Predatory journals stung by Star Wars Hoax

[Tyndmyr]

Okay, maybe children's flintstone's vitamins is a better example.

Oh, I'm not criticizing it as a bad example. I'm just noting that there's an additional layer of meaning there.

It hearkens from the ol' "a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down" style of traditional wisdom, but the traditional wisdom has been displaced in the modern day because we found an unfortunate side effect. This happens to apply *quite* well to the topic the metaphor is standing in for. A world in which we rely on the sugar of presentation polish to allow people to judge science does risk things being swallowed that folks ought not to, based on polish. Sure, from the standpoint of the individual who wants his bit to be accepted, he's incentivized to get as much polish as possible, but if ultimately, the common wisdom is based on packaging rather than content, why, bad content can be packaged as nicely as the good stuff.

People skills make one very likely to be successful at dealing with people. I don't think this is the same as making them the folks who ought to be successful with dealing with people, or that it somehow makes it preferable that they should manage. It's akin to "might makes right", only using social pressure instead of physical. Sure, in any system, it's good to be the one with the talent selected for, but in neither case are we actually using truth as the selector.

[NichG]

The problem with 'ought' is that it requires control to already exist in order to implement. You basically have to have an existing culture already in place whose values are more or less where you want them, and then 'ought' can be used to encourage small shifts around that point on the basis of adapting to changing conditions.

E.g. you can motivate academics who already place a cultural value on truth to change details of how truth is established or circulated within academia by using 'ought' type arguments. But it's pretty hard to apply them to a culture that doesn't actually share that core value. So if society as a whole doesn't actually place a cultural value on truth above, say, comfort or mental equilibrium, then 'ought' won't really be effective at creating change. That's the point at which 'playing the game' or 'pretty packaging' might come in, to try to actually shift that underlying cultural value to the point where a discussion about what ought to be could actually work.

[pendell]

The problem with 'ought' is that it requires control to already exist in order to implement. You basically have to have an existing culture already in place whose values are more or less where you want them, and then 'ought' can be used to encourage small shifts around that point on the basis of adapting to changing conditions.

E.g. you can motivate academics who already place a cultural value on truth to change details of how truth is established or circulated within academia by using 'ought' type arguments. But it's pretty hard to apply them to a culture that doesn't actually share that core value. So if society as a whole doesn't actually place a cultural value on truth above, say, comfort or mental equilibrium, then 'ought' won't really be effective at creating change. That's the point at which 'playing the game' or 'pretty packaging' might come in, to try to actually shift that underlying cultural value to the point where a discussion about what ought to be could actually work.

Precisely. We've all encountered marketing and advertisement of all kinds. About how much of that material would you say is concerned with a rigorous, objective discussion of the truth?

Well, the reason marketeers do that is because it works. It's because their jobs depend on making sales, and if that means writing a clickbaity article instead of a straight one, because they'll be fired if they don't generate enough clicks, then that's what they'll do.

What we reward we get more of. And it seems to me that the larger culture only values truth as a means to an end -- if it generates more revenue or makes them happier or improves their lives in some way. And if this doesn't happen they are more than happy to indulge in what earlier ages called 'pious lies' or some such -- the lie that makes people work more productively and has a better outcome (for the liar) than the truth does.

Those of us who value truth as an end in itself -- as thing to be sought as a knight seeks zir prince/princess -- need to push back against this, but unfortunately this also means we have to play their game to some extent. If we try to act as if that culture of valuing truth is already in place when it is not, we will be ineffective. And outclassed by the scoundrels of this world, who care far more about their own benefit than about anything resembling truth.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[wumpus]

This is less about people management or science journal, than clickbait journalism.
...

It doesn't help that the the publishers of nearly all "journalism" seem to operate at this level. Read the description of a recent paper about CTE in [American] football over at arstechnica.com (a once-great site sliding closer and closer to clickbait. This article is still pretty good). Now go and read about it anywhere else (preferably US-based media, or possibly other places where the game might be popular). Expect to see clickbaiting headlines of "99% of the time playing football leads to CTE" or "reckless scientists horribly bias study against football". The actual study made it perfectly clear that it couldn't be used to compute CTE chances (although it did set a painfully high floor with the 100 or so known cases of CTE).

