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Comment by kangnkodos | Hacker News Reader

I'm very disappointed that Scientific American endorsed a political candidate.

The reason is that this act adds to the polarization of this country. It does nothing but add more hate to the world. It brings politics into an area of life which has previously been apolitical.

Worst of all it normalizes the idea that one political party is smart and rational, and another is stupid and illogical. Every time this idea is repeated, and this article will lead to the idea being repeated more, another swing voter who could go either way clings tighter to the Republican party.

Sure, it feels good to claim superiority in this manner, but it has the opposite effect from what was intended.

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> Worst of all it normalizes the idea that one political party is smart and rational, and another is stupid and illogical

I think the entire point of their endorsement is that they are not saying anything about parties at all, but rather that a singular candidate is dangerous for reasons relevant to their purpose and readership.

I hear you. I agree that what they wrote is limited to just the candidate and not the voters. I even agree that Trump is unscientific, illogical, fear mongering and dangerous. Wait. I went beyond what you said. Sorry.

But what is the corollary to Trump "rejects evidence and science"? It's that anyone who votes for Trump does the same thing.

You're right that they did not spell this out. But many people who hear the endorsement will immediately jump to that conclusion.

> But what is the corollary to Trump "rejects evidence and science"? It's that anyone who votes for Trump does the same thing.

Naturally. In what reality would voting for a candidate not indicate at least some level of support for their platform, values, etc., and wanting to see more of it in government? That's quite literally what voting is designed to do.

> The reason is that this act adds to the polarization of this country.

Taking a position in favor of a candidate is not hate. Democracy is powered by civic engagement. People who professionally write bear a joint responsibility to be civic, to make cases, explain them.

You make a good point. But take an objective look at all the other responses on this page. How many of them contain the hidden assumption that Republican voters are stupid? I see a few. You might not be able to see it right away. You have to read them a certain way. Some have been downvoted and are light gray. But they are there.

And conversation here on HN is very restrained. When this news hits other social media, there will be more claims that Trump is stupid, Republicans are stupid, and any independent who is considering voting for a Republican is stupid.

So, yes, this article has unleashed a new wave of hatred in the world.

I have nothing against professional scientific writers writing a letter to the New York Times, or even writing an editorial there. In fact they should. I agree with you that it's good when they correct a specific claim with scientific evidence.

This is something else.

This is the whole Scientific American organization putting their stamp of approval on the idea that Republican voters are stupid.

Republican voters aren't stupid, they are grossly misinformed. This fact is supported by multiple studies of the subject, and is hardly controversial.

> The group who names MSNBC as their main news source is far more likely than the Fox News group to answer correctly that the coronavirus originated in nature rather than a laboratory and that it will take a year or more for a vaccine to become available. On both questions, the portion in the CNN group to answer correctly falls between the MSNBC and Fox News numbers.

> About three-quarters (76 percent) of those who name Fox News as their main source are conservative Republicans and Republican leaners, while 57 percent who name MSNBC are liberal Democrats and Democratic leaners.

https://www.journalism.org/2020/04/01/cable-tv-and-covid-19-...

> to answer correctly that the coronavirus originated in nature rather than a laboratory

That hasn't been proven either way, and probably never will be.

And journalism.org's linked source is not scientific evidence, but rather a "Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19". I guess they mean "answer politically correctly".

> But take an objective look at all the other responses on this page. How many of them contain the hidden assumption that Republican voters are stupid? I see a few. You might not be able to see it right away. You have to read them a certain way. Some have been downvoted and are light gray. But they are there.

I'm not going to accept a couple of downvoted outbursts as evidence of a problem. it's hard to guess who might leave such comments & whether they are even authentic. I'm not even going to judge a lot of these people even if they are authentic & being mean. I don't know what they have experienced & perhaps they have some good reasons to be so upset as to have become uncivil.

> So, yes, this article has unleashed a new wave of hatred in the world.

That you don't like how they feel & seem scared of it is not what civics is about.

You are right though, that mentioning this kind of deeply politicized mistreatment of science will stir anger in some people, often anger people already harbored. Perhaps some of that hate is due. Perhaps uncivil forces are acting with greed & profiteering, destroying earth's resources & legacy, plundering our shared inheritance.

Do you mean that people in general should not accept evidence of a problem that is literally right in front of their eyes?

I must have misunderstood what you meant.

True civic engagement is inherently bipartisan or nonpartisan; it pursues moderation and consensus. Taking a position for or against a candidate (as in, not just e.g. a few policy positions from any given campaign) is the very opposite of actual, genuine civic engagement.

