[HN Gopher] Journal of Controversial Ideas
___________________________________________________________________
Journal of Controversial Ideas
Author : paulsb
Score : 97 points
Date : 2021-08-31 16:21 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.journalofcontroversialideas.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.journalofcontroversialideas.org)
| jl6 wrote:
| Maybe they'll accept Mochizuki's paper on the abc conjecture.
| mattpratt wrote:
| A podcast interview with the editors earlier this year --
|
| https://samharris.org/podcasts/245-can-talk-scary-ideas/
| paulsb wrote:
| Also one from today: https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-dr-
| debra-soh-podcast/episo...
| ausbah wrote:
| it seems people in this thread like this idea because it could
| give a platform to not-mainstream-but-not-totally-crackpot ideas
| in physics, math, sociology, etc. The sorts of ideas that might
| disregarded by experts in a field but not things anyone would
| necessarily get "cancelled" for
|
| the creators of this journal seem to have a more cynical
| definition of "controversial"
|
| >controversial, in the sense that certain views about them might
| be regarded by many people as morally, socially, or ideologically
| objectionable or offensive
|
| the seem to want to attract articles that are not mainstream
| because they are ethically and morally outrageous to most people
| (say bigotry, cruelty, eugenics, etc.)
|
| the small amount of papers published so far seems to be mostly
| the former thankfully, I personally do not think ideas pertaining
| to the former should be given a platform exactly because of their
| content
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| First, I'm very happy this journal exists and I hope it gets
| popular at some point.
|
| Second, I'm slightly disappointed by the contents of the first
| volume. I'd love to read more from the areas of astrophysics,
| philosophy of mathematics, molecular biology, quantum physics
| etc. written by actual experts in these fields who, for some
| reason or another, do have certain opinions, backed up by
| research, that diverges from the mainstream for various reasons,
| including but not limited to cultural ones.
| saalweachter wrote:
| I'd first note that the three editors are philosophers and
| ethicists; most of the editorial board is philosophers, social
| scientists and lawyers. I expect they've begun as they mean to
| go on.
|
| The problem with wanting "controversy" in "hard" sciences is
| that if there's a "controversial" theory of physics or biology,
| that's really just another way of saying "there's not
| convincing evidence in favor of it, and it doesn't provide a
| productive framework for future research". If it's backed up by
| evidence, if it's a useful way of thinking that leads to lots
| of interesting new research, it's not going to be particularly
| controversial.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| > The problem with wanting "controversy" in "hard" sciences
| is that if there's a "controversial" theory of physics or
| biology, that's really just another way of saying "there's
| not convincing evidence in favor of it, and it doesn't
| provide a productive framework for future research". If it's
| backed up by evidence, if it's a useful way of thinking that
| leads to lots of interesting new research, it's not going to
| be particularly controversial.
|
| This is a credulous view of the hard sciences, which many
| scientists and almost all people who study the philosophy or
| sociology of science would disagree with. Certainly Kuhn
| would disagree fundamentally.
|
| Many ideas which are uncontroversial within their respective
| scientific fields today were, in fact, very controversial in
| decades or centuries past: relativity, quantum physics, plate
| tectonics, evolution, heliocentrism, ...
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >Many ideas which are uncontroversial within their
| respective scientific fields today were, in fact, very
| controversial in decades or centuries past: relativity,
| quantum physics, plate tectonics, evolution, heliocentrism
|
| All of those examples provided a productive framework for
| future research, and after the research was done were
| supported by convincing evidence. They wouldn't be
| considered "controversial" in a modern field, people would
| just rightly be skeptical until the research bore fruit.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| > They wouldn't be considered "controversial" in a modern
| field, people would just rightly be skeptical until the
| research bore fruit.
|
| This is a hypothetical that is obviously impossible to
| disprove, but I fucking doubt it.