Inevitable "science news cycle" cartoon

PS: to get back on topic - have any of the ignobel prize winners gone this route or do they all have to somehow find a "real" publication that will take them?

[Trekkin]

Those of us who value truth as an end in itself -- as thing to be sought as a knight seeks zir prince/princess -- need to push back against this, but unfortunately this also means we have to play their game to some extent. If we try to act as if that culture of valuing truth is already in place when it is not, we will be ineffective. And outclassed by the scoundrels of this world, who care far more about their own benefit than about anything resembling truth.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Aside from poesy, what will you do with your truth when you find it, pendell?

I'm asking seriously, because without what you call pious lies there would be no science education. Filthy indefensible lies like "the sky is blue because of Rayleigh scattering" and "the Earth is a sphere" and "plants produce oxygen by photosynthesis" and "all matter is made of atoms" and countless others are necessary to fit the world into a child's brain, and more lies like "you will definitely need trigonometry in real life" and "this will be on the test" are needed to get at least a few of them to stop fondling each other and/or shooting raw sewage into their retinal veins to get high in the back of the room and maybe draw a triangle before going back to texting each other under the table.

Then they grow out of being legally required to attend class, and they spend the rest of their life with an elementary-school grasp of how the world works and no need or desire to learn anything else. They live in a very human world, doing tasks set by humans to earn wages provided by humans with which to pay the prices set by humans for the human-made things they happen to want. They want -- indeed, they need -- their every injury to be someone's fault, their every triumph a product of their own superiority. "Their" team won good at sports ball because they "wanted it more"; they'll beat cancer because "they're a fighter." "Everything happens for a reason." "You matter." None of these things are at all consonant with reality, but they make people happy anyway -- and they will get hostile if you try to disabuse them of the lies that get them through the day.

I'm cool with that, mostly because it only hurts things when they try to have some level of agency. It matters very little that the vast majority of motorists, for example, have no real idea how their vehicles function on a theoretical level; they may know that gasoline burns, but most would be hard-pressed to explain why, and that doesn't affect their ability to drive a malfunctioning car to a mechanic who will go through the steps to repair it as set out by the manufacturer. Somewhere up the chain is someone who understands gears and sparks and torque and aerosolization, but there only needs to be one of them to make all the cars we'd ever need. This is only becoming more true as automation vastly reduces the number of people we need even to understand at an elementary level how the world works. Why teach people things they don't need to know?

You might say it's to let them be more educated and thus make better decisions, but I'm afraid that's just not a workable solution. It'd be ideal, yes, but a good chunk of the populace simply isn't intelligent enough to grasp science at its most complex (which is the only form in which it can be reasonably called true) and many, many more don't want to. Even most of the people who want truth for its own sake can be fobbed off with vastly more digestible philosophical pap and will come away far happier -- and if the only alternative is confronting how small and brief and random they actually are, they will invent their own. There is no surety in science; the princess is in another castle, sipping wine and pondering the equivalence between truth and beauty. Good thing, too, because the only route to Science Castle is through a big long period of knowing only that you don't know anything and nothing makes sense and feeling like you couldn't possibly be good enough and endlessly being upset. It gets worse and worse as you learn more, too. Most people literally don't have the time and capacity and inclination to reach the far side of that, at least not in any way where they'd be happier or more useful for it.

That's why I say we give it up. Forget compulsory schooling and edutainment and science journalism and especially science outreach; let's stop pretending like we're doing a necessary thing by teaching people things they don't need that will only upset their worldview. We have the matter and energy to make them perfectly happy forever (or at least keep them from noticing they aren't) and never require anything other than an obedience they need never realize they're giving. If they want to believe that aeroplanes are pulled through the skies by invisible dragons who hate cell phones, what does it hurt? They'll sit in the little chairs and eat their peanuts all the same. And yet we insist on dragging their comfortable delusions through the mud to no benefit to anyone.

