The shiny
Some brief points, since apparently the shiny distracts people.
1) This is not the 60s and 70s. This is not then. Repeat after me, “this is not the 60s”. The US then was much richer and fundamentally much stronger and more prosperous. There were many complaints behind the Arab spring, but at bottom people were willing to put themselves on the line for one reason: food prices. Food prices for the laboring class.
2) When Americans can’t afford to eat, they’ll either starve or revolt. And yes, you are going to get there. Barring an unlikely turnaround of current long term trends, you will eventually be forced to choose: to live or die on your bellies, like worms; or to fight and in many cases, die, on your feet.
3) You’re not the only country in the world, and I am not writing just about or for you.
4) When you deny the legitimacy of people fighting for their rights, we’re not on the same side (that’s fine, just noting it). That is true if you deny the rebels in India, the Palestinians, the Syrians or the Libyans. Or Americans, for that matter.
5) Everything is about trade-offs. People are dying right now because of the way the world and specific countries are being run. People get distracted by explosions and words like violence, me, I look at the people dying for lack of health care, food and housing. The people who commit suicide because of the financial downturn. The wives and children being beaten because their husband or father cracked under financial stress that needn’t exist. The trillions spent on bankers and wars which could have been used to make people lives better, healthier, and yes, save lives. Westerners are already dying. You’re already dying. You’re already being killed. You or your friends or loved ones already don’t have jobs because of the oligarchy. And you means Americans, Europeans, Arabs, Afghanis, and on and on.
Any moral calculus has to take into account the people already suffering, the people already dying. Every year it goes on, the list of dead and walking wounded grows. It is not a question of violence vs. non-violence. The damage, the violence, is already being done. And everyone who cries for incrementalism must understand that every year adds to the list. “Try everything else first” condemns those people to die. The longer we don’t fix our problems, don’t fix our elite, the more people die. If 10X as many died in a revolution as the yearly burn rate (which is going up), would that be more than have died, will die, while we sit on our thumbs and rotate?
But my best guess is this. The US will get a revolution, and it will come from the right. I’m not even particularly concerned about it at this point. The US is as close as a country gets to a write-off, because that’s what Americans want (for example, a majority not wanting to raise the debt ceiling) and a culture with majority approval for torture isn’t high on my triage list. Sure, it’d be nice to save America, plenty of good Americans, but the culture is now beyond corrupt and into evil. The question is whether everyone else goes down with America. So far everyone else (except Iceland) seems to be chaining themselves to the Titanic.
So be it. Plenty of folks knew WWII was coming and couldn’t stop it. Sometimes what will be will just be, not because it couldn’t be stopped, but because people just refuse to do what it takes. And there is nothing Westerners won’t do, no trouble or expense in blood or gold, to not solve a problem.
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Similarly, I don’t think that it’s a persuasive argument to tell someone that they’re evil or have arrested moral development.
I would not attempt to have such an argument. Words and argument are not always sufficient for convincing someone because not everything is reducible to a rational argument. Much of what we know and believe comes only through experience, for example. Empathy is better taught through personal experience or through direct personal observation. I’m not sure that a rational argument for empathy can be made that will be as well learned and understood as through experience.
Note: I broke up my reply into several small replies rather than a long one. This passed the 100 comments threshold that breaks up replies into two groups (or more?). WordPress appears to have an error that labels the link to earlier comments as “Newer Comments” and the link to more recent comments as “Older Comments.”
Anon2525:
I am comparing a segment of the u.s., not the (entire) u.s. A segment of the adult population of the u.s. is in a state of arrested moral development. A segment is and so that segment may be compared with the rest of the population.
Then my bad; I misunderstood.
But even there–polls give the percentage of hard-core righties to about 20 %. of the adult population in the US. That’s a lot, maybe but hardly enough to win elections. (The number of hard-core lefties lags only slightly behind, at 15 %.) Everyone else is in the middle or confused or not watching closely. I don’t have the numbers for the rest of the developed world, but looking at the 2009 elections far-right parties captured 14-17 % of the vote in places like Austria and the Nethlerlands, which is not too far behind the US percentage. That would make the breakdown of US political not terribly different than the rest of the developed world.
And that makes sense, in a way. In 1960 the US had one of the most equatable distributions of income and wealth in the world. Now it’s possibly the most unequal of the developed world.
So why is that 20 % so powerful in the US and less so in Europe? It all boils down to structural differences: our winner-take-all electoral system, our lack of any real restraint on essentially bribing government officials, our corporate-controlled media and lack of any public media free from that control (like the BBC) that hardly ever allows a lefty near a microphone. The fact that the public by and large continues to support the retention and even the expansion of progressive programs like Medicare and Social Security and despises the banksters bailout (like Ian said, calls ran against it 1200:1) matters little in the actual exercise of power in this country.
That’s not arrested moral development, but a gamed political system where the Right nearly always gets its way even when its proposals are wildly unpopular. A “heads I win, tails you lose” proposition. The fact that the Democrats pose as the opposition party but prove all-to-ready to enact the conservative agenda as well (Obamacare, anyone?) means that even when the Right seems to lose, they don’t.
StewartM
By the morality of anyone who claims to be Christian, including the Christian right, the Christian right are both hypocritical and immoral–by their own principles of morality. It is not because they follow their principles, but because they do not follow them that makes them right-wing.
