What? I completely disagree. Unless you and I have different definitions of "informed". My definition of informed is that the person feels they are informed, and they have sought out all the information they can.
Therefore, with that definition, it's entirely possible for two humans to look at the same information, and draw two different conclusions (perhaps because they filter the information according to their pre-existing beliefs, perhaps for other reasons), and therefore disagree on a hard truth. e.g. Climate change.
By hard truth I mean absolute truth. Facts. 2+2 = 4. If you understand all the rules that go into addition, there's no way for you to arrive at another conclusion.
Another example:
The earth is not flat. If you spend any amount of time studying just one of the many reasons why it can't be flat, you will have to agree.
Climate Change is not something we can know for sure. "Climate change" itself is not very well defined. Do you mean man-made climate change? Do you mean global warming? What exactly do you mean? You can, of course, draw different conclusions because its not well specified.
Out of that complex of issues, one good example would be the ozone hole. It's pretty clear that in the 70s we ejected a class of chemical substances (FCKW etc.) into the atmosphere that messed with the ozone layer. That's provable. If you study the facts, you have to agree.
Likewise, you have to agree that the human race has contributed to an increase in carbon oxides in the atmosphere.
All hard truths.
Then you have truths that we do not have direct evidence for but can verify conceptually - like this one:
"The universe has not existed for an infinite amount of time". How can we know?
Hawking makes the following argument: "Had the universe existed for an infinite amount of time, it would have had an infinite amount of time to achieve thermodynamic equilibrium. But it is obviously not in equilibrium (us being able to observe it necessitates it not being in equilibrium); therefore, it must be finite"
You can not possibly find a counterargument to that.
I differentiate between absolute truth and "what we know". We can be wrong about things because we have access to a limited amount of knowledge, but that doesn't change truth.
Faster than light travel is either possible or it is not. We don't know. But that doesn't make the truth any less deterministic.
Ah, I see what you mean. I did not correctly interpret your use of "hard truth".
I agree with your comment.
That said, I don't believe it is relevant if my/your/someone's goal is to learn about the world to create things/etc. Many (most?) of the things I know that are useful are not absolute truths, they are just hypotheses.
Aumann's agreement theorem says that two people acting rationally (in a certain precise sense) and with common knowledge of each other's beliefs cannot agree to disagree. More specifically, if two people are genuine Bayesian rationalists with common priors, and if they each have common knowledge of their individual posterior probabilities, then their posteriors must be equal. This theorem holds even if the people's individual posteriors are based on different observed information about the world. Simply knowing that another agent observed some information and came to their respective conclusion will force each to revise their beliefs, resulting eventually in total agreement on the correct posterior. Thus, two rational Bayesian agents with the same priors and who know each other's posteriors will have to agree.
one side of the argument. scientists do not generally take sides in a battle to denounce "races" through flawed metrics.
unless its politically motivated.
"oh look we figured out that the black people have lower iqs. not saying this means anything. obviously. just saying. claiming the scientific method here. sorry about the results but they are what they are."
My point is that you don't see the opposite- there aren't researchers purporting to have shown that the means are the same, flawed research or otherwise.
They don't want to study it, even though doing so could prove their position.
Imagine if there was an easy way to check whether or not God existed, but Christians virulently fought against anyone who tried to do so. Wouldn't this be a pretty good indicator that they were wrong?
I know what your point is. I'm not arguing your point. I'm calling it morally bankrupt.
Any person who is at all familiar with the history of the United States of America and has a iota of class stays away from publicizing data that concerns itself with judging whether "those black folks" may or may not actually be "inferior".
Even if your research proved that they are NOT - you'd still have had to question it first to even perform the study.
Personally, I don't believe that there should be limits to what science can and can not investigate. But the individuals who actually perform those studies are no less repugnant deplorables who feel like arming white supremacists with "evidence" is a justified means to gaining scientific recognition.
What does the world gain from knowing this? "Black people are genetically predisposed to being incapable of being smart". Great service to the human race and modern society. Make 500 million people feel bad about themselves in the name of progress. seriously, dude.