Really, the only difference between "The Marching Morons" and a perfect world is the absence of hormonal contraception and administrative expert systems. If we're to choose between making a valiant stand for truth and just letting people believe whatever they want while we go learn stuff, I say we bear in mind that people's addiction to comforting lies will roll over our tutelary efforts without even noticing we tried except to mock us and just let people be happy, whatever that does to their minds. It would take only a handful of generations for humanity at large to comfortably abandon the idea of empiricism, and I firmly believe that there will always be a few people who are the right kind of crazy to go learn about science rather than magic and keep doing so until they have some worthwhile contribution to make -- and don't mistake my advocacy for drowning the world in brightly colored, appealingly simple hogwash for a call for censorship. Nor is this more than distantly related to my overwhelming, vitriolic contempt for the vast majority of people. I'm just pragmatic. If 90% of the world were either totally blind or loved walking around with their eyes shut, I would not insist on teaching everyone the names of colors.

We're so close to abandoning reality I can almost taste the ultracrepidarianism, it's a straight shot from here into an endless species-wide childhood under the distant tyranny of disinterested experts, and yet we force ourselves to resist rather than embrace the passing of the point where most people need to think and offering to build computers to think for them. It's unfortunate, and eroding blind trust in authority with clickbait like this just prolongs what is probably an inevitable process.

[Bobb]

Aside from poesy, what will you do with your truth when you find it, pendell?

I'm asking seriously, because without what you call pious lies there would be no science education. Filthy indefensible lies like "the sky is blue because of Rayleigh scattering" and "the Earth is a sphere" and "plants produce oxygen by photosynthesis" and "all matter is made of atoms" and countless others are necessary to fit the world into a child's brain

These all stop being lies when prefaced with "it doesn't exactly work like this, but it's close enough for now."

and more lies like "you will definitely need trigonometry in real life" and "this will be on the test" are needed to get at least a few of them to stop fondling each other and/or shooting raw sewage into their retinal veins to get high in the back of the room and maybe draw a triangle before going back to texting each other under the table.

They aren't stupid. They knew those were lies. You got them less interested when you started the BS.

Then they grow out of being legally required to attend class, and they spend the rest of their life with an elementary-school grasp of how the world works and no need or desire to learn anything else.

So you put kids in a box, lie to them about the future, and expect them to still want what you want? If Trig doesn't add value to their life and their authority figures in their life tell them it does....

What do you expect to happen when they're not legally required to listen to lies about things that don't interest them?

[Trekkin]

What do you expect to happen when they're not legally required to listen to lies about things that don't interest them?

I expect them to believe whatever makes them feel good, even despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. That's kind of the whole point.

[pendell]

These all stop being lies when prefaced with "it doesn't exactly work like this, but it's close enough for now."

Agreed.

Thank you , Bobb. You've already given the answers I would have given and lack the time to answer in detail.

Aside from poesy, what will you do with your truth when you find it, pendell?

Research it, understand it. Apply it. Pass it on to others as effectively as possible given the constraints of human nature.

I'm asking seriously, because without what you call pious lies there would be no science education. Filthy indefensible lies like "the sky is blue because of Rayleigh scattering" and "the Earth is a sphere" and "plants produce oxygen by photosynthesis" and "all matter is made of atoms" and countless others are necessary to fit the world into a child's brain,

You can start with that, but at older ages you explain to them the concept of simile and metaphor and show that , while this is not the literal truth, it nonetheless is close enough to the truth to give you a good estimate. Sort of like rounding to three decimal places instead of to six.

All of life as humans understand it, to my mind, is an approximation. I've never used pi beyond a certain number of digits but by your standings evaluating pi as 3.14 is a "lie" because I'm truncating the remaining digits. Which I am, but we need to truncate at some point if the number's going to be useful in a calculation at all.

The same goes for explaining how the big bang happened, or where new humans come from, or wave-particle duality.

