This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Short summary (a scientist erred/falsified results in heart disease treatments, up to 800,000 died):
Full Vox link
I find the Vox article somewhat disturbing. They spend most of the article talking about whether criminalization is the answer. 800,000 dead, or some number in the high thousands and they feel it's necessary to spend so much time justifying and proposing? Why should they be carefully peeping their heads over the parapet, wary of sniper fire? If ever there was someone to cancel and demonize, it's this guy.
I have an internal feeling of justice that calls for extremely severe penalties for these people. I guess I'm in the minority, since it doesn't happen. The EcoHealth gang, Daszak and the Bat Lady of Wuhan are still living the high life. Meanwhile, scientists who dare to have sex with coworkers get their lives derailed.
I suppose that most people have their feelings of justice heavily weighted towards direct things like killing with knives, selling faulty goods or being mean. That makes sense, we didn't evolve to care about the probabilistic harms caused by institutional malpractice over many years. This is why I think we should have extra-strong prohibitions on this kind of non-obvious harm. Even a hardened EcoHealth researcher might have qualms about massacring 10-20 million people with guns and blades. It's a lot easier to do exciting, fun research and be a little slack on all those tedious safety checks. It doesn't feel so wrong, which is why they need to feel fear to counter it.
In the past I've made this sort of argument and been rebuffed by some people on the grounds that if we imposed very severe punishments then people would just double down on lying and blaming others to escape liability. Plus it would disincentivize people from taking up important roles.
However, when it comes to mechanical engineering, we've learned to build bridges that stay up. We appreciate that some kind of consequence should fall upon you if you adulterate food with plastic or replace the concrete with cardboard (or cardboard derivatives). Back in the early Industrial Revolution nobody particularly cared about safety, there were plenty of bridge failures. We slowly had to evolve systems that corrected these problems but we got there in the end.
Indeed, negligence is a big part of law. Mostly it works on the assumption that the harm-causing party is a big corporation or someone with lots of money. From a broad evolutionary point of view, that makes a lot of sense. Proving guilt and getting to the bottom of things takes a lot of effort, you want to be sure that there will be a pay-off. It's like how creatures might evolve fangs to pierce flesh and get at that juicy meat. Entities that can cause lots of harm tend to have lots of resources.
However, academia gives us cases where there are no clear, direct, short-term links between the cause of harm and the victims. The cause of harm might be a few moderately well off scientists. The harm itself might be hazy, there might be no ironclad proof of the magnitude and exact nature. Think how long it took to prove that cigarettes caused cancer. We had the statistical proof long before the exact causal mechanism was ironed out and the costs of delay were phenomenal. Biology is the most obvious case where this happens. There was another case where Alzheimer's research was thought to be fraudulent, wasting many years and billions of dollars. I say slash and burn, take their money away, give them humiliating tattoos and make them work at McDonalds somewhere far away from all their friends, or worse. Normal criminals couldn't do that much harm in a lifetime.
AI likely falls into the same category, though it can probably be dealt with via more traditional negligence systems since it's mostly advanced by big companies. I am worried that it will take far too long for people to realize the danger posed by AI or those who wield them, there isn't enough time to develop seriousness.
Anyway, I think it would be wise to develop ways to target and severely punish biologists who fraudulently or negligently allow harm (perhaps also praising and granting boons to those who uncover their fraud). This would be a positive incentive for singularitarian scenarios and virtuous in itself. We need to get out of the mindset of waiting for our market-Darwinist-legal system to fix things and attack problems pre-emptively. Or at least with a minimum of megadeaths.
I mean, there are two separate issues here and it's important not to conflate: 1) scientific fraud i.e. bad stuff happened because you provided Science and people trusted you but the Science was a lie; 2) mad science i.e. you did experiments that were -EV because the experimental procedure caused or risked harm.
With regard to #1 I would caution you that there is a really-obvious failure mode:
Regarding #1, they already do this.
The PIC researchers don't generally get jailed for the bogus fraud, though.
In corrupt countries that's how the police works. You get expropriated and imprisoned but can't complain since the courts will side against you.
That's bad but it doesn't follow that we should abolish the police. We should abolish corruption and policing is a useful tool for that, in principle.
My point is not that it's impossible to fix academia from outside, just that there are hostile actors who are very good at rules abuse there and a treacherous epistemic environment, and naïve action that doesn't take those into account risks backfire.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link