why is that? Could it be the echoes of your peers? Where does trigger warnings and safespaces come from if not from spending a life inside the echo chamber? An autoimmune response to having lived in an ideologically pure environment.
jergul large member	Mon Jan 01 08:08:06 Nimi Its more that as a trained researcher, I expect to be provided with a peer reviewed study you find questionable so that I can evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the paper in question. I can do this in any field, because above all - the peer review system standarizes publications in a way that allows evaluation of the study's scientific handiwork. Alas, barred to you in part because you lack the formal training (the difference between a BSc and a MSc rests in the training), but most importantly because you are fundamentally lazy. You have to actually read the study in question you see. Your stupidity is ultimately your own fault. Get a Masters and get unlazy.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Mon Jan 01 08:37:27 ”Though it never is a bar you will pass using anectdotal evidence” An article by a sociology professor about the problems in his fields is not anecdotal evidence. Biology denial in SS is not ”anecdotal”. When you and seb want people who discuss science you disagree with fired, it is not an anecdotal problem, it is systemic. I would give you more studies, articles and meta analysis if I thought it would help. BUT you already told me you are a religious nutbag about your socialism, remember? There is no amount of evidence that will convince a creationist. These threads as I explained are for my benefit and in extension our audience. How far can you get with someone who: 1. Gets baited and does not get it 2. Does not catch absurd and obvious jokes (norwegian parenting sucks, when the study says nothing of the quality) 3. Obsess about ”complex math” to utterly miss the central point of his opponent. Baseline retard/autistic reaction.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Mon Jan 01 09:04:02 The formal part of ones education will in the long run by a fraction of the time one spends educating. Degree waving will get you no where, bro. You are assuming you are an above average ”whatever” and I am a below average ”whatever”, clearly our time here has shown me this is not the case. I told seb when he did this, it would be a great compliment had I considered you an equal. To earn my respect, well that is no small feat. Unless you are a scientist in the relevant fields you can only do what I am doing, look at the research and draw conclusions and make sense of their exposure and applicability in the real world. It is what I get paid to do. I am the filter that saves society (the one where people die from lies) from psuedoscience, that would be a fitting job description for me. That means everything from techical expertise, to reading research, being a beuarucrat, mentoring people, guiding people with fancy degrees in the right direction and so on. You have to work hard to impress me with having spent 1 extra year in school, bro. I don’t drill a deep hole and marvel over the layers of dirt, I cover ground and generalize, you call it lazy, in reality it is efficiency, I don’t obsess with scientific certainty when good enough is good enough. I assess the risks and move forward. It is the difference between theory (full of pseudoscience) and practice where psuedoscience will get you killed. You of course have it all ass backwards. Theorizing is lazy, it carries no costs and no risk. Apply or die.
jergul large member	Mon Jan 01 09:38:06 Nimi The only issue I have is with you trying to present stupid and batshit crazy as relevant to the academic discourse. Which is true in so far as it goes for certain fields (of interest for studies in behavioral sciences or clinical pathology). Degree waving when discussing academic systems is quite relevant actually. I have paid my dues so to speak. Lazy is code for drugs, bro. You chose to do drugs ahead of reading studies that you present. Then get all prissy when I point out you have not read the research, nor understood the abstract that you may or may not have tried to read. Incidentally, the term you are looking for is sophistry. Academics pre-occupying themselves with subjects of interest only to themselves. Or somesuch. You would know that if you like read a book or something. Its nice that you find value in applying the science others have done. They likely appreciate it.
jergul large member	Mon Jan 01 09:44:27 I incidentally have huge doubts that you fully understand risk analysis. It goes against the whole grain of cutting things out like cancers in various countries. I would dub you more an anachist in that sense. The important thing is to destroy what is. What will come must surely be better.
TJ Member	Mon Jan 01 11:15:58 There is a lot of better to come, hopefully. Does anyone need to wonder how that will develop? Blind spots need to be shed. Conflate
jergul large member	Mon Jan 01 14:12:51 TJ That question boils down to who productivity gains should benefit and in what manner.