|
| Science, including in the hard sciences, is rife with
| personal animus, envy, and rivalries. Scientists are not
| dispassionate logic machines who simply maintain a
| healthy skepticism until the research bears fruit. Many
| of them will viciously attack your research, you, and the
| institutions that support you if they feel threatened by
| your ideas, and they are not above lying and cheating to
| get their way.
|
| As the pithy saying goes, science progresses one funeral
| at a time. Max Planck--a man who knew a thing or two
| about advocating controversial ideas--put it slightly
| more kindly [1]:
|
| > A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing
| its opponents and making them see the light, but rather
| because its opponents eventually die and a new generation
| grows up that is familiar with it. . . . An important
| scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually
| winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely
| happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that
| its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing
| generation is familiarized with the ideas from the
| beginning: another instance of the fact that the future
| lies with the youth.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle
| byecomputer wrote:
| Agreed. Many people in this thread seem to overestimate
| scientist's ability to operate without ego and
| underestimate the power of institutions to suppress work
| it finds objectionable. That sort of environment
| encourages self-censorship, and many (possibly good)
| ideas are stuffed away for fear of rocking the boat. It's
| easier to go with the flow than to stand alone and cast a
| shadow over your reputation and ability to work in the
| future.
| [deleted]
| jkhdigital wrote:
| As a mid-career PhD student in a "hard" field I can
| attest that this description aligns with my experience.
| I'm a bit late to the party myself, but very much looking
| forward to the next generation of scientists who are
| exposed to the "categorical" approach to applied
| mathematics from a young age and have no qualms about
| rebuilding entire scientific fields within this new
| foundations.
| derbOac wrote:
| I don't know. It's the first volume. I agree this is more
| likely to attract submissions from fields where there's more
| vicious controversy, but give it time.
|
| There's a good chance it will largely stay within the area of
| the first volumes' articles, perhaps with a bit more focus in
| bioethics or something of that sort. I could also forsee some
| sort of bombshell paper appearing that draws attention to the
| journal and raises its profile.
|
| A reasonable comparison might be whistleblower outlets. They
| tend not to churn out scandalous intelligence all the time,
| but rather, have long boring periods punctuated by
| significant submissions.
|
| I hope the journal establishes itself really. I think the
| main stake it's trying to make is protection of author
| anonymity, which I imagine could get very contentious at more
| mainstream outlets, even those in the physical sciences. I
| could even see a disgruntled editor at a typical journal
| leaking information about a submission in some belief that
| everything should be open, despite some consensus among the
| remaining editorial and publishing staff that anonymity
| should be preserved. Remember that there's a huge trend now
| in academic publishing toward radical transparency, in the
| sense of getting rid of blinded reviews. This is taking the
| opposite approach it seems, of increasing anonymity of
| everyone involved. If nothing else, it demonstrates the value
| of anonymity in academic publishing, and maybe provides a
| counterperspective to radical openness.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| I agree. I also like that such journals can be made. I also
| would like to have more from the areas of astrophysics,
| philosophy of mathematics, molecular biology, quantum physics
| etc. written by actual experts in these fields who, for some
| reason or another, do have certain opinions, backed up by
| research, that diverges from the mainstream for various
| reasons, including but not limited to cultural ones.
|
| I think that the articles about philosophy and ethics are also
| good to have; as other comments say this is what the existing
| writers know, and so I hope that writers who do physics,
| mathematics, etc will also write more.
|
| (I also like that the articles are available as HTML and XML as
| well as PDF, to allow for reformatting and such things; I
| dislike many things about PDF. However, then about XML, it
| necessarily is using the XML both for the data and for the
| text. I think that XML is OK for text, and not as good for data
| (such as the data in the <front> block) (there are better
| formats).)
|
| Some of my own ideas are also controversial, although I should
| leave it to the real scientists who have similar ideas to write
| about them, since their ideas will probably be better than my
| own. (Such a thing is not for sure, but it is likely.)
|
| They mention formatting the document for submissing using
| Microsoft Word. Well, not everyone uses Microsoft Word, so they
| shouldn't require that. Also, since it is published as XML
| anyways, it might be better to use a subset of that, it can
| easily them be formatted as 12 point font double space or
| whatever (they do not specify specifically what font (e.g.