Because Christian morality is not dependent on empirical validation, you can’t say that. The Christian Right doesn’t follow Christian principles as *you* might see them, nor I, but from their perspective they’re internally consistent. All Christian denominations pick and choose from their holy texts which tenants they will highlight and follow and which ones they will ignore or try to explain away. That’s just as true as the liberal denominations as of the rightist ones, and it’s also not just a problem with Christianity, but all the other mainstream religions.
Related to this, that’s another key divide between Left and Right mindsets. The Left, as I said in a previous post, traces its lineage back to the Enlightenment, and the belief that bringing the scientific perspective and method to an examination of human social and political problems can enable us to improve our societies or to devise better ones. Our manner of thinking is empirical and to a large extent inductive (though not exclusively so on the latter). Our morality therefore is based on an examination of the consequences of our actions (with the caveat of the importance of *long-term* consequences; as there are many actions with short-term benefits that have very bad long-term negatives). Th argument of the left, like that of science, is fundamentally democratic; show us the data, and you win the argument, no matter who you are.
The Right? Fundamentalist and deductive. This is most evident when it comes to the Christian Right, but less spoken of is the “economic fundamentalism” of the Right. I’ve had arguments with Ayn Rand types, who, even when pushed to considering if their free-market system were to bring economic ruin to the the lives of most people, would still support it because it’s “just morally wrong” to tax the John Galts. The morality of the Right is a morality by fiat, by diktat. It’s an absolutist, dictatorial approach, and the people at the top of the social pyramid typically get to define what those diktats are. It wins adherents not by the power of its reason or evidence, but because of the power of propaganda and power relations–most people get indoctrinated from an early age into this “morality” and then later in life one must pretend to agree with it or be punished in some fashion.
This again is why we shouldn’t argue that torture is “just wrong”, like Maddow, by fiat. For one thing, that’s contrary to our intellectual tradition, and two, we don’t have the power to propagandize and coerce people into our belief systems. Nor do most of us want to.
StewartM
But even there–polls give the percentage of hard-core righties to about 20 %.
Yes, I made this point in an earlier comment. But now you’ll need to make some connection to Ian Welsh’s original point, which is that a poll had a result that over 55% of the (u.s.) respondents supported the use of torture. His conclusion from that result is that the u.s. population is “evil.” You then appeared to me to say that such a conclusion could not be drawn because it was “not scientific and moralizing.” Now, after a long, meandering walk, where are you? That 20% of the population is “evil”? That there is no such thing as “evil”? Or somewhere else?
Because Christian morality is not dependent on empirical validation, you can’t say that. The Christian Right doesn’t follow Christian principles as *you* might see them, nor I, but from their perspective they’re internally consistent.
Of course we can say that. The saying that “people are entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts” is true. All that is need is a a concrete (actual, not hypothetical) example. Otherwise, the discussion goes on endlessly with more and more conditions added.
All Christian denominations pick and choose from their holy texts which tenants they will highlight and follow and which ones they will ignore or try to explain away. That’s just as true as the liberal denominations as of the rightist ones, and it’s also not just a problem with Christianity, but all the other mainstream religions.
Yes, but you did not say “all religions” in your argument. You said the “Christian right.”
Th argument of the left, like that of science, is fundamentally democratic; show us the data, and you win the argument, no matter who you are.
With regard to science, this gets cause and effect mixed up. For example, scientists do not make the claim that the use of fossil fuels is causing the earth’s atmosphere to get hotter because most scientists think that that claim is true. On the contrary, most scientists think that it is true because that is what has been measured. In other words, the measurements shape what is believed to be true by the majority–the measurements shape the majority view. Voting has no place is deciding, that is, science is not democratic.
This again is why we shouldn’t argue that torture is “just wrong”, like Maddow, by fiat.
It would have been better if Maddow had said that it is wrong because they have a right as a human being not to be tortured.
Do you have a right to your life? Is that “just right”? Does someone standing on the bus behind you have the right to stab you in the back with a large knife? Would that be “just wrong”? If someone attacks you, do you have the right to defend yourself? If someone attempts to enslave you, do you have the right to resist? Does someone have the right to sell you or your spouse or children? Is that “just right” or “just wrong”?
Why does any of this have to rely on empirical data?
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Article 1. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. …
How is this measured? What are the facts?
Article 4. No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
Article 5. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Now, after a long, meandering walk, where are you? That 20% of the population is “evil”? That there is no such thing as “evil”? Or somewhere else?
I have consistently said that most of those supporters are not evil, but are deluded by propaganda. Even most of the 20 % hard-righties are.
I’ve also said that the support for torture by the US is not as great as the polls indicate, because “torture by us, the ‘good guys'” via Fox News is reported as “making obviously guilty ‘terroritsts’ mildly uncomfortable” instead of the reality of “subjecting often innocent people to terrifying and potentially life-threatening procedures”. I believe that support would evaporate if most Americans knew that truth.
StewartM
Of course we can say that. The saying that “people are entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts” is true. All that is need is a a concrete (actual, not hypothetical) example. Otherwise, the discussion goes on endlessly with more and more conditions added.