For that matter, on that last: metaphors are not just how we explain things to other people, it's often how we imagine theories in the first place. Lots of people know about Shroedinger's cat, for example, but not one person in a hundred on the street can show you the underlying equations, or even understand them.

and more lies like "you will definitely need trigonometry in real life" and "this will be on the test"

Depending on the job you have there is definitely a use for trigonometry and advanced mathematics. I found integrals necessary when I was writing code to simulate IR seekers in air-to-air missiles. And trigonometry was necessary when describing the geometry of an air engagement.

If I was talking to a young person, I'd show them something like EW 101 . If all you want to do in life is pump gas or work as a walmart checker, you don't need advanced mathematics. But if you want to be an astronaut or work on rockets or, heck, even make money at a bank, you're going to need at least some of it.

As towards "this will be on the test", the best solution I found to that in grad school was a professor who had a quiz in every class. Literally. And it counted towards your grade. Everyone showed up prepared. I learned more about computer graphics than than I ever had.

Then they grow out of being legally required to attend class, and they spend the rest of their life with an elementary-school grasp of how the world works and no need or desire to learn anything else. They live in a very human world, doing tasks set by humans to earn wages provided by humans with which to pay the prices set by humans for the human-made things they happen to want. They want -- indeed, they need -- their every injury to be someone's fault, their every triumph a product of their own superiority. "Their" team won good at sports ball because they "wanted it more"; they'll beat cancer because "they're a fighter." "Everything happens for a reason." "You matter." None of these things are at all consonant with reality, but they make people happy anyway -- and they will get hostile if you try to disabuse them of the lies that get them through the day.

The vast majority may be as you say but one out of a hundred will put in the effort and will contribute meaningfully to the world we live in.

That's one thing I learned from venture capitalist type people -- they throw a lot of money at a lot of different projects, and most of them never pay off. They cut them off quickly. But that one drug out of a thousand, or that one business out of a thousand, becomes the next facebook or the next google or the next penicillin. And that one success pays for all the failures.

It's the same thing in genetics, isn't it? Most of the sperm and egg cells produced by humans never come to fruition, and of those that conceive quite a few will miscarry due to genetic defects. But that one payoff out of a thousand pays for all the effort on the way.

And that's why I want to educate the masses. Besides which, I think truth is useful even when people live in willful ignorance of it, because objective truth, like reality, doesn't go away when you stop believing in it. We don't need the entire world to believe it. We just need enough.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Trekkin]

The vast majority may be as you say but one out of a hundred will put in the effort and will contribute meaningfully to the world we live in.

We're converging on the same thing, I think; I just see it as a waste of time to educate the other 99 when that one worthwhile pupil can so effectively self-select.

[pendell]

We're converging on the same thing, I think; I just see it as a waste of time to educate the other 99 when that one worthwhile pupil can so effectively self-select.

I think we are indeed converging. We make education available to all. Some minority self-select by taking advantage of it. The rest? Well, we leave to their own devices. Maybe at some point they'll step up, but if not, there's no more time to spend on them. I did enough time in public school to know what a waste of effort it is to try to put education into someone who doesn't want to be there. It helps them very little, and distracts attention from the students who actually care.

By the way, in my experience? No such thing as "gifted and talented". There's only "students who care about the subject and are willing to put the work in" and "students who don't care, are there because they have to be, are bored, and do the minimum they can to pass and get out."

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Bobb]

I expect them to believe whatever makes them feel good, even despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. That's kind of the whole point.

Oh, okay! I *think* I get you now.

You're about abandoning those who won't in favor of those who already are.

Curiously, I see the task you're willing to engage in--wrestling meaning, facts and utility out of world through science-- as roughly analogous to the task you're not willing to engage--wrestling apathy, disdain for science, and ignorance out of the human population.

I think a large part of that is just that you're a scientist and not a teacher. It's not your thing to deal with willful ignorance. That's cool.

Just believe me when I tell you it would be a whole lot worse if we weren't trying so hard and it would be a whole lot better if we stopped lying in the "intentional deception for your own good" department.


Those lies, by the way, are usually given by people who are overwhelmed by their task of teaching and are cutting corners, much the same way (and with the same counterproductive effects) scientists sometimes cut corners when they are overwhelmed.

