The War on Science and Evidence

Politics and religion
1

This is the catch all thread for the current administrations war on scientific evidence and fact. Normally a thread on science wouldn’t belong in the P&R section, but… here we are.

Currently organization for a March for Science in Washington D.C. is underway.

Which is just… insane to me. We are marching to prove that facts are facts? That evidence based research should be listened to?

I mean, in Wisconsin, the government has made a scientific breakthrough saying that climate change was not caused by humans!

Here is an article on climate change and the great lakes.

Climate Change and Wisconsin´s Great Lakes

Earth´s climate is changing. Human activities that increase
heat–trapping (“green house”) gases are the main cause. Earth´s average
temperature has increased 1.4 °F since 1850 and the eight warmest years
on record have occurred since 1998. Increasing temperatures have led to
changes in rainfall patterns and snow and ice cover. These changes could
have severe effects on the Great Lakes and the plants, wildlife and
people who depend on them. While no one can predict exactly what climate
change will mean for our Great Lakes, scientists agree that the
following changes are likely if climate change patterns continue.

Increased summer and winter temperatures will cause increased
evaporation, lower lake water levels and warmer water, resulting in
reduced habitat for cold water species and a loss of critical wetland
areas.Decreased winter ice cover will also contribute to increased
evaporation and lower lake water levels which could have severe economic
consequences for our valuable shipping industry, lakeshore recreation,
and coastal businesses.Changes in rain and snowfall patterns (including more frequent and
severe storms) could change water flow in streams and rivers and
increase stream bank erosion and runoff pollution.

The good news is that we can all work to slow climate change and
lessen its effects. To find out more about climate change and how we can
all help, please visit the following links.

Here is what it says now.

The Great Lakes and a changing world

As it has done throughout the centuries, the earth is going through a
change. The reasons for this change at this particular time in the
earth’s long history are being debated and researched by academic
entities outside the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

The effects of such a change are also being debated but whatever the
causes and effects, the DNR’s responsibility is to manage our state’s
natural resources through whatever event presents itself; flood,
drought, tornadoes, ice/snow or severe heat. The DNR staff stands ready
to adapt our management strategies in an effort to protect our lakes,
waterways, plants, wildlife and people who depend on them.

For more information on the research conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison

We have always been at war with Climatechangeurasia!

2

And this shit is for real scary stuff.

Scientists Fear Purge of Climate Science Data

We are talking about some crazy shit here. Like the Wall Street investment firm caught insider trading, are we going to take the evidence and throw it in the shredder?

This shit blows my mind. We don’t like the facts, we can toss them out.

3

Ugh, a Forbes ‘contributor’ article. Everyone knows they are #fakenews

Worst is, presuming this all blows over and we resume some sanity, when the data comes back, naysayers will then say it was doctored once it was outside the control of approved repositories so can no longer be trusted.

4

Look, this sort of thing, it happens.

For instance, in Soviet Russia if science wasn’t considered Soviet enough, it would be discredited. Nazi Germany tried to implement Germanic Physics, without the influence of all those Jews…

In the end, reality triumphs. At least after the real world slaps people hard enough in the face to make them realize their dogmas aren’t true… so, around the time major US cities start to drown and rich people lose their investments?

Shit, this isn’t as optimistic as I thought…

5

Yeah.

The fear is real, however. The administration has basically placed a gag order on all science related institutions saying that they aren’t to release results to the public.

So, we are on our way.

6

Well on the bright side, roughly 7 billion years from now the Earth will be engulfed by the sun thus leaving no trace of Trump or his supporters anywhere in the universe.

7

Ok, for real presidential candidate Gary Johnson.

8

Not to be pedantic, but we don’t have that long. Maybe 500 million to a billion years before the sun grows hot enough to boil off the oceans. (That still should be plenty long enough for the planet to overcome the Anthropocene.)

9

Postmodernism is the enemy of civilisation. When people agreed that “define your own reality” was acceptable, it unlocked a pandoras box where facts, data, evidence and reason are merely a facet of an individuals perception.

The left built an infrastructure where postmodernist principles can be applied to arguments in face of reason, facts, data and evidence and this is commonly accepted, and the right are using it to destroy the world by dumbing this down further into fake-news.

