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She Blinded Vox–With Science!
By Jeff Fecke | March 7, 2007
You know, yesterday already was a pretty good day. I mean, Scooter Libby got convicted, the Justice Department was getting utterly destroyed on the Hill, and then, via PZ, I read that Vox Day has taken to the pages of his fugitive felon father’s magazine to take a brave stand against–science!
If that doesn’t make you happy, you don’t like life.
Now, needless to say, PZ has already folded, spindled, and mutilated anything Ted “Theodore” Beale thought he had to say, but everyone wants to take a whack at the pinata. I mean, this could be Vox’s best column since he advocated we gas the Mexicans.
It begins in the grandiloquent style to which we have become accustomed:
Science, we are repeatedly informed by scientists, possesses a unique claim on truth due to its self-correcting nature. And this is certainly true in theory, although it is not difficult to demonstrate that scientific history is littered with a long list of honest mistakes, not-so-honest mistakes and outright lies.
And this merely refers to the cases of which we know, scientific frauds that have been caught and exposed. But even if we politely avert our eyes from this well-chronicled inability of scientists to live up to their scientific ideals – a nicety seldom granted to religious idealists – there is real cause to doubt the continued benefit of science to modern society, or even its right to a respectable place within it.
Now, what is this long and memorable list of scientific frauds that is so easy for one to show? Vox has no time for such trifles. For he is Vox Day, destroyer of two-year-olds. Onward!
For the common belief in the beneficial nature of science rests on an underlying assumption that knowledge of all truth is desirable in all circumstances. But this is far from settled, as intellectuals from Plato to Daniel C. Dennett have frankly expressed their doubts on this score. Even lesser thinkers who have witnessed a child losing its innocent illusions or a family torn apart by the exposure of a long-hidden secret might well share this skepticism.
Shorter Vox: sure, scientists know truth, but who wants truth? Truth is for suckers. Lies rule!
For if all knowledge is inherently good, then it is a moral imperative to scientifically determine the relative intelligence of Asians and Zulus once and for all. But is everyone really comfortable with the possibility of determining that men are, in scientific fact, intellectually superior to women? Or vice-versa? The cowardice of scientists regarding such controversial subjects, their nominal dedication to absolute scientific truth nothwithstanding, is powerful evidence of their lack of faith in the inherent beneficence of science.
You know, I could dissect this, but I won’t do any better than PZ does, so I’ll just repeat what he says:
I don’t think Day quite understands science here—he seems to think it is a foregone conclusion that men are “in scientific fact” superior to women. If we had some consensus on what “superior” actually means in this context (and we don’t, which is really the reason work in this field makes many of us turn up our nose in disgust—it seems to really reflect a conditional bias rather than any kind of empirically testable measure), then maybe it would turn out that women are “superior”. We don’t know. It’s probably a very bad question, an attempt to reduce an answer with multiple dimensions to a crude and grossly simplistic linear scale.
So no, we aren’t afraid of the question. We think it is a stupid question.
Indeed. What’s a “superior” human? What’s “intelligence?” If the conventional wisdom is true that women are better at verbal skills and men better at math–who wins? Which is more important?
It depends, you say? Exactly–and that’s why this is such a stupid question. Not to mention that even if you could determine an accurate metric to determine who is “superior,” you’d have to control for–well, life. Tell me, how do you control for the role of racism on intelligence? And how do you come up with anything meaningful afterward? You don’t.
Believe it or not, Vox gets crazier.
Moreover, for a group of individuals claiming a right to act as a secular priesthood on Man’s behalf, scientists demonstrate an aversion for personal responsibility that would shame a child. Consider how the same militant atheists who claim that religious individuals are somehow responsible for the past actions of other religious individuals who do not even happen to share their beliefs simultaneously assert that scientists are not responsible for their personal actions even when those actions provide the means of mass murder or the motivation for embarking upon mass slaughter.
Uh…wha–?
