What is /lit/'s opinion on the writings of popular scientists

>>9373230
I should have added that when I see people discuss them online they are invariably the types of mouth breathers who say things like "well, I appreciate brave intellectuals like Krauss because he uses logic and scientific reason in his arguments", and so I hope for somewhat better quality discussion here.

Good scientists, poor philosophers.

>>9373230
Powering intellectual. Rational and logical to the extreme. Unparalleld.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL4Gq1Le2rQ

>>9373230
youtube entertainment, no real content

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>>9373251
So this is the power of atheism

>>9373258
It's the power of scientism. There are plenty of intelligent atheists

>>9373230
I guess dawkin's may have discovered lasting knowledge relevant to biogenetics.

But as a "science writer" (he refuses the label of philosopher of science) is total trash. Not only is it irrelevant to Philosophy as a whole, it isn't even relevant to the Philosophy of Science.

It's just lame atheist dogma and resentment at christianity. I suppose it might serve as a decent introduction to why theism should be questioned, but it isn't anything new or revolutionary. Worse, his ignorance of the humanities is leading people astray into bad scientism.

So like, if you want to help sort out your 13 year old nephew who just promised his 13 year old gf that they'll wait for marriage, maybe you could give him the God Delusion. But otherwise, don't bother with it.

Shortsighted religion breeds shortsighted atheism. The whole new atheist thing is backlash against retarded American protestantism.

>>9373274
>bad scientism

Is there such a thing as "good" scientism, though?

>>9373274
The Extended Phenotype is very good actually, interesting take on interactions between genes and environment. Everything else he's written is pop science and rants about religion.

>>9373230
Pseudoscientis.

>>9373230
Richard Dawkins is a dogshit philosopher who's only taken seriously by retarded 13 year old fedora tipping atheists

>>9373287

Scientism is a way to look at reality, not a moral codex. People might make choices based on the reality they interpret, but that doesn't mean that their moral standards are not to blame.

A positive outcome of scientism is technology grounded entirely in a scientific worldview and not on non-scientific conceptions of energy or power.

>>9373306

He isn't a philosopher, and I can't think of a time where he has claimed to be a philosopher. He is a scientist making arguments on subjects in philosophy. Most of those ideas aren't not original to him, but merely common rebuttals to positive existential claims for a divine being.

>>9373274
he was an excellent science writer when he actually wrote about science.

>>9373313
Then why would one use adjectives such as "good" or "bad" to define "scientism"? I'm not sure you answered the question.

>>9373313
>A positive outcome of scientism is technology grounded entirely in a scientific worldview and not on non-scientific conceptions of energy or power.

Yet scientism is not the belief that you can only interpret reality through the findings of science or the scientific method? What you are describing is not the result of scientism, but the result of scientific research.

>People might make choices based on the reality they interpret, but that doesn't mean that their moral standards are not to blame.

Could you develop this further?

>>9373274
The proud ignorance is a really widespread phenemena now; nothing matters outisde of math, education is a waste of time unless it leads to paid work, art and culture are trivial diversions etc

>>9373391
>The proud ignorance is a really widespread phenemena now;
How much is there to be proud of in the humanities nowadays? All it seems to do is produce cultural left literati who do nothing but embarrass themselves and their discipline, or bohemian/hipster authors who all write for one another about their experiences in Brooklyn or whatever.
>education is a waste of time unless it leads to paid work
Education is pretty expensive, and your prospects without a college degree are poor. Even with a college degree, without the right major and a good enough pedigree, your prospects are poor. Literature has relatively little value on the market, so unless you want to either giving out grants to writers or returning to a patronage system, you are going to have a relative lack of good literature.
>art and culture are trivial diversions etc
This has been the case among the general population for a long time.

>>9373457
>All it seems to do is produce cultural left literati who do nothing but embarrass themselves and their discipline, or bohemian/hipster authors who all write for one another about their experiences in Brooklyn or whatever.

That mostly happens in America and some European first-world countries, and only at the undergrad level in some universities.

Good propagandists, bad scientists.

>>9373263
yeah scientism and atheism are totally unrelated
remember when that hume guy debunked the myth called "natural sciences"? it was funny

If u read DORKins ur a fat autistic fedora nerd.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOOQ1ZCeMY4

Dawkins is brilliant

>>9373230
Dawkins is a really good writer and I enjoy his books on evolutionary biology.