Derrick Jensen explains this better than I can: although the article itself is not relate to Trump or climate change.

And I blame the groundlessness of postmodernism, with its assertion that meaning is not inherent in anything, that there are no truths, and that each person’s perception of reality is equally valid.

As well as destroying class consciousness—which is one reason modern blacklisting is often based on claims of how some speaker will supposedly hurt or trigger the individual, rather than emphasizing harm or gain to society as a whole—postmodernism has led to much of the insanity we’re discussing.

As philosopher Daniel Dennett commented, “Postmodernism, the school of ‘thought’ that proclaimed ‘There are no truths, only interpretations’ has largely played itself out in absurdity, but it has left behind a generation of academics in the humanities disabled by their distrust of the very idea of truth and their disrespect for evidence, settling for ‘conversations’ in which nobody is wrong and nothing can be confirmed, only asserted with whatever style you can muster.” And if all you’ve got is rhetoric, that is, “interpretations” and “assertions,” as opposed to, say, factual evidence, then the only way, or at least the most tempting way, to conclusively win an argument is through rhetorical manipulations. If you can’t say, “Your opinion is wrong, and here are facts showing your opinion is wrong,” you’re pretty much stuck with, “Your opinion is oppressing me, triggering me, hurting my feelings.” And that’s precisely what we see. And of course we can’t argue back, in part because nobody can verify or falsify your feelings, and in part because by then we’ve already been deplatformed.

Edit: a quick search brought up something interesting.

We should have listened to McCullough… erm… 13 years ago.

For he is truly the Kwisatz Haderach.

10

I know things are odd here in America, but I’m genuinely unclear what you mean by “the left” when you say things like this. I thought this postmodernist stuff was a far-left movement that was hip in the 70s and 80s, but now seems like old hat that’s already played out and people have moved on. I mean, guys like Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault, and Baudrillard are topics for Intellectual History, not cutting-edge research. What Jensen describes is not a postmodernism problem, his wikipedia-snipped quote notwithstanding, but rather a problem of rhetoric in general. It existed before and exists after postmodernism, and has nothing to do with the extreme claims that total solipsism is the driving force of postmodernism. It is simply an argument about authority: what constitutes authority, and who holds it? If people think you invented your evidence, or that your evidence doesn’t prove your assertion, or that your assertion is irrelevant to your broader point, then your argument fails to convince them. Pointing that out, and pointing out how that affects the whole edifice of objective reality is not the cause of weaknesses in that edifice. Empirical support is really awesome and convincing and successful at moving science along, but it isn’t reality; it’s just a guidepost for predicting the future. Fake news, willful ignorance, and appeals to non-scientific authority are far older than postmodern philosophy and are also some of the things it was fighting against. Witch-hunts and ideological zealotry don’t require that we discard objective reality (in fact, they require the opposite), and being offended by someone who calls you a liar with a false identity (as Jensen is doing by denying the reality of transgender folks) isn’t exclusive to postmodernists or “leftists”.

The very behavior that Dennett quote is lamenting is the behavior that would allow all viewpoints to be heard and all opinions respected, even if we plan to argue forcefully against them. An academic distrustful of Truth is an academic willing to listen to evidence or logic that refutes their beliefs, rather than one that seeks to silence all disagreement with an appeal to the authority of “objective reality”, or even of scientific consensus. The problem isn’t with that attitude, it is with the fake news and the predominance of tribalism. You don’t need advanced degrees to understand climate science, but even people who are scientifically inclined can twist what is otherwise near-conclusive evidence as far as experts are concerned into to proof that their tribally-approved view is the correct one. They aren’t doing that because post-modernism said they could, and refusing to listen to them because objective reality says their wrong doesn’t make them believe you.

11

I think postmodernism itself is a bit of a red herring insofar its only certain aspects of it that were adopted in academia and then the mainstream, especially around identity politics, and its only certain aspects of this that became more mainstream with the rise of “popular” identity politics. The first batch of articles I saw against science and evidence originated in socjus community. This is where “facts over feelings” arose and this phrase was extensively pushed, especially by Breitbarts area of the media (Ben Shapiro and co are extensive users) and its this section of right media that drove adoption of some of these ideas and tactics by the right.

