[guest post by JVW]
Today in fascinating Twitter threads. I’m attaching screen-shots to make this easier to read, but you can go here for the entire story.
It’s gratifying to know that people like The Science Femme exist.
– JVW
Pronounced "Patter-EE-koh"
E-mail: Just use my moniker Patterico, followed by the @ symbol, followed by gmail.com
Disclaimer: Simpsons avatar may resemble a younger Patterico...
The statements made on this web site reflect the personal opinions of the author. They are not made in any official capacity, and do not represent the opinions of the author's employer.
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Happy July. Halfway through this hellish year.
JVW (ee64e4) — 7/1/2020 @ 8:45 amThe part that I think is key is that Science Femme stood up to the woke nonsense and demanded that the various cliches repeated unthinkingly be debated and defended, and her colleagues who were otherwise just happy to go along with the woke flow decided to grow a spine and join her. I would hope that more closet conservative academics take her advice to volunteer for these committees and make their thoughts known. It’s the best way for pushing back on the herd mentality.
JVW (ee64e4) — 7/1/2020 @ 8:50 amhttps://wondermark.com/1k62/
Time123 (d1bf33) — 7/1/2020 @ 8:50 am“Appeal to the concept of treating everyone equally. This is the foundation of
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 7/1/2020 @ 8:59 amacademiaThe West, and it is in danger.”“The first step is to get involved. If your department or company is creating a committee to generate a statement in response to an event, be the first to volunteer.”
No, no, no, no, no.
If you’re female, or have tenure, or are weeks from retirement — maybe. For most, there is no surer path to getting fired or at least ostracized.
beer ‘n pretzels (1d265b) — 7/1/2020 @ 9:00 amHappy July. Halfway through this hellish year.
A while back I would have scoffed that “1968 was worse.” Now I’m not so sure.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 7/1/2020 @ 9:00 amA while back I would have scoffed that “1968 was worse.” Now I’m not so sure.
Well it’s the year in which my older sister was born, so you are probably right.
With apologies to our host, who was also born that year.
JVW (ee64e4) — 7/1/2020 @ 9:09 amBetter to be born then than to live through it. In the past, I’ve had to explain that. Now I don’t.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 7/1/2020 @ 9:19 amThis is the best thread here in a while. Thank you for posting it.
There are a lot of people out there unwilling to speak their un-racist minds because they are afraid of being ostracized, canceled or even uncool.
I posted this in another thread yesterday but it’s worth repeating, Black liberal John McWhorter at Reason on how this is a new religion and the zealots will not allow blasphemy:
Kneeling in the Church of Social Justice
“Because this is so very much a TWA [Third Wave Anti-Racism] moment and because its perspective has been creeping into the fabric of educated American society over several years, we are becoming desensitized to how ancillary to civic progress is this peculiar, furious, and fantastical indoctrination.
We seek sociopolitical change, yet we find on the vanguards a contingent who have founded a new religion. They insist hotly that they “really are right,” because racism is bad, isn’t it?
Indeed it is. But it is also bad for increasing numbers of Americans, out of fear for their social acceptance in wider society, pretend to subscribe to the semi-coherent tenets of an anti-empirical faith feigning higher wisdom with big words and manipulative phraseology.
They see themselves as the heirs of bygone heroes who would actually have been sickened by them. Progressive Americans’ task is not to learn charismatic but purposeless self-flagellational routines, but to fight injustices with sense and logic. Only TWA adherents think the two are the same.“
https://reason.com/2020/06/29/kneeling-in-the-church-of-social-justice/
harkin (5af287) — 7/1/2020 @ 9:45 am_
JVW: thank you for posting this. I too was heartened by this woman’s example. I do not think she is using a real name and affiliation. The Church of Woke is real.
Me, I keep my head down. Sure, I have tenure and will never, ever get promoted to full professor. But the Church can still come after you. Complete with mobs.
Sorry for being sad. Thanks again for posting this.
Simon Jester (5856df) — 7/1/2020 @ 10:16 amMe, I keep my head down. Sure, I have tenure and will never, ever get promoted to full professor. But the Church can still come after you. Complete with mobs.
