WHAT ARE YOU TELLING ME SOME PEOPLE ALSO BELIEVE OTHER SJIT I DONT BELIEVE? FUCKING CHRIST FULL BORE AHEAD WITH CAPITALISM FOLKS THIS TRAIN AINT GONNA STOP TILL EVERYONE BELIEVES EXACTLY THE SAME AS ME ON A BUNCH OF SPECIFIC GAY FAGGOT RETARD SIDE ISSUES THAT DONT MATTER AT ALL
elemennop posted:soviet union, yugoslavia, bulgaria, even pre-dengist china and cuba all poured in a lot of resources into science. in the soviet bloc countries and balkan communist states in general the positions with the most perks after like generals or party leaders was being a research scientist at an institute or university. even like during the worst rebuilding post ww2 yugoslavia, my grandparents got the largest apartment they could get (3 bedrooms and 2 offices, but they had 2 children and my greatgrandmother staying with them), they would be given travel grants, they even had a part-time housekeeper so that they could focus on their research. i mean, all of this is very modest by western bourgeois standards, but it does show where the priorities laid.
i dont know much about the science history in yugoslavia, but i certainly agree that the soviet union put a lot of effort into fields like physics and math but in that case we have to keep in mind that we're talking about the same country that sponsored lysenko. its one thing to have theoretical physicists who can make great theoretical progress and be prestigious and so on but have no relevance to policy, but another to investigate things like agriculture (like people have been talking about in the science problem thread) or cognitive science (ive been in conversations where someone didnt seem to want to accept the validity of confirmation bias as a "real thing" because cognitive science is part of the capitalist framework) which can easily be really tightly tangled into the practical ideological aspects of radical movements. and i think its very connected to the idea that everything is ideology or at least that its not possible to escape ideology completely and anything that purports to say "this will work even if you dont believe in it" is automatically received as some kind of oppressive force from which it is necessary to escape.
i guess im also doing myself no favors by talking about "science" like it's some monolithic coherent entity, especially in the context where you have people who will read brian green books about basically parts of the ontology of modern high energy physics and then go off and take homeopathic remedies for their cold. and i'll definitely agree that the way modern medicine works has huge problems (including huge amounts of research fraud and unreproducible results getting published) and could stand being overhauled but the people who are the most vocal about it are people who believe vaccines cause autism and that homeopathy is this one weird trick doctors dont want you to know.
c_man posted:elemennop posted:soviet union, yugoslavia, bulgaria, even pre-dengist china and cuba all poured in a lot of resources into science. in the soviet bloc countries and balkan communist states in general the positions with the most perks after like generals or party leaders was being a research scientist at an institute or university. even like during the worst rebuilding post ww2 yugoslavia, my grandparents got the largest apartment they could get (3 bedrooms and 2 offices, but they had 2 children and my greatgrandmother staying with them), they would be given travel grants, they even had a part-time housekeeper so that they could focus on their research. i mean, all of this is very modest by western bourgeois standards, but it does show where the priorities laid.
i dont know much about the science history in yugoslavia, but i certainly agree that the soviet union put a lot of effort into fields like physics and math but in that case we have to keep in mind that we're talking about the same country that sponsored lysenko. its one thing to have theoretical physicists who can make great theoretical progress and be prestigious and so on but have no relevance to policy, but another to investigate things like agriculture (like people have been talking about in the science problem thread) or cognitive science (ive been in conversations where someone didnt seem to want to accept the validity of confirmation bias as a "real thing" because cognitive science is part of the capitalist framework) which can easily be really tightly tangled into the practical ideological aspects of radical movements. and i think its very connected to the idea that everything is ideology or at least that its not possible to escape ideology completely and anything that purports to say "this will work even if you dont believe in it" is automatically received as some kind of oppressive force from which it is necessary to escape.
i guess im also doing myself no favors by talking about "science" like it's some monolithic coherent entity, especially in the context where you have people who will read brian green books about basically parts of the ontology of modern high energy physics and then go off and take homeopathic remedies for their cold. and i'll definitely agree that the way modern medicine works has huge problems (including huge amounts of research fraud and unreproducible results getting published) and could stand being overhauled but the people who are the most vocal about it are people who believe vaccines cause autism and that homeopathy is this one weird trick doctors dont want you to know.
my grandparents were actually agriculturalists (population geneticists) that were doing exactly what you said and my grandfather tried his best to convince russians that lysenkoism is stupid. my grandparents were exporting wheat varieties all over the world, translating their textbooks into english, collaborating with american universities, etc. yugoslavia turned from a net importer of wheat to a pretty decent exporter.
