Who should we blame for the current war on science?

A vaccine developer and a climate scientist <strike>walk into a bar</strike> write a book.

See full article...

 

[ReadandShare]

The collective 'we' don't like to sacrifice - or even just to be inconvenienced. So we look for ways out.

We are not going to admit to being self centered and selfish, of course, so we look to rationalize, obfuscate - or support leaders who do.

 

[Ajar]

Before the inevitable "why did Ars get political" complaints start coming in: science and technology reporting is necessarily political in a world where plutocrats control the information ecosystem through technology, and their political allies use it to push an anti-science agenda - all just to enrich themselves, as the article and the book point out.

Calling a spade a spade is, in this case, necessarily political. Putting your head in the sand and saying you just want to read anodyne coverage about cool science and tech is also, in fact, a political statement - one that, in the current moment, aligns you with the anti-science plutocrats.

 

[TheColinous]

Well, the answer is collective action, and make the debate temperature such that holding anti-science belief leads to public ridicule and loss of status. I mean, there are more of us that believe in reason and rationality than there are those who do not. But of course, that necessitates getting over the "oh, but it's difficult, and it will have adverse consequences so I don't want to do it."

 

[Hort]

They advise that the best—really, the only—thing we can do now to effect change is to vote and hope for favorable legislation.

Let's hope that we are allowed a vote that actually matters before it is too late. I fear that in too many places around the world, and potentially, eventually here, that there are too many bad actors to overcome.

And the frog keeps boiling.

 

[Tohelo]

The climate controversy is essentially a huge case of prisoner's dilemma.

A person can gain bigly relative to others today at the cost of everybody suffering more or less tomorrow. But if everybody does the same, we all suffer hugely and sooner than might be expected.

Humans being what humans are, this is only manageable with regulations. And for those to be fair, they need to be based on objective science. Greedy and ignorant people cannot be expected to act maturely in a prisoner's dilemma and shouldn't be allowed anywhere near deciding on climate regulations. So, don't vote greedy and ignorant people into power.

 

[Steve austin]

Well, the answer is collective action, and make the debate temperature such that holding anti-science belief leads to public ridicule and loss of status. I mean, there are more of us that believe in reason and rationality than there are those who do not. But of course, that necessitates getting over the "oh, but it's difficult, and it will have adverse consequences so I don't want to do it."

That assumes they are willing to even acknowledge those that oppose them or are able to feel shame, and neither seems true of this administration or the powers behind them.

 

[Trajen]

Let's hope that we are allowed a vote that actually matters before it is too late. I fear that in too many places around the world, and potentially, eventually here, that there are too many bad actors to overcome.

And the frog keeps boiling.

There is a clear trend that these bastards are backing down on many fronts when giving strong pushback. The authoritarian playbook is continuing but with less and less appearance of invincibility here, at least.

 

[LordEOD]

Voting isn't the only means of expression at our disposal - I will assume everyone here has a bank account and a wallet/purse?

Money still does a great deal of walking and talking around these parts.

If one can't (or doesn't want to) protest or make more active choices to resist, then perhaps the message should be, at minimum, do some research into where and how one spends their money and where that money ultimately ends up.

It'll also mean lifestyle changes (and for some, really drastic ones) but where we spend our money can be just as decisive as where and for whom we cast our votes.

Edit: spelling

 

[randomname7123]

Perhaps I lack imagination, but I don't see us (humans and/or Americans) doing anything meaningful about climate change in the next 50 years.

That is anything meaningful on purpose. I still see a small chance of the problem being solved accidentally as a side effect of capitalism, but not on purpose.

 

[balthazarr]

I fear voting is no longer the answer - it's too late for that in the USA, as unbelievable as that sounds. The chances of free and fair elections moving forward are essentially zero and, even if by some miracle there's a different outcome, the fascists aren't going to handover power. January 6 2021 will look like a picnic.

Of course, this is just my opinion based on my observations as an outsider looking in, but it's looking very, very bleak indeed.

 

[origen83]

“Support politicians who favor people over plutocrats“… This is indeed one of our best options - probably THE best - but having available leader choices that fit this description at the levels we need them to be at just feels increasingly more difficult every year. It’s so easy to be on one side and point to the other as the solution/problem, but I’m not sure that any direction on our current x-axis of political choices favors people over plutocrats - no matter how badly we want to believe that they do.

