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Is A Rational Nation Ruled By Science A Terrible Idea? (newscientist.com)
Slashdot reader schwit1 quotes an article from Jeffrey Guhin, an assistant professor of sociology at UCLA:
Imagine a future society in which everything is perfectly logical. What could go wrong...? Last week, US astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson offered up the perfect example of scientism when he proposed the country of Rationalia, in which "all policy shall be based on the weight of evidence". Tyson is a very smart man, but this is not a smart idea. It is even, we might say, unreasonable and without sufficient evidence... employing logic to consider the concept reveals that there could be no such thing...
First, experts usually don't know nearly as much as they think they do. They often get it wrong, thanks to their inherently irrational brains that -- through overconfidence, bubbles of like-minded thinkers, or just wanting to believe their vision of the world can be true -- mislead us and misinterpret information... And second, science has no business telling people how to live. It's striking how easily we forget the evil that following "science" can do. So many times throughout history, humans have thought they were behaving in logical and rational ways, only to realize that such acts have yielded morally heinous policies that were only enacted because reasonable people were swayed by "evidence".
First, experts usually don't know nearly as much as they think they do. They often get it wrong, thanks to their inherently irrational brains that -- through overconfidence, bubbles of like-minded thinkers, or just wanting to believe their vision of the world can be true -- mislead us and misinterpret information... And second, science has no business telling people how to live. It's striking how easily we forget the evil that following "science" can do. So many times throughout history, humans have thought they were behaving in logical and rational ways, only to realize that such acts have yielded morally heinous policies that were only enacted because reasonable people were swayed by "evidence".
Running things by believing whatever your friends on the internet says isn't really working out, so let's try it! If it doens't work, at least it'll be able to say that...
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
The collective resistance of political statists serve a PURPOSE in some respects to protect us from dangerous absolutist ideologies. A "pure" anything society is by definition dangerous.
So the softpedia spam is out and the newscientist spam is back?
Sigh. So tiresome.
Put your own personal resources where your own personal mouth is; that way, people with good ideas get rewarded with the ability to put more of society's limited resources towards other hopefully good ideas, and people with bad ideas lose their ability to squander society's limited resources on more bad ideas.
Quit trying to make everyone else a slave to your will.
Some of the best evidence we have suggests that "rationality" is based largely on gut feel. Read "Descartes' Error" by Antonio Damasio for a nice discussion.
For the children, of course.
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
Reasonable people can be swayed by both evidence and non-evidence. Evidence can be independently confirmed and backed by facts. The scientific method does not allow for intentional deception when practiced correctly because deception demonstrates facts to the contrary. It does allow for mistakes- but mistakes are possible otherwise.
So yes, running a nation based on science makes perfect sense because it applies all the principles that give us the best outcomes- our PCs, our electric cars, out trips to the moon, our modern medicines, atronomy. Those outcomes aren't possible via intuition. Science solved big problems and can effective measure the needs of the many against the needs of the few- something we have trouble with.
Maybe, but it would still be better than allowing religion or money telling people how to live.
“Earth needs a virtual country: #Rationalia, with a one-line Constitution: All policy shall be based on the weight of evidence[.]”
All the reaction to that tweet is based on what people assume he meant by it. This is obviously a sociologist's dream topic to discuss because it can mean whatever you want it to mean and debate it endlessly without ever reaching a conclusion.
... which is essentially a corrupt theocracy. I'd gladly live in a society run by rational ideas over what we have now.
I don't respond to AC's.
Just not smart enough to actually be a professor of physics like Michio Kaku, Sylvester Gates, Clifford Johnson, or Hakeem Oluseyi
Let's compare Science against the philosophies that current rule our societies.
Nationalism? Capitalism? Fear? RELIGION??!
I'll take science....
Being misled while attempting to base your laws off of actual physical evidence isn't is bad as us currently making up our laws based off the fucking BIBLE.
Any optimization approach/algorithm is set up to maximize the value of its utility function. Consider two utility functions for getting from "A" to "B", 'fewest miles' or 'fastest'. A direct route that takes you down 10 miles of roads at a speed limit of 30 MPH, compared to 20 miles on an interstate at 65 MPH, will win under the first utility but not under the second.
The same thing holds true for public policy. Do you want "most lives saved?" Do you want "greatest economic output?" Do you want "Least tax burden?"
