Thanks for the comment. Read through your post and it has indeed some similar ideas. And I like the idea to make longtermism more diverse.
Overall though I am not as convinced of longtermism as I might have been in the past (the following is more a general comment and not specifically about your post). It has just too many options to use it as a argument for horrible things in the present, due to potential value in the future (e.g. the whole FTX situation).
It seems like your perspective on science doesn't include the reality of what we actually may know is true. For example, radio telescopes requiring "that your understanding of electromagnetism is correct" implies that Maxwell's equations may be wrong. However, these equations are one of those "theories" like thermodynamics that if you find an exception you get a Nobel prize and become a billionaire. Knowledge at that level with corresponding mathematics is not the same as what you are thinking about and your diversity arguments are irrelevant. In fact, adding non-mathematically literate individuals to any team makes it worse.
It sound like you are from the so called "soft science" that don't use the language of mathematics or have "exception free" theories that can be falsified with one case. Perhaps the areas where you divesity views are relevant should be limited to "art" and not even called science.
Note that most of the basic theories of the real sciences were from individuals not defined groups.
First of all, your comment comes across very arrogant and condescending to me. I want this blog be a place of friendly discussion. If this is not possible for you, I will delete further comments.
Counter to you assumption I have a PhD in Hydrology and have been working on research related to this, soil science, extreme climate change and nuclear winter. So, I think I know a thing or two about science.
The examples you are talking about are already established science. The interesting part comes when you get to the frontiers of science. Here, you have conflicting theories. Even in physics you come across conflicting theories (e.g. string theory and its competitors). Those theories don't arise from a vacuum, but from people who had different world views and try to establish those into models and equations.
The same process happens in all fields. E.g. there are conflicting theories about how nuclear winter would happen or different ideas on how the climate system works in general. Heck, even for our understanding of the river in your backyard there are different ideas and theories on how everything might work there. Here, it helps a lot when you have a diverse team, as you can check your assumptions and build together to a better theory of the world.
Obviously, not everyone can make a contribution to everything and not every background is equally valuable in every field. But the post is more of a general comment.
Sorry about your feeling my comment was condescending, it wasn't meant to be. From your response it is now clear that your viewpoint about diversity is "diversity of thought" and your conclusions are valid, but in academic DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) the concept of diversity has evolved into pure check-box physical traits. The variance within each check-box diversity category on "diversity of thought" is huge relative to the diversity between the check-box categories.
I got baned from a site that was going on about calculus and math requirements in STEM and that they should be eliminated, or made optional, or "easier" with less rigid grading to increase check-box diversity. I view mathematics as the language of STEM fields and if you don't understand it, you should not be in STEM. As I watched new professors being chosen for their phenotype check-boxes and ability to have an excellent DEI statement while blocking review committees of digging into competence and merit questions, something is wrong. Having Academic departments heads actually being told no White, or Asian males on the short list and having had a friend get dropped for an emeritus position where his addition would have make that department number 1 in the world, by the diversity officer on the search committee with veto power over all the faculty members, something is wrong.
Some primitive cultures only know math at the 1, 2, 3, many level and literally can't comprehend most real science within their language and culture. What are they going to add to any team even requiring arithmetic? Watching the social sciences p-hacked non-reproducibility and the evolution of DEI demands for Engineering tenure track positions along with listening to my academic friends going crazy as students complain about graduate level Environmental engineering classes requiring calculus to solve kinetic problems, I have become hyperreactive to the changing meaning of the word diversity. As the meaning of diversity has been captured by anti-science "true believers" we need to use "diversity of viewpoints" to define the diversity that is beneficial in teams.
Why do you think the people you mentioned want to relax math requirements and include "check boxes"? What would be the best argument you could make for their side?
There may not be any good argument for not knowing math in heavy math intensive STEM areas. The STEM areas deal in the real world where nature doesn't care about humans or their irrational musings or emotions. Two + two may equal 5 in the Humanities and social sciences of Orwell's famous 1984 book but "big brother" and the "thought police" allowed STEM to use 2+4=4.
Their complaint was that math courses do not give EQUITY results as some check-box groups with different cultures did worse that others, but individuals within each check-box did well. They are trying to force the DEI standards of the math deficient humanities and social science fields into areas where they will not work. In math, you either understand it or you don't. There is little wiggle room when reality and nature, that doesn't care about humanity, determines whether the results are true or false.
This does not seem like a good faith engagement with the position you are opposing. You are mainly restating your own argument, but do not really try to understand where the other side is coming from.
If you assume that the people you are discussing with are obviously mistaken and your enemies, you will not be able to learn anything from this argument. If you want to become better at learning from positions which are not your own I can recommend reading this book here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42041926-the-scout-mindset
There are surely arguments on the other side. For example, you could say that there is a lot of room for people with less math skills in STEM fields, because today a lot of mathematical skills can be easily supplemented with programming and data analysis. When you are using programming packages it is usually enough to get the general gist of the math, but you don't need to understand the nitty gritty details. And even if there is a hard math problem, you can just ask someone else with good math skills to help you. Heck, even my own math skills aren't that great, but still I got a summa cum laude on my dissertation in a very math heavy field. But this never turned out to be really a problem, as being good at data analysis and data visualization was just much more important for my research.