Okay, I’ll agree with Vox that your average Buddhist doesn’t–and shouldn’t–have to answer for the Spanish Inquisition. But this is the most poorly constructed paragraph I’ve read in weeks.
Not being a “militant Atheist” (can one be a “militant agnostic?” If so, I am), I can’t comment on the rest, other than to note that people bear a responsibility for the lives they live and the choices they make, and the responsibility to ensure mistakes made in the past are not mistakes made in the future.
If “religion” is to be held culpable for the Inquisitions and the jihads, “science” is certainly no less culpable for the historical ravages of scientific socialism, the gassings of World War I, the National Socialist Holocaust, the fire-bombings of Tokyo and Dresden and the American abortion atrocity, to say nothing of the possibility of nuclear devastation as well as the inconvenient perils of global warming.
Well…I mean, first off, inquisitions and jihads are, ex vi termini, religious in nature. It’s like saying that people call both the World Series and the World Cup “sporting events”–they are.
Second–well, yes, like all human endeavors from language to religion to humor, science can be used for bad ends. Nothing is all-black or all-white, and only a fool thinks anything is.
That said, though, “scientific socialism” is as scientific as astrology. The Nazis were not atheists, and the pseudoscience of eugenics had already been discredited by the time Hitler seized on it. Legalized abortion is not an “atrocity,” but a human right.
As for the military attacks? Yes, science facilitated them, from gas attacks to the atom bomb. But it was not scientists who made the decision to fund the weapons, nor scientists who made the decision to use them.
Moving on:
I have previously demonstrated that religion does not cause war.
The Sunnis and Shi’a in Iraq are thrilled to hear that, Vox.
But even if it did, the number of Americans killed by medical science in the last ten years far exceeds the total number of Americans killed by war in U.S. history. If medical science can justly claim to have saved many lives, it must also take responsibility for the estimated 783,000 annual iatrogenic deaths it now causes every year.
Ooh! What a big word! What does it mean? Oh great Wiki Gods?
From a sociological point of view there are three types of iatrogenesis: clinical iatrogenesis, social iatrogenesis, and cultural iatrogenesis. While iatrogenesis is most often used to refer to the harmful consequences of actions by physicians, it can equally be the result of actions by other medical professionals, such as psychologists, therapists, pharmacists, nurses, dentists. etc. Further, iatrogenic illness or death is not restricted to Western medicine: alternative medicine (sometimes referred to as complementary medicine) may be considered an equal source of iatrogenesis for the same reasons.
Wow! So, are iatrogenic deaths on the rise?
With the discovery of antiseptics, anesthesia, antibiotics, and new and better surgical techniques, iatrogenic mortality decreased enormously.
Also, are doctors killing almost a million people a year?
Based on these figures, 225,000 deaths per year constitutes the third leading cause of death in the United States, after deaths from heart disease and cancer. Also, there is a wide margin between these numbers of deaths and the next leading cause of death (cerebrovascular disease).
This totals 225,000 deaths per year from iatrogenic causes. In interpreting these numbers, note the following:
- most data were derived from studies in hospitalized patients.
- the estimates are for deaths only and do not include negative effects that are associated with disability or discomfort.
- the estimates of death due to error are lower than those in the IOM report. If higher estimates are used, the deaths due to iatrogenic causes would range from 230,000 to 284,000
So…basically, Vox’s figures are off by a factor of three, and those numbers, while still too high, are evidently on the decline. And I’m sure that if, say, there were no antibiotics, the number of people dying of simple cuts wouldn’t be any more than two, three million tops.
Curse you, science!
Furthermore, the benefits of science are hugely exaggerated. Most of the advances in human technology are a function of the wealth produced by capitalism and human liberty, as may be seen in the retarded technological development in countries with no shortage of education and scientists, but handicapped by anti-capitalist, anti-libertarian ideology. Most inventors are not scientists and most scientists are not inventors; whereas Oppenheimer and Einstein gave us the nuclear bomb, Steve Wozniak gave us the personal computer and Al Gore gave us the Internet. It’s worth noting that the inventors of what is considered to be the most significant invention of the century, the silicon chip, were not scientists but electrical engineers.
