This is a clean example of an ignoratio elenchi fallacy.
Statement B attempts to use Statement A to make an unrelated point that isn’t necessarily untrue, but it is still unrelated.
This could be done with any combination of…
“Under capitalism, <random thing> is…”
“Under <random ism>, science is…”They would all result in a statement that supports Speaker B, but is no longer relevant to what Speaker A stated, as the topic has changed. In this case, from science to capitalism.
I.e. It’s an anti-capitalism meme attempting to use science to appeal to a broader audience through relevance fallacy. Both statements may be true, but do not belong in the same picture.
Unless, of course, “that’s the joke” and I’m just that dumb.
Edit: I’m not a supporter of capitalism. But I am a supporter of science—haha, like it needs me to exist—and this is an interesting example of social science. It seems personal opinion is paramount to some individuals rather than unbiased assessment of the statement as a whole. Call me boring and autistic, but that’s what science be and anything else isn’t science, it’s just personal opinion, belief, theory, etc.
Wow thanks! I’ve seen other instances of this fallacy but never knew its name (nor recognized that it is a common fallacy form).
I think you’re reading statement B too literally. I’m pretty sure the idea behind it is related to critical theory and is an objection to the idea that rationality is trustworthy and that class conflict should be regarded as a higher truth. In that way statement B is relevant to statement A; it’s an implicit rejection of it.
It’s not literal; as the fallacy credits, neither is it necessarily wrong. But(!!!), they’re just not related.
The entire post itself—and your reply—is social science. But science is incapable of alignment to any -ism. All isms are human-made. If they are 100% true, they are not isms.
Edit: Sorry, I’m drunk af, so probably you are right…maybe… At least in my mind, I’m just reading Statement B as literally as Statement A and therefore can’t see correlation without social agenda—theyre just two very different things. Science and agenda; or agenda using “science”. It’s bias. That’s very unscientific.
can’t see correlation without social agenda—theyre just two very different things. Science and agenda; or agenda using “science”. It’s bias. That’s very unscientific.
The idea is that the place the OP meme is coming from is likely a belief that science and agenda are not different things and rather are inseparable. It is very unscientific, it’s a fundamentally anti-intellectual attitude.
In this context, you use the term “belief” very well.
This post is discussing the phenomenon of people thinking that science is objective and rigid when in reality it is anything but. The first statement is not true because it’s nonsensical. There is no universally objective truth; it is still filtered through our relativistic perceptions of reality which are fabrications of our mind created from the raw abstractions of the data we perceive.
This post is discussing the phenomenon of people thinking that science is objective and rigid when in reality it is anything but.
It’s not though. That’s all you.
The irony of such a statement…
Pure objective truths exist, but humans are not objective creatures so our process of finding those objective truths is flawed at times.
You’re dead on. Science is a process. I can science the shit out of baking soda and vinegar to make a volcano, and I don’t need government funding to do it. What you science is effected by capitalism, but capitalism is just a scare word. No matter what you want to do, if it requires a significant amount of power or work to create your materials, a cost is accrued somewhere, and someone has to pay it, whether it costs dollars or beaver pelts.
This is reductive to the extreme.
Clearly if all you want to do is to build a baking soda volcano you can go ahead.
It’s also pretty clear that baking soda volcanoes aren’t the kind of science the meme is talking about.
Assuming this meme is some form of Marxist propaganda, it would be a self-defeating meme, since Marxism is rooted in dialectical materialism which is itself a scientific process. At least according to Marx.
ITT it’s still the 1920s I guess.
Political theory has moved on since those days, you know.
Granted, there are people who quote Marx like he’s a religious figure but those people are wrong and stupid.
Woah woah woah, I’m not a Marxist, but you’re going to have to back up your claims on how “political theory has moved on” and why that ties into Marxism not being based on dialectical materialism.
I don’t want to deflate your assumption, but “Science is pure objectivity and truth”.