| serif, sans serif), but they could easily enough change the
| formatting to whatever font is wanted). (Also, writers who will
| write about mathematics might want to use TeX, anyways (or
| MathML; it seems they already declared the namespace for
| MathML, but I have not looked at all of the articles to see if
| they are used or not).)
| darawk wrote:
| Totally agree. I was excited by this journal's existence, and
| then disappointed when everything in the first issue was
| philosophical in nature, and not scientific. The 'papers' in
| there right now are basically just unusually formal blog
| comments.
|
| Hopefully as they get more attention they'll attract more
| interesting controversial scientific takes.
| mherdeg wrote:
| I think my favorite one of these is ...
|
| Robert Heinlein wrote in an essay ("Paul Dirac, Antimatter, And
| You") that he believes that Paul Dirac believed until his death
| that the gravitational constant G is decreasing slightly over
| time, and that he thinks Dirac was right. Is there evidence for
| or against this proposition?
|
| Also, whatever happened to Garrett Lisi's unified theory of
| everything based on the E8 Lie group? was that important? how
| is that going?
| wrnr wrote:
| Lisi has said that E8 is not gonna work in the way he
| initially proposed, he is still trying to apply the idea in
| other ways, for example cosmology.
| uniqueid wrote:
| Did Paul Dirac address the matter directly? The Robert
| Heinlein essay sounds interesting; I'm just confused about
| why he had to speculate about Dirac's belief. It's not a
| topic about which I know much.
| COGlory wrote:
| Hopefully this gets resolved in the future. If I had something
| particularly controversial to contribute in my field, I would
| happily.
| natch wrote:
| Full justify is a controversial practice, if not a controversial
| idea.
| ReadEvalPost wrote:
| I must admit I was hoping for much more controversial ideas than
| what Volume 1 contained. There are plenty of well-argued
| dissident ideas online, these articles take only a small
| tentative step outside the mainstream.
| bedobi wrote:
| Within science, many ideas are "controversial" because they're
| demonstrably wrong. Such ideas should not be "published" in a
| "journal" in some misguided attempt to give them the exposure
| they're justifiably denied everywhere else, that's not how
| science works. (example off the top of my head: chiropractics and
| other psuedoscientific nonsense)
|
| Other ideas are "controversial" because there isn't enough
| evidence to support them, and there may never be. (example off
| the top of my head: neanderthals and their capacity for abstract
| thought, art and language) A journal for arguing about such ideas
| is OK I guess but kind of pointless because it's essentially just
| people's opinion about things that cannot be proven, and not
| really science.
|
| Yet other are "controversial" despite having solid evidence
| because of, for lack of a better term, politics within the field,
| or politics in general. To me, these ideas would be the only ones
| worthwhile having a journal for, and such a journal would have to
| very very carefully select only articles that fit this category.
|
| Instead, the first issue of this "journal" is full of garbage
| "articles" that are basically just people's opinions on identity
| politics, creationism etc? Just, what?
| jkhdigital wrote:
| You are conflating the abstract idea of "science" with the peer
| review process. Peer review is merely a social construct for
| filtering and disseminating knowledge among specialists. The
| fact that some novel scientific idea first showed up in a peer
| reviewed journal does not mean that peer review is an essential
| component of the scientific method.
| COGlory wrote:
| I could not disagree more with this take.
|
| >Within science, many ideas are "controversial" because they're
| demonstrably wrong. Such ideas should not be "published" in a
| "journal" in some misguided attempt to give them the exposure
| they're justifiably denied everywhere else, that's not how
| science works. (example off the top of my head: chiropractics
| and other psuedoscientific nonsense)
|
| They absolutely should be published. How else can I, as a
| scientist, be able to determine what is right and what is
| wrong? For example, in my field there was a small scandal
| regarding the publication and claims of a macromolecular
| structure, and to what resolution they had been solved.