I suspect many of his critics have read his books by title only... maybe a few pages of God Delusion at most.

I can't forgive Krauss for conflating "nothing" with "quantum vacuum". And then when a real philosopher of physics actually called him out on his error Krauss used his star power to have him removed from a conference. This arrogant puerile behavior seems to jive well with that of his fanbase. Just another case of fish not knowing they're in water.

Even the better pop scientists are absolute retards when it comes to philosophy. Take this Hawking quote for instance (not coincidentally contained within the book where he declares philosophy dead):

>If one takes the positivist position, as I do, one cannot say what time actually is. All one can do is describe what has been found to be a very good mathematical model for time

So if you look at what he says you find that the scientism espoused by Hawking and other pop scientists is actually intellectually inchoate. To paraphrase Niels Bohr, science (physics) either tells us what and how nature is or it simply describes what we can say (model) about nature, in which case the notion of science as the sole arbiter of truth and knowledge is rendered invalid. One cannot be a positivist while championing scientism, as positivism itself is hostile to the kind of scientific realism that most physicists adhere to.

>>9373644
>when a real philosopher of physics actually called him out on his error Krauss used his star power to have him removed from a conference

Source?

Their books are good. Krauss was annoying as a debator though, and Hitchens used to make Dawkins look like a child public speaking-wise.
(also I only just realised this now, can someone tell me if 'public speaking-wise' is correct? 'Public-speaking-wise' maybe?)

>>9373649
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/neil-degrasse-tyson-blows-it-big-time/

And here's a little something about the prevailing attitude towards Krauss's work among physicists and philosophers: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/is-lawrence-krauss-a-physicist-or-just-a-bad-philosopher/

>>9373378
>Then why would one use adjectives such as "good" or "bad" to define "scientism"? I'm not sure you answered the question.
Not that anon, but it's because people still view these things as categorical rather than dimension or dependent on context, so the tendency is to view scientistm as a closed system that you ARE rather than an open system that you use. The same can be said of religion. So when scientistm is seen as a category you identify with, there are no other options to obtain truth other than empericism. If you like empericism, it's good if you don't it's bad.

Good and bad are ALWAYS presuppositional, unprovable positions. They are personal opinion. Always.

>>9373672
Lol, what a bunch of smug assholes.

I appreciate brave intellectuals like Dawkins because he uses logic and scientific reason in his arguments.

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>>9373292
lynn margulis BTFO dorkins and neo-darwinianism, take the redpill and realize your zoological level perspective is all just an illusion, random gene mutations don't primarily drive evolution but symbiotic relations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hologenome_theory_of_evolution

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>>9373746
OP here. I'm glad this discussion is finally on track.

Usually useless.

If you want to actually understand their ideas you should read the essays they publish academically, since anything made for general consumption is watered down by editors to make it platable to the masses.

If you want to read to be entertained you should read something, well, entertaining.

They can occasionally be useful to gain a general idea of the scientist's ideas if you're a brainlet.

>>9373672
yikes
are half the comments on that scientific american article krauss samefagging?

>>9373230
I quite admired Chomsky's rebuttal to him:

> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/is-lawrence-krauss-a-physicist-or-just-a-bad-philosopher/

>>9373888
Fuck, I meant to link this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEKy1yE8ntI

>>9373888
Really dude... not knocking Chomsky but that was pretty weak

>>9373762
>random gene mutations don't primarily drive evolution but symbiotic relations
Wtf am I reading.

As a physicist myself, it feels pretty offensive to have someone like Krauss going around talking all high and mighty.

Modern Physics and arguably last century too, concerns itself with predicting the relations of things compared to how they are now or at some past time (through differential equations) and also concerns itself with how these relations occur or what trigger their change (through statistical mechanics and a wide range of measurement methods). There is NO mention at all, and I must emphasize this, that any given physical model will ever concern itself with WHY the relations of things is as they are. Heck, at most times we don't even give a shit about what "things" even mean! Fundamental concepts like energy and fields are only known insofar as they relate to one another and to other objects, and no serious physicist outside of philosophy proposes to define what "energy" would be in standalone. This is the realm of philosophy and would not change the way our experiments see the relations of things to energy and vice-versa.

So, both Dawkins and Krauss are doing a huge job in discrediting science, even more so than non-scientists are capable of doing. You can even compare Krauss's writings to say, Carl Sagan, and note the change in tone from someone who views science as a tool [to be paired with philosophy in order to understand the world], to someone who views it as the ultimate end in itself, in a kind of messed up nirvana-seeking race to nowhere.

