And a similar number of people who elevate science to the level of religion, marching in its name and developing a brand of hero worship for scientists when they too know nothing at all about the scientific process. Both are forms of anti-intellectualism that are growing in our polarized political environment.
Are you telling me that for every climate change denier, for every anti-vaxxer, for every creationist, for every chemtrail/tap water/moon landing/flat earth conspiracy theorist there's a rabid scientist who elevates the current scientific consensus to the level of religion?
That's borderline whataboutism IMO.
Now go to Google Images and search for "March for Science". Nearly every sign I see is either political in nature, elevating science to a level of religion/infallibility, or casting science as a fashion/meme ("Scientific is the new chic", "Science isn't wrong", "In science we trust").
Using the same logic I could say that the 62+ millions of Americans who voted for Trump are climate change deniers but I don't think that would be fair either.
> I'm not sure this reaction is particularly extreme or uncalled for
But opposition can easily veer into defining, and then rigorously defending, a 'pro-scientific' dogma that actually ends up opposing new, legitimate research.
As a complete hypothetical, what if an esteemed climate scientist discovers evidence that global temperature increase estimates actually are too high by, say, a factor of 2? Will people take that evidence seriously, or write it off as 'climate change denial'?
It feels like an act of willful ignorance to interpret the few words or catchy phrase on a protest sign and ascribe them as that person's core beliefs.
For instance, the GP mentioned anti-vaxxers. There are many different kinds of "alternative" stances on vaccinations, and only one (very) extreme position is "vaccines cause autism". But if you mention anything about vaccines that isn't 100% of vaccines are amazing 100% of the time you are considered an "anti-vaxxer", lumped in with the vaccines-cause-autism crazies.
Consider: I haven't made a judgement on vaccines in this comment, yet I guarantee you have a feeling/judgement about what you think I believe. Like I said, no room for nuance.
I think we're seeing a completely different trend, spurred on by social media and the ability for people to broadcast their own messages/opinions about a topic, and that is, everyone has a loud, and often spurious, opinion about everything. This is something that's always been true, social media is just amplifying this aspect of human nature.
Anyway, I think you're right about social media amplifying human nature, but I don't think it's about opinions. I think most people don't really care too deeply about most things -- one major reason why voting turnouts are so low! Sure, they care about one or two things passionately, but they're mostly moderate on most things. More universally though, people care about attention. They love attention. It's wired into our DNA; babies do everything they can for attention, because attention is survival.
But it turns out that having moderate views isn't really all that interesting. It doesn't demand attention the way having (or representing to have) extreme views does. So are the extreme views genuine, or just a show for attention?
Of course that's a complete strawman on my part here, you didn't say any of this. But consider this for instance:
> For instance, the GP mentioned young earthers. There are many different kinds of "alternative" stances on the age of the earth, and only one (very) extreme position is "earth is 6000 years old". But if you mention anything about the age of the earth that isn't exactly *the universe is 13.8 billion years old and the earth was formed around 4.5 billion years ago" you are considered a "young earther", lumped in with the creationist crazies.
I could do the same thing about flat earth or, if I wanted to heat up the discussion even more, the holocaust.
You can and you should question everything all the time, but at some point we have to reach a consensus and move on. We can't spend all of our time proving again and again and again that the earth is round, that Earth is not 10000 years old and that vaccines do not cause autism. If new evidence surfaces it should be reconsidered of course but the case for the anti-vaxxers is pretty weak as far as I can tell.
They're missing the inherent tension in science between a received body of knowledge and the skepticism it takes to produce new knowledge.
Discussions on reddit (and all sorts of other social platforms) are being influenced and manipulated by people who are being paid to do so, and anyone who denies that at this point is delusional.
Source: I know people who run firms that provide this service.
Who or what determines what is controversial?
To me, vaccines are not controversial at all. You can pick and choose specific ones to argue about, but the concept of vaccines is literally proven, beyond a doubt.
As for GMOs, there's a lot more room but even still, the fundamentals are nothing controversial. This is also proven in pretty much anything you can buy in a grocery store today.
Upvote/downvotes are de-facto agree/disagree buttons on reddit. As a forum it's completely useless to discuss anything beyond cat pictures and funny gifs.