And btw, its still just one paper. This is not much in the name of scientific discourse. Maybe "the other side" isn't "researched" because without scientific discourse, you don't actually have much of a result. Without a control study that replicates these results, you don't really have results. You could have engineered them. So long as nobody else is asshole enough to verify those results for you, you effectively don't have any.
Over here in germany, its illegal to research whether the concentration camps actually killed 7 million people. By a back of the envelope calculation, this seems unlikely to me. Its just A LOT. But seriously, lets say some historian assembles all the records and finds its "only 700k"? What kind of person would even want that kind of result on their hands? "Hey look, nazi germany wasn't that bad. It killed only 700k jews. Wasn't even a million".
And yes, I've just compared your stupidity to that stupidity. Because its exactly the same thing. If you want to hate people, do it fucking openly. Put your name to it. Don't hide behind the scientific method. You're just an asshole and we can line up a million mathematicians who would happily poke holes in your numbers all day long if you actually released the real numbers instead of just your carefully selected graphs that "render obvious the mental retardation of the wrong skin color folks".
It really does take a kind of person, I kind of mentality to study things like this. IMHO this person may have genetic traces to persons like say...H1tl3r or T
I kid. Here's a meta-study that overviews three decades of research into the topic, and provides what I've found to be the best summary of the position and its ramifications. [1]
Here's a survey administered to geneticists, behavioral psychologists, and other experts who are active in the field. 83% believe that the IQ gap has a non-zero genetic component. [2]
We're actually at the point now where we've been able to identify some of the genes involved. [3]
It'll be interesting to see what happens as this stuff gets harder and harder to reject.
I refrained from responding yesterday, but I see now how committed you are to the whole thing. I have to imagine you took a turn along the decision tree of life and arrived where you are. Fair enough.
Do you know that a hundred years ago, there was no such thing as "white people"? There were Irish, English, German, Italian, French, etc. Some of them were considered to be almost subhuman by others in Europe and here in the US. They washed upon the shores of this great land and filled the ghettos of the cities, brought crime and degradation and were generally thought to be a blight on society by the Americans who lived in this country and wanted them gone. Today, those deplorables enjoy a status that their ancestors wouldn't have been able to conceive of. Some of them even take it upon themselves to oppress other groups of Americans in what can only be considered tragedy, not irony.
At every point in history there have been those who used some type of reasoning to position themselves as "better". Whether it was for personal gain or ignorance or a personal or cultural need to oppress, it is a story that is repeated over and over with every generation. The lines may shift and change but, it is the same.
So I guess I would ask you, as a thinking person that you seem to be, to consider whether you are committed to division and oppression or will you instead commit yourself to understanding and unity? Choose wisely. History will judge you.
The Naturalization Act of 1790- the first legislation implementing the rules for citizenship- limited immigration to "free white persons of good character". [1] It's revisionist nonsense to say that whiteness is a modern invention.
The point of this is not to establish oneself as better, it's to answer a question that is the backbone for our current social policy.
The underrepresentation of black people among life outcomes that correlate with high intelligence (physicists, CEOs, leading politicians, etc.), and overrepresentation of black people among life outcomes that correlate with low intelligence (prison, death by shooting, etc.) has been accepted as proof that our society is fundamentally opressive, and needs to be torn down. If black people and white people are as groups genetically equal, then this reasoning is perfectly valid- different outcomes would be the result of environmental bias.
If not, however, then no such inference can be made- these disparate outcomes are exactly what you would expect from two disparate groups, even in the absence of any oppression. If this is the case, suddenly teaching black children that white supremacy will limit their ability to succeed in tech, taking medical school slots away from more qualified Asians, and requiring equal proportions of blacks and whites in various positions becomes tremendously harmful.
You've been using HN exclusively to propagate racial and political rhetoric. That's not what this site is for, so what you've been doing is abusive here. Please stop.
There are places on the internet where this war (and it is war, in the sense that politics is war by other means) is welcome; Hacker News is not one of those, so kindly keep your racial passions elsewhere.
The guiding value of this site is intellectual curiosity, and that spirit does not survive five minutes with this stuff. I've noticed that proponents love to speak as if they were the voice of science incarnate, but the truth is that this is politics all the way down, and nasty politics at that.
