Re: Why I won't support the March for Science
To demonstrate how progressive a scientific mind can be... "The real purpose of Socialism is to get past the predatory phase of human development." --Albert Einstein So, what does socialist science look like? In response to Michael: It is good to meet you. Perhaps you are one of the lab coat long-haired scientists pictured with Ant Farm's Clean Air Bubble in a photo Chip Lord put on Facebook commemorating the first Earth Day? In response to Florian and Brian's comments: I went to the Science march because it has been three weeks since my last street march and I can't make the climate march, which is more articulated on a personal level for many than a generalized march on science. We are all doing these MARCHES because they bring levels of resistance together, draw media attention to Trump's bad ideas, and in addition to flooding the White House with postcards, calling Trumps properties to request his tax returns, signing petitions, jamming switchboards with phone calls on issues to Congress, donating money to AAAS, ACLU, joining networks against ICE and all the rest of the resistance to Trump agenda, bring us face2face with each other. I was disappointed overall, despite the turn-out, because I would have thought, as I mentioned --that higher ed, public science institutions etc would be out in force. The turn-out was good everywhere, though, for keeping the topic of funding cuts and rise of ignorance in the news! And, there are so many important fights here now ---that we need to continue to remind ourselves that not giving in is important. At the same time many valid questions remain as you both point out in terms of a political critique not of Science per se but of its appropriation and use for-profit. These same questions and even similar wording - evidence-based equals "student-learning outcomes" for instance - persist in neo-leberalized education-speak as an influence of corporate privatization, creative industries, policy, etc. Sure we can reject it outright based on their statement, but I took the idea of the march to be ---a respect for knowledge and truth! I think for the European audience/fabric/makeup of nettime - it is genuinely worth consideration whether the Trump-era will create greater influence of American corporate leadership in EUROPE or less and how we can help each other to resist this "globalization" of scientific methodology couched in profit and defense, or how we can present and write about and communicate differing models at the level of research produced and research funded? For instance, we might turn towards supporting critical investigations of medical and environmental science where human interest is served for the good of all, while considering pro-environment, anti-war activity. Respectfully, we are reeling at the degree to which the Trump WH sits around fearing and hating and "enterprising" to secure itself. We have to continue to reject it. Molly On Wed, Apr 26, 2017 at 7:04 AM Michael Goldhaber wrote: I took part on Saturday in the March for Science in SF. It wast a bit of déja vu for me, since, about 47 years ago, I helped organize and participated in the March 4, scientists' movement that became "Science for the People" (SftP), and then the first Earth Day the next year. <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: Why I won't support the March for Science
On 2017-04-25 13:49, Florian Cramer wrote: > In other words, if anti-scientific populism is one (right-wing) hell, > evidence-based policies and regulations is the other > (neoliberal-technocratic) hell. This a more double-edged sword. I remember lots of policy discussions and proposals in the area of copyright where a central demand was to be more evidence-based, meaning the copyright maximalists should provide evidence that an extension of copyright would benefits artists. Or, the other way round, that the overwhelming evidence that it doesn't should be taken into account. of course, it wasn't. So, yes, evidence-based an contribute to the over expanding nightmare of neo-liberal quantification and micro-management, but the enemy here should be neo-liberalism, not evidence.. On 2017-04-25 11:34, Eric Kluitenberg wrote: > Let’s march for the politicisation of science! I'm not sure about this. I don't think we should politicize science, that is, make it depended on the demands for particular outcomes. We already have may too much of that thanks to corporate/military funding. However, we should bring the scientists and the way the speak for, say, the ozon layer, into politics. Latour has been talking about this for years with his Parliament of Things and all of this. Felix -- | http://felix.openflows.com |OPEN PGP: 056C E7D3 9B25 CAE1 336D 6D2F 0BBB 5B95 0C9F F2AC # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: Why I won't support the March for Science