For example, you can post the same remarks criticizing functional programming in a post about C# or Java and get upvotes, while the same post in a Haskell discussion will be downvoted. You can try the experiment yourself to verify it.
This applies to companies as well - you will be upvoted for pro-Microsoft or anti-Google posts in a news topic about Microsoft, and the reverse in a news topic about Google. This is because people who use Microsoft products will be very interested in Microsoft news, but not interested enough in Google news to go and downvote opinions they disagree with there.
It's simply unreasonsble to think that the value of a comment is independent of its context.
Just the same as Reddit. It's a deeper issue than just being 'reddit', and it's more about online discussion in general.
Then people could turn on or off some way to see which posts are heavily agreed or disagreed with without downvoting interesting posts just because you disagree. You could even have a system where you mark people you respect and then only see which posts they agreed with to get a more personal feel? Might be an interesting discussion board idea to pursue.
There are several factors that ensure better Signal to Noise ratios in communities.
Protective Moats, specific technical subject matter, for example.
Essentially it boils down to difficulty to engage, or non trivial effort required to engage.
The factors you mentioned have little impact on the behavior of the sub, which is mostly influenced by the people and norms of behavior, over the UI.
I had in mind people who go on planes to disprove the earth being round, who believe crystals have actual healing powers, or people who refuse proven cancer treatment.
Sure, there are plenty of pseudo scientists out there that promote their political or economic agendas, but you can't discredit all science because of that.
Right now "hard" science is the best way to explain things around us and the universe. Sure, often it is wrong as new science gets discovered, but that's how human knowledge evolves.
As for the "soft" sciences (anything social/psyc, etc), that's a completely different matter. They are more prone to trends, fads and more personal biases, hence I would put them in a different category.
This is not necessarily true, and I would urge caution when making such generalizations. There is junk social science and there is also plenty of junk "hard" science. Examples of fake data, political and personal biases interfering with the scientific method, occur in all fields. Some "fads" eventually become accepted fact. It took 100 years before plate tectonics was accepted by the majority of the scientific community, there are many such examples.
Don't universally discount social science: it is just as important as physical science. We actually need more social scientists to help understand the reasons behind anti-science movements in the first place, and to help legitimize science as a process, critial thinking, and to debunk illogical arguments.
And if social scientists want to "help legitimize science as a process, critial thinking, and to debunk illogical arguments.", they should start with fixing their own reproducibility crisis and p-hacking crisis before instructing other people on science as a process.
I am merely cautioning against over generalization that just because there are some high profile examples of bad social science, there is still a lot of very good social science happening and it would be a shame to ignore it.
The titans of a scientific field still valued arts, and history, and culture. And derived value from it.
Hell, I'm a working scientist and one of the most valuable classes I ever had for thinking about the world was a feminist art history class.
As a member of society I need you to take care of yourself. You are a burden on society if you don't have a productive job paying your own way. We provide a "safety net", but the less who use it the better. Too many people using the safety net will make society break down. We believe is education required to be productive, so we subsidize education to get more productive people in society.
Or to put it simply: If you love art, get an art degree.
You can study Computer Science while also learning a bit of art history, or architecture, or psychology, or the sciences, or business, or...
And doing so might even make you more valuable to your employer, to yourself/your family, and to society.
> You are a burden on society if you don't have a productive job paying your own way... We believe is education required to be productive, so we subsidize education to get more productive people in society.
This mode of thinking is a great way to churn out lots of well-behaved, competent corporate employees. From this viewpoint, it follows that the path to the upper class is reserved for the already-rich.
So what?
You are not a burden just by not having a "productive job, paying your own way". You are a burden if you deny people their essential human dignity, by forcing them to conform to your vision of what they should be in order to eat. You are a burden if you take for yourself a surplus and do not use it to supply those with a dearth. You are a burden if you lie, cheat, steal, and assault. You are a burden if you do not respect and appreciate the hundreds of people working in harmony who helped each other to ensure you survived to adulthood with enough education to write your own opinions.
