Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[Einherjar86]

I can't craft a response to all this information, so I'll only address the points that don't jive--which are probably predictable by this point.

The ethical implication: the intelligent are more likely to practise the Golden Rule, and this actually breeds trust; and the less intelligent are more likely to think they can get away with it, and this breeds mistrust. You only need intelligence to generate this difference. You can immediately see where social and civic capital might come from, at least in part.

I see the data and the correlation, but I don't see the causal relationship between intelligence and cooperation. I do see generation after generation of people who are told by their elders not to trust other people, likely because of shit pulled on them in the past; and so the cycle continues. This doesn't support a causal relation between lower intelligence and reluctance to trust others.

Now I can see some immediate responses to that study - one being that "Well Sweden is a great place to be poor - what about Detroit or Chicago?" and the other being that "What if all of the other risk factors are present because of poverty?". To the first I would say that sounds kind of racist (minorities can only respond to poverty with crime?)

No, minorities cannot respond only to poverty with crime. But that's not the argument, and I think you're smart enough to know that.

This isn't the first time I've reacted this way to this exact comment from you, and it isn't the first time you've ignored my objection. You absolutize appeals to poverty as a definitive causal explanations for why poor people commit crimes. That's a misinterpretation of the argument, which is that poverty is a contributing factor to criminal behavior. But there are a lot of rich people who also commit crimes, and plenty of poor people who don't.

I'd appreciate it if you'd stop insinuating that I'm a racist because I acknowledge the arguments that suggest poverty contributes to criminal behavior.

 

[Dak]

I can't craft a response to all this information, so I'll only address the points that don't jive--which are probably predictable by this point.


I see the data and the correlation, but I don't see the causal relationship between intelligence and cooperation. I do see generation after generation of people who are told by their elders not to trust other people, likely because of shit pulled on them in the past; and so the cycle continues. This doesn't support a causal relation between lower intelligence and reluctance to trust others.

I think the point about "don't trust others" advice lines up with that article. I certainly "didn't trust" the kids in my poor childhood neighborhood, and my parents probably told me not to either. And having some toys stolen and my bball goal broken reinforced it. However, I didn't broadly apply it. The argument via cooperation games is that those of lower intelligence are more likely to apply that behavior in all situations. It might have some utility where everyone is shitty, but that is rather the point.

No, minorities cannot respond only to poverty with crime. But that's not the argument, and I think you're smart enough to know that.

This isn't the first time I've reacted this way to this exact comment from you, and it isn't the first time you've ignored my objection. You absolutize appeals to poverty as a definitive causal explanations for why poor people commit crimes. That's a misinterpretation of the argument, which is that poverty is a contributing factor to criminal behavior. But there are a lot of rich people who also commit crimes, and plenty of poor people who don't.

I'd appreciate it if you'd stop insinuating that I'm a racist because I acknowledge the arguments that suggest poverty contributes to criminal behavior.

I'll borrow something along the lines of something you've said before and say I don't think you're racist, but I think some positions you argue are of the "racism of low expectations" variety.

The argument that poverty is a contributing factor , either at all or of consequence, to crime is under dispute.

 

[Einherjar86]

I think the point about "don't trust others" advice lines up with that article. I certainly "didn't trust" the kids in my poor childhood neighborhood, and my parents probably told me not to either. And having some toys stolen and my bball goal broken reinforced it. However, I didn't broadly apply it. The argument via cooperation games is that those of lower intelligence are more likely to apply that behavior in all situations. It might have some utility where everyone is shitty, but that is rather the point.

A lot of people never get a chance to consider the broad applications--for instance, if they never leave the community in which they were born.

I'll borrow something along the lines of something you've said before and say I don't think you're racist, but I think some positions you argue are of the "racism of low expectations" variety.

But that's not true either because I don't think we should rationalize and admit whatever the low expectations are that you're talking about. I think we need to address people's disadvantages according to their situations, and poverty is one of element that I don't think we can avoid.

The argument that poverty is a contributing factor , either at all or of consequence, to crime is under dispute.

