Orson Scott Card and Science Meritocracy

The rest of the article is Card's usual fooferall. But -- "But science is not done by majority vote -- particularly not by majority vote that was intensely pressured and cajoled by homosexual activists."


So that's sort of interesting. Science isn't done by majority rule, that's true. But science is sort of "done" by consensus. It's not a vote, per se-- there's nobody who tallies up the fors and againsts and says "Sorry guys, global warming it is, global cooling lost by ten points." But there is a consensus that emerges as expert scientists are convinced by compelling evidence and begin moving their work towards further investigations that rely on that compelling evidence. It's almost more like a herd thing than like a town hall thing.


Policy does get done by majority vote. And Policy bases itself on lots of different kinds of information -- only one of which is science. I do think that's how it ought to be. There are a lot of kinds of questions that science doesn't answer well. Like "What is the *meaning* of blue?" or "Have you ever really *looked* at your hands, on weed?" I'm kidding. Like, "If a certain stable segment of the population experiences attraction to the same sex, are we right to continue discriminating against them?" Science doesn't ask or answer that question - it asks "Is there a certain stable segment of the population that is attracted to the same sex?"

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