 

[ThEgg]

Well, the answer is collective action, and make the debate temperature such that holding anti-science belief leads to public ridicule and loss of status. I mean, there are more of us that believe in reason and rationality than there are those who do not. But of course, that necessitates getting over the "oh, but it's difficult, and it will have adverse consequences so I don't want to do it."

I don't think ridiculing others works today, at least not on its own, with individuals. It worked in the past because if someone was told they were wrong, they were unlikely to find an echo-chamber that would reinforce some reason why they aren't actually wrong. The super accessible internet has changed all that. And now they have the majority in US government backing them.

That's not to say that I think science supporters should be soft, just that leaving a door open for anti-science supporters to come to terms with grace and laugh at themselves later might be more effective. Basically I'm saying we still need Bill Nye types, solid science communicators who make science fun and approachable.

 

[josephandrews222]

I don't think I will ever be able to forget how Trump and his acolytes trashed Fauci (a world-class scientist), all for political gain.

It is as if these people don't understand science.

At all.

My oh my...what has happened to my country.

 

[DrewW]

Lawyers have a saying, “when the facts are on your side, pound the facts. If the law is in your side, pound the law. If the facts and law aren’t on your aide, pound the table.”

It seems like this is where we’re at with science. Elon loves science when it gets Tesla sweet, sweet carbon credits. But elon hates science when it says people are empathetic (the woke mind virus). So he just ignores the science when it makes him feel bad.

 

[ColdWetDog]

Voting isn't the only means of expression at our disposal - I will assume everyone here has a bank account and a wallet/purse?

Money still does a great deal of walking and talking around these parts.

If one can't (or doesn't want to) protest or make more active choices to resist, then perhaps the message should be, at minimum, do some research into where and how one spends their money and where that money ultimately ends up.

It'll also mean lifestyle changes (and for some, really drastic ones) but where we spend our money can be just as decisive as where and for whom we cast our votes.

Edit: spelling

Where has that ever worked? For a specific product - New Coke or Bud Light - maybe, for a while. Unless you want to go up to Alaska and homestead you are purchasing products and services. Overwhelmingly from Truly Asshole Corporations. I don't thing 'really drastic lifestyle changes' does service to what you would have to do.

A very large number of Americans are just getting by. Now, by dropping some of this culture's stupider concepts like 18 subscription services to television and a high five figure car you might even be able to save some money but major lifestyle changes generally don't go over well. Hell, we had a near existential crisis when you couldn't buy toilet paper in your typical convenient size.

And the number of people that could actually financially remove themselves from this culture is not even a rounding error on the problem.

 

[Aleutoja]

I came to the following interpretation (and it is pretty darn depressing): in the past (especially second half of the 20th century) science was the "new cool thing", there was enthusiasm about it and people blindly hailed to it in hope for magic solutions. Now it's clear that science can't do miracles, science is pointing at the fact that global problems require hard work for global solutions, so people are turning away towards fresher promises of magic solution (be it climate change denial, pseudo-science, or even just the good ol' blaming foreigners).

The masses never understood or trusted science, when science was in vogue a few decades ago it was just blind faith in the hope for zero-cost magic solutions.

 

[ColdWetDog]

This is setting up the stage for an AI to become the next US president. The US politics are at a point where even ChatGPT could make for a better leader.

ELIZA would be better. At least it tended to act empathetic and you could run it on a Raspberry Pi.

 

[Computers Are People Too!]

It would be a crime not to mention
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan in this thread.

For starters, this quote alone made me buy that book:
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/632474-i-have-a-foreboding-of-an-america-in-my-children-s

While the book spends a bit to much effort on "UFO nuts", still being a thing at the time of writing, it is a detailed description of the pursuit of truth through human history - and those who seek to gain something by preventing it.

Our struggle today isn't about opinion, it's about facts.

 

[Tochoa]

This is setting up the stage for an AI to become the next US president. The US politics are at a point where even ChatGPT could make for a better leader.

Since LLMs pull information from a huge body of text on the Internet, that sounds an awful lot like democracy.* I don't think that's gonna fly.

*Run by the most prolific writers

 

[Amateur Nerd]

I still see a small chance of the problem being solved accidentally as a side effect of capitalism, but not on purpose.