So independent of any other consideration, there is huge judgement and therefore huge variation when trying to conduct 'rational policy' by what you choose as your utility function.
...according to someone who many or may not actually be rational about any given subject.
I've met a lot of high-reputation scientists and academics over the years, and far too many of them are pretty useless outside of their chosen profession. A significant number of them are pretty useless INSIDE their chosen profession, too - and those are the ones who would be talking the loudest about whatever government policies were in question. You wouldn't be getting Richard Feynman advising you about physics. You'd be getting that sociology professor who blathered their way to a doctorate setting everyone's social policy, with no way of stopping them.
Until we can figure out a way to rationally measure rational thinking, we'd be falling into the trap of believing "experts" who actually let their own self-interest control them.
Jeffrey Guhin's first argument is that science cannot be trusted because it gets it often gets it wrong. Well, the scientific method is aimed at correcting such mistakes, not at preventing them. The fact that we know the quoted mistakes are mistakes, is because of science, not in spite of science. Without the scientific method, the misguided, self-serving opinions of whoever holds power will not be challenged.
The second argument is that science has no business telling people how to live. True, but science does not do that (science describes, not prescribes). It's politicians that interpret (pseudo-)science who tell you how to live. If they were forced to base policy on science that can be challenged, then we stand a much better chance. So, science is a tool and can be misused, but that does not make it a bad tool. And at least it comes with a method to challenge and correct abuse. Science may not be perfect, but it's much better than all the other options.
The police gave Mr. Castile contradictory instructions
The instructions changed when the officer learned Castile was carrying a gun. That's not "contradictory".
In general I would rather have experts in charge than careerists - who account for 90% of politicians.
Having said that I remember an encounter with a mathematician colleague who was looking under the bonnet (hood) of his car for an electrical fault because both headlamps were out. It took only a little lateral thinking - and a bit of persuasion from me for him to accept that probably he'd been driving on just one, and hadn't noticed it till the second one failed. Nevertheless he accepted the counter argument, just imagine any politician doing that.
It is never science itself that is 'evil', it's the implementation of policies (chosen by irrational humans), then selectively plucking out disparate facts that (seemingly) support the policy and calling it 'scientifically-based'.
(a poor example) The chemical processes involved in (traditional) photography are scientific. They've been investigated, the knowledge shared, the processes broken down to their component parts to better understand, the results verified a million times.
Using photography to 'prove' that aliens occupied the local Piggly Wiggly or that the entire Apollo program happened on a back-lot in California is just selectively choosing parts of a larger set of knowledge to support a point of view.
I believe a rational society could be wonderful. How we get there, when people are inherently irrational? I have no idea.
What? Your post is the height of racism. "Go back to collecting their government checks?"
It has already been tried to some degree. Nazi Germany based a lot of its policies on the treasure of science from the execution off crippled and mentally ill people who were scientifically shown to be a burden to society presently or in the future with their T4 program or their eventual final solution for those of lesser heritage through the scientific wonders of Eugenics.
And this proud scientific achievement was not alone in just Nazi Germany. Eugenics was prevalent in many areas outside of Germany including the USA with forced sterilization of lesser people and the birth of organizations designed to continue limiting births of lesser people although by convincing them of the neccesity rather than by force. Planned parenthood for instance doesn't have an abortion clinic in any area without a substantial minority population. They go into schools and teach children their life is ruined if they have kids so use protection.
The basis of a rational actor is that:
1) all policies would have the precise intended effect outlined as part of the policy. All opposition would be able to lodge their predictions of actual outcomes vsv policies and outline any actual intended outcomes that are obviously different than stated. Actor could mitigate with changes before implementation or object.
2) there would be an expected realistic time frame after which any policy would be assessed to see if it met 1) or is meeting 1) or possibly is meeting objectors assessment of actual intended consequence.
3) if they make a mistake and a program, policy or decision fails to meet 1) within the time frame of 2) they would revoke it and try something new or make changes based on what was learned during the time frame in 2).
4) all changes would be intended to be slow unless responding to a crisis to avoid instability.
Current actors have few rules:
1) How do I get in power and stay in power
For some reason the last 20 years or more has seen people attempt 1) without actually appealing to the populace as if there weren't democracies anymore ... for some reason the last several years of instability is a huge surprise to everyone. Conservatives losing power in Canada, Trump and Sanders in the US, Brexit, various unrest and unexpected groups gaining more influence and power in Europe ... In Rationalia the people would propose the objectives (limited by constitutional protections) and the government would project those desires.