Courage, Simon Jester: I’m sure there is still a role you can play behind the scenes, and I imagine that you are probably already doing so. I don’t blame anyone for not putting on the target vest the way that the Science Femme did in this case. As she acknowledges, you have to be well-prepared for the battle.
JVW (ee64e4) — 7/1/2020 @ 10:21 amI hope you’re well Simon. It is amazing how many good people feel the way you do.
Dustin (739c8b) — 7/1/2020 @ 10:21 amI’m assuming that this is college, probably not a liberal bastion, that it is in fact a hard-science department, and that she most likely has tenure (no matter how diplomatic, a non-tenured professor simply does not want to unnecessarily create enemies). I think the approach would probably be a disaster in a soft science department where certainly she would be quickly outnumbered…and overwhelmed with examples of white privilege….and systemic prejudice….that she would immediately be on the defensive….and have to…in essence….prove that she was not advantaged. Hard-science professors are not typically skilled in making that assault.
Let’s face it, most hard scientists have better things to do than engage in feel-good declarations that most rational people see right through. There can always be discrimination that could show up in grading and in office hour interactions but for the most part science-engineering-math itself is pretty objective….there’s no BSing your way through organic chemistry or general relativity. You can either do the memorization and high-level math….or not….
AJ_Liberty (ec7f74) — 7/1/2020 @ 10:45 am“You can either do the memorization and high-level math….or not….”
_ _
“ “On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness. Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as White,” Gutierrez argued.
Gutierrez also worries that algebra and geometry perpetuate privilege, fretting that “curricula emphasizing terms like Pythagorean theorem and pi perpetuate a perception that mathematics was largely developed by Greeks and other Europeans.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/its-not-just-a-joke-anymore-theyre-actually-claiming-math-is-racist
__ _
“ The Seattle Public Schools Ethnic Studies Advisory Committee (ESAC) released a rough draft of notes for its Math Ethnic Studies framework in late September, which attempts to connects math to a history of oppression.
The framework is broken into four different themes: “Origins, Identity, and Agency,” “Power and Oppression,” “History of Resistance and Liberation,” and “Reflection and Action.”
The committee suggests that math is subjective and racist, saying under one section, “Who gets to say if an answer is right,” and under another, “how is math manipulated to allow inequality and oppression to persist?”
https://dailycaller.com/2019/10/21/seattle-schools-math-is-racist/
harkin (5af287) — 7/1/2020 @ 11:14 am_
You can either do the memorization and high-level math….or not….
Except, there’s a real world, and that’s not how it works there.
A STEM department, or tech company, spends quite a bit of time these days trying to explain why there are certain groups underrepresented in their ranks. And, the reasons they come up with are the usual, of the self flagellation variety. Those reasons have very little to do with “can” or “can not”. Woe be to those who fight that narrative.
beer ‘n pretzels (55a824) — 7/1/2020 @ 11:42 amA while back I would have scoffed that “1968 was worse.” Now I’m not so sure.
It was.
“We got millions of telegrams after we landed, but the one I remember most was, ‘Congratulations to the crew of Apollo 8. You saved 1968.’- Frank Borman, Commander, Apollo 8, December 21-27, 1968
DCSCA (797bc0) — 7/1/2020 @ 12:18 pmThank you, JVW and Dustin, for the kind words. I have to be VERY careful, and some students have started little campaigns about me because of what I do NOT say. But I just continue to support everyone as best I can. That’s all I have.
Currently, folks on Twitter wonder if the person responsible for the thread is a troll or a real person. If she is real, I hope she keeps her head down.
It really is crazy out here.
But I do want to add that *many* students gingerly agree with my attitude. They just can’t say so. And I think it is going to get FAR worse before it gets better.
Best wishes to all.
Simon Jester (c8876d) — 7/1/2020 @ 12:37 pmP.S.: the scientist in question has this as her “pinned Tweet.”
I hope that worked.
Isn’t it sad those are controversial positions?
Simon Jester (c8876d) — 7/1/2020 @ 12:39 pmExcellent post, JVW… thanks!
