Neil deGrasse Tyson: #Rationalia should govern the world

[Brian Peacock]

...no scientist worth their salt thinks scientific Marxism (like Praxeology) is anything other than bullshit.

Both Marx and Engels regarded their version of socialism as scientific. They contrasted it with the "utopian socialism" of Saint-Simeon, Feuerbach and others. Engels wrote about it at length in a piece titled Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Marx added a foreword to its 1880 French edition. And yes, Lenin, Stalin, Mao et cetera insisted that Marxism is scientific.

This is why the scientific credentials of moral philosophers should be assessed with cold detachment.

[Brian Peacock]

And besides, Prof DGT only said that policy should be weighed on the balance of evidence.

[Pogue]

In a recent tweet, Neil Degrasse Tyson apparently suggested a system of government called 'Rationalia' (actually what lead me to this site) where government policy is decided based on factual objective evidence. After making this suggestion, many journalists came back writing articles declaring that it was a bad idea and that it would never work.
I like Neil's idea but I think it would often be difficult to determine what evidence is relevant; to objectively decide that one policy is better than another. In the world of science, we can prove things to be correct based on experimentation. It becomes more difficult when addressing social issues which are related to morals and values(which may vary based on factors such as religion or creed). It would definitely be difficult to set up such a system, in part due to the distribution of power, but it seems like an excellent ideal to strive for. For what should government policy be based on if its not logic and evidence? In an article Neil wrote reflecting on 'Rationalia', he used the issue of capital punishment as an example. When deciding whether to implement capital punishment, he suggested that we figure out the reason why we would implement it. If the reason is to deter crime, then we look at whether it actually deters crime though research and analysis. If it does not deter crime, we abandon the idea. There is too much 'he said she said' in politics, a mere power struggle. Policy ends up depending on a person's partisan opinions. If we could throw that away and determine truth together, each of us working toward a common goal, we'd be heading in a much better direction than we are now.

[Brian Peacock]

Hello Pogue

[JimC]

A very rational post, Pogue...

(you may in fact be too rational for the den of iniquity that is our Rationalia... )

[Svartalf]

But that's my point. The OP is confusing science with politics.

Results from good scientific analysis can inform political decision making (and should do more so), but are not some holy book of uncontested truth, handed down from an elite...

Anything to do with politics (and people behaviour in general) must fall into soft science, like economics or humanities, and approximation, hard science has little to do with that.

[Svartalf]

It's not a matter of scientists being in charge, but that scientific results should inform the political debate to a much greater extent than presently happens...

"scientific results", but results of what science? Economics? Pol Sci? those are soft and prone to Error, it's like saying Machiavelli's Prince or Sun Tzu's Art of War are scientific textbooks.

[JimC]

It's not a matter of scientists being in charge, but that scientific results should inform the political debate to a much greater extent than presently happens...

"scientific results", but results of what science? Economics? Pol Sci? those are soft and prone to Error, it's like saying Machiavelli's Prince or Sun Tzu's Art of War are scientific textbooks.

Examples can come from climate science, chemical analysis of pollution, statistical analysis of traffic loads, ecological surveys, hard-headed analysis of engineering risk in building standards or the design of nuclear plants. This list would be very long indeed...

[DaveDodo007]

In a recent tweet, Neil Degrasse Tyson apparently suggested a system of government called 'Rationalia' (actually what lead me to this site) where government policy is decided based on factual objective evidence. After making this suggestion, many journalists came back writing articles declaring that it was a bad idea and that it would never work.
I like Neil's idea but I think it would often be difficult to determine what evidence is relevant; to objectively decide that one policy is better than another. In the world of science, we can prove things to be correct based on experimentation. It becomes more difficult when addressing social issues which are related to morals and values(which may vary based on factors such as religion or creed). It would definitely be difficult to set up such a system, in part due to the distribution of power, but it seems like an excellent ideal to strive for. For what should government policy be based on if its not logic and evidence? In an article Neil wrote reflecting on 'Rationalia', he used the issue of capital punishment as an example. When deciding whether to implement capital punishment, he suggested that we figure out the reason why we would implement it. If the reason is to deter crime, then we look at whether it actually deters crime though research and analysis. If it does not deter crime, we abandon the idea. There is too much 'he said she said' in politics, a mere power struggle. Policy ends up depending on a person's partisan opinions. If we could throw that away and determine truth together, each of us working toward a common goal, we'd be heading in a much better direction than we are now.

Blah, blah, blah. Rationalia is fine when it is exposing religious stupidity but don't you dare question their retarded lefty/liberal politics, feminism, no siree.

[Sean Hayden]

Hi, and welcome to Rationalia.

I wonder in what way exactly, aside from corruption, people like NGT believe policy in places like the US is not formulated using evidence, and reason?

Just this week the DEA decided to maintain marijuana's Schedule 1 classification.

Their reasoning being that there is insuffucient evidence that it's useful as medicine. That's reasonable according to the science they like. They use reason and evidence to justify the harms of the drug war too.

Which raises another question: what are the easy issues where these troublesome values don't interfere with reason and evidence? I noticed that after admitting they'd make it difficult, the death penalty problem was presented without them.

I bet they're an indispensable part of our reasoning and influence evidence and its interpretation more than we'd like to admit.

----//----

Anyway, I like the idea! I can just assume he meant better reasoning and use of evidence.

There are better criticisms of what he said, and I enjoyed those too. But they were mostly very intelligent people showing off just how finely tuned their minds are; all completely necessary of course. But get those guys a room, throw money at them and let'em tease out the nuances.