What I love about this is that a sociologist, of all people, a practitioner of a "science" almost as soft (read: inaccurate and trend-driven) as psychology, feels compelled to weigh in on the unreasonable nature of trying for actual correctness.
The problem with a science run society is only that science is not (yet, anyway) able to correctly identify the correct paths that would lead to the results Tyson imagines.
As for eugenics, the basic idea is fine. The day comes when you can ensure that your offspring are genetically wired to be intelligent, stable, and healthy, and you don't see to it that is the case... clearly your parents didn't, either. Because you're stupid. But we're not there. Yet. Still, you'll note that choosing mates tends to bias heavily towards the successful, strong, healthy, and intelligent in various combinations. The attempt to tune for better results in pretty much built-in.
Implementations of the valid ideas that underlie eugenics thus far have suffered from not nearly enough actual ability to determine and control outcomes, mis-identification of problems and use of force which should never be an element of breeding, and a disturbing tendency to try to fix things after the fact by edict almost as regressive as the problems they were trying to address, which attempts were both cruel and pretty much absolutely guaranteed to be ineffective.
Tyson's not exactly wrong. He's just too far ahead of the curve.
Really? We already have rationality. A human life is valued at, I dunno $200k, but at some fixed value currently. This is based on a rationally determined value. So, if it's cheaper to kill people than to avoid putting poison in the water, it is rational to put poison in the water and kill people. This also decides whether you get your hernia operation, or whether your doctor gets paid. It determines whether a traffic light is put in at a dangerous intersection.
Although to be fair the older Eastern Block engineers I have met are all quite smart.
Representative democracy are relics which rose from past limitations in communications technology. There is no reason why we can't have direct democracy in the modern world. We don't even need full time law enforcement with every citizen are empowered to enforce the laws. Corruption will go away since the power aren't concentrated to the entitled few.
> They often get it wrong, thanks to their inherently irrational brains that -- through overconfidence, bubbles of like-minded thinkers, or just wanting to believe their vision of the world can be true -- mislead us and misinterpret information
Yes, but
1) Most are willing to admit they are wrong when an experiment result contradicts their theories.
2) Most are looking for the right answer, not the most profitable one.
I'd take that over our current Golden Rule model every time. Just look at leaded gasoline, waste disposal, or climate change to see examples of the golden rule hurting the average person. We have gotten rid of leaded gasoline, but it took one scientist nine years to convince the government that big business was lying. We're still fighting big business for good, long-term waste disposal and to minimize climate change
The only challenge I see is that, if we ever did switch to the Science Rule model, greedy idiots will claim to be scientists and put the true scientists in the minority, which would bring us back to the Golden Rule model anyway.
(I say Most in the bullets above because I'm pretty sure folks in it for the money these days wouldn't be scientists. But I also know there are a few bad scientists, so I sure as heck won't say 100%. I have no idea of how to test a scientist to see if they are good or not, other than to have well educated folks review a scientist's previous work.)
...should have died in the pot-fueled dorm room bullsh*t session they were formed in. This is one of them.
Like the article says, scientists are people too, and they may have finely honed their knowledge in their area of expertise, but beyond that, they know as much- or as little- as anyone else.
It's also absurd to think that the selection of topics of study, or the lead 'scientists' in charge of an area of policy, won't be driven by considerations outside of strict evidence. They'll fabricate it to obtain the pre-determined outcome- because that's what they do today in highly charged fields of study.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
When science gets things wrong, others can step in an find the mistakes, re-test, illuminate, fix the problems, and get the science right.
Science *can* tell us how to live, and can tell us how to live *better*. By measuring the desires of the people, one can formulate a platform to achieve those desires. Then, as above, you use your measurements to allocate resources, determine the taxation needed to implement policy, etc, etc, allowing policy to be refined and optimized.
I think the problem is that rampant anti-intellectualism has taken hold in many places. People don't like admitting they don't know what they're talking about, especially by someone who *does* know what they're talking about. It requires inner reflection that reveals to one's own ego the degree of personal ignorance regarding subject X. No one's ego can deal with that, and the ego will do everything it can to protect and insulate itself.
