>This isn't pedantry or navel gazing or postmodern bullshit, this is hard-nosed critical thinking.
I don't think it is any of that -- to me it smells more like a new word for classical philosophical skepticism/relativism. Which is very hard-nosed critical thinking and perniciously difficult to dismiss (see G.E. Moore's 'rejection' of skepticism -- "here is one hand") In fact while you say it is very new, I'd posit that it is very, very old. Thousands of years old. The essence of it from what I understand as you've explained it, minus the unnecessary gendering of the concepts, is taught in undergrad philosophy courses, has been for centuries.
My first point was trying to get at this question: we have two ways to approach science, the traditional approach where we choose to believe facts are objective and try to behave that way, and the "intersubjective" one. But which one should we take? What is the right framework to even make such a decision? Even if you simply assume the goal is predictive power, do we assume there is an objective assessment of predictive power that we try to get at, or that these predictions are inherently intersubjective and can't be compared so that no determination can be made?
And sure gender politics exist. But not everything is always about gender. I think what people reject is not considering gender politics at all, but for example trying to make science about gender. The relativist/skeptical position does not need to be feminine more than the realist position must be masculine. There are social gender structures that lay the burden of expectation on members in society, yes, but they do not completely pervade and define every moment of every thought of every person -- there are some instances in which we are human first and gendered second. And most I would suggest, believe (specifically hard) science is one of those instances. Or we should treat it that way. The entire purpose of mathematics is that there is no "female mathematics" and "male mathematics".
To that point, I would really be interested in hearing a little more about how intersubjectivity plays out in the mathematics research community.
This is what skeptical-about-gender-politics is about. Not rejecting gender politics themselves, but rejecting turning every discussion about anything into a discussion about gender. Which often quickly evolves into an attack on men (abusive, 'privilege', implying the work men do means less because of their advantage, etc). Where everything bad is the fault of "the patriarchy" (read: men). Which is tiresome. And not at all what you have done.
And as to your request,
>And this might sound pedantic but, I don't care if you're skeptical of gender politics because gender politics are real, and they have been real for thousands of years.
>I would suggest y'all stop taking gendered analysis of social phenomenon personally because it can only enrich your conceptual toolbox.
I would say that you should embrace intersubjectivity in your own position and understand that your posts cannot be objective, they are observed and interpreted by many others, so what matters is not what you say, rather, how it is observed by your audience. If you want it to be a strong argument /to HN/ you should take some steps to avoid throwing up red flags that HN readers are used to using to dismiss arguments out of hand as a tribal attack (this is what I meant by "incendiary" -- I was not incensed by it but the 'men are dumb but women are smart' trope is familiar because it is as ubiquitous as it is uninteresting. Your position is not this at all, but it superficially contains some of the same characteristics).
Again thanks for your thoughtful response, I enjoyed it a great deal.
I only brought up gender because I was clarifying what the quoted author meant because the person I originally replied to found it confusing and spurious. I think the key is that the intersubjective nature of science means that it is open to social analysis, a subset of which is feminist analysis, and basically I've just been giving my interpretation of what the quoted author was saying.
You brought up a lot of interesting points but I only have the energy to respond to one of them given my reception lately :)
> To that point, I would really be interested in hearing a little more about how intersubjectivity plays out in the mathematics research community.
1. What constitutes a correct proof? A proof has to convince other humans. Two mathematicians who work together a lot can sketch out an informal proof that they both agree on, but it's harder to write a proof that is widely considered rigorous enough. A fully formal proof that a computer can verify isn't anywhere near feasible. What constitutes rigor today is different from what constituted rigor for Euler is different from what constituted rigor for Euclid.
2. Most mathematics isn't done as symbol manipulation. Mathematicians rely on their human intuitions. We share a lot of the same cognitive structures but we each have our own preferences.
"It must be admitted that the use of geometric intuition has no logical necessity in mathematics, and is often left out of the formal presentation of results. If one had to construct a mathematical brain, one would probably use resources more efficiently than creating a visual system. But the system is there already, it is used to great advantage by human mathematicians, and it gives a special flavor to human mathematics." - Ruelle (1999)
Interesting idea: if there are differences between how men and women think, there could be a male and female mathematics. I doubt there is any significant difference though. Likewise, autonomous AI will almost definitely do mathematics with a distinctly different flavor from human mathematics even though they should be mutually intelligible.
