
Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office - justin66
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/01/thanks-to-trump-scientists-are-planning-to-run-for-office/514229/?single_page=true
======
hueving
>For now, 314 Action will only back Democratic candidates.

Great. When you're being accused of being partisan, the best way to come back
is to form an organization backing potential political candidates of just one
party. What a joke.

This is a squandered opportunity to try to get scientific minded people into
running for the republican seats, which is how you would get real change in
the discourse. Anyone who thinks there aren't fiscally conservative scientists
out there who want to shape the Republican party into something better is
deluding themselves.

~~~
jackmott
The republican party is simply unacceptable on many levels for any
intelligent, honest person.

I realize that you, like many people, simply do not see it that way, and
imagine that there is some kind of equivalence or near equivalence in how
corrupt and crazy both parties are, but most of us don't. What we are seeing
is horrific, a party that is against reason and goodness and civility at
almost every step. They picked a rapist trust fund baby autocrat as their
leader. He is now our president.

So yes, we are going to be partisan. We wouldn't be allowed to run as a
republican if we were 'fiscally conservative' but felt that gays should be
treated as people, refugees with compassion, women with respect, the
environment with car, and that religion was crazy.

Furthermore anyone with a scientific bent would look at the empirical evidence
provided by other nations with good standards of living and economic freedom
and NOT BE fiscally conservative in the way the republican party is. It has no
evidence supporting its efficacy!

~~~
hueving
>The republican party is simply unacceptable on many levels for any
intelligent, honest person.

Anyone who would say this with a straight face isn't intelligent or isn't
honest, so they can't speak for intelligent honest people.

>but most of us don't.

Who exactly do you think you are speaking for? Identity politics and strong
liberal populations in universities has made it social suicide for anyone to
admit they have any doubts about the Democratic party.

>We wouldn't be allowed to run as a republican if we were 'fiscally
conservative' but felt that gays should be treated as people

Two seconds of Googling reveals your bullshit:
[http://ijr.com/2014/10/185584-9-prominent-republicans-who-
su...](http://ijr.com/2014/10/185584-9-prominent-republicans-who-support-gay-
marriage/)

Humans have and can be elected into the Republican party and that's how you
achieve change.

>freedom and NOT BE fiscally conservative in the way the republican party is.
It has no evidence supporting its efficacy!

The situation in Greece and various other European countries seems to suggest
you can't buy your way out of a recession with entitlements either. You'll
find very little evidence supporting the efficacy of any system that
translates well to the US, which has the irritating job of being the entire
Western World's military.

~~~
epistasis
>>The republican party is simply unacceptable on many levels for any
intelligent, honest person. >Anyone who would say this with a straight face
isn't intelligent or isn't honest, so they can't speak for intelligent honest
people.

I think this is meant in the context of most sciences. If you're a physicist,
your work is sufficiently apolitical that you can see both parties as
reasonable. If you're an epidemiologist, or a cancer researcher, or a
developmental biologist, you see more examples where one political party has
asserted themselves as better arbiters of fact than the science. And that
political party is the Republican party.

In terms of politics in general, both "left" and "right" have plenty of
individuals that deny fact and scienec, but only one party has put those
people in charge of the party and the party platform.

~~~
hueving
If you're a vaccine developer or someone working on genetically modified
crops, you'll get pushback from Democrats. Pick your poison.

>but only one party has put those people in charge of the party and the party
platform.

If only there were some way to get people elected into the party to change
this.... nah, let's just dig in with the party that got summarily rejected by
the current voting system we have.

~~~
cryoshon
>If you're a vaccine developer or someone working on genetically modified
crops, you'll get pushback from Democrats. Pick your poison.

hi, former vaccine scientist here: there was never any pushback from democrats
that i ever heard of, and i can say with authority that nobody would pick
republican any percentage of the time for any purpose. i'm not even
exaggerating. scientists are liberals.

that's all.

~~~
hueving
>i'm not even exaggerating. scientists are liberals.

>that's all.

You're wrong. You just don't hear from the conservatives because it's become
acceptable to be borderline militant about political views that aren't liberal
enough in universities.