That's how capitalism works, when we trust it to work. And it's the only approach that actually works to solve problems for the long-term.

Ironic that you would post that as a comment on an article, that among others states:

They’ve helpfully characterized “the five principal forces of antiscience “ into alliterative groups: (1) plutocrats and their political action committees, (2) petrostates and their politicians and polluters, (3) fake and venal professionals—physicians and professors, (4) propagandists, especially those with podcasts, and (5) the press. The general tactic is that (1) and (2) hire (3) to generate deceitful and inflammatory talking points, which are then disseminated by all-too-willing members of (4) and (5).

All those five forces are in one way or another either a consequence or somehow related to capitalism.

 

[Veritas super omens]

(3) fake and venal professionals—physicians and professors

I coined a term for this. The word is kehoe. People with expertise that use their expertise for personal gain and in contravention of the public good and known expert information.

Its a specific type of scumbag. Joe Rogan and Brainworm do not qualify as they have no expertise. They are just run of the mill scumbags.

 

[crazedgironemo]

Let's hope that we are allowed a vote that actually matters before it is too late. I fear that in too many places around the world, and potentially, eventually here, that there are too many bad actors to overcome.

And the frog WE keeps boiling.

FTFY. Just a reminder that it's not frogs that's being boiled but all of us

 

[Fred Duck]

And the frog keeps boiling.

While this is an amusing metaphor, it is scientifically inaccurate, and in an article about fighting scientific inaccuracy, it does seem a wee bit out of place.

 

[Frank C.]

There is a clear trend that these bastards are backing down on many fronts when giving strong pushback. The authoritarian playbook is continuing but with less and less appearance of invincibility here, at least.

This. I know plenty of people who say it’s too late, too much of the long standing plan (and Project 2025) has already been implemented. No. People get pissed enough, they will back down. Note the Kimmel incident. Complete return to normalcy and the right wing voices have even clamored up on the issue…so much for a manufactured martyr. Note California’s anti-concealment law against ICE agents masking. Hoping we have law enforcement that steps up, unmasks them, and IDs them for future prosecution against Constitutional and human rights violations. They fear this.

 

[Veritas super omens]

This is a problem that capitalism will not solve. Absent government interventions there is no money to be made. Its like roadside litter or lead pollution or overfishing, capitalism will not solve those issues because there is no money to be made. They all require government intervention. Sadly the governments of the world are mostly absent in the face of the current existential threat facing civilization. They have been bought or corrupted by the perpetratirs of the threat. The war on science is just collateral damage in the petro industry's attempts to prevent interruption of their cash flow.

 

[C.M. Allen]

The current war on science, and who’s behind it -- Conservatives. It's always Conservatives. There has never been a time in world history where conservatives and conservatism were not on the wrong side of history for any issue that was even marginally divisive. It's the unholy alliance of the selfish and stupid.

 

[scdack]

Since LLMs pull information from a huge body of text on the Internet, that sounds an awful lot like democracy.* I don't think that's gonna fly.

*Run by the most prolific writers

Democracy is not at fault, but the voters are! People thought that electing a mediocre business man as a country's leader would be the equivalent to electing an actual politician, one who understands the craft.

And when people can be manipulated to think this could have worked, then they are ripe to elect an AI as their next leader, too. You just got to sell the idea as a salvation to all their problems: a machine that has no opinion, no emotion, no ego, no narcissism, no self-interest, and one that makes it fair for all. Heck, I would vote for it just to see what happens. Would it set the world on fire or would it actually do some good?!?

 

[marsiglio]

It's that darn Enlightenment. Once those guys like Newton and Descartes decided you could believe in a Christian God and, at the same time, set aside whichever version of the Bible you happened to have and instead look at experiment and abstract thought to understand reality ... it was all downhill. "Politics trumps science" - the president's agenda trumps the constitution - instead of having the Ten Commandments in every schoolroom, let's have the Periodic Chart of the Elements.

 

[serafean]

This. I know plenty of people who say it’s too late, too much of the long standing plan (and Project 2025) has already been implemented. No. People get pissed enough, they will back down. Note the Kimmel incident. Complete return to normalcy and the right wing voices have even clamored up on the issue…so much for a manufactured martyr. Note California’s anti-concealment law against ICE agents masking. Hoping we have law enforcement that steps up, unmasks them, and IDs them for future prosecution against Constitutional and human rights violations. They fear this.