that being said, outside of genetics the soviets were pretty decent about having science influence public policy e.g. nuclear power and aerospace development. i mean, i obviously agree with you that it wasn't perfect, but i don't think you're going to have to worry about healing crystals or whatever prospering in a socialist state. most of the hostility to "science" as a thing comes from the western left.
c_man posted:i dont know much
acephalousuniverse posted:ughh nuclear power i fucking love it so much my single issue boner is so fucking hard right now nuclera pwoer matters more than anythinggg im cummingngngngggggggg
i mention that because it's something i know a little bit about. i dont even care as much about the positions they take on issues as much as i do about why they take them. to take the nuclear power example, the reactor designs that are in use are pretty bad because they were designed to be part of the nuclear weapons pipleline and there are much cleaner ways to get nuclear power, but they need development. abandoning the whole project of nuclear power when there are ways of doing it that avoid the actual problems people have with it is dumb. same with GMO stuff. i even mostly agree with most of the proposed legislation (but im not super well informed about the specifics) but i think its really dumb that the given reasoning is that GMOs are "unnatural" rather than having concerns about private control over food staples. i dont think that its connected with socialism in general and i think its a really weird situation where you have a lot of people who are really concerned with helping people live in a better society having really backwards reasoning.
elemennop posted:my grandparents were actually agriculturalists (population geneticists) that were doing exactly what you said and my grandfather tried his best to convince russians that lysenkoism is stupid. my grandparents were exporting wheat varieties all over the world, translating their textbooks into english, collaborating with american universities, etc. yugoslavia turned from a net importer of wheat to a pretty decent exporter.
that being said, outside of genetics the soviets were pretty decent about having science influence public policy e.g. nuclear power and aerospace development. i mean, i obviously agree with you that it wasn't perfect, but i don't think you're going to have to worry about healing crystals or whatever prospering in a socialist state. most of the hostility to "science" as a thing comes from the western left.
thats cool + good. its relieving to hear that this is something that is just something from my environment and that people in other parts of the world have this figured out better.
c_man posted:i dont even care as much about the positions they take on issues as much as i do about why they take them. .
ahh see now here is one example of where you are fucking retarded
acephalousuniverse posted:c_man posted:i dont even care as much about the positions they take on issues as much as i do about why they take them. .
ahh see now here is one example of where you are fucking retarded
calm down man
acephalousuniverse posted:ahh see now here is one example of where you are fucking retarded
i think the reasons why people propose specific policy changes is important. im not saying i dont support the policies when they're good policies, which is why i support a lot of the gmo policy. but i think the way they're trying to sell the policies is counterproductive, and this goes hand in hand with support for policies that i dont think should be supported.
daddyholes posted:what is this phantom thing though where we care about the Green party
i guess my worries are overstated because in the two countries that ive lived in (the US) the greens have a lot more political clout than the socialists.
Edited by c_man ()
Vaccines are a blatant cash grab by pharma. Measles and mumps are not childhood bubonic plagues, yet industry-propagandized scifags go apeshit when they hear someone chose not to vaccinate their kid. They tried to shut down a conference on vaccine safety at Simon Fraser University a couple months, and were all over the news claiming that people who are skeptical of the benefits of a vaccine were partly responsible for dead kids. Their lack of respect for freedom of thought (which is the only consisently pro-science stance given how often science changes) rivals that of feminists.
c_man posted:elemennop posted:soviet union, yugoslavia, bulgaria, even pre-dengist china and cuba all poured in a lot of resources into science. in the soviet bloc countries and balkan communist states in general the positions with the most perks after like generals or party leaders was being a research scientist at an institute or university. even like during the worst rebuilding post ww2 yugoslavia, my grandparents got the largest apartment they could get (3 bedrooms and 2 offices, but they had 2 children and my greatgrandmother staying with them), they would be given travel grants, they even had a part-time housekeeper so that they could focus on their research. i mean, all of this is very modest by western bourgeois standards, but it does show where the priorities laid.
i dont know much about the science history in yugoslavia, but i certainly agree that the soviet union put a lot of effort into fields like physics and math but in that case we have to keep in mind that we're talking about the same country that sponsored lysenko. its one thing to have theoretical physicists who can make great theoretical progress and be prestigious and so on but have no relevance to policy, but another to investigate things like agriculture (like people have been talking about in the science problem thread) or cognitive science (ive been in conversations where someone didnt seem to want to accept the validity of confirmation bias as a "real thing" because cognitive science is part of the capitalist framework) which can easily be really tightly tangled into the practical ideological aspects of radical movements. and i think its very connected to the idea that everything is ideology or at least that its not possible to escape ideology completely and anything that purports to say "this will work even if you dont believe in it" is automatically received as some kind of oppressive force from which it is necessary to escape.
