tomlock

>Leibniz's strange philosophy has had no impact at all on science in the West.

What is this claim based on? His philosophy didn't have an impact on his own science, so perhaps a claim that a belief that God creates a mere appearance of causality, kills science, is a little overblown.

>The author did not deny that. He is talking about the overall trends.

While hand waving away GDP and other, more obvious indicators.

> In trying to explain the Islamic world’s intellectual laggardness, it is tempting to point to the obvious factors: authoritarianism, bad education, and underfunding (Muslim states spend significantly less than developed states on research and development as a percentage of GDP). But these reasons are all broad and somewhat crude, and raise more questions than answers. At a deeper level, Islam lags because it failed to offer a way to institutionalize free inquiry.

This is a pretty blunt and unconvincing dismissal of some pretty huge factors.

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The article makes some pretty strong claims that Islam currently has some fundamental beef with science due to a philosophical beef with causality as a "natural" force that does not exist in the West. I must disagree, not with the idea that Islam has this beef, but that this beef does not exist in the West. It is simultaneously true that Christians have been scientists, and that Muslims have been, and that both institutions have, at various times both endorsed and indicted the scientific method - and more specifically the idea that natural phenomena are causal without the influence of god.

Perhaps the author has heard of Leibniz's seminal work, Monadology? In this work Leibniz essentially argues that all action and causality in the universe is the result of God's great plan unfolding, that every action and reaction is predetermined, stored in every fragment of matter and that causality effectively does not exist. Now, according to the article, this kind of denial of causality is antithetical to scientific thinking and progress. Leibniz, along with Newton, is widely credited with the discovery of Calculus.

If the right is arguing against the belief that ratios will be 50-50 automatically given equal opportunities, they aren't arguing against the left.

In fact the video states that the assertion there are biological differences between men and women is uncontraversial.

Also here's a great video that might help Peterson fans understand some of the problems with his positions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LqZdkkBDas

It is a self-help book rooted in Jungian theory, widely discredited in modern psychology. His understanding of modern and postmodern philosophy is only deep enough to convince readers with no knowledge of those topics that he knows something about them.

You're having to make a lot of presumptions to have to believe these employees are being paid fairly.

So you both think people are being paid reasonably and that Google and Apple are colluding with one another.

That'd be all very reasonable if we lived in a world where Apple and Google weren't colluding to keep wages down.

> The successful entrepreneur makes his money by capital gains in the share or venture capital markets and not by extracting it from his employees.

Incorrect, that value is only sustained and increased by the efforts of company workers.

> Employer competes with other employers for both a)market share b) hiring employees -bidding up their prices.

Incorrect. Companies that don't have significant oversight in the form of government regulation or strong unions tend to collude to keep salaries low - which is exactly what has happened in the valley, and has meant that these companies have gigantic cash reserves that they aren't leveraging to hire the best talent.

> By comparing gains from entrepreneurship with regular salaries, you are comparing a stock variable with a flow variable.

No, I'm merely saying that the differences and risks suffered by investors and founders versus regular salaried employees are not a justification for the sometimes ridiculous difference between the compensation of the two.

I'm assuming that you don't think risking making no money is enough to entitle a founder to their entire employees wage. How much does it entitle them to?

On the one hand it sounds like you're saying that software engineers are paid enough already, then on the other hand you're saying you think the compensation given to the software engineers that founded the company - which is much MUCH higher than that of the average company engineer is appropriate.

It feels like what you're saying is that the risk of failing in a startup is massive enough for a founder that they deserve literally billions of dollars.

Could you let me know exactly what risks you think a failing startup founder faces that would entitle them to say, a thousand times more dollars than the average salaried employee? Are you saying that because a founder may go bankrupt they are entitled to thousands of times more money? Does this mean that any individual that takes out a loan larger than their assets to start a business is entitled to thousands of times more money than their average employee? Could you help me understand what makes you think that?

> they're compensated fine already.

I disagree, given the massive cash reserves the tech companies have.

Yes, having a higher salary would be ridiculous in a lot of these cases, but we should moderate that through legislation that benefits the most people - not by a public company further lining the coffers of its owners.

Apple and Google particularly have a lot of cash just lying around, and that cash is the result of the employee's efforts, and they deserve it. I think if we think their salaries are too high in that case, we need to talk about better taxation systems.

But people can have one body with multiple chromosome combinations. As soon as we start admitting that there needs to be an "other" category, we're admitting that the categorisation we currently have is at the very least, inadequate.

