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VoiceOfRa comments on Rationality Quotes Thread August 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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"But listen to me, because I saw it myself: science began poor. Science was broke and so it got bought. Science was scared and so did what it was told. It designed the gun and gave the gun to power, and power then held the gun to science's head and told it to make some more."
-- from Galileo's Dream, by Kim Stanley Robinson
The problem with corruption of science is not Power holding a gun to Science's head and saying "make more", it's Power holding a gun to Science's head and saying "declare my claims to be true".
With the former, presumably Power wants the new gun to actually work and doesn't care how it works, thus satisfying Power's requested has the positive externality of increasing human knowledge. On the other hand, the latter has the consequence of polluting the human knowledge pool with falsehoods and polluting epistemology with the anti-epistemology used to justify said claims.
If we're rewriting the quote I'd say that Power's action doesn't even involve a gun. She glances at Science, sees that labcoat + talk = belief + status, and puts on a labcoat and starts talking. Because she is optimizing for status rather than truth the things that Power declares are much more comfortable to believe, and if pressed for proof she just points out that people who wear labcoats brought us prosperity, and who are you to question them?