i guess im also doing myself no favors by talking about "science" like it's some monolithic coherent entity, especially in the context where you have people who will read brian green books about basically parts of the ontology of modern high energy physics and then go off and take homeopathic remedies for their cold. and i'll definitely agree that the way modern medicine works has huge problems (including huge amounts of research fraud and unreproducible results getting published) and could stand being overhauled but the people who are the most vocal about it are people who believe vaccines cause autism and that homeopathy is this one weird trick doctors dont want you to know.
"lysenkoism" as it is understood in the west is pure anti-communist propaganda. the only example it really serves is to show that discourse is not a pure, ideologically free truth statement but rooted in the class struggle. marxists who "condemn" lysenko while ignoring social darwinism (the capitalist mirror image) are basically scientist trots.
discipline, the readiness to sacrifice oneself to the party, these are the qualities that matter and not in a bourgeois romantic way of sacrificing one's life. what it really means is sacrificing one's ego and one's desire for truth outside of one's objective material conditions. JBS Haldane was right to change any "lysenko" conversation to a conversation about funding of western science just as true communists change any conversation about the USSR or any anti-imperialist situation to one about the crimes of capitalism, even if we do not fully agree with our position! we are not liberal gods but simply men, and our position on any issue we cannot affect or cannot speak on based on our position in the class struggle (internal politics in a third world socialist country for example) should always be the same: destory capitalism at home, have faith in the masses to strive towards socialism without some white dude int the 1st world's help.
roseweird posted:but what does wittgenstein say about it
He didn't like scientism very much, didn't share the modern faith in scientific and technological progress. It explains his reaction to the atomic bomb:
The hysterical fear over the atom bomb now being experienced, or at any rate expressed, by the public almost suggests that at last something really salutary has been invented. The fright at least gives the impression of a really effective bitter medicine. I can’t help thinking: if this didn’t have something good about it the philistines wouldn’t be making an outcry. But perhaps this too is a childish idea. Because really all I can mean is that the bomb offers a prospect of the end, the destruction, of an evil, – our disgusting soapy water science.… there is nothing good or desirable about scientific knowledge and that mankind, in seeking it, is falling into a trap. (Monk 1990, p. 485)
babyhueypnewton posted:we are not liberal gods but simply men
speak for yourself, cupcake
*transcends some shit*
babyhueypnewton posted:c_man posted:elemennop posted:soviet union, yugoslavia, bulgaria, even pre-dengist china and cuba all poured in a lot of resources into science. in the soviet bloc countries and balkan communist states in general the positions with the most perks after like generals or party leaders was being a research scientist at an institute or university. even like during the worst rebuilding post ww2 yugoslavia, my grandparents got the largest apartment they could get (3 bedrooms and 2 offices, but they had 2 children and my greatgrandmother staying with them), they would be given travel grants, they even had a part-time housekeeper so that they could focus on their research. i mean, all of this is very modest by western bourgeois standards, but it does show where the priorities laid.
i dont know much about the science history in yugoslavia, but i certainly agree that the soviet union put a lot of effort into fields like physics and math but in that case we have to keep in mind that we're talking about the same country that sponsored lysenko. its one thing to have theoretical physicists who can make great theoretical progress and be prestigious and so on but have no relevance to policy, but another to investigate things like agriculture (like people have been talking about in the science problem thread) or cognitive science (ive been in conversations where someone didnt seem to want to accept the validity of confirmation bias as a "real thing" because cognitive science is part of the capitalist framework) which can easily be really tightly tangled into the practical ideological aspects of radical movements. and i think its very connected to the idea that everything is ideology or at least that its not possible to escape ideology completely and anything that purports to say "this will work even if you dont believe in it" is automatically received as some kind of oppressive force from which it is necessary to escape.
i guess im also doing myself no favors by talking about "science" like it's some monolithic coherent entity, especially in the context where you have people who will read brian green books about basically parts of the ontology of modern high energy physics and then go off and take homeopathic remedies for their cold. and i'll definitely agree that the way modern medicine works has huge problems (including huge amounts of research fraud and unreproducible results getting published) and could stand being overhauled but the people who are the most vocal about it are people who believe vaccines cause autism and that homeopathy is this one weird trick doctors dont want you to know."lysenkoism" as it is understood in the west is pure anti-communist propaganda. the only example it really serves is to show that discourse is not a pure, ideologically free truth statement but rooted in the class struggle. marxists who "condemn" lysenko while ignoring social darwinism (the capitalist mirror image) are basically scientist trots.