If there is ever ambiguity, the classification is not binary.

But, the idea that the classification is binary is inherently flawed if, as you state, there are special cases.

"The right parts" isn't a scientific concept.

"The Second Sex" by Simone De Beauvoir is on here twice. I'd recommend if you're looking to read an existentialist book by the same author - check out "The Ethics of Ambiguity" which is an attempt to form an existentialist ethics, and is short, and good. Tbqh "The Second Sex" is a bit dry for modern tastes - even though it is important. I'd recommend reading something like Judith Butler's "Gender Trouble" if you want a better feel for modern feminism.

What's odd to me is that some people seem to, even in the face of this, think it's fair to criticize liberal arts journals for sometimes publishing bad papers. People are just people, in every field.

But the "majority of americans" doesn't consistently agree on what is and isn't political correctness, so it really is based on "things I don't like".

Agreed. In my opinion, labeling someone as too politically correct will only garner a response of "that's not true". So basically anytime anyone says it, it's just name calling, nobody learned anything more about the other person's position or reasoning. Useless.

> as the University of Maryland criminologist John Laub told me, it’s because any suggestion of a possible biological or genetic basis for crime could be misconstrued as racism.

Or, it is because biological and genetic factors aren't as powerful at predicting crime as other factors. The idea that crime runs in families indicates a biological factor in crime is nonsense. Families and children that start in lower deciles of wealth are likely to stay there. Social mobility is awful.

Which tribal effects do you think dominate? I can make a guess at what thinkers you may be following, given some of the words you've used here. I'm assuming this, but lets just say for a moment you believe that these disciplines uncritically believe that trans women are "real" women.

This is simply, untrue. There are debates about both the semantics and broad claims in that specific case in these fields of study. I often find that criticisms of these fields lack a nuanced understanding of the actual content and behavior of the fields, and instead come from a malformed reading of the field that is readily accepted by the reader. Are there other specific beliefs in these fields that you're more concerned about?

So you're not advocating for rigorous empirical standards?

You've come into this article, which only has evidence that papers written in bad faith can be accepted by peer-reviewed journals (trivial), already presupposing that the field is intellectually bankrupt. In order for me to believe you have the ability to make that judgement, I must also believe that you understand the field. People can be experts in fields without being a member of that field. You have fallen prey to the same false ideological purity you seem to have deemed yourself fit to criticize in others.

Since you're not advocating for rigorous empirical standards, I can only assume you feel the article we're commenting on was pretty pointless. And let's be real here, this article didn't effect your view either way. We're done here.

Considering that you're advocating for rigorous empirical standards, and considering that in the case of economics, a full THIRD of articles submitted to two top tier economics journals could not be replicated, which is quite similar to the 7/20 article admissions rate these hoaxers managed, what empirical evidence do you have that suggests this is outside the norm for a multitude of disciplines not necessarily related to your area of examination?

I'm really glad you're now saying that you just have the opinion that these papers and disciplines are absurd, because I'd consider that claim, stated as a fact, to be the realm of experts in the field. Presupposing the discipline is absurd would require you to have a deep knowledge of the field, which I'm not seeing much evidence of, here.

If you presuppose that the category is absurd, the submission of an absurd paper is a vacuous act that proves nothing, and your point should be able to be easily demonstrated by your knowledge of the field as it stands.

But if your argument kind of hinges on the idea that these disciplines axiomatically believe in their righteousness due to their lack of scientific data, wouldn't it be quite strange to say you believe they're making scholarship more ideological, without the data to back that axiom up?

What makes you feel like you're an expert on what is and isn't reasonable?

Because both address getting papers that are incorrect and have made up evidence into prominent peer-reviewed journals.

Pay attention to the article! The authors of these hoax papers don't demonstrate or address a methodological flaw in gender studies. They demonstrate that you can get papers written in bad faith into a peer reviewed journal, which is also trivially true for many disciplines, including economics, which you have previously implied people would have a problem getting a "nonsense" paper into.

Things are either fallible or they aren't, and since it seems you're willing to accept that all fields are fallible "to some degree" aka are fallible, we shouldn't edify any of them uncritically. Are you saying that you can claim things can be fallible without being equivalent? Because that's what I'm saying, and I'm glad we agree.

The replication crisis is a perfect example of the problem faced by all fields, of papers of questionable veracity being accepted by peer-reviewed journals. Convenient for you to say it is not up for discussion. However, I am casting a critical eye on your seemingly infallible nature, and I choose to consider it relevant.