This pure Orwellian-based politics. This has nothing to do with science, nor we want it to be because our lives depend on it. You do not want to get a medication which’s dosage has been calculated by Social Justice, nor you want to drive over a bridge or be in a building with an engineering calculated according to the social rules according to racial equality.
They get show their final colors in this “statement from the MAA Committee on Minority Participation in Mathematics”
Critical race theory, referenced in recent Executive statements by the President of the United States, is an established social science inquiry which is grounded in decades of scholarship. It is misguided, at best, to reduce this theory to the race-blaming of white people and to define it and the discussion of systemic racism as a “divisive concept.” Furthermore, banning training utilizing this scholarship to raise consciousness, from federal and federal contractor workplaces, is an encroachment on science and the academy. At the first presidential debate this year, President Trump’s refusal to disavow white nationalism and his encouragement of groups that the FBI has identified as the greatest threats of domestic terrorism, only serves to reinforce the sense that his administration seeks to reverse decades of progress on civil rights for all citizens.
ANTI-SCIENCE POLICY AND THE CENSURE OF DISCOURSE ON RACE AND RACISM
I have no idea what kind of asinine organization is this, but sure as hell it is not about mathematics but the application of less than exact political fashion to a field of science that applies itself equally to everybody. Going back to 2+2, the result is the same if you are a Jew, Black, White, Hispanic, Muslim, Lesbian or a Himalayan penguin. To say that math is different and wrong because somehow it is being taught by white people is just more of the galloping stupidity we are experiencing and that needs to stop.
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and
ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth’s centre. With the feeling that he was speaking to O’Brien, and also that he was setting forth an important axiom, he wrote:Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows
1984 – George Orwell
The freedom to say 2+2=4, the freedom to say the most basic and egalitarian mathematical equation, known by every soul in the world is in danger because some “revolutionaries” have deemed it socially unjust.
Tell me again we are not at war.
If they think that science is merely a collection of white male biases, I invite them to climb a tall building and step off, to see whether the “opinion of gravity” is valid or not.
Helicopters. Helicopters.
Bridges and buildings collapse, planes falling out of the sky, and drugs that don’t work.
But hey, people will feel good about their race!
“Critical race theory” is not science. That’s why President Trump ordered that it not be taught in Government organizations and Government contractors. This screed conveniently left out that part. It is merely an extension of the “postmodernism” bullshit that has infected Universities for 30- odd years. One thing that postmodern pundits reject is “objective reality.” Another is “reason.” If you don’t believe in these two fundamental facts that are foundational to civilization, you can make up any bullshit you want. Critical Race Theory was created and foisted on society by postmodernism.
That should tell you all you need to know.
“Science” is any academic subject where the answers do not depend on your race, gender, or political leanings. If those factors do matter, then it’s not science, it’s opinion. Sometimes it may be scholarship, sometimes it doesn’t even reach that far.
So physics and math are sciences; economics is not but it seems to be solid enough to be called a scholarly activity; and “critical race theory” is merely a bizarre religious cult.
Math, physics, chemistry, and biology are sciences. Medicine and technology are built upon them, and are also sciences. Economics is “science-y enough” to mostly count, in that it has testable theories and real, measurable outcomes.
Psychology — and its incestuous cousin, sociology — not so much. There are more competing hypotheses in both than there are religious cults, and their adherents are equally-if-not-more overzealous fanatics.
The hallmark of science is that your opinions, your political leanings, your ethnicity and skin color, your religion, your sex and gender, and any other thing you may feel “oppressed” over, do not matter. The answers are the answers, and they are equally accessible to anyone willing to put in the time and energy to learn. If you aren’t willing to study and learn, and thereby you don’t get the answers, that has jack-squat to do with your “special status”; it’s entirely on you.
Really, if you think science and technology are inherently biased against “people of color”, ask yourself why so many STEM-oriented work visas are granted to Indians and Pakistanis and not Western Europeans.
My reasoning for declaring economics a non-science is the same principle we both agreed to — your political opinion is relevant in answering questions in the field of economics.
To look at it another way, “conservative economist” is a meaningful term. “Conservative physicist” is not.
There’s another test I like to use: any field whose name contains the word “science” isn’t. (The same, only more so, for any field whose name contains the word “studies” — those are always plain and utter garbage.)
