politics

I think part of it is that they underestimate the complexity of the topic. I think Sabine doesn't know what she doesn't know, and then she's too overconfident to realize it because neoliberal narratives are fucking crammed into every conceivable corner of human discourse — and if they're that ubiquitous, they must be really well vetted and they must be fuckin true!

I have a hypothesis that this phenomena of science types overestimating their ability to draw conclusions in the social sciences is a result of STEM-y people persistently being told they are smart for being relatively competent with more concrete subjects, making them far less likely to negatively assess their understanding of the more squishy world.

This is absolutely 100% a thing. I'm a software dev and every other colleague is like this to some extent, they'll make the most puddle-deep analysis of a societal problem backed up by nothing but their personal biases and think they're fucking sociological geniuses.

Physics is the absolute worst with this, too. When I was doing my postdoc in a climate lab, by far the greatest amount of pushback against climate science as a discipline (at least internally) came from the physics department. They sometimes think that since physics is in some sense the "most fundamental" science, they have a right to pontificate on anything else since everything is, at bottom, a physical system. Combined with the fact that they deal with mathematically sophisticated but frequently highly idealized or constrained models--and thus are skeptical of complexity in general--this sometimes gives them the attitude that they can pick up any other discipline and do it better than genuine experts. It's a pretty pervasive problem.

I have a hypothesis that this phenomena of science types overestimating their ability to draw conclusions in the social sciences is a result of STEM-y people persistently being told they are smart for being relatively competent with more concrete subjects, making them far less likely to negatively assess their understanding of the more squishy world. Thoughts?

STEMlords get told their shit don't stink, which cultivates a form of arrogance. The funny thing is that this happens enough that once they get old, they start doing the same shit to STEM fields that they have no expertise in. It starts with the social sciences and the humanities when they are younger, but by the time they're old, they become full-blown cranks who think their expertise in electrical engineering makes them an expert on the efficacy of vaccines.

I said it in a previous thread about her, I think she's intentionally misrepresenting this. She did some shady stuff with climate change which is science. She doesn't deny it but talks it down for her audience.

In first minutes of climate change video she says we can't stop using cars. This is a "scientist". Idk why people bother

This is a really simple way of explaining it. Any reading you recommend that talks about this in more detail?

And the best part is that the original capitalists despised landlords.

hes a terf and homophobe and a good free resource for marxian economics.

it is what it is

He isn’t TERF-y. He is an unrepentant turbo TERF. Some TERFs like Rowling try and couch what they say to not appear transphobic. Cockshott doesn’t even bother, he wears his transphobia on his sleeve.

And Towards a New Socialism was invaluable in helping me understand Capital so it’s complicated for me.

paul cockshott isn't wrong when he says capitalism is bad just because he also happens to be a transphobe (calling him a TERF is too dignified since the RF implies that he's a radical feminist, but he's not even that). but yes I agree we should post comrade hakim's takedown of sabine instead

They are part of the Cock extended universe