I took part on Saturday in the March for Science in SF. It wast a bit of d�ja vu for me, since, about 47 years ago, I helped organize and participated in the March 4, scientists' movement that became "Science for the People" (SftP), and then the first Earth Day the next year. Slightly earlier, in 1968, I was a founder of what eventually became "SftP". We objected to science being used for war , especially in Viet-Nam, and not only weapons science but anthropology and medicine as well, in that context. We opposed a whole range of science for the corporations, or for racist ends, and so on. Of course these are still valid and important concerns. But they have little to do with the origins of the current marches, which are the Trump administration's strident opposition to non-corprorate-aiding, non-military research which goes right along with its opposition to the humanities and the arts as well as public broadcasting. Of course, on the whole, the organizers of the current event might be accused of being a bit naive, both as to the likely effects of the march as well as the purity of science. For some, the primary reasons for marching are selfish: they want their grants renewed or simply want to have a job, as well of course, as wanting to be able to carry out the research projects that interest them. That's no more selfish though than typical strikers .When they speak in favor of 'evidence-based" efforts they are referring in large measure to climate science or medicine, where , despite perhaps going a bit too far, the approach has mostly been beneficial. As far as the philosophical implications or, perhaps equivalently, the claims to universality, it's certainly easy for science as well as philosophers to claim too much. No overarching view is unproblematic. With climate science for example, absolute certainties are out of the question. There is only one earth, and in general., at best, scientific precautions are statistical or probabilistic in nature. One is simply too small a sample. For the right, that is an entirely fallacious dodge, but it cannot be logically refuted. I myself doubt that the marches will change much of anything, though they may add some esprit de corps. They were hardly covered even in what should have been the most sympathetic press. But to rail against them on Nettime strikes me as absurd to the point nearly of idiocy, being principled about utterly the wrong thing. Best, Michael On Apr 25, 2017, at 12:32 PM, carlo von lynX wrote: I'll try a deconstruction from the perspective of having "designed" a leaderless political organization... On 04/23/2017 06:54 PM, Florian Cramer wrote: 1) The central demand of the 'March for Science', "evidence-based policies and regulations", is toxic and dangerous. This approach has certainly been abused strategically in the past, like declaring economics a kind of science. It's interesting you mention Popper because in my understanding of Popper I would define politics as the space of possible choices of action remaining if you remove all the proven false options. <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
The meaning of Macron (short answer: Tocqueville in France)
Dear Dante Yes, and I believe Emmanuel Macron himself would agree to "being a socioliberal" which in Nettime parlour would be "neoliberal" indeed. You don't need to wait for that. It will be his victory speech soon. But of devils presented to us, I prefer a liberal like Macron to a neo-fascist like Marine Le Pen (I'm not an accelerationist). Until the Left regroups into a responsible but straight-forward welfare-state-defending basic-income-promoting, budget-keeping democratic Marxism that is the best we can have (Trotskyist populists like Melenchon and Corbyn must therefore be strongly resisted; they are the least thing we need right now). And as for dear Sebastian's bitter but welcome comments on this thread: Yes, of course politics is political theatre. It always has been, as thinkers from Machiavelli to Guy Debord have always been quick to point out. Jan Söderqvist and I even predicted in "The Netocrats" in 2000 that soon the U.S. would likely elect a game-show host as president as a result of politics going ironic and increasingly powerless (therefore tyurning into a "celebrity democracy"). In 2016 we were proven right. So you could easily regard our comments in this thread as "nothing more than football babble", if it was not for the fact that politics still controls, deals with and directs trillions of dollars worth in jobs and wealth between the world's nations and populations. Your nihilism consequently adds nothing to address these complex issues. So what do you want to say besides attacking fellow Nettime debaters for the apparent fun of it? Or was that all? For hundreds of thousands of Afghan and Somali migrants in Sweden and Germany at the moment, it makes a hell of a difference if these countries are run by social democrats or right-wing populists. And that is just the start. Best intentions Alexander Bard 2017-04-26 1:50 GMT+02:00 Dante-Gabryell Monson : Emmanuel Macron can also be understood as a ( status-quo ? ) Neo-Liberal public relations guy, ex-Rothschild investment banker, creating a new packaging for the same neo-liberal politicians. Let's see, if and when he gets elected, whom he brings into his government. <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