I don’t know why you believe this, but it is false.

My take is that they don't want people they disagree with to speak up.

> True civic engagement is inherently bipartisan or nonpartisan;

Semi true. When both sides are engaging civically yes. If one side is acting partisanly or in bad faith, using demagoguery & deceit, civics is to call out the dis-ingenuousness & descent from reason.

> it pursues moderation and consensus.

Including moderation of bad actors & fanatics when necessary.

> Taking a position for or against a candidate (as in, not just e.g. a few policy positions from any given campaign) is the very opposite of actual, genuine civic engagement. reply

Obviously [insert explitives here]. Entirely bogus conclusion that in no way follows from some weak & very partial but slightly somewhat true origins.

Does it not signal something, that in all of the publication's history, all the world events it has existed through, that now is the time they decide make an endorsement? Instead of bemoaning that they made an endorsement, maybe it would be better to discuss why now? What's different about our current times that the publication has made such an out-of-character move?

I understand what you're trying to get at. I listened to the DNC. They kept repeating that this moment is more critical than any other in history. I don't buy that. After Japan annihilated our fleet in Pearl Harbor, and Nazis were rolling over one country after another in Europe... that must have been a very scary moment, and critical. Today... important, but not as much.

But I digress. My honest answer to what you're asking is:

The difference is that at this point in time, the staff of Scientific American is in a media bubble more than at any time in the past. They have lost touch with the common man. The man on the street who does not have a college degree. They don't realize how negatively that man is going to react to this endorsement.

That's honestly why I think they did it now, and not over the last 175 years.

Even if you're assumption is correct (which I don't agree with), it's not the job of Scientific American or even the media to be concerned about polarization. Scientific American should provide objective information about matters within its domain expertise, of which the candidate's impact and leverage of science is appropriate.

FYI I also don't agree that it leads to "another swing voter who could go either say cling tighter to the Republican party." This kind of thinking is what leads to creating the false equivalence that both parties are relatively equal, which significantly benefits any party that acts in an extremely polarized and deceitful manner, since it can rely on the media to launder their actions to look roughly equivalent to the other party.

Let me put it this way. I'm having a disagreement with my wife. Her voice starts to get louder. A logical course of action would be to point out that she is not currently calm, and that she should calm down or resume the conversation at another time.

That's logical.

And yet, that's not the best course of action.

Sometimes, you have to go beyond logic, and take into account how others will react to your statements.

When one candidate is _clearly_ anti-science, ignoring scientific consensus and by doing so harms the country, why wouldn't a magazine that celebrates it endorse the other candidate?

This seems like one of those bad faith argument that is just trying to muddle the water.

> Worst of all it normalizes the idea that one political party is smart and rational, and another is stupid and illogical.

Donald Trump is a single politician, and not the entire Republican Party. Having an opinion on one is not the same as calling an entire party stupid and illogical.

> the idea being repeated more, another swing voter who could go either way clings tighter to the Republican party.

If someone is a swing voter, and unsure which side to pick, why would reputable sources offering well reasoned advice lead them to cling tightly to the opposite (you said “tighter” here, which I assume was a typo, since you previously claimed they were a swing voter and so Therefore wouldn’t be clinging to either side yet).

Thanks for correcting my typo. Yes.

I've read first hand accounts about what happened in Venezuela. About twenty years ago, Chavez turned a democracy into a dictatorship. How could this possibly happen?

Well, one ingredient was that the people who were against Chavez repeated over and over that the dictator was not logical.

In Venezuela, this type of argument did not persuade Chavez voters. It did the opposite. Chavez won and the country is now a dictatorship.

I see the same thing happening here. Trump supporters with a high school diploma are personally insulted when a bunch of PhD's get together and declare that their candidate is not scientific.

I really didn't explain it yet. Did I? Let me try this. The battle is asymmetric. One side, Trump, is using fear. The other side, Scientific American, is using logic.

Fear actually gets voters off their couches and into the voting booth.

Logic gets people to nod their heads, but doesn't translate into actual votes.

Well, they definitely could have bumped the fear component up more, but perhaps Scientific American feels their subscriber base is more likely to respond to reasoning than to fear.

“This was a mistake because they weren’t fear-mongery enough” is definitely an interesting take, though.

Haha. I can't imagine them jumping on the fear bandwagon.

I am hoping they back Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camach in 2024.

I'm hoping he's not the best (or least bad) option then...

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