|
| http://xray0.princeton.edu/~phil/Facility/Guides/ABCtranspor...
|
| I'm glad those papers were published because the truth was
| eventually determined, and nearly everyone in the field had a
| good lesson to learn from it. Not all the same lesson, either.
| Don't gatekeep - just falsify. Otherwise we won't know when we
| end up wrong.
| jkhdigital wrote:
| > Don't gatekeep - just falsify.
|
| Amen. Gatekeeping is not science.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| I'm not sure I can agree with this. Are you suggesting that
| we should knowingly publish work we are _certain_ will later
| be withdrawn due to factual errors?
| joe_the_user wrote:
| The thing about the situation is that you ideas accepted by
| the mainstream, that may or may not be true (I have more
| faith in physics than experimental psychology).
|
| Then you have ideas which contradict this mainstream,
| "alternative approach" or whatever you want to call them.
| Some of these might be true. Speaking rough, an alternative
| approach that has a constituency becomes that constituency
| publicizes it anyway and the mainstream dissents.
|
| Those constituency will naturally be the ones publishing
| those dissident ideas. And they should have a right to
| publish them and make them available. IE, it seems as if
| there'd be no reason to publish X just _because it 's
| controversial_, if X is controversial, it has proponents and
| they can be the ones publishing it, not because it's
| controversial but because they believe it.
|
| The thing is, there's a certain kind of position where the
| constituency doesn't want to be too identified with the ideas
| even if they hold them - usually ideas considered "hateful",
| a common example is racist positions and related opinions.
| Here, "I'm put this out because it's controversial, not
| because I believe it" is a common trope and I find it
| disingenuous.
| wrnr wrote:
| Or just read my comments buried at the bottom of HN.
| bee_rider wrote:
| How do these people have time to write pages and pages on topics
| that they clearly aren't trained in at all? I barely have time to
| write up the stuff I can actually make intelligent contributions
| to...
| [deleted]
| bawolff wrote:
| Its much easier if you skip the training step
| jfengel wrote:
| It's a lot faster when you aren't beholden to reality. You can
| save a lot of time by not having to do any of the background
| reading, or checking your conclusions against it.
| hirundo wrote:
| > write pages and pages on topics that they clearly aren't
| trained in at all?
|
| Also known as "journalism".
| geofft wrote:
| Well, I have to say, as someone who's not politically aligned
| with the sort of people who tend to be the loudest defenders of
| "controversial" ideas and the loudest opponents of deplatforming
| (because they somehow always come up with reasons that _my_
| controversial ideas don 't count), that I am cautiously
| optimistic about what's being published here.
|
| I was going to make some snarky comment about whether the
| "controversial" ideas here include the moral necessity of the
| proletariat revolution, the need to abolish and prosecute the
| police, a defense of open borders, etc. But in fact the articles
| in issue 1
| (https://www.journalofcontroversialideas.org/volumes_issues/1...
| - click "Read more" -> "Full article" -> "View Full-text" on any
| of the articles to see them) include
|
| - a defense of violent action to protect animals, as done by
| various animal-rights activists
|
| - a rebuttal of a paper claiming that "women" are "adult human
| females" (by which I assume is meant "cis females"), which
| replies that the paper gives no reason to dispute that trans
| women are women
|
| - a dive into the merits of blackface-ish traditions, which ends
| up concluding that the Dutch "Black Pete" character is not
| actually defensible (though others are)
|
| - an argument in favor of "global enlightened despotism" to save
| the world from climate change
|
| It isn't literally a call to guillotine every billionaire, but
| it's a whole lot closer than I expected it to be. Yes, there are
| also papers in here arguing that left-wing opponents of
| scientific racism are no better than young-earth creationists,
| that you shouldn't deplatform Steve Bannon, etc. But I came in
| expecting it to be _only_ that and it isn 't.
|
| (I do agree with another commenter's point that, essentially,
| most of the ideas here - especially the counter-rebuttal by the
| original author of the "Are women adult human females" paper -
| are firmly within the Overton window of discourse, and so this
| journal is not strongly succeeding at widening the window.)