What? Religions have to hew to empirical evidence? How does one empirically validate the Resurrection? Nirvana? Heaven? Hell? Reincarnation? Gods and demons?
No, religion does not have to follow the rules of empirical evidence. The religious mindset across cultures is that the physical reality we interact with is but a backdrop where a host of otherworldly beings or forces act. Physical reality and “facts” are of less importance, even a distraction or illusion, to what is “really going on” in that otherworldly or metaphysical existence.
So not only does religion not need to hew to empirical evidence, the a central purpose of religious thinking is to *discount* the importance of empirical evidence and physical reality. I think it’s no coincidence that the rise of religious influence on the political Right coincides with the habit of conservative operatives like to invent “dirt” on liberal politicians and movements out of whole cloth when none exists. To someone like James O’Keefe, ACORN really had to be up to no good even though his stealth videos did not show it. (Reading up on O’Keefe, it seems he is enamored of G. K. Chesterton’s staunch Christian apologetics and anti-scientific perspective…hmmm).
That rise is alarming, because brutality is nearly always justified by mystified explanations rather than commonsense and mundane ones. As Voltaire said, “When we believe in absurdities, we will commit atrocities”.
StewartM
With regard to science, this gets cause and effect mixed up. For example, scientists do not make the claim that the use of fossil fuels is causing the earth’s atmosphere to get hotter because most scientists think that that claim is true. On the contrary, most scientists think that it is true because that is what has been measured. In other words, the measurements shape what is believed to be true by the majority–the measurements shape the majority view. Voting has no place is deciding, that is, science is not democratic.
But anyone can do the measurements. Anyone can propose a new hypothesis. Appeals to authority are not valid. Persuasion rather than coercion is the way that any new theory wins acceptance. And while there is no voting, there is consenus.
That sounds pretty democratic to me, in the tradition of hunter-gatherers.
StewartM
anon2525:
It would have been better if Maddow had said that it is wrong because they have a right as a human being not to be tortured.
Do you have a right to your life? Is that “just right”? Does someone standing on the bus behind you have the right to stab you in the back with a large knife? Would that be “just wrong”? If someone attacks you, do you have the right to defend yourself? If someone attempts to enslave you, do you have the right to resist? Does someone have the right to sell you or your spouse or children? Is that “just right” or “just wrong”?
I don’t do metaphysics. Practically speaking, I only have the rights that we grant each other in this society.
And what’s so special about humans? We’re just the third chimp species. Pray tell, what inalienable rights should bonobos and common chimps and gorillas have? Do they likewise have a right to life? We don’t observe any for them, nor anywhere else in nature.
Now, I can make arguments that I think human societies function better; that people live longer, happier, existences; that human societies are more prosperous, and a lot of other positive outcomes are observed when certain rights are granted. That’s an empirical argument. But I ‘m not going to speculate what what rights humans “should” have.
StewartM
I’ve also said that the support for torture by the US is not as great as the polls indicate, because “torture by us, the ‘good guys’” via Fox News is reported as “making obviously guilty ‘terroritsts’ mildly uncomfortable” instead of the reality of “subjecting often innocent people to terrifying and potentially life-threatening procedures”.
You would be unscientific in saying it. Ian Welsh cited a poll result. My view is that a poll result is not sufficient to decide what people think. 1) The poll, as cited, was badly worded–leading, and 2) a single poll result is not enough to decide. Ian Welsh drew conclusions from one poll result, and you are drawing conclusions from zero polls. Truthiness personified. “Who needs data when one can consult one’s gut?”
I think that is possible that a significant percentage do support the use of torture on suspects, but we cannot know yet because we do not have the data. And it is completely possible that it would not be a significant percentage. In other words, I am not relying on my gut to tell me. Measure it, and find out.
Persuasion rather than coercion is the way that any new theory wins acceptance.
Data coerces, reality coerces. Theories do not get accepted because they persuade; they get accepted because they match the data. Plenty of theories get offered because the idea was persuasive to the originator (“Such a beautiful theory! I must be right!”), but they get discarded because they did not match reality. The way of progress is that a theory is thought of that ultimately matches the known data, and it is published. Scientists then either accept the theory or they don’t. Many don’t and die not accepting it. (Before they die, they might propose alternative theories, and either these alternatives provide a better match to the data, or they don’t and these alternative theories die, too.) It is all coercion of the scientists’ minds to the new way of thinking. This is easier for younger scientists because they are coercing their minds to all sorts of explanations that they have not learned yet.
I don’t do metaphysics. Practically speaking, I only have the rights that we grant each other in this society.
You don’t know whether you have a right to your own life? Or whether someone else has the right to take it from you? Or whether you have the right to self defense?
OK, then.
Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann had a similar conversation of about “Why torture is wrong”. Maddow took your position–that torture should just be considered wrong and evil, period, as a moral absolute. Keith took the argument I would tend to take–that torture produces bogus and unreliable information, that mistreatment of captives causes your adversaries to resist you harder, that it’s counterproductive to your own side’s morale, that it ruins your reputation, among others. That it’s not only hideous morality, but bad policy.
Here is Olbermann making the argument again this past week at his new location, but this time regarding the nomination of Petraeus to the cia (no doubt to keep him out of the running as a republ candidate opposing obama — “Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies closer.”):
link
anon2525:
No, I posted a link earlier to the historical record on the polling on this during the Bush and Obama years. The poll Ian supports is the one taken after Bin Laden’s death, after a very loud contingent that was given a lot of air time insisted very publically that torture produced information that led to Bin Laden’s demise.