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 7/1/2020 @ 12:52 pmAs a matter of science, her Point 5 (“There is an objective reality…”) has been known – based on the scientific method she touts in her point 7 – to be false for 100 years or more.
In nearly all cases, we are well-justified in behaving as if there is an objective reality, despite the fact that there isn’t, but it’s not as simple as she tries to suggest. Objective reality is nothing more than a convenient fiction.
Dave (1bb933) — 7/1/2020 @ 1:02 pmThe media could be informing the public to make rational decisions, especially when political machines are destroying urban communities and a good slice of the public is forming into lawless mobs.
Instead they pour gas on them while pointing at the rational as the arsonists.
__ _
jerylbier
@JerylBier
Via @NYTimes:
“Throughout human history, three caste systems have stood out.”
India, Nazi Germany, United States
__ _
Truth Over Team
@TruthOverTeam
So this is what a dying paper looks like
__ _
MrStrawberries
@GrahamLowell1
but remember:
NYTimes Opinion:
Don’t Cancel That Newspaper Subscription
“News organizations make mistakes. But shunning them will only hasten the death of journalism itself.“
__ _
The NYT’s journalism is dead, putting the zombie on life support is not the answer.
harkin (f58543) — 7/1/2020 @ 1:09 pm_
can you make science conform to an ideological standard, like with lysenko in the soviet union, on conrad stark, the talented physicists who insisted on aryan science, and we saw the shortfall in that, in volpi’s in search of klingsor, have they brought back the baseline standards, which imposed a false historical narrative re the source of western civilization,s
narciso (7404b5) — 7/1/2020 @ 1:10 pm20. Good to know you’re denying the very existence of objective reality. The next time someone lights into me for my CoViD-19 skepticism, I’m sure you’ll step in to defend me in a manner somewhat along the lines of, “Now, now. We can all agree to disagree.”
Gryph (08c844) — 7/1/2020 @ 1:11 pm22. Science is not ideological when done properly. When not done properly, it is pseudoscience masquerading as the scientific method.
Gryph (08c844) — 7/1/2020 @ 1:12 pmEgalitarians annoy me more than outright collectivists. At least collectivists admit that there are people qualified to be in the Inner Party, others in the Outer Party, and others born to be Proles.
nk (1d9030) — 7/1/2020 @ 1:19 pmwhen he splits atoms with his mind, that’s the result,
narciso (7404b5) — 7/1/2020 @ 1:21 pmThe design and operation of your cellphones, computers, DVD players, GPS, MRIs, etc all rely on it’s non-existence, in one way or another.
Nope.
Dave (1bb933) — 7/1/2020 @ 1:31 pmHarkin, what is chattel slavery if not a caste system?
Dave (1bb933) — 7/1/2020 @ 1:33 pmwhat is chattel slavery if not a caste system?
Maybe the issue is not whether it’s a caste system, but whether it’s among the three that “stood out” throughout human history.
That would be ridiculous even if human history started in 1619.
beer ‘n pretzels (906ea1) — 7/1/2020 @ 1:44 pmthat was 150 years ago,
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/07/harvard-ends-policy-that-penalized-students-for-belonging-to-single-sex-clubs/
narciso (7404b5) — 7/1/2020 @ 1:45 pmYour point is well taken, But, are you aware of the irony of this statement? Clue: It is a statement of faith not science.
Much like our perception of reality being entirely at the mercy of (at least) chemistry, our ability to define and prove an objective reality is at the mercy of mathematics, which is the workhorse of the scientific process, and in turn is, itself, a convenient fiction.
TL/DU; There is no truth, including this statement.
felipe (023cc9) — 7/1/2020 @ 1:50 pmRome: Patricians, plebeians, equites, nobiles, novi homo, proletarii, freedmen, slaves, foreigners.
nk (1d9030) — 7/1/2020 @ 1:52 pmwe’ve gone full fizbin
narciso (7404b5) — 7/1/2020 @ 1:52 pmnk (1d9030) — 7/1/2020 @ 1:52 pm
I lend you my ear.
felipe (023cc9) — 7/1/2020 @ 2:01 pmnarciso (7404b5) — 7/1/2020 @ 1:52 pm You are not wrong, narciso, never go “full fizbin.”
felipe (023cc9) — 7/1/2020 @ 2:02 pm27. Actually, the design of all technology depends on the predictability of the behavior of its component parts, hence “objective reality.” If all reality was subjective, there would be no way to know how those parts would react to the inputs we use on them.