The disconnect is mind boggling. I had several tenured professors on my
Facebook feed ranting about how everyone who would consider not voting for
Hillary was a racist, sexist, and a fascist. Is it really a big surprise that
people with conservative view points don't speak up in research groups? In
particular people shooting for tenure would be committing career suicide to
admit conservative political leanings.

~~~
cryoshon
i've spent more time in biotech industry than in academia, as is true of many
of my scientist coworkers.

even in industry, they're all (all) liberals. maybe even moreso than in
academia, really. even the high up ones. even the runts of the litter. even
the foreigners; even the white males. scientists are liberals... and capable
of having a polite and objective discussion with those who aren't.

~~~
hueving
No they aren't. If you think they are liberals you are either stupid or naive.
Someone who thinks an 'entire' non political industry is filled with a single
political viewpoint is not capable of an objective discussion because people
are clearly hiding it from him/her.

I've met many people in biotech startups that are not 'liberals' when it comes
to economic policy. They joined explicitly to make something that helps
humanity while making them rich at the same time. They were explicitly against
government intervention in health care research and believed private industry
was better at finding viable solutions to problems. That's antithetical to the
standard liberal viewpoint in the US.

If you don't think there are people like that, it's because the crowd you are
with is hostile to people with dissenting political views. It's not because
biotech is a magical statistical anomaly that operates on the principles of
capitalism while being filled purely with liberals.

~~~
epistasis
Liberals and capitalists are a hugely overlapping group! I meet very few
liberals who aren't supportive of free markets.

I guess you can find a few in biotech that are against government funding
health care research, but they are few and far between. There are also a few
that are against regulation, but more as its implemented rather than the idea
of it.

------
nonbel
Ok, but please do not vote for anyone calling themselves "scientist" who
practices NHST, you will only be perpetuating this nation- (even
civilization-) destroying practice:

"We are quite in danger of sending highly trained and highly intelligent young
men out into the world with tables of erroneous numbers under their arms, and
with a dense fog in the place where their brains ought to be. In this century,
of course, they will be working on guided missiles and advising the medical
profession on the control of disease, and there is no limit to the extent to
which they could impede every sort of national effort."

Fisher, R N (1958). "The Nature of Probability". Centennial Review. 2:
261–274.
[http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/fisher272.pdf](http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/fisher272.pdf)

Do not be blinded by a degree, there are a lot of these people out there. As a
heuristic, you may have to limit "scientist" to mean physicists and engineers,
as those communities have been least affected.

~~~
aphextron
>Ok, but please do not vote for anyone calling themselves "scientist" who
practices NHST, you will only be perpetuating this nation- (even
civilization-) destroying practice:

Can you expand on this? What is NHST?

~~~
omginternets
Null-hypothesis statistical testing

The parent poster has ... for some inexplicable reason ... decided that this
technique is invalid. This reeks of a profound misunderstanding of the
technique, and a failure to discriminate between poor use and invalidity.

~~~
nonbel
It isn't inexplicable. NHST entails affirming the consequent and transposing
the conditional, which are known formal fallacies.

------
jasode
The article doesn't mention the word _" technocrat"_ but the wiki seems
relevant even if the scientists only have modest goals of _participating_ in
government rather than grand ambitions of _controlling_ the government from
the top down.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy)

~~~
croon
I'm not sure it applies. You can still be well educated and greedy/egotistical
and not work for your constituents.

But within elections, what else SHOULD we vote for other than merit?

What really bothered me when Obama was elected was people throwing the word
"elitism" around, because he was smart, eloquent and well educated, like that
was somehow a bad thing.

I sure as hell hope that the people elected are smarter than me, because I
would have no idea what I was doing in office.

But I guess we'll now see what happens when you elect someone that's "just
like us", except born with money.

~~~
maverick_iceman
The idea that smarter people will be better at government is a fallacy which
was conclusively disproved during 20th century. Since Plato's time there was
this hypothesis that philosopher kings would somehow bring utopia or at least
be better than the average ruler. Alas, the experiences of the 20th century
belies that assumption. Communist parties were invariably led by formidable
intellectuals (e.g. Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot) but they only left utter hopelessness
and destruction in their wake.

~~~
croon
I don't disagree that it absolutely is no guarantee for success, but don't you
agree that it's one requirement?

~~~
Sacho
I believe you are applying a circular definition. We call people smart when we
like a majority of the actions they take. Due to the unknowable causes of
these "smarts", we have invented many memes to rationalize them - eloquence,
colege education, street smarts, intelligence, philosophical wisdom, the list
goes on.