discipline, the readiness to sacrifice oneself to the party, these are the qualities that matter and not in a bourgeois romantic way of sacrificing one's life. what it really means is sacrificing one's ego and one's desire for truth outside of one's objective material conditions. JBS Haldane was right to change any "lysenko" conversation to a conversation about funding of western science just as true communists change any conversation about the USSR or any anti-imperialist situation to one about the crimes of capitalism, even if we do not fully agree with our position! we are not liberal gods but simply men, and our position on any issue we cannot affect or cannot speak on based on our position in the class struggle (internal politics in a third world socialist country for example) should always be the same: destory capitalism at home, have faith in the masses to strive towards socialism without some white dude int the 1st world's help.
i mean, yeah, we should avoid sensationalism and question those that use the issue as a bludgeon against socialism globally, but it was still a stupid policy and since it was last relevant 50+ years ago, i think we can safely criticise it. also, in this very particular case, my family was very directly involved in the struggle that had population genetics win over lysenkoism in yugoslavia, so i think i can relatively safely comment on it.
roseweird posted:but what does wittgenstein say about it
"The world is independent of my will." --Ludwig Wittgenstein
Don't get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one.
NoFreeWill posted:energy is only the most important thing in the economy, so surely issues like nuclear power don't matter at all.
I was referring to other stuff with "don't matter at all" but yeah nuclear power, scientific advancements, environmentalism, and all that mean absolute shit out of the context of socialism. nuclear power is not going to bring about socialism, so yeah it's an issue that doesn't matter at all until we have socialism (it's funny how scientists suddenly get this ironclad faith in the ability of capitalists to obey regulations and follow safety standards when nuclear power comes into play, and similarly how they think that converting to nuclear is a matter of convincing ignorant sheeple how good it is rather than battling an economic system that is hostile to sensible energy policy). this is why i said that dude is fucking retarded for basically saying he's concerned with policing everyone's hyper-specific adherence to scientific truth and proper reasoning over actually accomplishing anything politically.
discrediting "the left" (which intentional or not is what's done here) because some amount of strawman "leftists" are against nuclear power is dumb and damaging to whatever "progress" science-worshiping star trek fans think they're advancing by spraying their single issue nuclear power diarrhea all over the place. it's basically encouraging people to go to some reactionary "third way" ideology by implication
claiming pseudoscience as some fundamental part of "the left" in particular, in the face of how much pseudoscience bullshit is pushed by capitalism (as babyhueypnewton said), is ridiculous. i'm willing to bet 99% of the people c_man is thinking of as "the left" are actually liberal Democrats or libertarians anyway - that's the demographic of people obsessed with crystals and anti-vaccination stuff, not actual committed leftists of pretty much any stripe (especially given his totally ignorant idea of what "ideology" even is)
whether or not nuclear power specifically is popular is nowhere near as important as whether or not we're living under capitalism. advancing technology and spreading the Cool New Religion of James Randi or whatever aren't going to actually stop us from continuing on our path of "living in this horrific shitty world until we destroy it," only socialism is going to enable those technological changes to actually matter in terms of the lives and survival of basically anyone
FOUR PARAGRAPHS BITCH
roseweird posted:what is the point of a revolution if not to seize control of an existing state and redirect its people, wealth, and resources by implementing new energy, industrial, agricultural, public health, environment, economic, and overall organizational practices
yeah but science worshipers tend to ignore the "revolution" and "seize control" and "state" parts and just think inventing shit and harping on people about how theyre not rational enough and doing ted talks is gonna Change The World
like "have revolution and implement sustainable energy policy" is all well and good, "try to reform capitalism into being sustainable" or the more common "do ted talks until capitalism happily reforms itself somehow" is a stupid waste of time
acephalousuniverse posted:(as babyhueypnewton said)
every post should have this in it 
i just dont want people to think france has no nuclear reactors or something from what that guy said lol
Edited by gwap ()
also
lessons posted:I drove past Occupy today to see what that stuff was all about. Seemed pretty "whack" to me, to use a bit of hilariously outdated "urban" slang, but whatever. Anyway, after that, I decided to read the first sentence of the Communist Manifesto to see what this Marxism thing was all about and read Einstein's famous ee equals em cee squared equation to see what physics was all about, pretty sure I've got those down. After that I stopped into Subway (Eat Fresh!™) for a delicious Italian BMT and read the calorie listing on the back of my napkin to learn all about nutrition. On my way home I accidentally hired a hooker, funny story there. Now I'm home and it's time for us to all discuss our really important political options. I'll start:
"Homosex represents *does Doctor Evil pinky thing* Six Hundred Beeeellion dollars in spending power. Let's get crackin'. Let's get a-gogo. Now listen to my song!"
