[ivxvm]

I'll just save some quotes here since I really like them:

> Kaczynski likened science to a “surrogate activity” that is “directed toward an artificial goal that people set up for themselves merely in order to have some goal to work toward” or some sense of fulfillment.

> “Scientists work mainly for the fulfillment they get out of the work itself,” he wrote. “… Thus science marches on blindly, without regard to the real welfare of the human race or to any other standard, obedient only to the psychological needs of the scientists and of the government officials and corporation executives who provide the funds for research.”

[dennis_jeeves1]

Reminds me of people here who will passionately argue which some js framework is next best thing after sliced bread.

[yawnxyz]

The scientists who DO usually start from goals, don't want to grope around "just for the science" and spend ten years on how "tail spike protein x interacts with blah blah blah"... the ones who aren't blind are usually cast away and made fun of not being "pure scientists" and cast away as "translational". It's an entire caste system lots of people have created for themselves.

So these "translational" people either go back obediently to doing the pure stuff, or they just leave and go to biotech / pharma.

The field is better off viewing those two as two sides of the same coin, but to keep people in the walls they've built a "if you do translational science, you're an outcast and should never come back!"

[alan-crowe]

That is powerful writing. Powerful by orthodox literary standards. In my own notebooks I regard that kind of writing as bad. I call the trap that it falls into "letting language do my thinking for me."

Consider "directed toward a goal that people set up for themselves in order to have some goal to work toward." I've dropped the words artificial and merely. What work were they doing?

I think that the word artificial is imposing a binary, "natural" versus "artificial", on the way that we think about goals. The paradigm of a natural goal is having sex to start a family. The paradigm of an artificial goal is playing golf. Which is science? It has to fall in the artificial bucket, so it is like golf, and therefore of low value.

If I were writing in my own notebook, I would think that I had tricked myself. I've persuaded myself that science is low value. I look for the clever argument that I've used; its not there. I've been incautious in my use of language, stuck in the word artificial and failed to wonder whether there are any artificial goals that are surprisingly valuable.

merely is heavy with implications. One might set oneself a goal in order to have something to work towards, to avoid the tendency to sipping and sampling which so often defeats the aspirations of gifted beings. This might be within a larger context; the aspiration may be towards a noble and lofty goal. merely trashes all that. A simple little word that slots in easily, merely making the words flow more smoothly. And yet it has smuggled in heavy negativity. Once again language does our thinking for us, guiding us towards a conclusion, and concealing from the author his lack of justification.

Turning to the second quote, one notices that blindly is a powerfully pejorative word. Who wants to be blind? Here is does triple duty, with three meanings. First, we are doing science because we are curious about something that we do not know. It is a cliche to call such groping in the dark blind. So no-one can disagree that science marches on blindly. The phrase "real welfare" intensifies the negativity. Notice the weasel word real. Nothing and nobody can meet the test of having regard to real welfare because the word real licences us to raise the standard for what counts as welfare into an unknowable, remote future. Science must confess to not being able to foresee ultimate consequences and confess a second time to being blind.

The third meaning of blind refers to the reasonable critique. It is hard to respond appropriately to even foreseeable medium term consequences and scientists often fail to do so. Is this reasonable critique actually justified? The claims made by the previous two meanings of the word blind were true, even if unimportant, so it is tempting to nod this through. The third meaning gains our approval by the momentum of the first two meanings; another example of language doing our thinking for us.

If we can escape the momentum of language, the example of Louis Pasteur will spring to mind, or Humphrey Davy investigating flames to invent the safety lamp. Scientist sometimes pay close attention to the foreseeable, medium-term welfare of mankind.

Is it true to say that science marches on, obedient to the psychological needs of scientists, government officials, and corporate executives? Yes, this is obviously true. Yet it is only that sneaky little word only (which I left out; did you notice?) that makes this important.

Ponder the tale of medicinal chemist trying to explain to his boss that it is actually the mice that are in charge. Science can only march on if it obeys the mice. Leaving them out misses the point entirely. That little word only both makes the ringing phrase important-if-true and hopelessly-false.

Notice how hard this overlong comment works to expose how language does our thinking for us. It is an example of Brandolini's Law. Cultivate a horror of powerful writing, before it tricks you into believing falsehoods. No-one is coming to save you. Untangling how language does our thinking for us is too much work.

[elif]

It is kind of true that the neoliberal lense through which science and academics are directed and funded is a form of ideology which is not always parallel with the improvement of the human condition, and I would argue at times it is even contrary to improvement of the human condition..

But there is no replacement ideology which can guide science uniformly toward an objectively better human condition. That is because any such ideology is as beholden to capitalism as neoliberalism. Science cannot escape the overarching power of capital while still depending upon it's forces to propel it.

Thus I agree it is an artificial goal, but more than a lie told by controlling beurocrats, it a lie told even to its adherents, as is inherent in ideology. Further, it is an inescapable lie produced by the organization of means.

The answer to this ideological trap we find science caught in is succinctly responded to by Star Trek. Post-capitalist post-materialism is what liberates science from these constraints, not some "opening of minds" accomplished through terrorism.

[ivxvm]

I think you get the wrong idea. What he basically says is that scientists mostly do science because they enjoy doing it, and everything else he says is a consequence of that. People in general tend to gravitate to activities which they enjoy in terms of process, and science is no exception. Usefulness of their work would be a nice side effect, but people rarely do things purely for result, especially when it's something that requires a lot of time and efforts. Basically we are inherently hedonistic creatures and there's no way changing that.