[Trekkin]

Oh, okay! I *think* I get you now.

You're about abandoning those who won't in favor of those who already are.

Curiously, I see the task you're willing to engage in--wrestling meaning, facts and utility out of world through science-- as roughly analogous to the task you're not willing to engage--wrestling apathy, disdain for science, and ignorance out of the human population.

I think a large part of that is just that you're a scientist and not a teacher. It's not your thing to deal with willful ignorance. That's cool.

It's not the same at all; there's no wrestling with the universe. There's just learning how to ask it questions that have meaningful answers.

And yet, my ability to do that is to some tiny yet unforgivable degree made contingent upon my ability to teach disinterested children, because "outreach is important" according to non-scientists.

More than abandonment, though, I'd prefer more of a defense mechanism against willfully ignorant people being bothered by their own ignorance, which can happen sometimes. Just make an assortment of variously outrageous and generally palatable nonsense available for public consumption as an ablative defense against mid-life education, and also make it quite clear that scientific literacy promises nothing but insanity and pain and despair. A tiny fraction will choose to learn anyway, and now more than ever before they're enough.

[Bobb]

It's not the same at all; there's no wrestling with the universe. There's just learning how to ask it questions that have meaningful answers.

And yet, my ability to do that is to some tiny yet unforgivable degree made contingent upon my ability to teach disinterested children, because "outreach is important" according to non-scientists.

I take it you are an academic with teaching hardwired into your employment? If so, I'll not interrupt your venting further. :D

[Trekkin]

I take it you are an academic with teaching hardwired into your employment? If so, I'll not interrupt your venting further. :D

Not even. It's just that important for grants from some agencies.

[Tvtyrant]

Not even. It's just that important for grants from some agencies.

So you want people to fork over their fruits of their labors to you on your say so, and would like them to stop trying to understand what you are doing?

[Grinner]

So you want people to fork over their fruits of their labors to you on your say so, and would like them to stop trying to understand what you are doing?

That doesn't appear to be what he's saying. I suspect the students he's speaking of are not in any position to give grants.

With that having been said, what demographic are you dealing with, Trekkin?

[NichG]

Assuming people will leave things alone is usually a mistake. That handful of dedicated experts Trekkin imagines would be under constant attack - maybe not physically (though, historically...), but culturally, socially , financially, and legally.

When Musk came out with crazy AI panic comments, the first reaction I saw from armchair AI speculators was 'let's monitor and restrict the sale of GPUs'.

The baseline of a society is basically going to determine the spectrum of susceptibility to manipulation by different interests. Education isn't so much about 'let's make everyone a scientist', it's inoculation against some forms of manipulation. Of course at the same time it can create some vulnerabilities too.

[An Enemy Spy]

I take it you are an academic with teaching hardwired into your employment? If so, I'll not interrupt your venting further. :D

No, I'm pretty sure he's a frustrated intellectual demigod living in a world of insects who've mistaken themselves as people. Of course, how could lowly creatures like us ever truly comprehend the workings of his mind?

[Fri]

Though, to a less speculative degree, there's actually a specific time period where you can pinpoint why people suddenly trust science/scientist less. And it's related to tobacco industry. Of course, I might be subjective, and if you already distrust scientist you will just think of it as anti big business conspiracy theory or whatever but check the book "Merchant of Doubt," it's a very good book that basically explain how people hired by tobacco industry tried to obscure research on how cigarette is bad for your health, and in effect, give open textbook on how anyone can obscure any science and make people distrust them.

[Trekkin]

So you want people to fork over their fruits of their labors to you on your say so, and would like them to stop trying to understand what you are doing?

Mostly I want them to lose their jobs to robots, get everything material they want anyway, and be too preoccupied with memes and their social networks and so forth even to notice that I'm doing anything at all.

With that having been said, what demographic are you dealing with, Trekkin?

What, for outreach? Everything from elementary school kids to undergrads, and on into the general adult public on some occasions. The experiences were depressingly similar.

Of course, how could lowly creatures like us ever truly comprehend the workings of his mind?

Very simply. You've just got other priorities than neurological science (like mocking me, for example) and that should be fine.