I really appreciate having your voice in this discussion, dang. I wouldn't want to see the OPs contribution downvoted to oblivion, but I was put off by the lack of contrary viewpoints. I was hoping there would be others bearing the flag of reason.
Regarding having the opinion expressed for all to see instead of hiding or downvoting it, I think having it available proves that racism is alive and well even among the more educated. Some people believe we are in a "post racial" society and that is clearly out of ignorance at the least.
37 comments
[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] threadTherefore, with that definition, it's entirely possible for two humans to look at the same information, and draw two different conclusions (perhaps because they filter the information according to their pre-existing beliefs, perhaps for other reasons), and therefore disagree on a hard truth. e.g. Climate change.
Another example:
The earth is not flat. If you spend any amount of time studying just one of the many reasons why it can't be flat, you will have to agree.
Climate Change is not something we can know for sure. "Climate change" itself is not very well defined. Do you mean man-made climate change? Do you mean global warming? What exactly do you mean? You can, of course, draw different conclusions because its not well specified.
Out of that complex of issues, one good example would be the ozone hole. It's pretty clear that in the 70s we ejected a class of chemical substances (FCKW etc.) into the atmosphere that messed with the ozone layer. That's provable. If you study the facts, you have to agree.
Likewise, you have to agree that the human race has contributed to an increase in carbon oxides in the atmosphere.
All hard truths.
Then you have truths that we do not have direct evidence for but can verify conceptually - like this one:
"The universe has not existed for an infinite amount of time". How can we know?
Hawking makes the following argument: "Had the universe existed for an infinite amount of time, it would have had an infinite amount of time to achieve thermodynamic equilibrium. But it is obviously not in equilibrium (us being able to observe it necessitates it not being in equilibrium); therefore, it must be finite"
You can not possibly find a counterargument to that.
I differentiate between absolute truth and "what we know". We can be wrong about things because we have access to a limited amount of knowledge, but that doesn't change truth.
Faster than light travel is either possible or it is not. We don't know. But that doesn't make the truth any less deterministic.
I agree with your comment.
That said, I don't believe it is relevant if my/your/someone's goal is to learn about the world to create things/etc. Many (most?) of the things I know that are useful are not absolute truths, they are just hypotheses.
Aumann's agreement theorem says that two people acting rationally (in a certain precise sense) and with common knowledge of each other's beliefs cannot agree to disagree. More specifically, if two people are genuine Bayesian rationalists with common priors, and if they each have common knowledge of their individual posterior probabilities, then their posteriors must be equal. This theorem holds even if the people's individual posteriors are based on different observed information about the world. Simply knowing that another agent observed some information and came to their respective conclusion will force each to revise their beliefs, resulting eventually in total agreement on the correct posterior. Thus, two rational Bayesian agents with the same priors and who know each other's posteriors will have to agree.
https://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-Jense...
unless its politically motivated.
"oh look we figured out that the black people have lower iqs. not saying this means anything. obviously. just saying. claiming the scientific method here. sorry about the results but they are what they are."
repulsive
They don't want to study it, even though doing so could prove their position.
Imagine if there was an easy way to check whether or not God existed, but Christians virulently fought against anyone who tried to do so. Wouldn't this be a pretty good indicator that they were wrong?
Any person who is at all familiar with the history of the United States of America and has a iota of class stays away from publicizing data that concerns itself with judging whether "those black folks" may or may not actually be "inferior".
Even if your research proved that they are NOT - you'd still have had to question it first to even perform the study.
Personally, I don't believe that there should be limits to what science can and can not investigate. But the individuals who actually perform those studies are no less repugnant deplorables who feel like arming white supremacists with "evidence" is a justified means to gaining scientific recognition.
What does the world gain from knowing this? "Black people are genetically predisposed to being incapable of being smart". Great service to the human race and modern society. Make 500 million people feel bad about themselves in the name of progress. seriously, dude.
And btw, its still just one paper. This is not much in the name of scientific discourse. Maybe "the other side" isn't "researched" because without scientific discourse, you don't actually have much of a result. Without a control study that replicates these results, you don't really have results. You could have engineered them. So long as nobody else is asshole enough to verify those results for you, you effectively don't have any.