Sure, you think, the media reporting has some effect?
Or by simply knowing people. People I know who advocate cruelty in the abstract usually back away from it when confronted with the close-up view. Or, as some have said, if most had to kill their own livestock, there’d be a lot more vegetarians.
The problem is not that the American people have “gone bad”, it’s with a sociopathic and lying political and economic leadership and a media that’s either craven or complicit, or both.
The problem is, most polls are very limited in what they really measure.
StewartM
anon2525:
Uh, no. Data doesn’t “coerce” squat.
Hypothesis are floated to explain the data. However, usually more than one explanation for the data is possible. When proposing a hypothesis, one also tries to conceive of ways to “test” for it–though you really can’t test to confirm it, you can only test to falsify it, to knock it down. (Which is the great thing about science when compared to, say, our political discourse–could you image what it would be like if the scientific approach were actually applied to that and if proponents were forced to subject their policies to “tests” under which they themselves would be forced to admit failure if met? Reaganomics would have lasted less than four years if so, instead of being the dominant political economy).
A particularly long-lived hypothesis that survives a number of such knock-down attempts becomes the widely accepted explanation, the theory. But that does not mean that alternative explanations that explain the data aren’t still viable. Theory is theory because other scientists have been persuaded to accept it, not because the facts coerced it. In cosmology, today, there are scientists who do not accept the Big Bang Theory and who insist that they can explain all the data with either plasma or modified steady-state theory. And they may be right–after all, Newton’s hypothesis of light as particles lost out originally to Huygens’s wave explanation only to make a comeback in the 20th century. There’s certainly merit to their objection that the Big Bang theory has needed frequent patches and even inventions of new concepts (like “dark energy”) to explain the data. That’s getting uncomfortably close to the epicycle-piled-upon-epicycle patches that were used to explain Ptolemy’s solar system.
At the university I attended long ago, there was a newsletter in the physics department, dedicated to explaining the solar system using Ptolemy’s model instead of Copernicus’s. The students had great fun devising hypotheses that would explain all the then current data using Ptolemy’s model. Yes, it was a joke, but it illustrates a point that many scholars of science have pointed out: that while the acceptance of a hypothesis depends on it explaining the data, other factors–personal, cultural, aesthetic, and others—also play a role, especially as there will always be competing explanations. Starting with the very basic point that humans tend to prefer simple explanations of the data better than complex ones (parsimony). Yet there is nothing inherent in the nature of the universe that would mandate that the simplest explanation is the best.
-StewartM
A “right” existing somewhere out in the aether, a Platonic abstraction? Yep, I sure do. The reality is that I only enjoy what rights I am given by the society in which I live, including my “right” to live. To maintain otherwise is a form of wishful thinking, akin to the arguments made by income tax protesters that the Constitution gives the government no right to tax them. But it does.
So a “right to life”? We deny people’s “right” to life all the time. We call these denials “executions”.
Personally, I wished we had a great many more rights than we currently have–like voting. Voting’s not any inalienable right in the US at all, but one routinely denied. Me, I think that it should. Not only should released felons be able to vote, but incarcerated ones. But the simple deplorable fact is that we don’t.
-StewartM
Uh, no. Data doesn’t “coerce” squat.
Uh, yes, it does. Science is empirical, not political.
Theory is theory because other scientists have been persuaded to accept it, not because the facts coerced it.
So, an explanation matches the data because of a popularity poll? According to your view, the explanation does not have to match the facts, it only has to persuade some humans. This is nonsense.
Put another way, if there is a “theory” that one thousand “scientists” accept, but which contradicts the data, and there is another “theory” that only one “scientist” accepts, but which matches the data, which “theory” is scientific? Only the one that matches the data. And we don’t need any history or anecdotes to know this. It is the definition of science.
And they may be right–after all, Newton’s hypothesis of light as particles lost out originally to Huygens’s wave explanation only to make a comeback in the 20th century.
Your example does not help your argument. As more data became available from new experiments and measurements, the theory of the nature of light changed, that is, the data coerced the theory.
In cosmology, today, there are scientists who do not accept the Big Bang Theory and who insist that they can explain all the data with either plasma or modified steady-state theory. And they may be right–after all,
…There’s certainly merit to their objection that the Big Bang theory has needed frequent patches and even inventions of new concepts (like “dark energy”) to explain the data.
Without judging the two theories, there are three possibilities:
1) Steady-state is a better explanation than big bang (A > B)
2) Big bang is a better explanation than steady state (B > A)
3) the underlying theories are equivalent (A = B)
If it is the third possibility, and neither has been falsified by the data, then both explanations need to be taught until some data is measured that one (or both) of the explanations cannot account for. Neither is “the” theory because more scientists favor it. Until some measured data comes along that coerces, persuasion and popularity cannot decide it.
If it is not the third possibility, then one of the two theories will explain some data that the other will not. One of them will be contradicted by the data, that is, it will not have been coerced into matching the data. That theory will be relegated to “nice try,” while the other will become the best approximation of the known data. Later, more data may come along that requires explanation that “overturns” the previous best approximation. And thus will science progress.