[Lord Torath]

Just believe me when I tell you it would be a whole lot worse if we weren't trying so hard and it would be a whole lot better if we stopped lying in the "intentional deception for your own good" department.

The trees are really sneezing today.

Also: Physics Confession.

[Dr.Samurai]

No, I'm pretty sure he's a frustrated intellectual demigod living in a world of insects who've mistaken themselves as people. Of course, how could lowly creatures like us ever truly comprehend the workings of his mind?

Came here for this. Thanks Enemy Spy!

I'm surprised it took until page two.

[Trekkin]

Came here for this. Thanks Enemy Spy!

That's fair. I was thinking of you (among others) when I wrote the first of my posts, after all.

[Dr.Samurai]

That's fair. I was thinking of you (among others) when I wrote the first of my posts, after all.

Aww, I'm flattered you're thinking about me!!

[BeerMug Paladin]

Stuff.

I concur with many of the general ideas of your thoughts here, but I'm uncertain about the conclusion. I would like to raise an issue.

I think it would be helpful to make a distinction between science and engineering. Engineering is easier for the layperson to grasp and may be valuable to teach as a generalized concept. You just get told a series of facts and you can either accept them (and accomplish something with them) or reject them (and be useless). People can be totally ignorant of where the facts they use to their advantage were derived from, and even totally ignorant of a great many basic facts about reality (such as most of the cosmos).

Those who ask why the facts are the way they are, or how the facts had come to be known could potentially be suited to learn the sciences. I would guess that most people wouldn't ask such questions, but I suspect in a public forum, it would be valuable (to society in general) for the common person to exposed to the fact that some people actually exist who are asking these questions. These aren't trivial questions, so there needs to be some understanding that what those people are doing is fundamentally different.

I'm not sure common folk would be as willing to support the economic networks that exist to support the sciences if they did not place some implicit value on the concept of science. And the reason why the concept exists at all, as I imagine, is people understanding that it's hard work that is valuable.

After learning about engineering, only the actual people who progress to being engineers or scientists would continue, everyone else would have their skills atrophy while still maintaining the experience of having been exposed to such an environment.

The alternatives as far as I know would be untenable based on modern cultural expectations and would also seemingly be outside the confines of this forum.

[pendell]

I get what Trekkin is saying; While I don't know his exact background, I get the impression he's a genuine scientist working on researching some very, very hard things. He has a limited amount of time on this earth, and he doesn't want to spend it teaching undergrads the basics, especially when a fair number of those undergrads have neither desire nor interest in understanding what he's doing. If it's part of their general ed curriculum, they are checking their watches until they can move on to something they really care about, while it's absorbing his time and energy, a waste all around.

I get that. Teaching science is a different job from doing science. And teaching is more than a bare recital of facts; the best teachers have a passion for their subject and can communicate it to their students, such that a few of them decide that this isn't just a complete waste of their time but something worth paying serious attention to, maybe even put in a career to understanding. Very few of us were born with a passion for mathematics or physics or biology; somewhere along the way it was communicated to us, like some infectious disease.

Yet it seems that the people who are best at teaching science aren't really research scientists. Maybe there are a few who can do it well, but as a rule time spent with students is not time spent on publish-or-perish.

In a perfect world, we'd have passionate science teachers to free up the researchers to do research , and we'd all be as efficient as possible. In practice, it sounds like some of the programs Trekkin needs to get grants from requires him to do all sorts of things outside his primary focus, such as teaching or "outreach" -- something that he has little patience for, and I suspect the students on the other end aren't exactly thrilled with it either.

And of course, in a perfect world both teachers and research scientists wouldn't have to scramble for funding like rats in a cage while the football department builds stadiums and pays millions for people to throw balls around, but I digress .

In any event, busywork hoops to jump through aren't unknown in the corporate world either. It's not that they are bad ideas; probably somewhere, somewhen, they made sense at the time. But corps pick it up and apply a blanket policy devoid of reason or common sense or any clue what the intent of the policy is in the first place, with the result that everyone wastes their time and no one's happy.