Now the fight against science doesn’t originate just from this of course, Lysenkoism is mentioned above, Mein Kampf directly references use of fake news, and of course the Bible comes into it, but I think some of the popular application of “why science/experts/evidence is bad” in use today comes from the open use of these principles by the right’s opponents, especially over the last 5 years or so ,and the gleeful adoption of this by the Bannonites.

This isn’t an assault on science and evidence from one side alone, its under threat from multiple vectors. Look at some of the criticism of the anti-Trump science march, not criticism of being anti-Trump, but squabbles around comments on intersectionality et al being announced by the march organisers and their critics claiming that those that espouse this are enemies of evidence and science.

12

There’s an argument that 3rd wave feminism, which is what leads the way with identity politics imo, is a result of women studies’ interaction with combining feminist theory with postmodern concepts such as deconstruction and social frameworks (patriarchal culture is the feminist analog of the Marxist bourgeoise capitalism frameworks). OTOH it’s been one of the best uses out of a more or less dead end philosophy, since the goal of feminism is concrete (improving women’s lives).

Identity politics being continuous with the “rise of women” does seem to be the case but I’m not sure I can demonstrate it and is the debateable. But I think it’s true.

13

[quote=“playingwithknives, post:11, topic:128241”]
I think some of the popular application of “why science/experts/evidence is bad” in use today comes from the open use of these principles by the right’s opponents, especially over the last 5 years or so ,and the gleeful adoption of this by the Bannonites.[/quote]

I’m not clear on the original purpose of the “facts over feelings” idea, but a) it being perverted by Bannonites to push their agenda doesn’t make it wrong in its original form (look at the skittles thing, the deplorables, and most of the rest of their arguments - they love to turn something around, add some racism to it, and use it as their own, especially if that something came from feminists); and b) this statement is a pretty long walk from “Postmodernism is the enemy of civilisation.”

I’m not entirely clear on what you mean here, but saying that someone else (who you disagree with) is an enemy of evidence and science is the opposite of saying that evidence and science are bad. Even if it’s stretching the truth (because the other side does have evidence and you are dismissing it), it’s still holding up evidence and science as the standard. If my main insult of someone is that they aren’t god-fearing, that’s a pro-religion stance, not an attack on religion.

14

Tennessee legislators consider only children conceived by hetero sex to be legitimate?

15

What does that even mean? ‘Legitimate’?! They can’t inherit the throne?

16

I think it means they have a “soul” as opposed to the freaks

17

…and what? Will this impact their credit scores?

I’m just lost as to what this is supposed to do.

18

One big factor, legally, it means they are not presumed to inherit in cases where the parents die intestate. In some cases the courts have ruled against illegitimate children inheriting, so this removes a huge safety net and creates legal hassles at least. Plus they get to call them all bastards without fear of defamation I guess :/

19

I’d agree, pretty much. The lasting (useful) legacy of postmodernism is a new set of tools for unpacking meaning and conceptualizing things in ways that allows for different arguments and allows for different things to be valued, rather than a long-established set of arguments and evidence that, often enough, served specific interests more than any vision of truth. But making this work takes a lot of intellectual effort, and some skill; it’s much easier for people to take the approach playingwithknives outlines, and God knows I’ve worked in academia with some of 'em.

Ultimately, any serious academic (or at least, any honest intellectual) has to respect a hierarchy of information resting on some form of evidence and assumptions of reasonableness. Unless you’re going for shock value, I suppose, which goodness knows the extreme postmodernist/deconstructionist clique was fond of.

In teaching, I find that the big problem with students is the flat model of information encouraged by the Internet. It’s all equally available, so it’s all equally valuable. The concept that there are rules that we can follow to ascertain the value of specific pieces of data as evidence, compared to other pieces of data, and that, yes, we all have to share in the understanding that such rules exist and agree more or less on the criteria, is alien to them.

20

Hi gang,

Science is great! It’s brought us the wonders of eugenics, phrenology and psychiatry.

It’s so great that science is never wrong and the experts are always right!