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| One of the things I've realized is that
|
| - if you are in the habit of defending rights, you will
| necessarily spend a lot of time defending the worst kinds of
| people: Good, wholesome (non edge case) people typically do not
| behave in a way that conflicts with others, and if they do,
| they are unlikely to invoke "muh rights" as a defence.
|
| - the same with social justice: Who else is going to require
| social justice advocacy other than people who are considered
| disgusting enough by society to be treated unjustly?
|
| I felt the same sense of cautious optimism because this journal
| seems to be another manifestation of the two examples I just
| mentioned above. They are doing the grunt work of allowing
| people with coherent but unpopular arguments to air them,
| hopefully leading to a better society for the rest of us.
| artem247 wrote:
| >> - the same with social justice: Who else is going to
| require social justice advocacy other than people who are
| considered disgusting enough by society to be treated
| unjustly?
|
| Ehh, maybe there is something I'm not picking up, but there's
| plenty of bad things happened to people (and are happening
| right now) that were not justified by any 'disgusting
| behavior'. Ethnic cleansing for example - something that
| happened in my country, I do not think that people who lived
| somewhere for hundreds of years and killed due to some lofty
| ideas about the 'nation' really deserved that treatment.
| jkhdigital wrote:
| What does it mean for something to be controversial?
| Basically, it means there is strong disagreement about the
| morally justified level of Type I versus Type II errors--how
| many false positives are worth one false negative, in the
| wages of morality?
|
| This is of course complicated by the realization that across
| society, achieving "more" of one kind of justice often
| necessarily comes at the expense of another kind. In a stable
| society, the justice hierarchy is fairly well agreed-upon (at
| least by the "good, wholesome people" you refer to) but
| things can really go off the rails when profound
| disagreements develop.
|
| This is how you get "good, wholesome people" to participate
| in xenophobic genocide or political extermination. The lesson
| of the 20th century is that these catastrophically tragic
| inversions of the justice hierarchy can come from extreme
| positions on _either the right or the left_ of the
| ideological spectrum.
|
| I think the space of "controversial" ideas is essentially
| created by the interplay between those who are hypervigilant
| about extreme ideas _on the right_ which might lead to
| tragedy, and those who are hypervigilant about extreme ideas
| _on the left_ which might lead to tragedy. These two groups
| will likely be mortal enemies for obvious reasons, but a
| well-functioning liberal society _should_ be able to view
| both sides impartially and determine when one of them is on
| to something.
|
| Accordingly, a dysfunctional society is one which starts
| swallowing the ideas of one side or the other... and I
| suppose the aim of this journal is to help slow our descent
| into an internally fractured society of two equally
| dysfunctional halves.
| jkhdigital wrote:
| Indeed, it appears that much of the content is in fact focused
| on simply constructing fully-specified rhetorical arguments (as
| opposed to the hand-wavy self-inconsistent arguments that
| dominate popular media) which derive fairly controversial
| conclusions from relatively widely accepted premises.
| tux3 wrote:
| Controversial is by nature not a very clear category. How will
| the journal differentiate merely controversial papers from
| submissions that are various shades of unscientific, incorrect,
| or in bad faith?
|
| People will submit creationist flat earther HEP theories-of-
| everything that explain why conservation of energy is optional
| and climate change is a conspiracy. Obviously, you want to reject
| those, or your journal's content will taken as seriously as
| internet forum conspiracy theories.
|
| But all controversial ideas are divisive by nature. On any
| controversial topic, there will be people who think the idea is
| obviously wrong, no better than the flat earth, not worth the
| paper it's printed on.
|
| And on the other hand, the people who defend their ideas the most
| vigorously can be the least interesting. Trying to reject, say,
| flat earther theories by proving them wrong is an endless fight,
| where every second spent fighting is your loss.
