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Comment by toxik | Hacker News Reader

Science is myopic by construction. Science does not consider what questions to answer, but rather tries to answer what can be answered. Science cannot tell you how to run a country or city. It can, at best, tell you how NOT to.

Over reliance on science as guidance has also lead to some of the darkest chapters of human history, like phrenology and its use to justify racial supremacy.

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> Over reliance on science as guidance has also lead to some of the darkest chapters of human history, like phrenology and its use to justify racial supremacy.

Could you clarify this? I understand that humans committed terrible atrocities in the name of "racial supremacy". I also understand that the same people used science as a fig leaf to justify their actions. But you seem to be saying that over reliance on science lead to these atrocities.

I simply can't imagine someone saying "I like these people and normally wouldn't hurt them, but the scientific consensus is so strong therefore I will kill/maim/throw them into a concentration camp." It sounds more likely that the racist ideology was there first, which caused both the racist science and the atrocities both. In other words racist people wanted to commit atrocities and they manufactured excuses for themselves to do so.

But I'm far from an expert on human history, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

I’m not the person you’re replying to (and I agree with your) but thinking about your question the closest thing I could come up with is maybe lobotomies? Even then I’m not really sure about the chicken and the egg. Was it ever about treating the patient or was it meant to make caring for an “embarrassing” patient easier for the family by turning the patient into a shell of a human?

Also, unlike e.g. phrenology, I wouldn't say lobotomies were one of the darkest chapters in the history of mankind. Sorely misguided and tragic, but not that.

Eugenics was a mainstream science for a large part of the 20th century, not just amongst white supremacists, and was often carried out with "good intentions", as opposed to simply being a way to legitimise white supremacist ideologies.

Exactly this. Science has too much emphasis on the "now", on present knowledge.

Take 17th century science... most of it would be ludicrous by any standard today. Now imagine applying that science onto humans/society... Science as a tool to deal with present knowledge, should not be used solely to manage societies or human situations with irreversible consequences.

Then propose another way of getting reliable, robust and explainable guidelines for managing societies?

But of course, evidence-based decision making should not be turned into decision-based evidence making; science alone is not a basis for politics.

In your very last sentence there; you summed up what I meant. I don't know why you expect me to come up with a solution on how to manage societies in a comment section.

Sorry, that was needlessly aggressive. Glad we agree then.

Well it would be helpful if you did.

Maybe some nice corp would be willing to buy an issue of a journal so that you can publish and distribute the solution!

hahaha indeed! issue of a journal seems to go pretty cheap these days :D

I don't think they expected you to come up with a solution to managing societies; I assume if you know of a better way to come up with reliable guidelines for running society you wouldn't have thought of it yourself. Maybe you could link to a book that contains the methodology that you think is better than science.

Dude, we (me and other commenter) are already in agreement. Other commenter summed it up pretty succinctly. So I just didn't want to start a flamewar on semantics, except for pointing out that I can't come up with a solution in a short form here.

I have a medium article in draft over 3 months on this exact topic. That's why my wording of the issue came out sounding more complicated. But other commenter saying "science alone" and me saying "using science solely" are basically pointing to same understanding.

There are many examples in history for the said situation leading to social catastrophes; see Malthus (or Thanos' ideology if you like pop-cult), or Darwinian take on managing societies. Some lead to racism, some eugenics etc etc.

Like the original commenter said; science is myopic and highly focused on the present body of knowledge available. But once we applied those results onto people and cause suffering, and 10 years later find some of those were wrong, we can not undo the human suffering.

There needs to be a balance; when science is treading closely to the human dignity, well-being, life in general.

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