Just think of the bonus we'd get on our science research! We'd be ahead on tech in no time if we switch our government to science-focused technocracy. I mean, sure, we'd probably lose the military bonuses we get from our current government type, but since when have we had a war where that would have mattered? If we switch, we could achieve a tech victory in no time!
There's one huge reason why ruling your society based on "science" is a bad idea: What you will generally find is that, whatever method you use to govern, it will eventually fall under the sway and corruption of the rich and powerful. Attempting to merge science and politics won't result in politics being ruled by scientists, but in science being run by politicians.
Of course, there are other more specific problems, one being that "scientists" are often not as detached and rational as they believe themselves to be. What constitutes sufficient evidence is itself under constant debate. There are difficulties with the question of whether science can determine morality... And more. Every vague or uncertain point and every place where there's wiggle-room will become a tool of people seeking political power.
And why do you think "creationism" is a thing, after all? You try to marry science and politics, and politicians will exploit ignorance and uncertainty to make their positions sound "scientific" to those who don't know better. Neil deGrasse Tyson wants more of that? He should stick to physics, and stay out of fields he doesn't understand.
You tell me.
http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/They_Saved_Lisa's_Brain
Good luck with a rational economy!
So far as I can see, these articles express the view that a society based entirely on objective decision making wouldn't be perfect and therefore shouldn't be considered. Well, Duh! Surely it is completely obvious that it wouldn't be perfect, not least because there are large areas of the human condition not amenable to the scientific approach.
But, surely the question is not whether such a society would be perfect, but whether it would be better - on average - than other arrangements currently on offer. I have no idea what the answer to that question is, but may I submit that if one is to postulate such a society then that is precisely the question which needs to be asked.
I think the OP is falling into an anti-science fear-mongering state of mind that misrepresents the core idea of evidence-based policy making. The best thing about science is that it is constantly improvingâ"getting closer to what we might call (with some inherent romanticism) the truth. The anti-science knee-jerk reaction to this is that, because scienceâ"at some given point in its progressionâ"has not yet reached "the truth" then it is wrong and therefore worthless. I argue that there is no better way to move consistently in the direction of truth than the rigorous application of evidence and careful testing that is true science. When it comes to the application of what is learned through the scientific methodâ"a moving target that is constantly improvingâ"to public and governmental policies and laws, there is more than one way to use it, depending on the nature of the government installed. A totalitarian society might tend towards additive applicationâ"creating new laws and rules for society to limit its bounds. A case of "science says this change is optimal so this change will now happen," for example. This is not a methodology that most of us would find comfortable. But in a representative society that values fairness and freedom, such as what we aspire to here in the United States, the application should be of a subtractive nature. Science should be a filter to prevent patently wrong and harmful laws for being enacted and a measuring stick to judge the validity of laws created in more ignorant times. With science-based knowledge continuously improving, something no other form of knowledge acquisition can claim, applying that knowledge to prevent oppressive or dangerous laws is an obvious choiceâ"far better than letting the laws bend to the wills of lobbyists and political powerhouses which have no secure claim to truth or accuracy and, in fact, are often dead-set against them. There is no inherent imperative that science should or would be used to inflict legal restrictions upon American citizensâ"that form of application requires a more totalitarian government. (A form of government that a scientific analysis might steer a society away from.) We should embrace the benefit of scienceâ"more accurate knowledgeâ"and not ignore what we've learned by sticking our heads in the sand and claiming tradition, expediency, selfishness, and ignorance trump truth.
Does that sound like a place you'd want to live? Think it through.
> 1. Concerning the murder of Philando Castile by police. The police gave Mr. Castile contradictory instructions. If they did not want to kill him, why did they give him contradictory instructions? The only reason for such contradictory instructions is to be able to kill him and then claim he did not follow their directions. The contradictory instructions given by the police show premeditation in the murder of Philando Castile. These contradictory instructions did not start on that night. They go back decades. This means every cop who ever gave contradictory instructions, everyone who trained a cop to give contradictory instructions, and everyone who gave legal advice to a cop to give contradictory instructions is guilty of criminal conspiracy to commit the capital murder of Philando Castile and should be charged accordingly.
?
