I did not follow the Moral Mazes discussion as it unfolded. I came across this article context-less. So I don’t know that it adds much to Lesswrong. If that context is relevant, it should get a summary before diving in. From my perspective, its inclusion in the list was a jump sideways.
It’s written engagingly. I feel Yarkoni’s anger. Frustration bleeds off the page, and he has clearly gotten on a roll. Not performing moral outrage, just *properly, thoroughly livid* that so much has gone wrong in the science world.
We might need that.
What he wrote does not only apply to scientists. It is *written* as though scientists are a unique concern. He makes strong claims about the way things are in academia very casually, as if tacitly assuming anyone with eyes would have seen enough to corroborate it themselves. (Whether they would agree, I don’t know. For followup work I would like to see more concrete estimates and hard data about the extent and impact of these issues.) He writes this for his peers, I think, it almost feels intimate and like I ought to feel embarassed for eavesdropping.
But as I said, scientists don’t seem like a special case. The loss of integrity in science is what he knows, but I suspect it’s a much wider trend and he’s rather gelman amnesia’d about the extent to which it exists in other fields. From a quick perusal of the Moral Mazes tag… it sure seems like. In Anna Salamon’s question post about institutions, the dissolution of personal integrity is up there in the list of possible causes for modern institutional decay. He writes “if every other community also developed the same attitude, we would be in a world of trouble”, but I don’t think he should be so confident that they *didn’t*.
This article is a kick in the pants. I don’t tend to like that approach because I have empathy for people who are afraid. It is exactly when they are making decisions from fear that they don’t support their decisions with data or reason, as Yarkoni complains about. I continue to believe that you can’t really fix fear with punishment and shaming. But I’m coming around to the idea that the wake-up call needs to come before the support.
As off-audience as this post seems… the message is timely and on brand.
We are not slave to incentives. Constraining your goals to be safely within the bounds of ease and social agreeableness is NOT HOW YOU ACTUALLY WIN, and we are playing to win. Shut up and multiply.
I did not follow the Moral Mazes discussion as it unfolded. I came across this article context-less. So I don’t know that it adds much to Lesswrong. If that context is relevant, it should get a summary before diving in. From my perspective, its inclusion in the list was a jump sideways.
It’s written engagingly. I feel Yarkoni’s anger. Frustration bleeds off the page, and he has clearly gotten on a roll. Not performing moral outrage, just *properly, thoroughly livid* that so much has gone wrong in the science world.
We might need that.
What he wrote does not only apply to scientists. It is *written* as though scientists are a unique concern. He makes strong claims about the way things are in academia very casually, as if tacitly assuming anyone with eyes would have seen enough to corroborate it themselves. (Whether they would agree, I don’t know. For followup work I would like to see more concrete estimates and hard data about the extent and impact of these issues.) He writes this for his peers, I think, it almost feels intimate and like I ought to feel embarassed for eavesdropping.
But as I said, scientists don’t seem like a special case. The loss of integrity in science is what he knows, but I suspect it’s a much wider trend and he’s rather gelman amnesia’d about the extent to which it exists in other fields. From a quick perusal of the Moral Mazes tag… it sure seems like. In Anna Salamon’s question post about institutions, the dissolution of personal integrity is up there in the list of possible causes for modern institutional decay. He writes “if every other community also developed the same attitude, we would be in a world of trouble”, but I don’t think he should be so confident that they *didn’t*.
This article is a kick in the pants. I don’t tend to like that approach because I have empathy for people who are afraid. It is exactly when they are making decisions from fear that they don’t support their decisions with data or reason, as Yarkoni complains about. I continue to believe that you can’t really fix fear with punishment and shaming. But I’m coming around to the idea that the wake-up call needs to come before the support.
As off-audience as this post seems… the message is timely and on brand.
We are not slave to incentives. Constraining your goals to be safely within the bounds of ease and social agreeableness is NOT HOW YOU ACTUALLY WIN, and we are playing to win. Shut up and multiply.