3. What we think is important to study is what we think our peers and superiors value. A grad student does mathematics their adviser thinks is interesting. A grad student chooses their adviser based on their interests. Which fields get grant money? Which are "hot"? Which fields are all but abandoned even if they have legitimate open questions?
4. Mochizuki has published a proposed proof of the ABC conjecture. That's a huge result. It has not yet been widely accepted because he worked alone for several years and the concepts he has come up with are very foreign to every other mathematician. So, a lot of the work of "proving" the ABC conjecture is teaching his ideas to other people even though he has produced a detailed proof. You can't just read the proof and understand it.
5. This isn't math, but physics. It's in the news recently that a time crystal may have been constructed. It's not entirely clear if a time crystal can even exist. How can two physicists look at the same experimental data and hold two different positions on this question?
Physicists, hardest scientists of them all, getting really emotional about QCD? But I thought science was about objective facts! "Objectivity" is what remains when the science has settled, it is not the science itself, and it certainly is not a permanent state.
>This isn't pedantry or navel gazing or postmodern bullshit, this is hard-nosed critical thinking.
I don't think it is any of that -- to me it smells more like a new word for classical philosophical skepticism/relativism. Which is very hard-nosed critical thinking and perniciously difficult to dismiss (see G.E. Moore's 'rejection' of skepticism -- "here is one hand") In fact while you say it is very new, I'd posit that it is very, very old. Thousands of years old. The essence of it from what I understand as you've explained it, minus the unnecessary gendering of the concepts, is taught in undergrad philosophy courses, has been for centuries.
My first point was trying to get at this question: we have two ways to approach science, the traditional approach where we choose to believe facts are objective and try to behave that way, and the "intersubjective" one. But which one should we take? What is the right framework to even make such a decision? Even if you simply assume the goal is predictive power, do we assume there is an objective assessment of predictive power that we try to get at, or that these predictions are inherently intersubjective and can't be compared so that no determination can be made?
And sure gender politics exist. But not everything is always about gender. I think what people reject is not considering gender politics at all, but for example trying to make science about gender. The relativist/skeptical position does not need to be feminine more than the realist position must be masculine. There are social gender structures that lay the burden of expectation on members in society, yes, but they do not completely pervade and define every moment of every thought of every person -- there are some instances in which we are human first and gendered second. And most I would suggest, believe (specifically hard) science is one of those instances. Or we should treat it that way. The entire purpose of mathematics is that there is no "female mathematics" and "male mathematics".
To that point, I would really be interested in hearing a little more about how intersubjectivity plays out in the mathematics research community.
This is what skeptical-about-gender-politics is about. Not rejecting gender politics themselves, but rejecting turning every discussion about anything into a discussion about gender. Which often quickly evolves into an attack on men (abusive, 'privilege', implying the work men do means less because of their advantage, etc). Where everything bad is the fault of "the patriarchy" (read: men). Which is tiresome. And not at all what you have done.
And as to your request,
>And this might sound pedantic but, I don't care if you're skeptical of gender politics because gender politics are real, and they have been real for thousands of years.
>I would suggest y'all stop taking gendered analysis of social phenomenon personally because it can only enrich your conceptual toolbox.
I would say that you should embrace intersubjectivity in your own position and understand that your posts cannot be objective, they are observed and interpreted by many others, so what matters is not what you say, rather, how it is observed by your audience. If you want it to be a strong argument /to HN/ you should take some steps to avoid throwing up red flags that HN readers are used to using to dismiss arguments out of hand as a tribal attack (this is what I meant by "incendiary" -- I was not incensed by it but the 'men are dumb but women are smart' trope is familiar because it is as ubiquitous as it is uninteresting. Your position is not this at all, but it superficially contains some of the same characteristics).
Again thanks for your thoughtful response, I enjoyed it a great deal.