Since we are good at hypocrisy as well as rationalization, we have left
ourselves a back door for thebpeople we truly hate - he's not smart, he's
lucky(or the opposite, if we are really sympathetic).

I believe you are right that "these qualities" are a "requirement", but only
due to their flexible nature and our tendency to assign and strip them in
order to meet our just-world view.

~~~
croon
Trump is an idiot, Bill O'Reilly is smart. I don't like either.

While I get your point, most rational people have no trouble attributing
positive properties to people they dislike.

------
donretag
So much has been written about this in the past. The American political system
is mainly geared to certain professions.

Why Don’t Americans Elect Scientists?:
[https://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/why-
dont-...](https://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/why-dont-
americans-elect-scientists/)

Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists:
[https://singularityhub.com/2011/05/17/eight-out-of-chinas-
to...](https://singularityhub.com/2011/05/17/eight-out-of-chinas-top-nine-
government-officials-are-scientists/)

Scientists and engineers cannot simply give up their positions for several
years and then easily return to their industries, and not just academia like
the article points out. Professions such as lawyers have it easier in that
regard.

------
croon
Great!

I get the appeal of non-career politicians voted into office, but I'd much
rather take reasonable, well-educated scientists than the opposite.

~~~
ysr23
Great? Angela Merkel, Maragaret Thatcher, Frauke Petry. Whatever your
political persuasion there is, i'm sure at least one of those you would not
describe as 'great'

~~~
soundwave106
No matter what you think of them as far as policy goes, two of those three
have ended up being very dominant politicians in their nation and time.

Margaret Thatcher is near the top of most historical rankings of UK PMs in
most surveys
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_Prime_M...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_Prime_Ministers_of_the_United_Kingdom)).

It's probably too early to tell whether Merkel is considered "good" or "bad"
from a historical perspective, but her term as chancellor has been quite
influential, enough for many publications to describe you as "de-facto leader
of the EU" (and for Forbes to name Merkel as the 2nd most powerful person in
the world in 2015).

Obviously the converse exists, but Thatcher and Merkel seem like good examples
for reasonable, well-educated scientists doing "great" in politics.

------
wyldfire
With ever-more-complicated technical marketplaces into which legislation pokes
its head, the need for technical guidance for this legislation arises. Here in
the US at least, lobbyists (usually funded by trade groups) are able to fill
that role and in some cases might be a net benefit.

What I want to know is -- is there a market for a "constituent pro-bono
consultant"? I don't want to become a career politician (not even part-time),
but I would be willing to consult with legislators on technical matters
without compensation. I won't buy my representatives lunch or even coffee, but
I'd be willing to try and be a balance against the trade groups for the sake
of the people.

------
exabrial
Scientists I think are too ideological to make good leaders by themselves. It
takes all kinds of kinds. You need historians, engineers, scientists,
marketeers, salesman, and finally organizer-executors. Right now our
government seems mainly ran by salesman...

------
arouqa
I remember reading that the majority of government officials in China are
either scientists or engineers.

Would be very intriguing to see this play out in a democratic society.

------
mgberlin
As a former scientist who is very sad about the way politics are going right
now, I was extremely excited to see this group forming. Then I saw that
they've inexplicably co-mingled gun control and science. By all means we need
to take every measure possible on climate change, energy production, and
science education (the other issues listed on their site), but scientists are
no better suited to have an opinion on gun control than any other citizen
(except some of them might have a slightly better understanding of statistics,
but those can lie in either direction).

~~~
wfo
Doesn't the very fact that statistics lie in either direction mean that
someone with knowledge of statistics (any scientist would be more
knowledgeable than nearly every politician i.e. lawyer that we have today)
would be crucial to ferreting out the consequences of gun control legislation,
and therefore better able to make an informed decision? I do agree that a
group promoting science shouldn't pre-suppose an answer to a question the jury
isn't out on yet like gun control. And even if the question were answered
(suppose legal guns cause enormous increases in death) there's still a moral
question to be answered there, weighing the freedom to own them vs. the
destruction they cause. Just like no scientist will disagree that climate
change is real and caused by humans; plenty of reasonable scientists disagree
on what we should do about it.

------
Agustus
What can a scientist do that no other person can at a macro-level?