>>9374088
Or someone who views it as a nice claim to money and fame and all the nice trappings they come with.

>>9374088
it's not even that cynical - its clear from hearing them speak for a minute that the likes of Dawkins/Krauss et al are just not very well read. They really probably believe their infantile scientism is some brave defense of 'reason' or something.

>>9373251
>those salty downvotes
wew lads

>>9374088
Yeah, it's a real shame that more people don't understand this. People are still so caught up in the what-why dichotomy and applying it to the relationship between philosophy and science that only those well versed in both come to understand that very often even the "what" is lost in science. It's just not necessary to explicate terms for a theory to be considered successful

>>9373230
They are both amazing scientists. Their writings on politics and philosophy are unoriginal, but do a great job of spreading ideas to others who wouldn't be able to access them.I don't understand how people could disagree with anything Krauss says, he is so uncontroversial. Dawkins is a bit braver, but I still like his ideas.

>>9374237
Upvoted

>>9373230
All trash, in pretty much every respect desu
If they wanted to contribute, they would do actual fucking work rather than spouting "religious people are dumb amirite" and "science is the be-all and end-all of reality"

>>9374088
not sure what kind pf physicist you are, but I'm sure your career could benefit from some writing courses. you have a very choppy writing style which is indistinguishable from a choppy thinking in this case

>>9374237
>amazing scientists
Found the IFLS redditor

>>9373230
wew lads, some of the most boringly uncontroversial opinionators got you so triggered.

/lit/ feels like mostly autistic Christian aestheticians lately. not even joking.

>>9374271
If you'd bother to read the thread you'd see that people are triggered mostly BECAUSE they are boring and yet lauded.

>>9374242
Thanks, but I don't that does anything

>>9374255
I do fucking love science, but I have never been on Reddit. So you are half correct.

>>9374271
I agree, There is NOTHING controversial about Krauss. Dawkins is more so, but even he doesn't come to the level of the other New Atheists.

>7. Edruezzi November 25, 2015
>How is it that someone as ignorant of basic scientific methodology and history as this is writing a column for none less than Scientific American, a name synonymous with the best science writing since the nineteenth century? Sometimes I wonder if Horgan is kept on for the comedy value, the way Andy Borowitz writes mock-serious articles in the New Yorker.
>Horgan describes Lawrence Krauss as obfuscating, a word in heavy use in the kinds of internet forums run by Creationists and people who defend racism. I'm not kidding. If Krauss obfuscates, it's because nature has forced complexity on scientists. At various times in the history of science, the non-obvious and counterintuitive ideas and theories of heliocentrism, Newtonian mechanics, natural selection, Mendel's laws, Maxwell's laws, atomic theory, relativity, quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics, to mention only major highlights, were adopted not because scientists loved their complexity or wanted to dabble in obfuscation but because the theories were instruments that worked in understanding various aspects of nature better.
Relief to see science is in good hands going forwards. Hopefully bright minds like these will lead us into a new age of superstition and pseudoscientific... virtue signalling? I'm not even sure what to call someone who namedrops Mendel and Maxwell right next to each other.

>>9374237
Take another upvote from me fella *high fives*

>>9373230
They should stick to talking about science.

I recently listened to the JRE ep with Krauss and his opinions on politics and religion lacks critical thinking.

Krauss is so hideous and pathetic looking that I just want to curbstomp his repungent kike face.

>>9374291
>There is NOTHING controversial about Krauss
I watched an interview of this guy a couple of months ago where he was arguing that mathematics is not knowledge because it's a language used to describe the universe. If you think there is nothing controversial with this glorified theoretical engineer, you're "problematic".

>>9374252
Lol?

>mfw American timezone time. /lit/ is objectively worse when most Americans are awake

>>9374359
Not always. The postmodernists always swarm this board during real yuro hours. But yeah there's some annoying bait posts coming from the states.

>>9374339
My goodness, you couldn't understand his argument less if you got a lobotomy.

>>9373251
btfo

>>9373644
>positivism itself is hostile to the kind of scientific realism that most physicists adhere to.

This isn't true. Most recent neo-positivists, like James Ladyman, usually adhere or commit themselves to some sort of structural realism (usually ontic structural realism).