Yes, the scout mindset is a good way to go, but you need to know when someone is on the wrong track. With math being a very individual activity and I know I am not good enough to be a mathematician so it wasn't my major. This also means the association with the check-box DEI groups is probably meaningless and individual interests dominate.
Depending upon software is very dangerous as we see all the time with the misuse of statistics. Even what appears to be straight forward often is not. One time I was analyzing a 3-D mass transport problem relating to landfill gas recovery and the company hired a consulting that was using standard equations from natural gas field extraction to understand the field data, but he had forgotten the assumptions that went into that solution. I created my own model specifically for landfill gas situation with biological generation and we disagreed by a factor of 2. After a top management meeting where I filled three blackboards with differential equations under dynamic extraction conditions proving that his implicit assumptions built into his computer model were wrong, I lost and the company lost $17million. My answer wasn't what they wanted to hear and the management had forgotten freshman calculus decades ago. The company ultimately failed.
The devil is often in the details and that is the real world we live in. The gist of the math may lead you astray. My cousin sees this all the time teaching EE where the students depend upon the simulation software for circuit design and don't really understand the math.
I have been becoming concerned about data analysis as it is being practiced with large data-sets and multi-factorial analysis of various types (especially AI and meta studies). With both human brains and AI being able to imagine patterns in random data, how many times are we just recreating ASTROLOGY where a 2-D patterns of dots from an earth viewpoint over time becomes associated with all sorts of beliefs?
For example all the claims I am seeing about health effects of gas cooking stoves for NOx files in the face of research from the 70's, where it was very difficult to get measurable NOx from those cool flames on a stove and we had to do our experiments on the much higher temperature real boilers with 150 ft long flames. A very high activation energy makes temperature the critical variable. I then think about all the cancer clusters from the 70's through the 2000's which all seem to not provide any long term information on cancer but lots of income for lawyers and activists.
I did have to create and solve partial differential equations for my thesis, just to understand the data I was obtaining and to prove that the accepted values were really artifacts of a ppm level impurity not the material being tested. Ironically there was a branch point in the solutions where the branch that wasn't used on my problem applies to the creation of the covid-19 vaccine mRNA particles.
Thanks for the comment. Read through your post and it has indeed some similar ideas. And I like the idea to make longtermism more diverse.
Overall though I am not as convinced of longtermism as I might have been in the past (the following is more a general comment and not specifically about your post). It has just too many options to use it as a argument for horrible things in the present, due to potential value in the future (e.g. the whole FTX situation).
If you want to read some things that let me drift away from longtermism I recommend reading this paper here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3995225 and existentialist philosophy like Ethics of Ambiguity: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21119.The_Ethics_of_Ambiguity
About the latter I also plan to write a blog post here, so stay tuned^^
It seems like your perspective on science doesn't include the reality of what we actually may know is true. For example, radio telescopes requiring "that your understanding of electromagnetism is correct" implies that Maxwell's equations may be wrong. However, these equations are one of those "theories" like thermodynamics that if you find an exception you get a Nobel prize and become a billionaire. Knowledge at that level with corresponding mathematics is not the same as what you are thinking about and your diversity arguments are irrelevant. In fact, adding non-mathematically literate individuals to any team makes it worse.
It sound like you are from the so called "soft science" that don't use the language of mathematics or have "exception free" theories that can be falsified with one case. Perhaps the areas where you divesity views are relevant should be limited to "art" and not even called science.
Note that most of the basic theories of the real sciences were from individuals not defined groups.
First of all, your comment comes across very arrogant and condescending to me. I want this blog be a place of friendly discussion. If this is not possible for you, I will delete further comments.
Counter to you assumption I have a PhD in Hydrology and have been working on research related to this, soil science, extreme climate change and nuclear winter. So, I think I know a thing or two about science.
The examples you are talking about are already established science. The interesting part comes when you get to the frontiers of science. Here, you have conflicting theories. Even in physics you come across conflicting theories (e.g. string theory and its competitors). Those theories don't arise from a vacuum, but from people who had different world views and try to establish those into models and equations.
The same process happens in all fields. E.g. there are conflicting theories about how nuclear winter would happen or different ideas on how the climate system works in general. Heck, even for our understanding of the river in your backyard there are different ideas and theories on how everything might work there. Here, it helps a lot when you have a diverse team, as you can check your assumptions and build together to a better theory of the world.
Obviously, not everyone can make a contribution to everything and not every background is equally valuable in every field. But the post is more of a general comment.
Sorry about your feeling my comment was condescending, it wasn't meant to be. From your response it is now clear that your viewpoint about diversity is "diversity of thought" and your conclusions are valid, but in academic DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) the concept of diversity has evolved into pure check-box physical traits. The variance within each check-box diversity category on "diversity of thought" is huge relative to the diversity between the check-box categories.