The assumption you introduced just added another layer on by bringing Marxism into it. And here’s the thing with that fallacy; you may be very right! But, it’s got nothing to do with the original statement anymore. It’s just going down tangents of a tangent that should be explored under their own initiative, not the blanket of “science”.
Well i guess you’re right. I just wanted to point out an observation. Guess i just got ignoratio elenchied
Unfortunately that’s not how communism works in practice
Thank you. Something about me was rubbing me the wrong way, but I couldn’t articulate it.
Any process unless specifically adjusted to compensate for it (and the adjustment itself is a distortion of it and has secondary effects) will be affected by the environment it is working in.
So specifically for Capitalism and the practice of Science under it, funding and the societal pressure on everybody including scientists to have more money - as wealth is a status symbol in that environment - are he main pathways via which Capitalism influences the practice of Science.
It’s incredibly Reductionist and even anti-Scientific to start from the axiom that environment does not at all influence the way Science is practiced (hence Capitalism is unrelated to Science) and then just make an entire argument on top of such a deeply flawed assumption
Also statement A isn’t the truth either. It’s a highly exaggerated belief.
“science is good” turns to “science is pure truth and always right”
When actually science can be manipulated because humans are, well, humans. It shouldn’t be taken as always 100% fact.
This statement is
on the verge of beinga strawman argument. The first compares science to other systems of knowledge, while the second criticizes the subjects of scientific study under a capitalist influence.These two statements do not refer to the same thing in context.
Edit: clarity
Let’s also not forget that Scientists are also humans. Humans with their own beliefs and biases which do get transferred into studies. Peer review can help reduce that but since peers are also humans with their own biases, but also common biases shared amongst humans it’s not bulletproof either.
There will always be some level of bias which clouds judgement, or makes you see/think things that aren’t objectively true, sometimes it comes with good intention, others not so much. It’s always there though, and probably always will be. The key to good science is making it as minimal as possible.
This is why the last step of science is broad consensus, which has solved literally every single example of bad science in this entire thread. All this means is people should pay more attention to sources.
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Science doesn’t change just because some groups try to use it to forward an agenda.
ignoring the other examples you’ve been given: it absolutely does even when it goes well. The scientific method is literally based on “other people must change and refine this, one person’s work is not immutable nor should be taken as gospel”
Also what science is has changed. Science used to be natural philosophy and thus was combined with other non-scientific (to us) disciplines. Social sciences have only been around 200 years tops.
Some would debate that applied mathematics is science, others would say all sociology isn’t science.
No True Scotsman argument sort of.
Now, I’m not saying we ignore science or throw it out, but there are flaws.
Is it made by humans? Yah, there are flaws.
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If you catch your friends using Science as a religion, tell them they’re not a skeptic, they’re a cunt.
Am scientist (well, was, before career change), can confirm. Fuck dogmatic scientists, they’re worse than regular dogmatists because they’ve been given many opportunities to know better.
Ah SoleInvictus, he is an average [Insert Career Here], but he was a BRILLIANT Scientist!
Memes aside - (https://youtu.be/F_DFJ-OXTzQ)
This is such a common problem that it’s lead to the phrase “Science progresses at the march of funerals.”, what with all the people so attached to their pet theories they can’t humor anything that contradicts them…
Hah, I haven’t thought about Dragonball in ages. Thanks for the laugh.
Progress through turnover is true, and it’s maddening because the core tenets of science are explicitly against this. At our hearts, we’re still just apes with extra inflated egos.
Well look here buddy this was proven better than p>0.05 therefore it is scientifically accurate !
The fact that capitalism taints everything it touches is not a criticism of the things it touches.
Yet, it’s not as simple as “scientists are under capitalists’ interests”, but “the ideologies within capitalism permeate the way we do science”. A common example is how we measure functionality (and therefore pathology itself) in medicine.
Actually, it is.
Science is the process of getting things a little less wrong.
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Cuz that’s what this meme is trying to abandon - science
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If you’d like to read into this I recommend these books.
