> I think if anything I’m better in person as words can anodyne and I would think most lack the connection and ability to transcend past a more difficult arena. In person we humanize each other and often show magnitudes higher level of normal human decency and respect.

True....but then on the other hand in person verbal communication also comes with numerous drawbacks, many of them not visible.

> I bring up the intelligence thing for two reasons. We get the often over used Dunning Kruger type effect. Let’s just refere to it as it’s colloquial understanding. While I also get those people that I know are prob smarter than me often dealing with the imposter syndrome. If I know something they don’t they attack it and feel threatened by me just the same as the anti-intellectual bunch. They’ll try to out think something from an angle they don’t know enough about. And often they get by because of this superior knowledge. Both groups to me just need to put the effort in and more than anything become a bit more emotionally self aware. Maybe that’s truly where I excel with my skill bundle. Introspection coupled with a passion to learn and share my thoughts when the time arises.

Maybe it would be useful if participants had (at least some realtime awareness) awareness of the various phenomena you describe?

> In perspective approach… I like to go back to thinking if only on the marginal gains … just as most things are slightly pushed in one direction or another.

Considering humanity has essentially zero skills (or interest) in causality: I think you might be onto something.

> I interact with people from all over the world and tend to...

This seems like a good idea....I wonder: might it be possible to scale this up? If you think about it: triviality and delusion have existed since the beginning of mankind, but the geniuses in silicon valley (with a little help from their friends in government) were able to build numerous means to increase the prevalence of these psychological phenomena to planetary scale, such that they now exert a force on almost all human endeavours. Might something similar be possible for more positive human capabilities?

> Then I’ve done my small part. So I if I can just crack that shell a touch. Even put a slight consideration of doubt on a previously narrowly conceived doubt. Well then, I feel accomplished. Shoot for the 10% change on a view and be happy with anything.

I suppose, and well done. Why such modest goals tho?

> Sometimes it does just coming down to having a real person in front of you and not allowing them to get stuck in the caricature in their head. I started seeing this problem become common in the last 6 - 8 year or so. Even people I knew would think “oh your one of those,” then we would talk and I’d take down all the straw men in the field

How long does that typically take? Have you refined your techniques over time?

Do you find it annoying that you have to repeat the process (often with the very same strawmen) for each conversation?

> It’s only through having these tough discussions in which we get to test our own ideas against other on the safer battlefield of words.

This (specific implementation/methodology) is the only way....or were you speaking colloquially? (Again: I'm thinking scale).

> It’s this hyper siloed echo chambering off in ones specialized in-group that we lose faith in others as scapegoating and disgust arises quite similar to the grand history atrocities that we should never forget

Agreed. I sometimes wonder what people would do if they were pulled out of their safe spaces and forced to show their value in an arena where all of their powers have been stripped away. Experiments suggest: not well.

> And when I ask what would you do? I’m just honestly curious and open to take tips and suggestions.

What is happening here seems like a decent start. But once again: I don't think this scales. Something additional may be needed.

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“All forms of life compete for resources”.

I guess ants don’t exist then. Nor any other social animals.

Ffs every single social species shares resources and don’t compete with each other, we’re the only one who does that.

This is what I get from a google definition search:

"an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state."

Anyways i don't want to spend much time arguing about this. There is plenty of that in this thread already lol

Which is not really applied, otherwise there wouldn’t be a food oligopoly where over 90% of the market is controlled by 3 companies that always agree with each other.

I think this is less about telling us "science can answer moral questions" (it can't) but rather pointing to the way that "science" itself has the same attributes as various ethical philosophies, like utilitarianism, deontology and virtue ethics.

In particular the focus on "reputations" of scientists shows that the "virtue ethics" elements of science are far stronger and more prominent in practice than most philosophies of science would generally admit.

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The Soviet Union did not achieve true Communism.

The means/vision to try to get there were prescribed by the vanguard/bolsheviks and then distorted/reimagined after Lenin’s death with Stalinism.

The Soviet Union went from a peasant agrarian society to full on industrialism within 30-50 years. The Communist ideal didn’t lead to the atrocities that happened under the Soviet Union (capitalism has its fair share as well). It was the material conditions that were operated from, the participation in a world war, the top down leadership approach, etc.

You’re copying propaganda from a place entirely lacking of nuanced thinking.

This is some deep shit

I enjoyed this article, and broadly agree with thesis. I'd also like to highlight the interactive reasoning bit, which has been vital to my development as a scientist and has really emphasised the sociological aspects of science. I've never done better work than when my colleagues were also friends who I could bug with discussion topics and vice versa.

Just a small aside about this para:

>In 2015 the physics journal Physical Review Letters published, for the first time ever in the history of science, a paper with more than 5,000 authors. The findings reported in the article resulted from the combined efforts of two teams working with the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva. Their goal was to obtain a better estimate of the mass of the Higgs boson that was only discovered a couple of years before.

Authorship in large collaborations means different things depending on the collaboration in question. It certainly doesn't mean that 5000 people wrote the paper, or even that most of them actually read the paper before it was released*. It means that they have contributed to the collaboration(s) and so are acknowledged. It also means that they trust the methods and judgement of their fellow scientists in the collaboration to put out good results, which comes back to building a local morality.