At the university I attended long ago, there was a newsletter in the physics department, dedicated to explaining the solar system using Ptolemy’s model instead of Copernicus’s. The students had great fun devising hypotheses that would explain all the then current data using Ptolemy’s model. Yes, it was a joke, but it illustrates a point that many scholars of science have pointed out: that while the acceptance of a hypothesis depends on it explaining the data, other factors–personal, cultural, aesthetic, and others—also play a role, especially as there will always be competing explanations. Starting with the very basic point that humans tend to prefer simple explanations of the data better than complex ones (parsimony). Yet there is nothing inherent in the nature of the universe that would mandate that the simplest explanation is the best.
Scientists are free to use either one, so long as the theory does not contradict the data (data coerces). One explanation is preferred because it makes it easier to make predictions. Both give the same prediction (“The moon will be full on June 30”), but one theory makes it easier to make calculate that date.
Nothing in your example supports the argument that science progresses by persuading scientists. It progresses by coming up with explanations that match the data. Without that condition, you have a human activity that is not science.
Sorry, but that’s not the way science is actually practiced. One, usually there are multiple explanations for the data. What is defined and taught as science *is* the broad consensus, but that doesn’t mean that there are holdouts. Nor does it mean that the holdouts are “unscientific” or wrong.
Yet another example: the origins of birds. Originally, Thomas Huxley posited birds as having evolved from theropod dinosaurs. Then Gerhard Heilmann came along in the 1920s and convinced most that no, dinosaurs evolved from an unrelated archosaurian ancestor, distinct from dinosaurs. Today, it’s reversed: many paleontologists have been persuaded that birds did indeed evolve from dinosaurs after all. That doesn’t mean aren’t holdouts–I’m thinking Larry Martin, in particular.
And yes, while there has been new data discovered that has influenced this debate, it doesn’t mean that the other side is being unreasonable or that their position doesn’t explain the data either. It’s just that a majority of scientists working in that field believe that one explanation is to be preferred. That is how the scientific consensus on any subject is achieved.
And though no votes are taken, that sounds democratic to me.
-StewartM
anon2525:
So utility and simplicity are valid reasons to prefer one explanation over another? I don’t disagree that’s the way science is practiced, but why should the “real” universe accommodate human brains by always having the simpler explanation to be the correct one?
The fact is–although science is the best way humans have ever devised to understand our world, it cannot and does not explain what “real reality” is all about. Science constructs models, stick-figure simplifications of how reality works, stick-figure simplifications which are useful because they seem to make predictions. But are said stick figures ever “real” or correct? Science cannot answer that question, we only find out when they seem to be obviously wrong.
This is not to knock science. The utility of science to me is not that science always gets the stick figures right–hardly, it doesn’t. The utility of science to humanity is in the democratic way that scientific knowledge is produced, and the honesty by which it proceeds (ideally). When one posits a hypothesis, you also set forth the criteria where you yourself will accept error if met.
Imagine how much better our politics would be if practiced likewise! All the claims of Reaganomics have been demostrated to be empirically false, yet they keep getting repeated ad nauseum as if repeating them enough make them true.
-StewartM
anon2525:
It has to explain the facts acceptably well to a majority of scientists studying the field. If you want to call that a “popularity poll”, so be it.
Having sung the praises of science above, let me now warn of some of its shortcomings. Science is practiced by human beings, human beings limited by their cultural and personal history and biases. Science is always practiced within a culture, and cultures place restraints on what science can properly investigate and what conclusions science can reach. Investigations which come too close to questioning strongly-held cultural beliefs and/or findings which threaten an economic or political power structure are likely to be discouraged.
The result of this is that even when what might seem to be an objectively better explanation is at-hand, the majority finding of science may instead gravitate towards an objectively poorer explanation more congenial with cultural or personal bias and/or a given political power structure. Stephen Jay Gould wrote about the whole sorry history of human intelligence testing, how it was (and still is) manipulated to reinforce biases about race and gender and social class. Studies involving sexuality likewise can run afoul of such biases or limitations; the researchers who first seriously studied homosexuality in other human cultures or even among other animals ran afoul of similar biases.
Sometimes the bias in internalized in the researchers themselves, who can’t bring themselves to “see” and accept an explanation almost self-evident; other times it’s enforced by the culture, which will punish an experimenter who dares question a social orthodoxy. Either way, it’s a problem. Though I will hasten to add that it’s not just a problem limited to science.
-StewartM
And yes, while there has been new data discovered that has influenced this debate, it doesn’t mean that the other side is being unreasonable or that their position doesn’t explain the data either. It’s just that a majority of scientists working in that field believe that one explanation is to be preferred. That is how the scientific consensus on any subject is achieved.
And though no votes are taken, that sounds democratic to me.
The question is “Does any of the new data contradict any predictions made by the explanation (the current theory)?” If it does, then the theory is thrown out. It is no longer accepted. Some people would like to say that it is modified, but all theories that work at some time are modified when new data is found that it does not explain. All of science is an approximate explanation that improves over time. What your example does not say is that there is (or is not) some contradictory data.