I got baned from a site that was going on about calculus and math requirements in STEM and that they should be eliminated, or made optional, or "easier" with less rigid grading to increase check-box diversity. I view mathematics as the language of STEM fields and if you don't understand it, you should not be in STEM. As I watched new professors being chosen for their phenotype check-boxes and ability to have an excellent DEI statement while blocking review committees of digging into competence and merit questions, something is wrong. Having Academic departments heads actually being told no White, or Asian males on the short list and having had a friend get dropped for an emeritus position where his addition would have make that department number 1 in the world, by the diversity officer on the search committee with veto power over all the faculty members, something is wrong.
Some primitive cultures only know math at the 1, 2, 3, many level and literally can't comprehend most real science within their language and culture. What are they going to add to any team even requiring arithmetic? Watching the social sciences p-hacked non-reproducibility and the evolution of DEI demands for Engineering tenure track positions along with listening to my academic friends going crazy as students complain about graduate level Environmental engineering classes requiring calculus to solve kinetic problems, I have become hyperreactive to the changing meaning of the word diversity. As the meaning of diversity has been captured by anti-science "true believers" we need to use "diversity of viewpoints" to define the diversity that is beneficial in teams.
Why do you think the people you mentioned want to relax math requirements and include "check boxes"? What would be the best argument you could make for their side?
There may not be any good argument for not knowing math in heavy math intensive STEM areas. The STEM areas deal in the real world where nature doesn't care about humans or their irrational musings or emotions. Two + two may equal 5 in the Humanities and social sciences of Orwell's famous 1984 book but "big brother" and the "thought police" allowed STEM to use 2+4=4.
Their complaint was that math courses do not give EQUITY results as some check-box groups with different cultures did worse that others, but individuals within each check-box did well. They are trying to force the DEI standards of the math deficient humanities and social science fields into areas where they will not work. In math, you either understand it or you don't. There is little wiggle room when reality and nature, that doesn't care about humanity, determines whether the results are true or false.
This does not seem like a good faith engagement with the position you are opposing. You are mainly restating your own argument, but do not really try to understand where the other side is coming from.
If you assume that the people you are discussing with are obviously mistaken and your enemies, you will not be able to learn anything from this argument. If you want to become better at learning from positions which are not your own I can recommend reading this book here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42041926-the-scout-mindset
There are surely arguments on the other side. For example, you could say that there is a lot of room for people with less math skills in STEM fields, because today a lot of mathematical skills can be easily supplemented with programming and data analysis. When you are using programming packages it is usually enough to get the general gist of the math, but you don't need to understand the nitty gritty details. And even if there is a hard math problem, you can just ask someone else with good math skills to help you. Heck, even my own math skills aren't that great, but still I got a summa cum laude on my dissertation in a very math heavy field. But this never turned out to be really a problem, as being good at data analysis and data visualization was just much more important for my research.
Yes, the scout mindset is a good way to go, but you need to know when someone is on the wrong track. With math being a very individual activity and I know I am not good enough to be a mathematician so it wasn't my major. This also means the association with the check-box DEI groups is probably meaningless and individual interests dominate.
Depending upon software is very dangerous as we see all the time with the misuse of statistics. Even what appears to be straight forward often is not. One time I was analyzing a 3-D mass transport problem relating to landfill gas recovery and the company hired a consulting that was using standard equations from natural gas field extraction to understand the field data, but he had forgotten the assumptions that went into that solution. I created my own model specifically for landfill gas situation with biological generation and we disagreed by a factor of 2. After a top management meeting where I filled three blackboards with differential equations under dynamic extraction conditions proving that his implicit assumptions built into his computer model were wrong, I lost and the company lost $17million. My answer wasn't what they wanted to hear and the management had forgotten freshman calculus decades ago. The company ultimately failed.
The devil is often in the details and that is the real world we live in. The gist of the math may lead you astray. My cousin sees this all the time teaching EE where the students depend upon the simulation software for circuit design and don't really understand the math.
I have been becoming concerned about data analysis as it is being practiced with large data-sets and multi-factorial analysis of various types (especially AI and meta studies). With both human brains and AI being able to imagine patterns in random data, how many times are we just recreating ASTROLOGY where a 2-D patterns of dots from an earth viewpoint over time becomes associated with all sorts of beliefs?
For example all the claims I am seeing about health effects of gas cooking stoves for NOx files in the face of research from the 70's, where it was very difficult to get measurable NOx from those cool flames on a stove and we had to do our experiments on the much higher temperature real boilers with 150 ft long flames. A very high activation energy makes temperature the critical variable. I then think about all the cancer clusters from the 70's through the 2000's which all seem to not provide any long term information on cancer but lots of income for lawyers and activists.
I did have to create and solve partial differential equations for my thesis, just to understand the data I was obtaining and to prove that the accepted values were really artifacts of a ppm level impurity not the material being tested. Ironically there was a branch point in the solutions where the branch that wasn't used on my problem applies to the creation of the covid-19 vaccine mRNA particles.
Good stuff. Funnily enough, wrote something tangentially similar yesterday if you want to have a look, it was on Bostrom and the need for diversity for longtermism: https://epistemism.substack.com/p/bostrom-and-individualistic-vs-collectivist