I don't know enough about the specific policies trekkin has tackled that require "outreach" or similar nonsense, so I have no idea whether those policies are at all reasonable. All I can do is sympathize; we've all been there.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Dr.Samurai]

I get what Trekkin is saying;

Really? Because if so I think you're being rather charitable. It seems to me he is saying "some people don't appreciate science to the same degree that I do, therefore it should be kept from them".

Now, I know there are anecdotes in there to attempt to justify this ridiculous moral argument, but I think that's the gist of it, and I don't think that's a reasonable or tenable position.

[NichG]

I take it more to be something like 'trying to educate the general public about science doesn't actually improve the decisions the public makes on science-related matters, so don't waste your time on it'. It's a pretty hostile position and I don't generally agree with it, but there is a point there which is that its a mistake to assume that the values of academia or scientists will necessarily be shared by the general public, and that can lead to certain kinds of severe backfire.

Essentially, you have to be aware that there's going to be a small portion of the audience who aren't looking to improve their understanding but are instead looking for ammunition in order to legitimize or support their particular cause, attaching to the reputation of the particular expert who is attempting to do outreach. So you can have things happen like saying 'there's more to evolution than just vertical descent, we now know there are horizontal forms of transmission' and then having a bunch of crackpot websites turn that into 'leading expert says that Darwin was wrong, evolution confirmed to be a hoax!'

So I do at least agree that the point of view 'if we give everyone as much knowledge as possible, they'll inevitably start making better decisions' is overly optimistic. How to deal with the people who use selective filters and presentation bias to weaponize that kind of increased knowledge access into a means of manipulation is a real problem.

[Jormengand]

It seems to me he is saying "some people don't appreciate science to the same degree that I do, therefore it should be kept from them".

Now, I know there are anecdotes in there to attempt to justify this ridiculous moral argument, but I think that's the gist of it, and I don't think that's a reasonable or tenable position.

Just as well that it's overtly and obviously not what he's saying, nor did he by any means imply it, then. What he is saying that he should not feel compelled to make something accessible to a group that doesn't care about it on behalf of a third group.

[Dr.Samurai]

I take it more to be something like 'trying to educate the general public about science doesn't actually improve the decisions the public makes on science-related matters, so don't waste your time on it'.

I mean... he literally said laymen should have no business even knowing science exists, and when Pendell disagreed, he backpedaled a little and said well, the facts should be out there but we should distract the populace enough for them to forget that science is a thing. Which is effectively the same thing.

The rest is him trying to impress us with how disdainful he is of humanity.

Essentially, you have to be aware that there's going to be a small portion of the audience who aren't looking to improve their understanding but are instead looking for ammunition in order to legitimize or support their particular cause, attaching to the reputation of the particular expert who is attempting to do outreach. So you can have things happen like saying 'there's more to evolution than just vertical descent, we now know there are horizontal forms of transmission' and then having a bunch of crackpot websites turn that into 'leading expert says that Darwin was wrong, evolution confirmed to be a hoax!'

Right. And a politician can't admit to a mistake because his opponents will sound the alarms and declare that he doesn't know what he's talking about and he was wrong and can't be trusted.

I agree that some people can't be trusted to handle information appropriately. I can totally accept Trekkin's experiences as 100% true and valid and still see that his suggestion of a solution is complete rubbish.

So I do at least agree that the point of view 'if we give everyone as much knowledge as possible, they'll inevitably start making better decisions' is overly optimistic. How to deal with the people who use selective filters and presentation bias to weaponize that kind of increased knowledge access into a means of manipulation is a real problem.

I agree. You have to teach people about critical thinking, about bias, about not needing to be validated. It's not just feeding them information, but also how to approach knowing and not knowing. Throwing your hands up in the air and abandoning all hope for humans is... I mean, come on, it's obviously not a real answer to the problem.

Just as well that it's overtly and obviously not what he's saying, nor did he by any means imply it, then. What he is saying that he should not feel compelled to make something accessible to a group that doesn't care about it on behalf of a third group.

*throws intellectually dishonest fish back in the water and recasts line*