If all you do is sit on a couch with a cannabis vape and a game console, you're no burden to me. Some people keep house cats, and have no problem feeding them without getting much of anything in return. A "non-productive" human may yet do something. It might not be great, but could be at least marginally useful, if we allow them the time for their calling to mature and motivate them to action. Or they could just be a dud for their entire life. I don't really need to make a monkey dance in order to throw it a nut.
I don't particularly need you to take care of yourself. I may even be willing to pitch in with others to take care of you, on the conditions that you first do no harm to others, and then that you give back in whatever way you feel you are able. But that generosity only extends as far as what I think you may need. If you want something extra, you're going to need to give a little more before you get it.
We are way past the era of "no work; no eat" edicts. Thanks to our machines, we don't have a labor problem any more; we have an information problem. The systems in place for connecting creators with consumers, to everyone's mutual benefit, have never been entirely adequate, and haven't scaled very well to a world of 7.6 billion people.
I'm really not belittling your degree. I value such degrees highly. I also don't think they should cost so much, nor that the student-loan bubble should be allowed to facilitate charging you so much for it. Ideally fixing the system wouldn't eliminate such degrees, they would just decrease the cost to something reasonable.
I self taught computer science and programming, so now I have a good salary and a much more comfortable life.
I feel my bachelor's was pretty special since it was a liberal arts degree and my employer seems to recognize the difference between me and someone who didn't go to school and/or just studied STEM exclusively.
I was very lucky to have scholarships, that made it easier on me when I was younger. But wanting to go back for CS made it impossible later in life without getting in debt. And I refuse to get a student loan. It's sad that when someone didn't get lucky with a well off household or scholarships, they have to cripple themselves into debt.
I think a lot of people don't realize how little they will earn with their degrees compared to how high their debt load will be. That's not including people who fail to even finish their degrees.
I always thought this was an excellent idea.
I remember helping my sister with her philosophy home work, and being surprised by the amount of elementary logic and set theory being taught.
But some departments are less analytic (e.g. departments heavy on [2] and [3] aren't too difficult to find in the US). In those departments, the mode of thinking is very different from what you'll experience in a CS course.
And in both cases, taking a lot of humanity courses will teach you how to write well. Which is definitely a skill that a lot of CS majors lack.
(Also, a course of study in analytic philosophy can definitely help round out a CS major that's too light on the theory courses.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy
It usually saves 2 years compared to doing them separately and you get 2 degrees on the final piece of testament.
I found it tremendously useful as my "humanity" was my Physics degree to complement the Comp Sci. Plenty of philosophy in the hard sciences when you learn the history and where we are going.
> Scholarly work really helps shape the way you look at life for the better.
Like what? What scenario did you encounter and how did your studies help you? Otherwise it sounds like a vague claim that every religious institution would make.
Studying for a degree involves more than just reading a book. A good degree (no matter what major you choose) should leave you with the skills and capabilities to learn and teach yourself new skills. This - not the knowledge gained - is by far the most valuable takeaway that I have from my studies: Oh, I need to learn about the problem space X. How do I start, research, teach myself things about something previously unknown. School teaches knowledge, university learning skills.
My opinion is that many (I'd say most but I'm not certain) of the universities in the US are pretty good.
If we could objectively measure the tangible benefits of a degree and replicate it with a low cost alternative - it still wouldn't carry the same prestige because it's not exclusionary. I think the greatest barrier to truly accessible education is our status seeking behavior.
> the way you look at life for the better
Do you feel your outlook has improved, or are your life outcomes measurably better, and how?
Additional question: was it worth the $37,000 in debt, and do you think that perhaps we could achieve the same better-ness with less debt?
Yeah it's like when people defend hazing. "Oh it builds character!" No thanks please.
I dont feel this is the case, and I wouldnt say its priceless. its on average ~30k$ + 2 years of extra course work, and honestly, we are getting very little bang for our buck.
it has little impact on my career, but cutting my tuition nearly in half, and giving nearly 2 years back to me would be huge.
I went to school for such a degree. While I don't use it in my day to day now, I still consider it priceless. There's some inherent value added to a person who pursues to study a bit of humanities, history, philosophy and art in college apart from their major. Scholarly work really helps shape the way you look at life for the better.
Part of this is that you really understand why you need to trust academic work for general human advancement. We have too many people thinking it's okay to discredit scientists and scholars because they don't understand how research works.