gwap posted:remember when bhpn said that huey newton hated gay people because he was a dumb nigga when the thing newton was most known for was the integration of gays into leftist politics. good times hahahaha
you see, when you spell it with an a, it has a wholly different meaning
gwap posted:hah didn't even realize. Ty for catching me bro, just in time for ninja edit (literally)
oh, my bad, i just meant not to censor yourself. looks like i won't be seeing you at the weekly murfreesboro rhizzone klavern meetup after all, seeing as how you were definitely talking about ninjas
roseweird posted:swirlsofhistory posted:roseweird posted:but what does wittgenstein say about it
He didn't like scientism very much, didn't share the modern faith in scientific and technological progress. It explains his reaction to the atomic bomb:
The hysterical fear over the atom bomb now being experienced, or at any rate expressed, by the public almost suggests that at last something really salutary has been invented. The fright at least gives the impression of a really effective bitter medicine. I can’t help thinking: if this didn’t have something good about it the philistines wouldn’t be making an outcry. But perhaps this too is a childish idea. Because really all I can mean is that the bomb offers a prospect of the end, the destruction, of an evil, – our disgusting soapy water science.… there is nothing good or desirable about scientific knowledge and that mankind, in seeking it, is falling into a trap. (Monk 1990, p. 485)
you really love easy answers
well yeah, since language predates thought
gwap posted:btw france gets something like 80% of it's electricity from nuclear power, recent politicians have been trying to lower that for some reason (hollande for example), but, afaik, it's like more than any other country on earth.
i just dont want people to think france has no nuclear reactors or something from what that guy said lol
i know that, which is why im really confused by the eco-centered efforts to reduce reliance on nuclear without a really clear idea of what's going to replace it.
acephalousuniverse posted:I was referring to other stuff with "don't matter at all" but yeah nuclear power, scientific advancements, environmentalism, and all that mean absolute shit out of the context of socialism. nuclear power is not going to bring about socialism, so yeah it's an issue that doesn't matter at all until we have socialism (it's funny how scientists suddenly get this ironclad faith in the ability of capitalists to obey regulations and follow safety standards when nuclear power comes into play, and similarly how they think that converting to nuclear is a matter of convincing ignorant sheeple how good it is rather than battling an economic system that is hostile to sensible energy policy). this is why i said that dude is fucking retarded for basically saying he's concerned with policing everyone's hyper-specific adherence to scientific truth and proper reasoning over actually accomplishing anything politically.
discrediting "the left" (which intentional or not is what's done here) because some amount of strawman "leftists" are against nuclear power is dumb and damaging to whatever "progress" science-worshiping star trek fans think they're advancing by spraying their single issue nuclear power diarrhea all over the place. it's basically encouraging people to go to some reactionary "third way" ideology by implication
claiming pseudoscience as some fundamental part of "the left" in particular, in the face of how much pseudoscience bullshit is pushed by capitalism (as babyhueypnewton said), is ridiculous. i'm willing to bet 99% of the people c_man is thinking of as "the left" are actually liberal Democrats or libertarians anyway - that's the demographic of people obsessed with crystals and anti-vaccination stuff, not actual committed leftists of pretty much any stripe (especially given his totally ignorant idea of what "ideology" even is)
whether or not nuclear power specifically is popular is nowhere near as important as whether or not we're living under capitalism. advancing technology and spreading the Cool New Religion of James Randi or whatever aren't going to actually stop us from continuing on our path of "living in this horrific shitty world until we destroy it," only socialism is going to enable those technological changes to actually matter in terms of the lives and survival of basically anyone
i don't think its "fundamental" to the left, i obviously think its something that can change and i don't see where you're getting your whole deal about postponing socialism or whatever because its not like it was going to happen tomorrow but because i demanded that the green parties in the us and western europe stop having dumb policies we have to wait until the next election cycle. you can go on about how stuff like green parties and whatever aren't "really" part of the left but not matter how true it is in an ideological sense, in a practical sense they form a part of the competition for "real" leftist parties and policies so you ought to have as much issue with people who are promoting some sort of "return to nature" at the expense of actual socialism as anyone.