Comment by breppp
5 days ago
It's dangerous because of post colonialism and earlier post structuralism is in its basis.
That philosophical school sees truth as being a fantasy and subservient to power.
Therefore it is common for an adherent of post-colonialism to believe a statement is true if it was made by a person arbitrarily considered oppressed, while the same logic might be false if made by an 'oppressor'.
As this approach makes all science to be political effort before a discovery effort, it was highly successful in the highly political environment of the academics, as it also has highly favorable economical results for its followers. (New departments, ability to religiously outcast the old, new postions)
The problem as it reaches the hard sciences, for example the religious sacrifice each ML paper needs to make to the gods of ethics, is that it assaults the very notion of truth by its very essence. It is easy to see why this is highly problematic for mathematics
No part of your comment addresses any "nonsense" or "danger" in the Nature article ( https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00240-9 )
The context was:
Do you have _ any _ meaningful critique of the contents of, say, maths historian George Joseph’s book The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of Mathematics (1991) ?
This appears to be old established material that I read in the ANU library back in the early 1980s.
I read the Nature article, and I read the seminal work on the subject Orientalism by Said. The context of the article is post-colonialism, a very established philosophical movement. This is shown when they mention whether mathematics is socially constructed and in the actual title "decolonization". I then proceeded to criticize that movement and explain why it is a problem for mathematics.
You and the other poster responded with anger, I do not agree I am the one who is not meaningfully contributing
Do you think there may have been developments in this space since 1978, when Said published Orientalism?
I don't mean to be rude, but do you think it's possible that your understanding of the situation is a bit out of date?
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What? Have you really read the Nature article? You're talking absolute nonsense here. No one is out to redefine mathematics, fuck!
You want real politicization of science? Check out the GOP's pomicies. They're the one cutting funding to organization that won't bow to their ideological lines. They're the ones barring access to foreign scientists for having criticized the dear leader online. They're the ones appointing political commissars to overview what's fine or not to work on in labs.
75% of scientists that ever published in Nature are now considering leaving the US [1] from fear of the administration. Is that not a concern to you?
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00938-y
Politicizing the sciences is a huge issue from both sides, and Trump efforts are worrying
I currently worry more about the left though, as it is much more powerful in the academics, and actually creates political "science" today
?????
Talk to any academic, ask them wether they fear more from blue haired teens or the looming fascist threat that is Trump and his cabinet. You may be surprised by the answer.
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