If we're saying that poverty is a factor and not a cause, then simply noting a correlation between the presence of poverty and a decrease in crime doesn't prove there's no relation. It means that some other factor could have intervened and overcome the influence that poverty has on crime.

Again, I haven't read these links and so I can't have an informed discussion. The little bits that I looked at seem to simply say that inverse trends have occurred (i.e. that crime decreased when it shouldn't have). But I didn't see where the studies considered alternative reasons for said decreases. Poverty doesn't happen in a vacuum, and neither does crime. Until other studies weigh the factors, I don't see how we can dissociate the two.

 

[Dak]

@Einherjar86

www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/better-business-through-sci-fi

 

[Einherjar86]

I remember when that came out. It was exciting. There have been other articles over the past couple years to suggest a similar influence. It makes sense, since science fiction has been looking more like real life since about the 1980s. Sci-fi will never be as strange as real life though.

 

[Dak]

22382344_1453392398115374_6857631834195725794_o

• Dak
• Oct 8, 2017

Conspiracy time!

 

[CiG]

They need to explain the Asian woman he was with. Apparently she was running around warning people that they were going to die moments before the massacre.

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

...are you sure it was moments before? I think she was out of the country during the massacre.

 

[CiG]

Yeah you're right, I must have heard something that was just a typical bullshit rumour when something like this happens.

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

.. no but i heard there was indeed some lady/person going around telling people that they're gonna die before it happened. Don't know who it as or how legit the story is.

 

[CiG]

Oh? That's what I heard then I guess.

Did you see the video of the guy who kept standing when the shooting was happening, as everyone else dropped to the ground or scattered, shouting "come on pussy" at the shooter?

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

yeah, and then he would duck 2-3 inches while holding his beer or something, no? Pretty stupid move imo, what if him and the people around him got sprayed right when he was doing that?

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

 

[CiG]

yeah, and then he would duck 2-3 inches while holding his beer or something, no? Pretty stupid move imo, what if him and the people around him got sprayed right when he was doing that?

Oh total retard move.

 

[Einherjar86]

Citizen science, I’d argue, is not structured to produce real knowledge. Rather, it’s about rejigging power relations. It draws strength from a certain brand of market fundamentalism – a political sensibility we might also call neoliberalism – in which people’s beliefs about science are simply transactions in a marketplace of ideas, as unassailable as their choice of soap-powder at the supermarket. What does it all mean? Let the market sort it out, not the scientific community. For neoliberals, the market knows the nature of truth better than any human being, a category which includes scientists.

The problem with this argument is that it doesn’t recognise that the mind must be prepared to see the significance of certain kinds of information. Being and becoming a scientist doesn’t revolve around a hieratic conformity to some transcendent ‘scientific method’. Rather, it’s the consequence of a long period of immersion in the specific culture of a discipline, such that one begins to be able to perceive what are the valid questions, preferred methods, legitimate styles of research, and so on.

By contrast, citizen science often amounts to the bald assertion that you can dispense with everything (including long years of education and apprenticeship) and mimic the outward trappings of science (cool apparatus, measurement, making organisms blink) – and still make a lasting ‘contribution’ to knowledge. Now, if it were just a matter of recruiting people to do the gruntwork, and have the experts check and follow up, such ‘knowledge’ wouldn’t really matter; but that is not at all how citizen science is sold. All movements to make citizens behave more like scientists embody a baneful internal contradiction: if the participants were at all serious, they would have to undergo real training, not a drive-by blast of methodology lite. But in that case, by definition, it would no longer be citizen science.

An ivory-tower reaction to the bucking of academic discourse? Or a perceptive take-down of lay science?

I wear my opinions on my sleeve.

https://aeon.co/essays/is-grassroots-citizen-science-a-front-for-big-business

 

[Dak]

An ivory-tower reaction to the bucking of academic discourse? Or a perceptive take-down of lay science?