“Diamond is a hard substance” is a subjective statement, but “There are no substances on earth harder than diamond” is a provable fact which just so happens to be true.
Gryph (08c844) — 7/1/2020 @ 2:18 pmWhen she says there is objective reality, she’s not talking about electrons, but sociology.
I think she doesn’t take issue enough with some people. They could interpret away the claim that people should not be judged on immutable characteristics. It needs something more. Examples.
I don’t know what she means by the scientific method. But requiring that at at any given moment, everybody agree on the facts, and not allowing statements to be made because of peer review is not the way to the truth. Had peer review existed in 1905 in German language publications, I don’t think Albert Einstein would have been able to get his theory of relativity published.
https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/09/26/the-rise-of-peer-review-melinda-baldwin-on-the-history-of-refereeing-at-scientific-journals-and-funding-bodies
Peer review does not prevent error; it preserves it, and makes sure that progress comes in tiny incremental steps, and does not nothing to screen out outright fraud. Nobody checks claims in a study it against the real world; sometimes they were quite impossible to do.
Liars and quacks are quick to claim that what they say is science (Because Science = infallible) Karl Marx claimed that he wrote was “scientific socialism.”
Science, with a capital “S”, is organized groupthink.
Sammy Finkelman (70b0bc) — 7/1/2020 @ 2:19 pmI don’t think so.
As far as science is concerned, math is a tool or language, and all that is necessary is that it proves useful. It does, so I need ask nothing more of it.
Science itself is based on the tentative, disprovable assumption that there are natural laws (or regularities) that we can learn by observing nature. Many such laws are, in fact, apparent, which justifies the starting assumption.
The statement that there is no objective reality does not mean there are no natural laws. It means there is no objective “state of the world” that exists independently of our observations.
Experiments have shown that measurement, at the most fundamental level, is a subjective act.
Dave (1bb933) — 7/1/2020 @ 2:20 pmLOL
Dustin (739c8b) — 7/1/2020 @ 2:23 pmExperiments have shown that measurement, at the most fundamental level, is a subjective act.
Dave (1bb933) — 7/1/2020 @ 2:20 pm
Absolutely agreed. But it does not follow that an unknown quantity does not objectively exist. Reality does not require our observation, we do.
felipe (023cc9) — 7/1/2020 @ 2:26 pmThat seems like a matter of perspective, which would be colored (for lack of a better term) by being descended from the enslaved group.
Even as a white person, the southern slave system, and its toxic legacy, has affected my life much more directly than anything that happened in India, Nazi Germany or Ancient Rome.
Dave (1bb933) — 7/1/2020 @ 2:30 pmAbout math: The people criticizing it are not more correct, but some of what is taught is wrong.
The classical proof, attributed to Pythagoras, of the irrationality of the square root of two has been undermined by modern physics: The square root of two is not a real number; rather, it does not exist. It is no more possible to get the square root of two than to divide by zero.
And there is no such thing as a perfect circle. If there was such a thing as a circle, and you could somehow straighten out its perimeter, then Pi would be the number the diameter would need to be multiplied by to get the length of the circumference. But there is no such thing as a circle, and neither is there any such thing as a straight line. There are approximations, but there is a limit.
Sammy Finkelman (70b0bc) — 7/1/2020 @ 2:30 pmDustin (739c8b) — 7/1/2020 @ 2:23 pm
Thanks, I’m glad you liked it!
felipe (023cc9) — 7/1/2020 @ 2:35 pmI don;t think the proponents that there is such a thing as “white privilege” will quickly recognize that they themselves have privilege. The ones who don’t are the “undocumented” And the longer people live in the United States with such a status, the more immigration status resembles a caste system.
Sammy Finkelman (70b0bc) — 7/1/2020 @ 2:36 pmThe anti-police people use misleading, even if sometimes true, statistics. Like that the safest communities have the least police.