|
| So, on what grounds can you reject papers, without immediately
| falling back on the generally accepted scientific consensus; the
| same that is used to reject all controversial idea?
|
| What's your procedure to improve on traditional peer review?
| Where and how do you draw the line?
| WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote:
| > Controversial is by nature not a very clear category.
|
| Not sure if it answers your question exactly, but here's the
| meat of it via their v1 to get a general idea:
|
| - Cognitive Creationism Compared to Young-Earth Creationism
|
| - Gender Muddle: Reply to Dembroff
|
| - Deflating Byrne's "Are Women Adult Human Females?"
|
| - Black Pete, King Balthasar, and the New Orleans Zulus: Can
| Black Make-Up Traditions Ever Be Justified?
|
| - A Puzzle about Self-Sacrificing Altruism
|
| - In Defense of Direct Action
|
| - Punishment and the Body
|
| - Who Cares? --The COVID-19 Pandemic, Global Heating and the
| Future of Humanity1
|
| - Ultimate Meaning: We Don't Have It, We Can't Get It, and We
| Should Be Very, Very Sad
|
| - The Epistemology of No Platforming: Defending the Defense of
| Stupid Ideas on University Campuses
| jkhdigital wrote:
| The journal's home page states that "The main criterion for
| acceptance will be the quality of the arguments given." The
| principles of deductive logic are pretty cut and dry, so
| evaluating the quality of a rhetorical argument boils down to
| (1) making sure there are no logical fallacies, and (2) judging
| the strength of the assumptions made.
|
| I suspect that the vast majority of papers which are
| "unscientific, incorrect, or in bad faith" would be filtered
| out at step (1), at least if the reviewers are sufficiently
| adept at deconstructing logical arguments. Furthermore, judging
| by the content of the first issue, it appears that the editors
| intend to focus on topics for which the assumptions (2) can be
| plainly stated and understood by the average academic.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Unless the journal only accept papers on logic itself,
| there's no way in which the criteria can be only "quality of
| argument". If one is making arguments about the real, one has
| to begin with assumptions that are plausible rather than
| certain and go from there. And what an editor considers
| plausible varies by what intellectual, political, scientific
| or whatever tradition they begin with.
| jkhdigital wrote:
| > Unless the journal only accept papers on logic itself
|
| A journal that was focused on "logic itself" would belong
| in pure mathematics.
|
| > what an editor considers plausible varies by what
| intellectual, political, scientific or whatever tradition
| they begin with.
|
| Not necessarily; one need not make independent claims about
| plausibility of an assumption in order to construct
| powerful logical arguments around it. This is pretty much
| the only game in town in philosophy, but scientific
| arguments must also adhere to the rules of deductive logic.
| And scientists are not necessarily expert logicians--they
| do commit logical fallacies. John Ioannidis has basically
| built his entire reputation on finding logical fallacies in
| otherwise "hard" research.
| mellosouls wrote:
| I think you have to bear in mind the original motivation behind
| the journal which was to enable a platform for researchers
| being suppressed and cancelled by woke academia for daring to
| shine a light in areas they've declared off limit.
|
| Whatever else the factors in deciding what gets through,
| countering politically motivated censorship of research by the
| usual suspects who've appointed themselves Guardians of The
| Truth will play a significant part.
| p_j_w wrote:
| >the original motivation behind the journal which was to
| enable a platform for researchers being suppressed and
| cancelled by woke academia for daring to shine a light in
| areas they've declared off limit.
|
| You need to check your history. The person who came up with
| the JCI had a different (though somewhat similar motivation):
| she received death threats from right wing Christians for an
| article she wrote that was published in an ethics journal.
| mellosouls wrote:
| No, that is just one example she cited of the originating
| motives in response to interviews to (rightly) suspicious
| liberal interviewers.
|
| While right-wing equivalents exist, the vast majority of
| recent censorship pressure has come from the left and it is
| inevitable the journal champions will offer placatory tales
| to counter the hatchet job coverage from their (woke
| academic) fellow-travellers in the press.
| [deleted]
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