* Extensive documentation, often hundreds of pages of technical material, is accessible for members of the collaboration. The papers are also circulated to the collaboration(s) weeks before release and anyone has the right to ask questions or make suggestions.

In this case, I believe Capitalism is the wrong term. What you are describing is "Commerce" and I do believe there is a significant distinction. In my replies, I have stated that Capitalism is a fairly new model of structuring our economy. Before that was mercantilism, before that bartering, etc. Capitalism distinguishes itself by a heavy focus on profit by trying to imbalance the zero-sum game of commerce. Also, if you look into the field of anthropology, you will see that tribes of humans were very communal, helping each other without seeking profit. I'm not claiming that it was some utopia nor that tribes always worked well with each other, but the claim that capitalism is some sort of innate trait in human society present in our ancestors does not hold well against evidence.

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Hi, appreciate the reply!

You're perhaps right that exact equality is hard to determine, so I should have been more specific and said "≈1" instead of "=1" for the example, however while a perfect equality in trade might be outside of human scope, we do take it as a standard by which we judge a trade. Supply and Demand runs on this equilibrium.

Of course I do not deny that specialization of labor is good, however, such specialization predates capitalism and specialization itself does not ensure profit. No matter how efficient I am at making a product, making more of that product means nothing if there is no more demand for it, and if there is demand, it might not be consistent. Basically increase in supply does not necessarily mean increase in demand. People get full, so they don't need an abundance of corn. Enough trees are cut down so that axes are no longer necessary. A scythe is used only for the harvest and afterwards lays idle. Capitalism's solution in this case would be to introduce planned obsolescence in a product, use cheaper material or labor to make the product, or employ heavy propaganda to convince buyers that they need to buy more even if their needs are already met.

And Jiddu Krishnamurti, Alan Watts, Scott Alexander, etc.

1. No, stoicism’s whole point is not relevance, it is to accept that which is truly out of your control like death. 2. People are born as needy babies. Not as a grown successful pioneer. And, DNA does not determine all. Effort and will determines a person greatness. A true great person would not let a doctrine such as stoicism stand in his way. Again stoicism doesn’t resonate with the freakish driven crazy achievers.

That's a tremendously naive interpretation of how science works. The reality - including things like the reproducibility crisis and citation farming - is a very human endeavour. What science gets done is largely based on who is willing to pay for it, and as often as not the sponsor of the work is looking for a specific outcome, and looks askance at paying for work which doesn't reach the desired conclusion.

Doesn't sound very moral to me.

The existence of badness does not rule out the possibility of goodness tho.

Sounds like it, I heard the dinosaur bit after someone posted it here.

Buddy there are NO individual human rights under communism. There were NO individual human rights in the Soviet Union. Are you kidding me? How are you going to completely ignore the red terror, the holomodor, or the gulags where innocent people were used for slave labour, starved to death and replaced with another innocent person.

You're the personification of complete nativity and ignorance. What a bloody fool.

"Seizing the means of production" = violating someone else's individual human rights. You're my proof.

Edit: one of you guys.. the Soviet Union was in fact what communism looks like. You can trace the root of the evil in the Soviet Union to the evil conception of communism as a straight line. Communism is necessarily coercive and oppressive. You can't force everyone to want to participate in your communist experiment, some folks believe in individual human rights. You're wrong. Quit drinking the kool-aid.

Jfc.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_Soviet_Union

You're almost like the personification of the mocking "everything bad is communism" meme.

>Remember again that in a liberal-democracy nothing is forbidding the communist from getting together with their communist friends and forming a commune.

You don't think I'll be arrested for seizing the means of production?

Communism is more than just sitting in a commune, it's an entire economic system. The same way that capitalism is very different from feudalism.

Communists trying to create division and resentment as always. If workers want to embrace capitalism there has to be a reason for it, why do they assume that workers have been manipulated or corrupted.

It's like they're not aware of the incredible advancements on workers rights under Capitalism. Now this "new workers" are considered traitors of the working class, because they reject a revolution and instead prefer supporting unions and parties always under Capitalism, sabotaging the bourgeois revolution.

There won't be a revolution, because workers lifes under Capitalism aren't as bad as communists wish them to be.

Then it isn't communism. You're attempting to paint communism as if it were liberalism where everyone gets to live the lives they want but that's not communism. You don't get individual human rights under communism because what matters is the "greater good" and not the good of the individual or their interests. "What you do" as a communist is exactly what I've already mentioned, which is exactly what communists have been doing for about a century now.

Remember again that in a liberal-democracy nothing is forbidding the communist from getting together with their communist friends and forming a commune. The good guys are obvious.

Without integrity the scientific pursuit is flawed. Science cannot be run by business if its to be science.

You don't do anything? Why would you need to do something?

That's some strawman.

Liberals are ideologically opposed to communism. Any communist system would see resistance from the liberals trapped inside. So what do you do with the liberals that refuse to cooperate within the oppressive communist system? What do you do about those pesky humans that believe in individual human rights and freedom? Exactly as I've said and it's already been demonstrated plenty of times. (The communists start chanting "one of us. One Of Us. ONE OF US!" as they surgically remove your your soul and your humanity from your body).

There's a straight line from the idea of communism to the oppression, coercion and murder required to actually run it. Communism is incredibly evil.