Just a reminder: Scientists are, technically, people.

PhilGoetz

Just a reminder: Scientists are, technically, people. — LessWrong

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Scientists also have highly unrepresentative personalities, high in openness to experience, and tend not to care about conservative values like respect for authority, group loyalty, and various taboos. Delegation of decision-making power to representative samples of elite scientists will thus favor those values more than the policies that would be adopted by a set of comparably informed people with values representative of the population.

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PhilGoetz17y30

Delegating this power to politicians has a poor track record.

Are you speaking from within a rationalist perspective, or are you defaulting to speaking from within a populist framework?

5komponisto17y

This is a good summary of the bioethicists' argument; but I find their argument unconvincing. My suspicion is that the values of "comparably informed people" would inevitably tend to resemble those of scientists -- at least for practical purposes. Concretely, for instance, it seems that much if not most of the opposition to embryonic stem-cell research is based on a failure to grasp the empirical fact that personhood resides in brain structure: no neurons, no person. Maybe in principle there could still be moral arguments worth having that don't directly depend on the science; and maybe scientists would be biased toward certain stances in such arguments. But I don't think that's what's really going on here.

2[anonymous]17y

This is true. For my part, however, I would not speak out about this. I believe that if a tribe delegates, for whatever reason, their ethical decision making to a group with that sort personality bias then the morality that results in is perfectly valid. The very nature of morality is that it is determined not by consensus but by a dance of power and priorities. I suggest that having decisions made by a group that tends not to care about conservative values like respect for authority, group loyalty, and various taboos is far better than those usually made. This is partly because it would better suit my own preferences but also because each of those differences from the norm tends towards deciding what is best for the group rather than best for the leader or best for signalling allegiance to the leader. My main reluctance with having scientists having this influence is that it is bad for science. The more political power you give a group the more the group becomes political.

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Just a reminder: Scientists are, technically, people.

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Just a reminder: Scientists are, technically, people.

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