> 2. If the goal is to overthrow the government, know that fighting in an insurgency is hard work. It requires the kind of hard work that most members of Black Lives Matters would call “white privilege.” I mean get up before dawn, sweat all day digging trenches, and go to bed exhausted, only to get up in the middle of the night and run some more. Look at the typical video of cops vs. protesters. The cops have body armor, tear gas, training, shields, etc. They are backed up by tactical experts with very expensive firearms that they have spent years training with. Look at the long line of perfectly maintained vehicles in the background. The protesters are not even bothering to cover their faces. There is an old saying: “Train more, bleed less.” The US Government has nothing to worry about. These protesters will go back to collecting their government checks in a few days.
The point isn't to overthrow the government, the point is to annoy it enough to do something. This is sort of the purpose of freedom to protest.
> 3. Black lives do not matter, at least not to black people. If black lives mattered to black mothers, they would not be aborting their unborn and newborn black babies, and the US black population would be more than twice what it is today. If black lives mattered to young black men, the black-on-black homicide rate would be 25 times lower, where the white-on-white homicide rate it. If black lives mattered to blacks, they would not idolize a criminal lifestyle full of drugs, prostitution, and violence.
Has it occurred to you that in terms of economic power, black people are, overall, have much less power than other Americans? Poverty usually breeds crime. The crime makes headlines. And all everyone sees are poor black people committing crimes. It's the same up here in Canada with indigenous people. The drunk ones in the streets are the most visible, so many Canadians just extrapolate from that and apply that view on all indigenous people. Then, when they complain about poor treatment, everyone else watching it on the news will do exactly what you're doing now. Dismiss it as the ramblings of poor, lazy criminals.
> 4. How many laws were violated by the Dallas Police Department using a robot and an explosive device to kill a man?
Probably none. Police have the right to kill threats, this man was clearly a threat.
Way too many words have been said while beating around this simple bush:
Any conclusion about how something "should" be is a combination of two elements:
1) how things already are
2) our preferences
Science gives us #1. Our values give us #2. Eliminate either from the equation, and you have all kinds of stupidity and suffering.
That is really all there is to it.
I don't think ruled would be the right word. Most science is open to interpretation. Scientists, even "experts" in their field, often cannot agree about anything, string theory versus quantum mechanics for example.
A nation ruled by science is no guarantee of benevolence. Take away any sort of human factor in society and you could get people like Josef Mengele.
Better to "retire" the elderly by sending them to be ground up into "pure pork sausage", while they can still contribute. Ditto children (and adults, if any get past childhood screening) who are incapable of thinking clearly....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Freedom requires a certain amount of illogical latitude. There are all kinds of things people should be free to do which might cause harm to themselves or not be rational or logical. You cannot be free in a society which imposes strict logic and reason. Logic and science would seek to minimize risk and harm, but without risk and possible harm, innovation can be severely stifled. So while it is a good thing to generally live life rationally, and with laws based on science... it cannot be taken to an extreme. And I might add, it is not in our nature to be THAT logical- emotion, religion, fantasy, faith, art, etc, are all important parts of being human and to necessary to extract the most meaning from living and enjoy the world around us.
Using scientific reasoning to rationally choose between potential decisions is a great idea, but it doesn't solve the problem of deciding the basis of the questions. Logic can really only solve for one variable at a time. People will still have to decide which societal variables to solve and how to balance the weight of multiple variables. Fair is never fair to everybody. You are always having to make trade-offs between forms of fairness: equity, equality and welfare.
-rd
First, experts usually don't know nearly as much as they think they do. They often get it wrong, thanks to their inherently irrational brains that -- through overconfidence, bubbles of like-minded thinkers, or just wanting to believe their vision of the world can be true -- mislead us and misinterpret information... And second, science has no business telling people how to live.
What is it with this recent trend of anti-expertism? This arguement was used in the Brexit as well as several political campaigns of recent times. People confronted with evidence that something isn't working rather than address the evidence move straight into either:
a) attacking something about a study that has nothing to do with the evidence e.g. who commissioned it or the fact that it disagrees with an own internally biased study (see Australian election where the Coalition attacked Labor's economic credentials as non existent despite their treasurer winning awards for his policy and the direct impact of his policy keeping a country out of a recession.
b) attacking people who believe in studys saying things like "The public is sick of experts". Interesting this is a statement often made by a career politician rather than their far more educated advisers. Damn those smart people with their fancy degrees, what would they know.
