Harsh words towards journalists but I do think something has changed with journalism. It's much more narrative driven and attracts people who think they're doing missionary work. It's increasingly homogenous group of people who have the same politics, went to the same school and even date in the same circles. Was it always like this?
The weirdest one to me is the modern tech journalist, who ... hates tech? Here's NYT tech journalist Greg Bensinger's last articles (not cherry picked):
- OPINION How Illinois Is Winning in the Fight Against Big Tech
- EDITORIALS Twitter Under Elon Musk Will Be a Scary Place
- OPINION Spotify Backs Joe Rogan’s Disinformation Machine
- OPINION Why Uber Won’t Call the Police
I get it, they're editorials. But every article is a reiteration of tech bad. He never worked in tech. He's been a journalist his whole life. They're all like this. Here's the NYT op-ed columnists:
Ezra Klein: Worked for Howard Dean campaign and interned at Washington Monthly after graduating with a political science degree from University of California. Klein is married to a journalist
Jamelle Bouie: Worked at American Prospect shortly after graduating in political and social thought and government from University of Virginia
Michelle Goldberg: Worked at Salon after a masters in journalism from University of California
Paul Krugman: Career academic with a brief stint serving on Council of Economic advisers for Regan administration.
Gail Collins: Started writing for Connecticut publications after a bachelors in journalism and a masters in government
I am a wholehearted proponent of technology.
I am also very strongly against the trajectory over the past decade or so of Facebook and Google, the blatant disregard of companies like Uber and AirBnB for regulation (and their VC-funded price undercutting), and the entire blockchain/cryptocurrency sphere.
Too much of Big Tech recently has been pushing in the direction of cyberpunk dystopia. I believe we need to be moving more toward solarpunk.
Most "tech" journalists are trying to appeal to a mass audience now. It is absurd.
Opinion pieces are not journalism.
that's what reading reddit and facebook is
> In nearly all circumstances, our intuition (crafted by millions of years of evolution) ... are much better guides to life than the scientific consensus, despite them being "irrational" (and sorry, religion is part of this too).
very next line:
> When someone guzzles down some newly fabricated energy drink or gallons of soda, they're nearly certainly damaging their bodies in ways science does not yet understand.
"millions of years of evolution" is what gave us the craving for sweetness, science is why we now know it's bad.
Intuition is not a reliable compass, and is built around local circumstance. For example, "gut feelings" like disgust are often how people justify acting on their morally corrupt behavior.
That said, this style of speaking in asides and nonsequitors actually works well on vlogs on YouTube, since jumping around can keep people's attention better than something straightforward and boring. Plus, visual cues can help tie things together.
this is a collection of personal complaints at celebrities and the presumption that that is in some way related to science
too much finger pointing and not a single scrap of hard evidence
The point of the piece was to point out the issue with this way of thinking. Science exists to find flaws in a hypothesis, not find evidence to support it.
It's very comparable to how the Church and clergy were the sole intermediary between God and man when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to a door, which began a movement that helped develop the freedom of speech.
Trusting that the methodology leads to truth is the belief part of science. Someone has to frame "the truth" as some functional model and that gives them immense power to influence, just like any clergy.
I roll my eyes each time I see this. How exactly is a process real?
Even if this phrase were to mean "the results of science should be weighted more than opinions" it still purports that science is definite which leads people to believe things and never change their minds -- which is the opposite of science.
This, like so many other reactionary screeds, is based on an intentional misunderstanding: nobody is actually anthropomorphizing science. English doesn't have many elegant ways to say "a process provides inductive evidence for a claim"; that is all anyone is ever really saying when they attempt to reduce a hypothesis to a pop factoid.
Similarly for factuality itself: the post's author is arguing against an 8th grader's understanding of "fact vs. fiction." It's simply not how either scientists (or the serious scientific press) uses it. Strip that away, and this is just a confused ramble about pop culture, everybody's favorite thing to hate.
for one thing, a few years ago there was an irritating practice of any perspective outside current academic dogma being described as 'anti-science'
that is to say, the simplistic anthropomorphizing of science was leveraged in order to try to change the word 'science' to instead mean 'our chosen narrative', a position which is itself anti-science in the most meaningful way
Then why not say 'the scientific method' so that we know you don't mean 'scientists'?