1. “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” by Thomas S. Kuhn
2. “Science as Social Knowledge” by Helen Longino
3. “The Politics of Science” by David Politzer
4. “The Science Industry” by Philip Mirowski
5. “The Commodification of Science: A Critical Perspective” by various authors
An example of why this matters would be that research claiming ME was psychological was heavily funded, by both governments and insurance companies because it meant that they didn’t have to spend money on people disabled with ME. No effort was made to look at possible biological causes. Only a couple decades later, we now know it is a neuroimmune disease. But since insurers and government don’t benefit from that fact, it took decades to show and disprove the mountain of research claiming it is psychological. This meant thousands of people died from the disease or were in severe poverty.
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You forgot Foucault’s Power/Knowledge.
Fuck Foucault
Do you hate Foucault because your a Marxist or a Petersonian?
There are more than just two possible reasons to dislike Michel “what if the child consents tho” Foucault.
No i hate him because post-modernism is trash. Peterson doesn’t understand post-modernism, but he is right that it’s trash
It’s true Peterson doesn’t understand it very and he definitely IS one. As a philosophy, it is quite disagreeable but you’re going have to do better than throw it in the trash during a tantrum and explain yourself. Or else it is the downvote bin for you.
Peterson’s gripes with postmodernism mainly stem from his hatred for Marxism and Neo-Marxism, whatever that means to him. He falsely equates the two by claiming that the Neo-Marxists attempt to the shroud their ideology in the form of “oppressionism” which is a staple of postmodernism. This is obviously wrong for a number of reasons but mainly because; 1) Marxism is rooted in scientific praxis by way of dialectical materialism which postmodernism opposes. 2) Marxism presents clear cut structures and systems for how society operates. Postmodernism says that systems are oppressive in nature and therefore should be opposed.
Now, i mentioned all this not because I’m a Marxist, but because i disagree with the two characteristics of postmodernism i outlined. Firstly, i don’t think it is in the best interest of any discipline to disagree with scientific reasoning simply because of how it has proven time and time again to be efficient. Science is the absolute and it should rather be science dismantling other modes of thinking than the other way around. Secondly, I disagree with the proposition that systems are oppressive therefore should be abandoned. Society, politics, etc CAN and SHOULD be explained in clear cut systems once again simply because of how accurate they are. It may not be the conflict theory, but there are other theories out there that explain society and accurately predict the actions of those in it e.g rational choice theory, feminist theory, etc.
I can’t claim to have read Foucault or Derrida or any other postmodernist literature, but this is my understanding of some of its claims.
Also, i have thought about Peterson potentially being a postmodernist (or at least incorporating some elements of postmodernist thought into his own ideologies) especially if you watched his recent discussion with Richard Dawkins. The way he tried to reconcile both points of view and say that they are actually two sides of the same coin seemed a bit postmodern to me. Although, what do i know.
Don’t let the post-modern-neo-marxists bite
Critical theory, my beloved
science is science. it can be (sometimes necessarily) prioritized via societal influence, culture and monetary means.
socialist countries have different types scientific spend but I don’t see femboys taking things in the ass for them I guess.
Also corporations tie employment of scientists to the number of papers they publish, as well as burying data that is financially harmful.
scientists are like gold prospectors dependent on assayers for their continuing in the mine
And under socialism in the 20th century, science was an institution that only funds research that advances whatever narrative the hermetic powers-that-be decided to push and strengthen their grip on power, their obsession with secretiveness and projecting an image of infallibility.
Take the Soviet Union.
T.D. Lysenko and his crackpot food engineering ideas is one such glaring example. But boy oh boy could he talk a “toe the party line” game and suck up to Stalin.
Or how about how the kremlin rendered nearly one quarter of Kazakhstan uninhabitable due to their relentless nuclear testing. And they nearly did that for all of western Europe with Chernobyl.In the name of workers and science, we shall poison your land. Science for the workers’ paradise, rejoice, comrades!
Science is easily corruptible, but of most relevance to us is how it is being corrupted here