>>9373251
Remind me again, why is it that these guys are so popular?

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>>9373251

>>9375163
They make dumb doods feel smart.

>>9373251
>thinks logic is empirical
hahahahaha

>>9373762
>random gene mutations don't primarily drive evolution but symbiotic relations
I don't think you understand holobiont theory, or anything about evolution

>>9374088
I agree. Dawkins and Krauss create a mish-mash of pop science, pop morality, and pop atheism, and the general public gets an impression that those are what scientists do.

Most scientists just love their speciality and work on that, they couldn't care less about making some grand overarching worldview.

>>9375163
Because their public opposition is so often even more shallow and ridiculous.

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h*ly...

You know your ideology and your school of philosophy is weak when literally just asking them to explain why something is the way it is makes them crumble.

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Imagine being Richard Dawkins, reflecting in old age on your storied life and career, and thinking this shit.

>>9375724
>Why is physics the way it is?
>umm idk
>The answer is that God made it that way. You fool. You fucking philistine. Are you completely ignorant of Western religious tradition and the central role of Christianity in the development of science? For shame. Go read the Bible.

>>9373230
They write good stuff when they actually stay in their fields of knowledge, which are biology and astrophysics. And not theology or philosophy. Every person with half a brain could debunk a creationist, but when they try to talk about the intricacies of Christianity or Islam then they are always hilariously out of their depth.

>>9375738
>imagining you've destroyed Christianity
I want to sit Dawkins down and ask him what it's like being delusional

>>9375967
Honestly, I think that the rather superficial and unoriginal nature of the 'new atheist' movement was pretty effective and perhaps even necessary in the US because of the monumental stupidity and obnoxious attitudes of the fundamentalist Protestant communities peppered throughout that country.

>>9373230
-I always suspect that the sorts of scientists that take the time to write popular science books aren't very good scientists. After all, they have to take years of their lives to write, publish, promote, and support their book, years when they are NOT doing research and NOT getting grants, etc.
-The books always seem to show one of three things
1) They have an extremely limited focus and their topic of discussion is shockingly narrow
2) Their discussion of 'science' is so broad as to be virtually worthless
3) They know virtually nothing outside of their chosen field

>>9374967
Neopositivists (and positivists) actually engage with the philosophical tradition and have well worked out opinions on matters of ontology and epistemology in science. Hawking bandies about the term without any real understanding of what its implications entail. The structural realism of (some) neopositivists is distinct from the verificationism that would preclude any formulation, much less discussion, of an ontological position that the original cadre of positivists subscribed to.

>>9373251
What an ignoramus

>>9376004
>Kick the dog until it bites, then shoot the dog.

>>9376018
Not really. For instance, Hawking, Feynman, Brian Greene, etc. are certainly real scientists.

>>9376018
>They have an extremely limited focus and their topic of discussion is shockingly narrow

This is what actual scientists should be doing, though. Proper scientists are people with an very narrow field of great expertise, and are content to continue in that field and discover and evaluate what they can. The idea that scientists would make the wide pronouncements on religion and other social issues that Krauss and Dawkins have done is ridiculous to to most people in their respective fields.

I cannot think of any popular science books that can be accused of having "an extremely limited focus". It's just the opposite that renders them problematic.

oh just quit your autistic aesthetic whinings. they did good. weakening evangelism and advancing mainstream meme apologetics to the point where 'cultural Christian' is an acceptable category is all good in my book. discuss a fucking book for once

>>9376045
Whatever your criticism, I think that the 'new atheists' are seeing the shallowness of many of their prodigy's arguments now that Christianity has had some of its fundamentalist fringe chipped away, and now they can get a better view of the depth of Christianity and its implications on history, law, and philosophy. I think this is a good thing.

>>9376058
I said 'suspect'

I really liked "The Greatest Show on Earth" but I really have no interest in his religious, or lack thereof, views

>>9373274

>So like, if you want to help sort out your 13 year old nephew who just promised his 13 year old gf that they'll wait for marriage, maybe you could give him the God Delusion. But otherwise, don't bother with it.

This confirms my belief that atheists are in league with the devil.

i study chemistry and i would say out of all the the professors the two than i think are a level above the others are definitely both big on their philosophy

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>>9376343
Devil is just a part of G/god's plan.

Personally, I appreciate brave intellectuals like Krauss because he uses logic and scientific reason in his arguments.