Once upon a time, the best scientific thinking was that the earth was flat. That theory matched all known data. It was correct for that data. Eventually, new data was measured that could not be explained by the flat earth theory. The flat earth theory was a good approximation. Most people (billions) still use it most of the time today because the earth’s curvature does not need to be taken into consideration in their day-to-day activities. Democratically-speaking, the earth is flat. Scientifically-speaking, we have found data that contradicts the flat-earth explanation. Democracy is good for some purposes, but if a single measured fact contradicts a democratically-accepted explanation, then science discards the democratically-accepted explanation.
So utility and simplicity are valid reasons to prefer one explanation over another? I don’t disagree that’s the way science is practiced, but why should the “real” universe accommodate human brains by always having the simpler explanation to be the correct one?
The real universe doesn’t. You’re drawing a conclusion that was not argued. Both explanations are correct, if they are not contradicted by data (the coercive power of data). One explanation is simply more convenient, not more correct.
The utility of science to humanity is in the democratic way that scientific knowledge is produced, and the honesty by which it proceeds (ideally).
You continue to repeat the claim that science progresses through the use of democracy, but you haven’t provided a single argument that shows a democratic process that advances a theory that is contradicted by data. Once a theory makes a prediction that is found to be contradicted by data, science throws out that explanation and begins the process of trying to find a new explanation.
Imagine how much better our politics would be if practiced likewise! All the claims of Reaganomics have been demostrated to be empirically false, yet they keep getting repeated ad nauseum as if repeating them enough make them true.
You’re making my argument for me. “Reaganomics” is supported by some majority (at least for a time). Evidence/data is measured that contradicts that explanation, but because politics is not scientific, the explanation is not discarded.
It has to explain the facts acceptably well to a majority of scientists studying the field. If you want to call that a “popularity poll”, so be it.
No, it doesn’t have to explain the facts to a majority of the scientists. It’s just that most scientists are, in fact, scientists. That is, they accept that an explanation needs to be discarded if it makes a prediction that is contradicted by data. This is part of the definition of what it means to be a scientist. They accept the coercive requirement of data.
The result of this is that even when what might seem to be an objectively better explanation is at-hand, the majority finding of science may instead gravitate towards an objectively poorer explanation more congenial with cultural or personal bias and/or a given political power structure.
You would need more specifics about what is meant in a particular instance by “what might seem to be an objectively better explanation.” If by “might seem to be …better,” you mean it is not contradicted by the data while some other explanation is contradicted by the data, then it doesn’t matter what the majority “gravitate towards”–they are simply moving away from reality.
Does politics influence science? No, politics eliminates science. Once a theory is no longer coerced to match data, it is no longer science. It is political dogma. Lysenkoism is not science.
Stephen Jay Gould wrote about the whole sorry history of human intelligence testing, how it was (and still is) manipulated to reinforce biases about race and gender and social class. Studies involving sexuality likewise can run afoul of such biases or limitations; the researchers who first seriously studied homosexuality in other human cultures or even among other animals ran afoul of similar biases.
No one said that science is easy. Working out an explanation that describes cause and effect in human intelligence is going to take a long time. The fact that Gould can describe biases shows that science has found data that contradict the explanations provided earlier. Data is coercing those scientists to change their explanation.
You continue to repeat the claim that science progresses through the use of democracy, but you haven’t provided a single argument that shows a democratic process that advances a theory that is contradicted by data. Once a theory makes a prediction that is found to be contradicted by data, science throws out that explanation and begins the process of trying to find a new explanation.
And you continue to ignore that “the data” are like Leggo parts, which can be assembled together in a myriad of ways. “The data” does not come with any instruction manual to tell one how to assemble them together, one is free to devise any means.
This is not only true about science, it’s also true about religion or any other path to “knowledge” . The difference that makes science different is a) you can’t force-fit the parts together, or pretend that they don’t exist*; and b) that a form of democracy, not authority or tradition, is the arbiter of what is at any time the “best way”. The latter is why the practice of science is ecumenical; it crosses barriers of language and culture which constrain other presumed paths to knowledge.
(*-Though in actual practice science can ignore missing parts, or even force-fit parts, by calling these parts “bad” or questionable data, or simply pretending they do not exist. The virtue of science is that it does this a lot less than do other methods of presumably knowing).
But even then–even using the rules of science, there are always more than one way to fit those Leggo pieces together. That’s why saying that the “data coerces” any one way is demonstrably false. Why one way is preferred over another may be because of its simplicity, because it fits better with individual or cultural biases, because of aesthetics, because of the restraints of the cultural power structure, a whole host of possible reasons are possible. Commentators have noted that the Copernican solar system didn’t explain all the observations either–it was just as flawed as the Ptolemaic solar system (and wouldn’t fit them, until Kepler). Its simplicity and aesthetic and cultural biases helped the Copernican system win out.
So any way that pieces the parts together and doesn’t contradict the data is acceptable in science. However, when you open up a science text, you don’t see an explanation of all the possible explanations that fit the data, you read about the consensus one. You read about the Big Bang instead of the modified steady-state or plasma theories. You read that birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs instead of Larry Martin’s assertion that Gerhard Heilman was correct and that birds descended from a non-dinosaurian archosaur. The people who propose the non-consensus theories are just as much scientists as those that propose consensus ones, they are doing this not because they are being stubborn or irrational or blind, and their explanations do in fact explain all the data. Einstein never accepted quantum mechanics–was he being “unscientific” or not truly practicing science by this?