This framing seems extremely useful from a pedagogical standpoint.
Distinguishing scientific units-of-advancement as 'eliminated falsehoods' + 'the tests used to rule out the untruths' would be have been a wonderful correction in my science education.
The Tobacco industry is already sufficiently guilty through their actions that there is no need to make things up to paint them in a bad light (here, the 'originators' of scientific chaffing) - all that can do is provide cover for bad deeds when people figure out that such claims are fraudulent, and extend the possibility to information that is not. See the war on drugs for a more modern example.
Arguing that sleep is an irrational need is worse than misdirected, its exactly opposite to the truth. We don't know the mechanism behind sleep but we are keenly aware that there is a strong correlation between good sleep habits and better health. The correlation is observed and keenly accounted for in science AND pop science.
The correlation is not causation mantra is true but that doesn't magically mean that we don't care about correlation.
The argument of 'correlation does not equal causation' ONLY matters when its relevant. E.g. you misattribute a cause.
He aaaaaaalmost notices this with his cigarette company argument bit then again completely misunderstands the idiom to mean that skepticism is always good and not just a tool in the scenario where you have limited information and its appropriate.
The fact that the cigarette companies were skeptical about the correlation is not scientific in a vacuum of this article either. It was a vested interest that they took the preferable stance for their company. Science cares about vested interests, and correlation.
I'm all for calling out shoddy scientific reporting but this is arguably worse because it acts like its above the idioms and conflation, when it isn't. Its tragically bad.
This is also tagged philosophy
I wish we could get this out of our community, this attempt to set people at odds by fetishizing science in a way that science itself does not actually support
It's pretty damaging
I think there are facts - there is an objective reality. There are situations that are win/win but more often we have every incentive to create or create the perception that situations are win/lose.
Whenever the situation is win/lose and someone is pointing to objective facts the hair on your neck should go up and you should acknowledge that you might be in a minefield. The incentives and the goals of all the participants in those kind of Political situations can be strange and not readily apparent.
Unfortunately, the writing in this post is not compelling -- it is overly emotionally charged (rather than analytical), contains contradictions, is not backed up by any citations or links, and has weird grammar.
Some examples:
> Of course, much like the Greek Gods, we cannot seem to speak to "knowledge" directly, or to mentally murky academics, but only to official mediators: journalists and "science communicators" and the like.
Every academic has a publicly accessible email address. Some may not respond to a honest inquiry, but in my experience, many do! Of all the academics I've emailed, I'd say my response rate is ~8/10.
> And scientific models, from our models of the atom, to models of the Earth's weather and climate, to models of our body are highly circumstantial, and as a rule, will nearly all inevitably be proven false.
The Bayesian interpretation of probability in the context of hypothesis testing suggests that "True" and "False" are not useful conceptual predicates for thinking about models. Newton's laws are "False" if you want to be persnickety, but they describe how things move on Earth to an astonishing degree of accuracy.
> We know nearly nothing of how the brain works.
This is a hyperbolic claim. The visual system, detailing how information in the form of light wavelengths are transformed at various stages of processing and location is remarkably well worked out. Especially given that researchers have only been tackling the problem for a little more than a hundred and twenty years.
> The reality is that these demigods really just went to graduate school because they were lazy and initiativeless, and even in the abstract, most of their real work has nothing to do with your life whatsoever.
> Science journalists, much like journalists generally, are people too incompetent and emotional to work in the private sector...
It always saddens me to read writing from an author who doesn't seem to be very happy. Would he say that MD-PhD researchers who went to grad school are lazy and lacking in initiative?
...
While it would be great to be alive to benefit from, say, another 100 years of medical research and development, that's a counter-factual fantasy. Science is our best guess. It is also an imperfect process. But hey, the author is more than welcome to think of a better way to do generate new, accurate, and useful knowledge.
Luke Smith is what you'd get if Curtis Yarvin had grown up on 4chan. He's a reactionary schmuck.