This is the rise of President Camacho
This is not entirely correct. Humans will respond poorly to situations that do not favor their happiness. As another poster pointed out, the issue with any optimization strategy is defining the utility function-- what are you trying to maximize?
For a society, there are a number of things that you could try to maximize. Wealth, for instance. However, wealth is really only useful when there is a disproportion of it, since otherwise it becomes useless. (a thing that is universally ubiquitous has no trade value.)
I proposed "utilitarian happiness" as the utility function. That is a composite value, derived from the sum total of the society's basic satisfaction, after all the things that make them dissatisfied are weighed in.
Failure to consider the implications of crushing human emotions would result in a serious negative to the total utilitarian happiness of the society, and would be a measurable metric that a rational society could then evaluate, and make adjustments for-- assuming utilitarian happiness is the utility metric.
Being a composite metric, such an optimized system will likely enter a local maxima state, where after that point, additional policy changes would only be demonstrably detrimental. The cynic in me says that this would be the death of the civilization's government, because after that point, government officials would have very little to do besides analyzing data that tells them they are doing things perfectly, and most people attracted to political positions, seek them to enact changes-- the very thing their data says is contraindicated. I feel it would be this conundrum between the irrational wants of the leadership, against the rational data their government is founded on, that would lead to the ultimate dissolution of such a government.
I'm not sure we can claim that supporting unproductive members of society is, or is not, "logical" unless we k ow what the society's end goal is.
And I'm not aware of any means by which science or mere rationality can determine such a thing.
Therefore the entire premise falls flat on it's face, right out the starting gate. Human beings are just animals who happen to be smarter than the other animals on this planet, and this simple FACT is reflected day after day in the news, and in our recorded history. We can't even get people to give up the totally irrational, illogical, and sometimes silly idea of 'god/gods' and religion, and by the way look at what it does to our so-called 'civilization'? It is ruining it, it is holding us back, it could destroy us. Don't bother with questions like this until the human brain manages to evolve past the point of needing mythical, omniscient, omnipotent beings to explain the Universe and our own existence. The need of people for such things just screams out to me that our poor caveman brains are still just too primitive and simple to even accept that we can't know everything, and it panics and makes things like 'god' up so it doesn't completely melt down. When the human brain reaches a point where it can deal with not understanding everything without having to say 'god did it', then maybe we can have a conversation about being 'rational' and 'logical'.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Politics is politics, and if being a certain religion is bad, then eugenics is a means to wipe out that bad trait. Bad in this case can mean some society doesn:t like them. E.g. deleting people because they believe in a different god.
There are many different logic systems and using the wrong one in context can be bad, as any young man who has tried to use formal logic when girlfriend logic was contextually required has learned the hard way.
But the core of the problem doesn't change: It's who defines what logic is appropriate that causes the grief because any logic system is based on a values table. Sometimes this is explicit sometimes implicit, but it's always there. This difference between values is the core problem and where the solution must be found and defined in such a way as to be acceptable to all players -- which is one very tall order.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
If we can even have a rational discussion about this, then it seems the rational approach would fix itself. If not, then we'll never know anyway.
First, experts usually don't know nearly as much as they think they do. They often get it wrong, thanks to their inherently irrational brains that -- through overconfidence, bubbles of like-minded thinkers, or just wanting to believe their vision of the world can be true -- mislead us and misinterpret information...
I'm not quite sure how you can make "scientists" mean "experts"; a scientist is somebody who conducts research, guided by evidence and logic - a true scientist is instictively averse to making bold statements about how things are, because they know how easily a good-sounding theory can be tripped up by reality - whereas "experts" is a much more loosely defined group, ranging from those few who actually know what they talk about, to the many that don't, but like to hear their opinions; a certain Mr Trump springs to mind. Being guided by science would be a good idea, but the ever present risk is that they quickly get sidelined by the usual crowd of dodgy dealers that we call politicians.
Another thing: it is probably time to stop talking about "the inherently irrational brain" as if it was an established fact. It is in fact nothing more than a myth that became popular in the early 20th century or thereabouts, because we didn't have a sufficiently good understanding of what happens in the brain. Now that we begin to know some of the details, it turns out that it is in fact perfectly logical, even if it is rather complex. The brain is not "inherently irrational" (what does that even mean?), but since it can only process a limited amount of information, some of which may be false, the outcome will inevitably seem irrational at times to others, even it it seems perfectly rational to the person.