I wear my opinions on my sleeve.

https://aeon.co/essays/is-grassroots-citizen-science-a-front-for-big-business

I agree that "not anyone" can be a scientist. The problem is that we assume people that matriculate are automatically qualified scientists. It's not a bar tooooo low, but a bar too low. Conversely, particularly in the social sciences, there are echo chambwer issues which your link fails to acknowledge. (Not that the issue noted isn't also an issue). I provide, as a convenient counter, the newest blog from my newest favorite blogger:


https://samzdat.com/2017/11/20/banish-plump-mouse-deer-and-banish-all-the-world/

Scott is left-wing, but he’s explicitly taking aim at a certain left tradition: Gramsci, Althusser, etc. This tradition is, more or less, opium of the masses on steroids. Someone is going to tell me that Actually, what they mean is […] and I’m going to say that you’re wrong and I don’t care. The Gramsciites I’ve met may have some super-secret other reading, but 95% of them present it as, more or less, “Sheeple just get propaganda’ed, bro, which is why they don’t rise up. We intellectuals need to show them the way.” They would look at Sedaka and instantly start screaming about cultural hegemony.

No.

 

[Einherjar86]

I agree that "not anyone" can be a scientist. The problem is that we assume people that matriculate are automatically qualified scientists. It's not a bar tooooo low, but a bar too low. Conversely, particularly in the social sciences, there are echo chambwer issues which your link fails to acknowledge. (Not that the issue noted isn't also an issue). I provide, as a convenient counter, the newest blog from my newest favorite blogger:


https://samzdat.com/2017/11/20/banish-plump-mouse-deer-and-banish-all-the-world/

I will read the post soon, but don't have time right now (and the number agreement issue in his first paragraph is too much to handle right now; I just graded eighteen freshman papers, I don't need to see more grammatical errors).

All I'll say is that the quote you posted is directed at the humanities; the article I linked is directed at the physical/natural sciences (i.e. not the human sciences). Chemists and physicists aren't clambering over one another to claim cultural hegemony.

I think we have to assume that people in universities are qualified. That's part of the gauntlet they have to go through, it's how they earn their credentials. Obviously there are differences between universities, and inevitably there will be those who produce sub-par work; but I don't think our position can be one of extreme skepticism when it comes to scientific research, since such a position would slow progress to a virtual standstill (for what it's worth, many laypeople out there believe the legitimacy of evolution is on the table for serious scientific debate; the academy can't be slowed by down explaining why this isn't the case every time a citizen scientist posits a hypothesis about Edenic origins, or some such).

Much of the skepticism toward the physical sciences today comes from people who have little to no justification for being skeptical other than closely-held personal beliefs. This is what the Aeon piece means by the democratization of science. It is a profession, and it demands expertise. That doesn't mean that there won't be hacks out there, but I don't think that justifies a position of absolute skepticism prior to viewing their work. If there are hacks, then chances are their work will not conform to discursive consensus, and they'll be forced to reevaluate or abscond.

We award businesspeople a level of credibility when it comes to social affairs (i.e. "He runs a business, he knows what he's doing"). Scientists deserve the same level of trust.

 

[Dak]

I will read the post soon, but don't have time right now (and the number agreement issue in his first paragraph is too much to handle right now; I just graded eighteen freshman papers, I don't need to see more grammatical errors).

All I'll say is that the quote you posted is directed at the humanities; the article I linked is directed at the physical/natural sciences (i.e. not the human sciences). Chemists and physicists aren't clambering over one another to claim cultural hegemony.

I think we have to assume that people in universities are qualified. That's part of the gauntlet they have to go through, it's how they earn their credentials. Obviously there are differences between universities, and inevitably there will be those who produce sub-par work; but I don't think our position can be one of extreme skepticism when it comes to scientific research, since such a position would slow progress to a virtual standstill (for what it's worth, many laypeople out there believe the legitimacy of evolution is on the table for serious scientific debate; the academy can't be slowed by down explaining why this isn't the case every time a citizen scientist posits a hypothesis about Edenic origins, or some such).