We’re in agreement that economics isn’t a hard science, but I maintain it’s “science-y” enough for scholarly study, particularly when it comes to testable theories and measurable outcomes.
Under 8 years of Model A, a nation’s GDP grows, the average person’s quality of life increases, and the bottom percentile group — while not fabulous — survives with $X public assistance. Under 8 years of Model B, the nation’s GDP shrinks, the average person’s quality of life decreases, and the bottom percentile group needs twice as much public assistance to survive.
Is that an over-broad comparison? Absolutely. There are too many variables (e.g. tax rates; poverty level; median household income; disparity between top and bottom incomes; availability, ratio, and relative pay scales of “professional”, “skilled labor”, and “unskilled labor” jobs … just to name a few) to accurately account for in one paragraph. But it is testable nonetheless.
An economist can believe whatever he/she feels like, but an intellectually honest one will follow the data.
It’s not a hard science because there’s enough wiggle room for someone to be flat-out wrong, and either conceal their wrongness in the multitude of variables, or justify the wrongness with moral arguments instead of facts. Just like psychology and sociology, it’s possible — even easy — to get away with intellectual dishonesty and survive as an academic in a way that’s simply not possible in math or physics.
But theories are testable, and results measurable. So “science-y” but not science.
“Conservative physicist” – a physicist who really prefers elastic collisions.
Not exactly. Science if a METHOD, of empirical observation, hypothesis, analysis. If the demonstrated results seem to confirm the hypothesis repeatedly, it is “established science”, but these are not the same as “irrefutable facts”. Any scientific dogma can theoretically be overturned tomorrow on hard evidence, a new theory and new experiments that confirm it. People may take things that have been rigorously proven via the scientific method as “facts”, but they are not actually the same thing. Not long ago everyone assumed that Newtonian physics was “the facts”, as opposed to superstition and religion, but now evidence and new hypothesis are starting to suggest that the universe is actually much more subtle and complex, with quantum physics, etc.
But no, in no way is critical race theory “science”. It is an academic school of thought. Just because academics are involved does not make it “science”, and their theories and hypothesis cannot be proven by scientific experiment (not easily, anyway). It is very much in the same class as psychology, with multiple schools, all with totally contradictory and un-provable theories and ideas about how the mind works. Critical race theory is purely a mental exercise, a broad based theory on human behavior.
A very wise man once said:
“it is a luxury of a wealthy nation to care about the environment. But, when you put caring about the environment above maintaining that wealth, you will lose both.”
Substitute any SJW cause for environment, and the sentence is just as valid. As soon as teaching race becomes more important than teaching fundamental axioms of mathematics, you will end up with a generation of idiots that will totally screw over the economy.
Let’s be honest, there are racists. Bummer, too bad, so sad, but deal with it. Changing the way math is taught because of it is just plain stupid. I do not care what color your skin is. Two is defined as 1+1. Four is defined as 2+2. It is a definition. A quadratic equation remains a quadratic equation regardless of whether you are oppressed or not. Applying some “racism” context may be applicable in a english class. Words meant different things when some books were written. Certain words were commonplace, and not offensive at the time the book was written. Adding context there, may be appropriate.
Adding race context to the sciences is absolutely ridiculous.
The biggest racists around today are the self-proclaimed “anti-racists”.
We have gone from “math is the universal language, and if we ever meet intelligent aliens from another planet, the first communication we will have will be in math.” To “math is racist and full of human bias.”
Boy howdy do we need to purge academia.
This is almost ludicrous. Mathematics has long been considered the only “pure” science, the only one where the numbers are what they are, immutable, the relationships are absolute, and are not in any way effected or altered by race, religion, culture. It’s the “universal language” we assume would be the best to communicate with potential alien species specifically for this reason, because it is absolute and universal and immutable. Music being mathematically based, we assume this is one of the reasons why music is considered a medium of communication that crosses cultures and is universal, regardless of language or culture. I wonder how exactly they figure that “mathematics are human based and therefore biased”? RELIGION is human created and therefore influenced by our cultural biases. Math is math. You could say that “there aren’t enough black mathematicians”, but that has nothing to do with math itself, it is merely a symptom of whatever other problems society has, or even biological differences. What, “black people aren’t good at math, therefore meth is racist”? Probably.