And second, science has no business telling people how to live. It's striking how easily we forget the evil that following "science" can do. So many times throughout history, humans have thought they were behaving in logical and rational ways, only to realize that such acts have yielded morally heinous policies that were only enacted because reasonable people were swayed by "evidence".
Science is one step ahead this time - scientists are not telling anybody how to live. The role of science can only ever be advisory - science at best enables you to find ways to solve problems. And again, science is not "science"; the fact that (pseudo-) science has so often been used as an excuse for some agenda, does not make it the fault of science and scientists, I hope that is self-evident. Scientists discover how the world works, and idiots who don't understand or care about the wider ramifications then abuse the discoveries to satisfy their own, shortsighted gratification. Tyson knows, without doubt, that his idealised dream cannot be realised, but it is still a good dream - something to strive towards, I think.
science has no business telling people how to live.
Is the author seriously suggesting science shouldn't tell people that smoking is dangerous to their health and the health of those around them? That for their own well being they shouldn't smoke? What about pregnant mothers who do drugs? Does the author truly believe that women shouldn't be told how they're poisoning their unborn child through drugs?*
If the author is a scientist (I didn't check), they should have their credentials revoked. It is well within the realm of science to tell people how to live their lives BUT not force them to. People should be free to determine their own course of action based on the scientific evidence and in so doing, can not later complain no one told them something was bad for them (see cigarette lawsuits for a perfect example of such a situation).
* I only bring this up because of the whiners who talk about abortion killing a person yet remain absolutely silent when pregnant women poison that same person for nine straight months. Apparently poisoning is perfectly acceptable to them so long as something comes out. After all, they're not the ones who are going to pay for the mentally/physically deformed kid.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
If your a rational expert an you're wrong you admit you're wrong and make corrections. You are also always iterating. Always testing and improving. This is what people don't like about socialists. Unlike you're communism/capitalism with simple (and wrong) answers to complex problems socialism says you can't just fix it once and *bang* utopia. There's no such thing as a simple solution to a complex problem. If there's a simple solution then you're problem wasn't really complex, was it?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Bacause you know, humans?
Humans just don't like anything.
As with the design of operating systems, it makes sense to distinguish between policy and mechanism. Science and rationality may or may not be a sufficient basis for creating policies. And here by "policy" I mean things like "people should be equal before the law", "healthcare should be a right", "what's good for Wall St. is good for America", "all citizens should be armed to the teeth", "Mars colonization should be our highest priority". That is, policies are goal statements, and reasonable people can certainly disagree about what our goals should be as a society. Mechanisms are the means we use to achieve our goals, that is, the means by which policies are implemented. So a policy might be: "wealth inequality should be bounded", and mechanisms to achieve it might include "progressive income tax", "subsidies for the poor", or "universal basic income". Given a policy, science and rationality are certainly applicable to designing and evaluating the efficacy of mechanisms to achieve the policy.
Our biggest problem is that most of our political discourse is consumed with debating what we call policies, but which are usually mechanisms to achieve some policy. The policy is seldom explicitly stated and almost never debated, while the participants in a typical political debate take it for granted that everyone accepts whatever implicit policy their proposed mechanism seeks to achieve. But even worse, we implement mechanisms without ever tying them to an explicit policy goal, which makes it difficult to determine whether a given mechanism is working. Politically you get a situation where anyone who questions a mechanism is assumed to be disagreeing with the unstated policy behind the mechanism. The result is that bad mechanisms become entrenched, and are no longer subject to rational or scientific examination. And that just sucks.
If I could interject one question into every political debate, it would be: what are you trying to achieve? And if I could have a second question it would be: how will you know if you've achieved it?
Except politicians know even less, and mislead and misinterpret even more than scientists. So basically, the suggestion isn't to move to a system of perfect rationalism, which as you've said, doesn't actually exists. The proposal is instead to move towards more rationalism driven by empirical justification. It would almost certainly be better than what we have now.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Replace the word "science" with "religion" in the paragraph below and that is what we had for the last 2000(?) years....