Over here in germany, its illegal to research whether the concentration camps actually killed 7 million people. By a back of the envelope calculation, this seems unlikely to me. Its just A LOT. But seriously, lets say some historian assembles all the records and finds its "only 700k"? What kind of person would even want that kind of result on their hands? "Hey look, nazi germany wasn't that bad. It killed only 700k jews. Wasn't even a million".
And yes, I've just compared your stupidity to that stupidity. Because its exactly the same thing. If you want to hate people, do it fucking openly. Put your name to it. Don't hide behind the scientific method. You're just an asshole and we can line up a million mathematicians who would happily poke holes in your numbers all day long if you actually released the real numbers instead of just your carefully selected graphs that "render obvious the mental retardation of the wrong skin color folks".
I kid. Here's a meta-study that overviews three decades of research into the topic, and provides what I've found to be the best summary of the position and its ramifications. [1]
Here's a survey administered to geneticists, behavioral psychologists, and other experts who are active in the field. 83% believe that the IQ gap has a non-zero genetic component. [2]
We're actually at the point now where we've been able to identify some of the genes involved. [3]
It'll be interesting to see what happens as this stuff gets harder and harder to reject.
[1] https://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-Jense...
[2] http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/2013-survey-o...
[3] http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/PifferIntelli...
Do you know that a hundred years ago, there was no such thing as "white people"? There were Irish, English, German, Italian, French, etc. Some of them were considered to be almost subhuman by others in Europe and here in the US. They washed upon the shores of this great land and filled the ghettos of the cities, brought crime and degradation and were generally thought to be a blight on society by the Americans who lived in this country and wanted them gone. Today, those deplorables enjoy a status that their ancestors wouldn't have been able to conceive of. Some of them even take it upon themselves to oppress other groups of Americans in what can only be considered tragedy, not irony.
At every point in history there have been those who used some type of reasoning to position themselves as "better". Whether it was for personal gain or ignorance or a personal or cultural need to oppress, it is a story that is repeated over and over with every generation. The lines may shift and change but, it is the same.
So I guess I would ask you, as a thinking person that you seem to be, to consider whether you are committed to division and oppression or will you instead commit yourself to understanding and unity? Choose wisely. History will judge you.
The point of this is not to establish oneself as better, it's to answer a question that is the backbone for our current social policy.
The underrepresentation of black people among life outcomes that correlate with high intelligence (physicists, CEOs, leading politicians, etc.), and overrepresentation of black people among life outcomes that correlate with low intelligence (prison, death by shooting, etc.) has been accepted as proof that our society is fundamentally opressive, and needs to be torn down. If black people and white people are as groups genetically equal, then this reasoning is perfectly valid- different outcomes would be the result of environmental bias.
If not, however, then no such inference can be made- these disparate outcomes are exactly what you would expect from two disparate groups, even in the absence of any oppression. If this is the case, suddenly teaching black children that white supremacy will limit their ability to succeed in tech, taking medical school slots away from more qualified Asians, and requiring equal proportions of blacks and whites in various positions becomes tremendously harmful.
[1]http://legisworks.org/sal/1/stats/STATUTE-1-Pg103.pdf
There are places on the internet where this war (and it is war, in the sense that politics is war by other means) is welcome; Hacker News is not one of those, so kindly keep your racial passions elsewhere.
The guiding value of this site is intellectual curiosity, and that spirit does not survive five minutes with this stuff. I've noticed that proponents love to speak as if they were the voice of science incarnate, but the truth is that this is politics all the way down, and nasty politics at that.
Regarding having the opinion expressed for all to see instead of hiding or downvoting it, I think having it available proves that racism is alive and well even among the more educated. Some people believe we are in a "post racial" society and that is clearly out of ignorance at the least.
is still drowning isn't it? pretty pedantic.
The average person is not solving it. And the average person isn't going to go, "oh it's phlegm, I only donate to mucus-related causes"?
long: https://www.reddit.com/r/gangstalkingmkultra/comments/4fb98a...
Suppose you could make an (strongly) Intelligent machine, and tell to analyze some data, it can just say "Fuck no, you're not a boss of me now!".