#MarchForScience open thread

[ssu]

ssu, unless I missed your point, you answered your own question. It's annoying when people who by my estimation are barely literate take up a "cause", a cause that I and other board members are involved in, as a vehicle to push their politics on everyone. Science doesn't give a fuck about the patriarchy, social justice, or colonialism. The cuts made were the results of politics, science is gonna keep on rolling regardless. Besides, the only people holding back science are these people, that want to force schools to accept kids that can't get in on merit alone. Furthermore, if they weren't such lunatics, Trump wouldn't have gotten into office in the first place to make those cuts. So yeah, fuck these guys.

And first and foremost, science a method! A systemized way to increase knowledge.

So I agree, it's annoying and basically condescending to portray an administration being against science, and protesting against the political leadership being "a defence of science". Cutting investment on government sponsored science programs or education in general is one thing, being against science would be something else.

Furthermore, the whole idea of science being under attack because of something like religious extremism basically happens in ISIS controlled territory. And perhaps not even there, as the so-called Caliph urged doctors, engineers and scientists to join the new state. Not even in theocratic Iran is science under siege, actually, there they just add to their scientific articles phrases of "praise to Allah" every here and there. Yet somehow if some religious people on a school council start favouring Creationism or spending is cut, somehow it's depicted as modern science is under a severe attack that might turn the time back in science. And guess what, it's the sitting Republican President who is at fault always. (Trump's not the first one.)

Anyway, seems like methods have become something more than they are. Just think about "The War against a method of warfare", which has come to define our time so much.

[Otern]

SJWs will never take over science, because science is not a party, or an ideology, or a community, but a method.

SJWs have, in recent times appropriated a lot of the image of science, but that does not make what they do a part of science.

Science is all about finding the objective truth, and most of the areas SJWs meddle in, is part of human morality, which have no objective truth.

Science is math, physics, chemistry, astrology, biology and geology.
Psychology has the potential to be closer to science pretty soon, but there's still a lot of hurdles to cross before it gets there.
Economics has still a way to go, but might get there some time after psychology.

Political science, sociology, philosophy, history, literature, and all the rest, is NOT science, but the people partaking in it, hang out at the same areas as real scientists, which makes them feel as "right" as the true scientists. But the sad thing is, these are the fields that get the most students, as they're damn simple. Read, read, read, repeat what you've read, get good grades. You don't need to understand anything, and whatever you need to understand, is simple.

Math is the root of all science, and the further a field strays away from math, the less science it is. If some pointdexter with degrees all over the place can't do a simple probability problem, he's not a scientist, and his opinion, no matter how well formulated, isn't worth much more than your average cab driver.

That's not to say the non-science fields aren't important. They're damn important, but they're not science, and the attempt to mash all education into the "science" bit, is damaging to science's reputation.

[heydaralon]

I hear a lot about the climate change stuff. In what other ways is Trump supposedly against science? Is this a thing where they lump in the Transgender shit in and call that science too?

[doc_loliday]

The climate change thing for example, is especially annoying because nobody ever talks about the mother fucking science. Talk to a random climate change believer, and it's just 98% percent of all climate scientists believe, or all climate scientists say , but if you press them, they have no source for these stats, and they can't argue why we're affecting the climate. And I should mention that I say this as someone that thinks it's reasonable to believe that we may be changing the planet's temperature. But when you get a bunch of self righteous zealots that have no clue what they're talking about, screaming at people about climate change, of course people are going to take the opposite position. It got Trump elected after all. Additionally proponents will never bring up funding issues, or lack thereof, that is, how researchers can't get grants if they aren't pushing the climate change agenda. This is has some really awful consequences too. It means that Exxon is going to fund the next study showing that climate change is bogus. People need to back off so we can get more data that can't be called into question. You probably saw this video, but Nye sounds like a lunatic. You're a scientist right? Use this platform to educate people, not chant dogma.

[TheReal_ND]

Carbon taxes are retarded. I've been meaning to type out the farmers almanac of current year. It was some sort of anniversary and in celebration they documented all the wild climate changes in America including chickens freezing in their tracks and children perishing on their way home from a great blue norther. They also include all the major publications headlines about climate change since their history. It started around the 70's and every five years not only could they not validate their claim that we would experience an ice age or heat wave they also got more ridiculous.

I'm going to type them all out in a new thread when I remember to bring the almanac home from work

[doc_loliday]

That's not to say the non-science fields aren't important. They're damn important, but they're not science, and the attempt to mash all education into the "science" bit, is damaging to science's reputation.

They don't actually believe this though. There is a reason why they find it imperative to infiltrate the hard sciences. They understand that mathematics, engineering, and computer science are the most challenging fields. Until they overrun those departments, they'll never be able to suppress the inner voice that tells them they aren't actually superior.

[ssu]

Economics has still a way to go, but might get there some time after psychology.

Political science, sociology, philosophy, history, literature, and all the rest, is NOT science, but the people partaking in it, hang out at the same areas as real scientists, which makes them feel as "right" as the true scientists.

Actually, historians and sociologists do use the scientific method. Historians can only use the most rudimentary thing: basically give a narration about events that followed each other. That still can be done following the scientific method. Which events you pick to follow is the subjective part that the historian has to choose (alongside the viewpoint).

And economics isn't at all anywhere further than the other endeavours, even if economics uses extensively math. Economics has failed miserably many times. That they (social sciences) cannot make themselves into physics isn't because the people in the field are less capable than the people researching physics, but simply because of the nature of the field of study.

The simple fact is that they are subjective and themselves affect on how human people make the choices. Hence they cannot, absolutely cannot, be like the objective natural sciences. Just look at the huge impact that economic theories have had in political and economic decision making itself. Far better would be to talk about political economy as in the 19th Century than to economics.

A simple thought experiment can explain this:

Assume you would have an economic theory that could explain and hence forcast economic phenomena as well as physics can forcast events in astronomy. Of course then people would use that theory when making economic decisions. Those decisions then would make up how the economy will develop. How then this economic theory would explain this? Because the theory itself said so? Circular reasoning that happens because of the subjective nature is simply a feature of economics itself. The subjectivity is also totally evident from that social sciences have their normative part (how things should be) and I presume that Otern above critisizes this normative aspect. How the World is, is very close to the question how it should be. It's an obvious and important question, of course.

But have you ever heard about normative physics? I haven't.

[Fife]

The climate change thing for example, is especially annoying because nobody ever talks about the mother fucking science. Talk to a random climate change believer, and it's just 98% percent of all climate scientists believe, or all climate scientists say , but if you press them, they have no source for these stats, and they can't argue why we're affecting the climate. And I should mention that I say this as someone that thinks it's reasonable to believe that we may be changing the planet's temperature. But when you get a bunch of self righteous zealots that have no clue what they're talking about, screaming at people about climate change, of course people are going to take the opposite position. It got Trump elected after all. Additionally proponents will never bring up funding issues, or lack thereof, that is, how researchers can't get grants if they aren't pushing the climate change agenda. This is has some really awful consequences too. It means that Exxon is going to fund the next study showing that climate change is bogus. People need to back off so we can get more data that can't be called into question. You probably saw this video, but Nye sounds like a lunatic. You're a scientist right? Use this platform to educate people, not chant dogma.

"Ancient Dinosaur Days." Kill your television.

[doc_loliday]

I don't have cable and I haven't watched a live broadcast in years. I get videos and catball pics the same way you do brother.

[doc_loliday]

So, I'm looking at the protest signs... Are they just all one liners? Do these people even take these things seriously? It's like twitter spilled out onto the street.