It might not be too late for US democracy, but it sure is for mitigating climate change...

 

[Hoptimist]

These articles would gain a lot of credibilty if they were willing to forego the political bias. I have kids, if I have to choose between a governement that doesn't want to enforce Co2 emissions, force wind\solar\electric cars, etc. and the politician who wants to transition my kids because someday they said they wanted to be the other gender (or none at all)... Well, I'll drop the long therm concerns to protect my kids immediately.

Gender theory is not based on evidence, and it breaks people's life, inform policies, seems like it brings political assassinations.

Same for the Covid measures and coerced vax policies, that had no baring on reality, most of it was useless power grabs. Most apparent differences in mortality in one region vs another can be accounted by median age and\or obesity rates (those people are at risk, needed protection). Same for schools closing and keeping people inside, that never made sense.

Not all "scientists" to science.

I am unaware of any candidate for president that advocates a minor child's complete gender transition over parental objections. People bring up fabricated edge cases as a reason to oppose candidates with sane views of climate change and public health.

 

[EnragedEwok]

Democracy is not at fault, but the voters are! People thought that electing a mediocre business man as a country's leader would be the equivalent to electing an actual politician, one who understands the craft.

This. We had 3 elections that could have had us well on the way to a much better future:
1. Bush v Gore
2. Trump v Clinton
3. Trump v Harris

We chose badly, and that's on us. We still have the power to turn things around in '26 and '28. That requires voting. We're following the Orban/Hungary path right now, but even Orban only holds power by controlling information flow and restricting opposition campaign funding/organization, and Orban himself is facing so much backlash that there's a real possibility he could be voted out in 2026. And this is after 15 years of rule. We're still in a much better position in compared to Hungarian voters in terms of opposition parties being able to organize and campaign.

 

[ColdWetDog]

I am unaware of any candidate for president that advocates a minor child's complete gender transition over parental objections. People bring up fabricated edge cases as a reason to oppose candidates with sane views of climate change and public health.

Parts of the left wing overplayed their hand. On a day ending in 'y'. Virtually all of the right wing overplays their hand. Every day. It's just politics. But if you work just a little below the headlines, just a bit, you find that as you point out, nobody is forcing gender transitions of people, only a few people are concerned about their pronouns (which is fine and not particularly important) and the vast majority of scientific thought and literature supports things like understanding the environment and working to address climate change.

But if you're connection to current events is Fox News headlines then you might think think all sorts of bizarre shit.

 

[Veritas super omens]

It might not be too late for US democracy, but it sure is for mitigating climate change...

Well...yes and no...civilization ending climate change is a done deal. The thing is IT CAN ALWAYS GET WORSE. The question becomes How difficult will it be for future generations to survive? If we kill 65% of species an 85% of individuals it is a far better world (I know! Right?) Than a world with 90 percent of species an 98 percent of individuals. We have fascists, kehoes and techbros trying their damndest to make sure it is the latter.

 

[raschumacher]

This doesn't quite get to the bottom of it. The designers of Project 2025 are largely religious fundamentalist nutjobs for whom the ideals and advances of the Enlightenment are anathema.

 

[Astro-CCD]

It is as if these people don't understand science. At all.

This can largely be laid on the doorstep of religion and the attendant desire for simple answers that simply do not exist. Smart politicians and religious leaders (aka con artists) know this and are happy to take advantage of it by providing the simple (and wrong) answers to those who lack the will or intelligence to do the hard work of thinking and becoming educated.

As such, it is a problem unlikely to be solved, both because of the large percentage of uneducated and lazy people and the bad actors that know how to use them.

 

[Tochoa]

Parts of the left wing overplayed their hand.

I see it more as parts of the left wing allowed themselves to be baited into bad-faith arguments on culture war issues. The right wasn't looking to engage in conversation, they just wanted to bait someone on the left into saying something that could be misrepresented usefully to their followers. The most detailed acceptable response to questions about trans rights is that this is a discussion between an individual and their medical team, and guardians if they're a minor. Engaging further only invites misunderstanding and feeds the trolls.