The stupid, it burns!
Now, I’m just a caveman, and not familiar with your “engineers,” but last I checked, engineers were applied scientists–that is, they take science and apply it to real life. So arguing that an engineer isn’t using science to design is like arguing that Dale Earnhardt, Jr. isn’t using machines to race. It simply isn’t true.
As for the boilerplate libertarian jibber-jabber–yes, it’s true, capitalism can help popularize inventions, and help drive development. But it needs inventions to popularize.
But Vox thinks he’s got us in a box:
Science advocates may argue that while scientists may not do much inventing, inventions are merely a practical application of the principles discovered by scientists. And while this is true in many cases, it is false in even more. From vulcanized rubber to the microwave oven, accidents combined with fortuitous observations by non-scientists have accounted for a surprising number of advances in human knowledge, advances to which the scientific method of hypothesis and experimentation may claim no credit.
There are a few things that we found out accidentally. Therefore, all science does not work. I think Vox’s logic is a bit faulty there–especially given that the microwave oven’s discovery came about when Percy Spencer was working on a radar…that had already been designed, using science.
Now, I’ve had fun with ol’ Child-Killer Ted, but really, his last two paragraphs are right up there with his argument for a new American Kristallnacht. I give them to you unabridged:
Sciencists [sic] (those who believe in science as a basis for dictating human behavior, as opposed to scientists, who merely engage in the method), like to posit that Man has evolved to a point where he is ready to move beyond religion. A more interesting and arguably more urgent question is whether science, having produced some genuinely positive results as well as some truly nightmarish evils, has outlived its usefulness to Mankind.
Man has survived millennia of religious faith, but if the prophets of over-population and global warming are correct, he may not survive a mere two centuries of science.
Uh…okay.
So science has brought us a lot of good and some bad. It’s brought us the internal combustion engine, that is causing global warming but also spurred a huge increase in wealth. It’s given us medicine, that means fewer babes must die of easily treatable diseases–but that does risk an increase in population. It’s given us video games and the internets, which are awesome, but which also keep Vox in business. As you can see, science is a double-edged sword–though not, alas, a flaming one.
But what is the alternative to science–a process that has brought us in three hundred years from sailing vessels to supersonic jets to the Moon? A process that has brought us in three hundred years from leeches to patent medicines to artificial hearts? If we turn simply to religion, where do we make our progress? And what happens to the eight billion-odd people who exist today because of the advances of science?
Well, seven billion of them die. And the other billion live, if they’re lucky, in the broken shadow of a once-great civilization, struggling to live through their hard lives, dead by forty. But they’ll be godly, which is great, if there’s a God.
What does science promise over the next two hundred years? Well, there are no guarantees–if we don’t get to work looking to move off of oil before oil runs out, we may end up in the same dead-end that Vox would take us to.
But science also gives us the best hope of finding a way out of the problem of global climate change–it gives us the best chance of finding new, environmentally-friendly forms of energy. It gives us the chance to find new, more reliable contraceptive drugs that will help lessen the population explosion. It gives us the chance to find new materials that are lighter and require less energy to move.
There has never been a better time to be a human than 2007. We are richer, healthier, and more powerful as a species than we have ever been. That does not mean we are perfect, nor that we do not have far to go–but we’ve reached this place thanks to science, among other things. I don’t know why Vox hates his life so much, but I like mine just fine–and I’d like my daughter to feel that 2037 is the best time to be a human, and her daughter to feel that 2067 is the best time to be a human. Science gives us the best chance of that. Not a guarantee. But a chance.
Topics: Science, Ted 'Theodore' Beale | 1 Comment »
March 7th, 2007 at 10:51 am
But Jeff, since you are explicitly endorsing science you must be a scientist, and hence a liar and promoter of the apocalypse!
LOL. What a tool.