Wrath of Orion Member	Mon Jan 01 14:39:34 Eh, MSc quality is very dependent on the adviser and what was done for a thesis. Many MSc holders (not just in the US) really did not do anything significant or worthwhile that would give them much of any staying power in a real scientific discussion or literature review/analysis. The default regarding that should be skepticism until shown otherwise. PhD's get more benefit of the doubt, especially if they completed a post-doc with a good lab. But still not an automatic pass.
jergul large member	Mon Jan 01 16:06:51 WoO I think it fair to say that most every MSc can recognize, read, and understand academic studies. They have a format that must be learned and that format has to be learned to earn a Masters. I would always take anyone's interpretation of a study with a high degree of skeptism. Which is why I like the study to be presented so I can see for myself. This is as true of Seb as it is of Nimi.
Wrath of Orion Member	Mon Jan 01 16:20:51 "I think it fair to say that most every MSc can recognize, read, and understand academic studies." So not true.
Wrath of Orion Member	Mon Jan 01 16:22:03 Btw, I do not disagree that it *should* be true. But it is not anywhere close to being true.
jergul large member	Mon Jan 01 16:32:11 "I would always take anyone's interpretation of a study with a high degree of skeptism. Which is why I like the study to be presented so I can see for myself. This is as true of Seb as it is of Nimi." Though your perspective is sad. 2 years spent failing to learn how to recognise, read, and understand academic studies is quite a spectacular failure. But it is something that needs to be learned. Nimi could do it here by presenting a few studies and have his initial understanding of them picked apart constructively. It would be less fun for me after 2-3 papers as he began to get a clue. The thesis is just demostrating craftmanship (here is the scope and limitations, here are the thesis questions, here is the thesis, this is the method etc) Doctorates get the repetitive publishing and an actual expectation of some original contribution.
Wrath of Orion Member	Mon Jan 01 16:55:51 It is a lack of rigor and expectations that allow MSc students to get by without truly learning it. And of course some of it is lazy students. However, understanding journal articles is not enough. Even at the MSc level, a person should be able to critique papers and know how to verify whether their methods/conclusions/inferences/whatever are legitimate. And that's usually the sticking point. Typically it's, "Yes, I understand what the paper is saying. It appears to apply to my work, so I'm citing it." Taking a look at PhD students regarding this is introducing a bias since the rigor of a PhD is usually a decent filter to get rid of the majority of the shit MSc students. It's better to look at people who get the MSc and then stop - they're usually the real issue. But MSc is becoming the Bachelor's of the education world at a rapid pace. In terms of having meaningful conversations regarding science, I am finding them increasingly useless.
jergul large member	Mon Jan 01 18:27:33 WoO Yah, I hate that. Citation salad. I am not sure if I expect a MSc able to carry any given conversation on science. But I know I expect them to be able to catch up quite quickly if called to the task. I think we can agree that no master student will rigourously read studies as they should be read every time. So even without questioning capability, capacity may always be questioned. We know that it is best to review a study ourselves. (Stirling process using gasified LNG on the cold side to make efficient use of cryogenic evaporation inherent to LNG transport. I erred on the side of original content. Presented in this forum as a heat neutral MBT. It had to trickle a stream of water from combustion to make the heat equation balance. I found the thought of an Abrams type tank with a weak bladder amusing:).
pillz Member	Mon Jan 01 21:13:36 "However, understanding journal articles is not enough. Even at the MSc level, a person should be able to critique papers and know how to verify whether their methods/conclusions/inferences/whatever are legitimate. And that's usually the sticking point. Typically it's, "Yes, I understand what the paper is saying. It appears to apply to my work, so I'm citing it."" No reward for students to bother. Teachers are rarely going to take a serious glance at your sources, and outside of the hard sciences (with which I have no real experience), their criticisms are typically asinine because they just feel obliged to criticize something regardless of whether it makes sense/is valid/useful. Like you said, a lack of rigour and expectations. Professors and TAs are just as lazy as their students. But the #1 thing you find lacking in college students & undergrads is abysmal lack writing and analytical skills, the later playing an important part in their inability to properly scrutinize what they read. No assignments ever intended to exercise or encourage it, either, so they don't bother. I've used absolutely horrendous sources, recognizing such, because I knew my teachers wouldn't give them a second thought. Exceptions include dated articles/field reports/etc. In Classics for instance, unless you're using original excavation reports/images, you'd best not use anything old (and be critical even with original dig work like that).