A key difference of why this happens is often the relative importance given to individual pieces of data; while recognizing all the data as valid, the competing sides weight some pieces of data more so than others. To use the bird evolution debate as an example: the defender of the dinosaurian theory of bird evolution, someone like Kevin Padian, would mention cladistic studies, and the discovery of feathers on theropod dinosaurs, and recent Chinese discoveries. Larry Martin and Alan Feduccia would counter with a timeline argument (most of the theropods cited as bird-related come *after* Archaeopteryx ), the case of the Triassic discovery Longisquama insignis, which Martin believes to be closer in timeline and structure to true birds, the results on digit homology of embryological studies, and would argue that the cladistic studies are a case of “garbage in, garbage out”. Padian would defend the cladistics, downplay the embryological studies, and question the status of Longisquama as even an archosaur (or might say that it’s a curious dead-end). And so on, back and forth. The same kind of dialogue would appear between competing explanations of anything scientific, from cosmology to viral biology.
Both sides recognize the same Leggo pieces on the table. Both sides believe their explanations are a better way of assembling the Leggo pieces than the other. But the Leggo pieces themselves are silent and coerce neither explanation. What the difference is that people like Padian have *persuaded* the majority of others working in the field that their way of putting the Leggo pieces together is the superior one to what people like Larry Martin propose. Most scientists in the field have in essence “voted” for the dinosaurian explanation.
And that’s why and how science operates democratically.
-StewartM
“The data” does not come with any instruction manual to tell one how to assemble them together, one is free to devise any means.
No, you are not free to devise any means. You need to devise an explanation that accounts for the existing data, and which predicts future events correctly. And if your explanation does not account for some of the data, or if it makes a prediction which is shown not to match the data, then your explanation is astrology, not science.
The difference that makes science different is a) you can’t force-fit the parts together, or pretend that they don’t exist*; and b) that a form of democracy, not authority or tradition, is the arbiter of what is at any time the “best way”.
I think that this is likely my final reply because this has been repeated. You continue not to supply an example of a scientific theory that is contradicted by measured data, but which, despite that contradictory data, is accepted because of a democratic vote or consensus. You have your cart before your horse, and appear not to be able to reverse them.
The latter is why the practice of science is ecumenical; it crosses barriers of language and culture which constrain other presumed paths to knowledge.
This, too, is false. The reason that science is not culture or language-specific is that it is empirical, and all of us live in the natural world subject to the same natural phenomena.
Einstein never accepted quantum mechanics–was he being “unscientific” or not truly practicing science by this?
By your reasoning, he was being unscientific because he was in the minority.
He did what a scientist is supposed to do: He tried to come up with alternative explanations for the data. He failed to come up with a better explanation that makes a prediction that quantum mechanics did not predict. If he had succeeded then he would have unseated QM with a better theory.
For him to behave as a non-scientist he would have had to develop an explanation, have that explanation be contradicted by data, and then still hold that the explanation was correct. That is, he would have had to refuse to be coerced by the data.
Both sides recognize the same Leggo pieces on the table. Both sides believe their explanations are a better way of assembling the Leggo pieces than the other. But the Leggo pieces themselves are silent and coerce neither explanation.
Both sides believe they are correct, and one side is wrong. The data will determine who is. A majority vote won’t.
Repeating my reply above: either one explanation or the other is correct, or the explanations are equivalent. If one is correct and the other is not, then as more data is measured, it will coerce the explanation towards the correct one. You give lots of examples above, and the answer to them all is the same. Not all of the explanations are correct (except when they are equivalent). You appear to think that there are many, many equivalent theories that explain various phenomena, and that the advancement of science is through a consensus forming around a favorite. Instead, what you are seeing is that many fields of study simply haven’t advanced enough and don’t have enough data to provide falsifying tests. The scientists studying those phenomena are attempting to get that data so that it can coerce one explanation or another. They might like one explanation or another, but they know that they have no say in which one is correct. The data will decide, by falsifying one or another explanation, not them.
And that’s why and how science operates democratically.
No, what will happen is that more measurements will be made and one explanation or the other will be falsified by the new data. People have no vote in what the natural world is.
Ok–in the bird dinosaur debate I described in detail above–why are Martin and Feduccia so obviously “wrong”? Their explanation explains the data too, after all.
And if you can’t point out any obvious ignoring or force-fitting data by them, or hole in their reasoning, then why does nearly everyone else hold to the dinosaurian origin of birds?
The very reason I went into so much detail was to show you that the dinosaur->bird evolution explanation has won out for now because a majority of paleontologists and ornithologists have been persuaded to accept it as a better explanation. And of course, you’re right that new data can cause the majority to decide differently–heck, it doesn’t have to be science for that to happen, in everything else a minority opinion can become the majority opinion when new evidence comes forth. It happen in history, politics, a courtroom, you name it.
How did you come up with that one? Being of the minority opinion doesn’t make one “unscientific”, just in the minority.
In the case of bird origins, I certainly did think I said that Martin and Feduccia were being unscientific. While I agree with the majority opinion on bird origins, I doubt my readings as a non-professional in that field would enable me to hold up in any debate with either of them.
