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Eugine_Nier comments on I've had it with those dark rumours about our culture rigorously suppressing opinions - Less Wrong Discussion

26 Post author: Multiheaded 25 January 2012 05:43PM

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Comment author: Eugine_Nier 26 January 2012 12:44:23AM 32 points [-]

The scientific process has been so corrupted by signaling and politics that outside the hard sciences, most of what is called "science" these days, especially mainstream opinion at universities, is less entangled with reality then most religions. At least the religions have been around long enough to be subject memetic selection.

Comment author: FiftyTwo 26 January 2012 07:05:02AM 4 points [-]

how do you know this isnt happening in hard sciences?

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 26 January 2012 04:08:34PM *  17 points [-]

They produce results that work, even for people that don't want to believe them. At least, in most parts of the hard sciences - I don't know about the depths of string theory or cosmology.

Comment author: [deleted] 23 February 2012 07:37:32PM 1 point [-]

Can't find the link offhand, but there's some interesting metaanalysis of medical-scientific journals and a few other fields that strongly suggests even the hard sciences in general aren't immune to this.

Comment author: AlexSchell 26 January 2012 05:40:06AM 3 points [-]

Which soft sciences do you have in mind? (I'd say "name three" but that would come off as confrontational.)

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 26 January 2012 05:50:28AM 13 points [-]

For example: economics, psychology, sociology, possibly even medicine (see Hason's discussion of it).

Comment author: AlexSchell 26 January 2012 09:10:29PM *  28 points [-]

On any reasonable operational definition of "less entangled with reality than most religions", you are ridiculously wrong in claiming that medicine fits the description, and I think Hanson might agree. (I'm less certain about this with regard to certain subfields like stroke rehabilitation, certain sub-subfields in nutrition, etc., but I'm talking about the weighted accuracy of the sorts of activities that Western MDs perform, that are taught in Western medical schools, etc.)

EDIT: Full disclosure: I'm a pharmacy student, so it would be moderately devastating to my sense of worth if you were right. Still.

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 13 April 2015 05:21:33PM -1 points [-]