pillz Member	Mon Jan 01 21:21:54 Although to be fair, Classics has the highest standards Im aware of in the Arts & Humanities. We actually do get critical thought & analysis of sources taught continuously, both for ancient stuff and modern. And toughest grading scheme in my University too.
Wrath of Orion Member	Mon Jan 01 23:10:10 "No reward for students to bother." In terms of professional colleagues, I'm only interested in working with those that do bother, whether the system provides/provided the motivation or not. And it's blatantly obvious who those are.
Pillz Member	Tue Jan 02 01:50:53 Regarding 'citation salad' : it's better than undergrads who struggle to scrap together a handful of sources can can't understand any of them. Which is a thing. You hope that people who over cite tend to read and understand what they're citing enough to form a coherent, if underdeveloped and maybe not correct, argument. And tbh, it's what is rewarded most generally. language & critical thinking skills have to be vastly restructured with regards to how they're taught and emphasized.
Seb Member	Tue Jan 02 04:40:01 Nim: The fact you think PhD means "extra year in school" - i.e. taught - is emblematic of the point I was making. Your approach to what you call critical apraisal is sub par for what we'd expect as entry level. You tried to gainsay that, and you just now started citing your professional role to do that. It conjugates something like I prove my credentials, you wave your degree, he/she/it name drops institutions? Examples of crap citation include things like that citation on sexual assaults in Paris where you construed the high proportion of immigrants to mean Muslim without checking the nationality data for immigrants in Paris let alone controlling for age. Or the bizarre claim that evolutionary psychology is a hard science for understanding cognition (neglecting the fact that the field is widely criticised for the fundamental un-testability of its predictions). Or the logical gaps between characteristics based on "biology" which you then imply in your arguments to be "inherent" (which basically ignores all the evidence that biology of an individual can change dramatically based on environment). You regularly cherry pick sources to bolster your quack theories - I.e. start with a theory and seek evidence to support it. This is a known anti patern that doesn't work in science but may work quite well in audit functions (assume risk, seek evidence of risk) which are about risk minimisation. But this doesn't work for getting to the fundamental truth of something. The fundamental issue is you don't actually seem to understand the high bar that is considered entry level to practicing science. This is not unusual. See for example the very large number of highly intelligent lawyers that seem to believe they can prove climate change fraudulent by examining the behaviour, incentives and possible motivations of researchers. They are operating under a different paradigm, as are you.
jergul large member	Tue Jan 02 06:03:27 Seb He was talking about an MSc, which of course it 2 extra years. Pillz The citation abuse I dislike most amounts to establishing a non-existent pedigree by placing a study in an academic context that is almost fraudulently misleading. I dislike it for muddying transparency. It takes a lot of work to dissect abuse like that and the whole point of standarizing academic publishing is to make it quick and easy to evaluate. We see it here used negatively. Researchers connected to a world view falsely attributed conclusions they never made (De Beauvoir to name misattributions I fixed by citing her original work).