On minimum wage, there are scientists who have two schools of thoughts:

a. Minimum wage can be increased without negative impact to individuals b.
Minimum wage is a horrible action that harkens back to racist unions trying to
keep black people out of jobs and has unseen consequences in a labor market.

In this instance, the answer from the 314 Action group is that those
scientists that agree with Democrat policies are more equal to others.

Another example of this would be in the realm of climate change modeling.
Let's say we have two climate models that utilize carbon dioxide as an input.
Model A uses less of a feedback loop than Model B, resulting in less global
average increase in temperature. Both were put together by top scientists,
there is just an existing dispute in the scientific community as to the amount
of feedback that can occur. Will these scientist politicians be able to
allocate resources any better than a politician? If according to the Atlantic,
the next five years is the time to act, will there be time to set up a
committee to review the differences and make recommendations?

~~~
j2kun
For one, they can read and understand the significance of various scientific
literature that is intended to shape their policy decisions. They also
generally don't support people who spew falsehoods and bullshit.

Of course anyone can learn these skills, but so few do.

------
jasonkostempski
I think tech people should be doing this too.

~~~
cderwin
You say that, but take a look at the HN thread on Peter Thiel's prospective
gubernatorial campaign[0]. It's needless to say the idea of a Thiel
governorship was not very popular.

This isn't to say the criticism found there is unreasonable, just that it's
not special. People in science and people in tech can get involved in
politics, but most of the political issues out there are not scientific or
technological so support for them will break down on ideological lines, not
technocratic ones. The case of Peter Thiel isn't special, i.e. a conservative
member of the tech community would not prefer Richard Stallman to Marco Rubio,
just as a progressive member of the tech community would not prefer Peter
Thiel to Jerry Brown.

If you want technocracy, I would suggest encouraging tech-minded folks to move
to the public sector rather than run for office. Personally I would oppose
that, as I think most tech talent would be somewhat wasted there.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13401358](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13401358)

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Hardcore libertarianism is the exception, not the norm in tech. Tech tends to
float in big cities and as such is naturally liberal. A lot of the successes
of early tech startups is in part due to liberal hiring policies welcoming
women, gays, and minorities who otherwise had a hard time working or getting
hired at the old conservative shops like IBM.

Its the weirdos who gave us the Apple // and the Mac. Not the button down
conservative culture Thiel represents. I'm not sure its even fair to call
Thiel a tech industry person. He's very much now a financier and investor.
He's not making the future, he's worrying about what stocks to short and who
to invest in.

~~~
cderwin
> Its the weirdos who gave us the Apple // and the Mac. Not the button down
> conservative culture Thiel represents.

I don't think that's fair. First of all, in some sense Thiel is one of those
"weirdos" you mentioned above as a gay man. But that aside, the more modern
versions of those enterprises -- google, facebook, uber -- were all funded by
that "button-down conservative culture". It is hard, if not impossible, to
call the success of those enterprises as anything but cooperation between "the
weirdos" and people like Thiel.

And it is of course ridiculous to say that Thiel isn't genuinely a member of
the tech community: if partners in ycombinator aren't genuine members of the
tech industry, then who is? Just the engineers?

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Depends what your focus is. If your focus is playing the stock market or IPO
game, it doesn't really matter what industry you're in. You're merely an
investor.

Yes, I think this anti-engineer culture at work at HN is ridiculous. Its the
people building the future and having a vision for it who matter. Not the
bankers who write the loans/buy stock/buy equity. That what Thiel's role is,
pretty much just what banks used to do for businesses, except the SV way is no
collateral just equity.

I think we greatly overplay the importance of the money men and let them steal
credit from the engineers and founders.

> "the weirdos" and people like Thiel.

He stopped being one of the weirdos a long time ago. He's the establishment
the weirdos now have to fight against.

------
squozzer
It reminds me of something Asimov wrote -- scientists are used to inflexible
facts and not flexible people -- that might make scientists either unelectable
or imcompetent.

OTOH, I pulled this gem from an Asimov quote website -- "[Creationists] make
it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all
night."

------
ocschwar
Not just scientists. Engineers should to, and for the same reason

If you're a civil engineer, chemical engineer, electrical engineer, or a
software engineer, you can find far too many examples of Republican
politicians offering rhetoric and policies that are directly at odds with the
domain knowledge of your profession.

We can't let this continue.

------
gremlinsinc
I'd frankly love to see a President Billy Nye Science Guy