Much of the skepticism toward the physical sciences today comes from people who have little to no justification for being skeptical other than closely-held personal beliefs. This is what the Aeon piece means by the democratization of science. It is a profession, and it demands expertise. That doesn't mean that there won't be hacks out there, but I don't think that justifies a position of absolute skepticism prior to viewing their work. If there are hacks, then chances are their work will not conform to discursive consensus, and they'll be forced to reevaluate or abscond.

No one is distrusting physical sciences over things like creating new materials or technologies. Things like "climate science" are questioned because A. There's no product to point to and B. It's politicized. Scott Adam's comparison of climate forecasting with economic forecasting via modeling makes a lot of sense, and too, the analogy with making a ton of tourney brackets and then spotlighting whichever variant turned out to be accurate.

We award businesspeople a level of credibility when it comes to social affairs (i.e. "He runs a business, he knows what he's doing"). Scientists deserve the same level of trust.

I know/have known at least a few buffoons who successfully run small businesses more due to cornering a niche, who I wouldn't trust to organize shit. That level of trust based on very carefully qualified success is generally misplaced in either case. But again, I'm not saying we should trust people who fail at those things as the other option. The bar must be carefully considered and raised.

 

[Einherjar86]

The Freud Wars just don't want to end...

https://aeon.co/essays/can-neuroscience-rehabilitate-freud-for-the-age-of-the-brain

Recovering or conserving the subjective viewpoint is an appealing notion, and its appeal reveals the sort of doublethink we have towards our era of the brain and the fMRI. Everyone’s attention is grabbed by talk of endorphins and serotonin-boosters and cooling that pesky fight-or-flight response. However, even when the evidence suggests that we want the total physiological control of Brave New World, it remains one of the most famous literary dystopias of our time. There is still horror in the idea of totally relegating our individual experience to the species-wide logic of physiology. Most of us, deep down, want our inner lives – our ideas about ourselves, our sense of where we want life to lead, what we fear, what we desire – to be of consequence. Psychoanalysis is attractive at least partly because it makes us rich, narrativised, and mysterious to ourselves. It makes life a novel, not a textbook.

Certainly, the project can become overheated, indulgent: to imagine that the depths of our being resembles the timeless turbulence of a Greek myth flatters us. To imagine that our dreams are loaded with meaning plays to our basic narcissism. (The same narcissism that makes us want to tell people all about them, and makes those that aren’t ours so reliably dull.) But there is a basic principle at play here, and it has to do with the feeling that no generalised theory can capture even a single living mind, let alone all of them. Rationalising ourselves offers a form of relief. No more vagueness; everything measurable and editable.

And yet, on some level, we don’t want to live our lives purely according to biochemistry, the same biochemistry as 7.5 billion others. What a flattening! In such an equation, something gets lost, even if we struggle to say what. Not for nothing does psychoanalysis survive most unscathed in the humanities. Freud’s work references Hamlet and Macbeth, and Goethe’s Faust. For a century, writers including H G Wells, Virginia Woolf, J G Ballard and Paul Auster have been compelled by his work. Like psychoanalysis, the humanities (and especially literature) privilege the richness of the individual life, and regard reality as populated by subjects rather than objects. Like psychoanalysis, the humanities are often framed as in decline, dwarfed by the technocratic bloodlessness of a scientistic age. There is a parallel pursuit for the two projects. Both are driven by the same instinct, that the stories we tell ourselves can affect how we live with ourselves.

 

[Dak]

I think it was interesting that the article had loads to say about Freud, including that psychoanalysis was only intended or expected to "change neurotic misery to common unhappiness", while giving nothing but a footnote to CBT (which is not a homogeneous suite of methods), which the author notes helped them tremendously.

Things like panic and phobias can be addressed with little to no introspection. Bipolar disorder or schizophrenia won't be solved with any amount of CBT or psychanalysis alone. Conversely, anxiety and depression, depending on the person/situation, may respond to a variety of treatment options (or not respond). Freud is most known for the things which have been summarily discarded, like psychosexual development and the Oedipal theory. Additionally, psychoanalysis is so iterative and dream analysis unfalsifiable, it doesn't lend itself to scientific analysis.