Seb Member	Tue Jan 02 06:30:55 An MSc isn't a fully taught course anyway. Normally has a 50% research element either. "Researchers connected to a world view falsely attributed conclusions they never made" This is all too common in science-ism approaches to debate. Although there's nothing wrong with citing the evidence and argument of a researcher and then arguing that it supports a different conclusion; that's rarely what happens. Cf. Nims citing of this article https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo-what-does-the-research-say-about-gender-differences/ in support of intrinsic sex differences being caused by biology. But somehow neglecting this key passage: "In this review, we also do not address Damore’s claims that some gender differences are rooted in biological factors, such as the effect of prenatal hormones on brain development." Was he arguing that actually he disagreed with the author and that it could support biology as a basis for differences? Was he being deliberately dishonest? Or did he simply skim lightly through the article to pick the basic bits he liked after having done a cursory search on Google looking for "scientific basis for Damore Google memo" and failed to notice that the best you can get without picking wildly disputed a critiqued papers was this review article that falls way short of actually substantiating the key elements of Damore's argument? Let's be generous - he's probably not going about this the way he would at work - but it's sloppy thinking and sloppy approach. And in the end he's the one making the argument for there being a strong biological basis (by which he must mean specifically intrinsic rather than environmental) for race and sex differences. So it's for him to show strong evidence. Picking holes is much easier of course, but that's why advancing science is hard. PhDs in particular are mostly about finding out all the different ways you can be wrong and gaining a healthy appreciation of how hard it is to prove something positive.
Seb Member	Tue Jan 02 06:30:55 An MSc isn't a fully taught course anyway. Normally has a 50% research element either. "Researchers connected to a world view falsely attributed conclusions they never made" This is all too common in science-ism approaches to debate. Although there's nothing wrong with citing the evidence and argument of a researcher and then arguing that it supports a different conclusion; that's rarely what happens. Cf. Nims citing of this article https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo-what-does-the-research-say-about-gender-differences/ in support of intrinsic sex differences being caused by biology. But somehow neglecting this key passage: "In this review, we also do not address Damore’s claims that some gender differences are rooted in biological factors, such as the effect of prenatal hormones on brain development." Was he arguing that actually he disagreed with the author and that it could support biology as a basis for differences? Was he being deliberately dishonest? Or did he simply skim lightly through the article to pick the basic bits he liked after having done a cursory search on Google looking for "scientific basis for Damore Google memo" and failed to notice that the best you can get without picking wildly disputed a critiqued papers was this review article that falls way short of actually substantiating the key elements of Damore's argument? Let's be generous - he's probably not going about this the way he would at work - but it's sloppy thinking and sloppy approach. And in the end he's the one making the argument for there being a strong biological basis (by which he must mean specifically intrinsic rather than environmental) for race and sex differences. So it's for him to show strong evidence. Picking holes is much easier of course, but that's why advancing science is hard. PhDs in particular are mostly about finding out all the different ways you can be wrong and gaining a healthy appreciation of how hard it is to prove something positive.
Seb Member	Tue Jan 02 06:30:55 An MSc isn't a fully taught course anyway. Normally has a 50% research element either. "Researchers connected to a world view falsely attributed conclusions they never made" This is all too common in science-ism approaches to debate. Although there's nothing wrong with citing the evidence and argument of a researcher and then arguing that it supports a different conclusion; that's rarely what happens. Cf. Nims citing of this article https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo-what-does-the-research-say-about-gender-differences/ in support of intrinsic sex differences being caused by biology. But somehow neglecting this key passage: "In this review, we also do not address Damore’s claims that some gender differences are rooted in biological factors, such as the effect of prenatal hormones on brain development." Was he arguing that actually he disagreed with the author and that it could support biology as a basis for differences? Was he being deliberately dishonest? Or did he simply skim lightly through the article to pick the basic bits he liked after having done a cursory search on Google looking for "scientific basis for Damore Google memo" and failed to notice that the best you can get without picking wildly disputed a critiqued papers was this review article that falls way short of actually substantiating the key elements of Damore's argument? Let's be generous - he's probably not going about this the way he would at work - but it's sloppy thinking and sloppy approach. And in the end he's the one making the argument for there being a strong biological basis (by which he must mean specifically intrinsic rather than environmental) for race and sex differences. So it's for him to show strong evidence. Picking holes is much easier of course, but that's why advancing science is hard. PhDs in particular are mostly about finding out all the different ways you can be wrong and gaining a healthy appreciation of how hard it is to prove something positive.
Seb Member	Tue Jan 02 06:31:24 My phone decided to post that three times. Delete two.
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