It is also true that in the safest communities people do not lock their doors. Does it therefore follow, that if all people were not to lock their doors, they would be safer?
Sammy Finkelman (70b0bc) — 7/1/2020 @ 2:39 pmA scientific hypothesis needs only to be testable in principle. That, for now, we lack the resources to carry out the experiment does not make it unscientific. There is no reason, in principle, to stop trying to find or make a substance harder than diamond, even it it takes until Judgment Day.
I don’t consider Wigner’s thought experiment to meet that standard — testable in principle — but what do I know? I am only a dream of the Nameless.
nk (1d9030) — 7/1/2020 @ 2:39 pmThat is not to say that getting involved in other activities can steer people away from a life of crime. But other activities are not just the ones they like. I remember there was some kind of study years ago of a cohort in Philadelphia, that showed that students who dropped out of high school! had less of a chance of winding up in jail than those who did not, provided that they got a job.
This of course was from certain very bad schools.
Sammy Finkelman (70b0bc) — 7/1/2020 @ 2:44 pmThat was Einstein’s view. But he was mistaken.
The technical term for what you suggest is a “local hidden variable” theory. Local hidden variable theories make testable predictions which differ, in some cases, from those of quantum mechanics.
The predictions have been tested in experiments. The predictions of quantum mechanics agree with experiments and the predictions of hidden variable theories do not.
Dave (1bb933) — 7/1/2020 @ 2:44 pmnk (1d9030) — 7/1/2020 @ 2:39 pm
This is 2020. I think they succeeded already, more thana decade ago
https://phys.org/news/2009-02-scientists-material-harder-diamond.html
Now that may have been theoretical.
But in 2016:
https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-made-a-rare-diamond-that-s-harder-than-jeweller-s-diamond
ND BY 2017:
https://theconversation.com/new-form-of-carbon-discovered-that-is-harder-than-diamond-but-flexible-as-rubber-79879
Maybe still not practical.
Sammy Finkelman (70b0bc) — 7/1/2020 @ 2:54 pmThis doesn’t explain it very well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_test_experiments
But I had an idea: what if time has a limited amount of thickness? How would that affect this?
Sammy Finkelman (70b0bc) — 7/1/2020 @ 2:57 pmMaybe this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-s3q9wlLag
Sammy Finkelman (70b0bc) — 7/1/2020 @ 3:00 pmTwo things:
A reason an “irrational” number is irrational, is because the formulation of number theory that defines it is inadequate for its existence. Much like the system of whole numbers could not define zero. We need an adequate system for that; the system of integers. Likewise, imaginary numbers are numbers that the integer system could not pin down until a more powerful system was found.
Which brings us to the second thing. At some critical point, mathematics steps on its own feet. Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorem posits that (forgive me if I lose some of the subtleties):
This speaks, of course to logic, but is not the question of Certain numbers being even, or odd, undecidable? As we get further and further out unto the frontier of our understanding, the inadequacies of the contrivance we call math, becomes more and more apparent.
felipe (023cc9) — 7/1/2020 @ 3:08 pmFollow-up video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zfnvGXpy-g
Not really good.
The point is averages.
This book is good:
https://www.amazon.com/Where-Does-Weirdness-Go-Mechanics/dp/0465067867
Sammy Finkelman (70b0bc) — 7/1/2020 @ 3:10 pmnk (1d9030) — 7/1/2020 @ 2:39 pm
I hear ya, man. I’ll believe in Love as soon as they design a scientific experiment that proves it.
felipe (023cc9) — 7/1/2020 @ 3:10 pm52. I’ll tell you what I think Godel’s theorem really means:
The axioms can cover different situations, in some of which something may be true and in some of which the question you are interested in is not true.
Sammy Finkelman (70b0bc) — 7/1/2020 @ 3:14 pmRemember this the next time one of the mooks link a NYT fable…
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/cancelmountrushmore
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 7/1/2020 @ 3:18 pmDave (1bb933) — 7/1/2020 @ 2:44 pm
Quite right. That is the thing about theories; they are not laws.
felipe (023cc9) — 7/1/2020 @ 3:36 pm