People most certainly have a vote in science between competing theories that explain the data, whether you want to admit so or not. There is never, ever, just one explanation that fits the data together.
And how the “real world” is? There may be just one “real world”, but you are forgetting what I said about how science constructs models of “the real world”, not mirror images of it. We will never, ever, ultimately know what the “real world” really is; we can only construct models that seem to fit and predict our observations of it.
But are these models truly represent the “real world”? We only find out when we’ve goofed. When we’re right, we’re left always guessing.
-StewartM
Change that to :
..I certainly did *not* think *I said that Martin and Feduccia were being unscientific.
Editing error.
StewartM
Ok–in the bird dinosaur debate I described in detail above–why are Martin and Feduccia so obviously “wrong”? Their explanation explains the data too, after all.
I did not say “obviously,” and I do not know who is wrong. And it might not be decidable because they need historical data that might no longer exist or might not be found. But it won’t be decided by a democratic vote. It will be decided or not by data.
And if you can’t point out any obvious ignoring or force-fitting data by them, or hole in their reasoning, then why does nearly everyone else hold to the dinosaurian origin of birds?
Because it is in the nature of their field. 1) It is relatively immature, and 2) it is difficult for them to gather data–it is a process of searching and finding. All science is an approximate explanation of cause and effect in nature. The current theory in any field is simply the best explanation that has been found so far. There will be periods when multiple explanations exist, but, if they contradict each other, then the decision on which one of the explanations is more correct will be determined by data that contradicts one of the explanations, not by a vote.
How did you come up with that one? Being of the minority opinion doesn’t make one “unscientific”, just in the minority.
Your argument has been that a consensus decides which theory is correct. If that is true, then Einstein was being unscientific because he did not accept the consensus view.
People most certainly have a vote in science between competing theories that explain the data, whether you want to admit so or not. There is never, ever, just one explanation that fits the data together.
No, there is only one, just as there is only one reality. There may be different ways of expressing the explanation (equivalent theories that have what appear to be differences), but there are not different and valid theories that contradict each other. If there is a contradiction, then one of them (or both) is wrong, but it hasn’t been discovered yet which is (the data hasn’t been measured that will coerce the theory).
“Your theory of celestial motion says that there will be a lunar eclipse tonight, while mine says there won’t be one. Which is correct? Show of hands! Just kidding! Your votes don’t matter! We’ll just have to look tonight and see.”
Of course, once it has been decided which one is correct (or neither, if both are contradicted by the data), then more experiments and measuring will go on which may uncover data that this latest, best approximate explanation cannot explain, and a new explanation or several will be developed (for lack of a better word) that will be tested against the data.
There may be just one “real world”, but you are forgetting what I said about how science constructs models of “the real world”…
I am not forgetting–I agree that science develops formal explanations, not a literal instance-by-instance description of everything.
But are these models truly represent the “real world”? We only find out when we’ve goofed. When we’re right, we’re left always guessing.
Repeating what I wrote above, all currently accepted scientific theories are simply the best approximation that we have at this time. Pick any theory–if you do not “like” it, then come up with an alternate explanation that does as good as the theory you do not like and publish predictions that your theory makes that the existing best theory does not. Unless you can do this, or you can point to some data that contradicts the currently accepted theory, then that theory does formally represent the real world. After all, it explains what has been observed so far, and you have not (yet) shown that it does not.
Your argument has been that a consensus decides which theory is correct. If that is true, then Einstein was being unscientific because he did not accept the consensus view.
No, it just means he is in the minority. One can still practice sound science and not hold to majority opinion.
No, there is only one, just as there is only one reality.
I don’t necessarily differ that there is only one physical reality, but we don’t know what that reality is. We will never know what that reality “really is”; as science cannot provide a final answer. All we can do is construct models that explain and predict observations.
And there are nearly always more than *just one* model in any field of endeavor that will achieve this. I have no dispute with you that new data can upset theoretical applecarts and that any proposed model must explain the data and be falsifiable to be properly scientific. But to say that the “data coerces” *just one and only one explanation* is empirically false, for reasons I have cited. Martin’s model explains bird evolution. Modified steady-state and plasma explanations explain cosmology. None of these explanations ignore any of the data, all of these explain the data and make predictions about future observations. They’re not “bad science” and their practitioners are not being unscientific by being in the minority. They might emphasize some of the observations more than others, but that’s also true of the consensus opinion. While Larry Martin downplays the importance of cladistic analysis and of the Chinese Cretaceous discoveries while playing up the importance of embryological research and Longisquama insignis, someone like Kevin Padian does the opposite–tit for tat. It just happens that a majority of researchers currently agree with Padian and disagree with Martin, for a variety of reasons, and that’s why Padian’s view forms the current scientific consensus.
This is true in every field. It’s more apparent and pronounced in discussions of “cutting edge” stuff, but even in the basics, even in well-established theories like quantum mechanics or relativity, there are researchers who question orthodoxy (in the former, about randomness being apparent or real; in the latter, about the result of the Michelson-Morley experiment really being null). The fact that these are minority opinions even on well-established explanations doesn’t mean they’re not scientific.
Science is always about tentative knowledge and uncertainty as well as democracy. You seem to have the perspective of science as some sort of secular dogma. It’s not.
-StewartM