Quote: "First, experts usually don't know nearly as much as they think they do. They often get it wrong, thanks to their inherently irrational brains that -- through overconfidence, bubbles of like-minded thinkers, or just wanting to believe their vision of the world can be true -- mislead us and misinterpret information... And second, science has no business telling people how to live. It's striking how easily we forget the evil that following "science" can do. So many times throughout history, humans have thought they were behaving in logical and rational ways, only to realize that such acts have yielded morally heinous policies that were only enacted because reasonable people were swayed by "evidence"."
Who would control the science machine and how would the goals be determined? What if there are conflicting values such as stability and freedom? How would we rank one over the other?
This is typical of the stupid ideas that result from a Harvard education. Highly creative, thoughtful, interesting and wrong. It demonstrates once again that intelligence is overrated. Good judgment requires something more and Harvard trains it out of some very smart people.
It is irrational to waste protein. It's even irrational to keep people around when a machine could do the job more efficiently.
...so what could possibly go wrong?
"You will pay for your lack of vision..." - Emperor Palpatine to Ray Charles
oh come on, this is Neil deGrasse Tyson. He's an entertainer! I'd like to recommend for anyone interested John Gray's seminal work "Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals" if you want to understand hubris and scientism of Tyson in detail.
I watched a documentary about bees (I think it was a "Nova Science Now" segment). A guy set up a bee colony on an island. The bees were going to need a new hive, so he set up 2 possible locations nearby, one was deliberately made to be better than the other. Bee scouts went out looking for a new location, some found the good hive, others the less good hive and came back to tell the colony. They communicate by pointing and shaking their bodies. The bees who found the good colony were more vigorous. Also, when scouts for one location encountered scouts from the other, telling the hive to go to the other place, they would try to suppress them. Eventually the colony made a decision to go to the better location. But the comment was made that this was very similar to how neurons stimulate and suppress each other to reach a decision in an individual brain. so it's a kind of neural network.
After watching the documentary, I was struck by the idea that this is how a human society ought to work. Different people from different walks of life and temperament debating each other, disagreeing with and maybe trying to suppress those they disagree with. But in a healthy society nobody gets to dominate! When some faction gets the upper hand too much, everything goes bad.
Anyway, I think the neural network model is better than the 'rational' one. I've read where sometimes artificial neural networks design stuff better than usual logical engineering methods, and nobody can figure out why they work so well. Human society might be like that.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
I find it incredibly absurd that the author is trying to use reason and science to argue against reason and science.
I believe this is called "cutting off the branch on which you sit".
What would Spock do?
I believe is was Karl Popper who said it wasn't because it wasn't falsifiable. Communists saw no way in which it could be wrong.
I'll add that certain tenets of socialism and libertarianism aren't even logical. "Everyone should be paid the same" (socialism) and "interfering with the economy is wrong" (libertarians) are MORAL values, not logical values. Maybe splitting the difference taxing/regulating a moderate amount would create an optimal balance and a better quality of life?
Also, Rational Wiki is full of irrational feminists.
"First, experts usually don't know nearly as much as they think they do. They often get it wrong, thanks to their inherently irrational brains that -- through overconfidence, bubbles of like-minded thinkers, or just wanting to believe their vision of the world can be true -- mislead us and misinterpret information... And second, science has no business telling people how to live. It's striking how easily we forget the evil that following "science" can do. So many times throughout history, humans have thought they were behaving in logical and rational ways, only to realize that such acts have yielded morally heinous policies that were only enacted because reasonable people were swayed by "evidence"."
LIKE GLOBAL WARMING!! (Oops, I mean climate change.)
I say fact #1 is importance 1, you say it is importance 10. We come to different "rational" conclusions.
It's been shown that some humans with amygdila damage can't think rationally. They can't weight the different facts correctly.It can get really bad with snakes which are flagged as "interesting" but not flagged as "be afraid".
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Theocrazies (;o) are perfectly logical societies once the most powerful will be put under the unrelenting religious law. A logical society requires continuing scientific pursue of knowledge to shape and deliver the premises of its logical processes for it to converse to as near reality as possible. Honest societies are better at avoiding risks, ensuring their survival and produce value to their occupants.
The idea that people should be "ruled" is the real problem with this. The specific "rulers" don't matter. People are free. Free people may decide to form a government to serve them, not to rule them. Free people need government to do things an individual can't really do by himself, like build a road or mount a military defense.
Rulers are illegitimate. Wanting to rule over your neighbors is evil, regardless of whether you call yourself a scientist or a god-king.
This has already been tried. The results have not exactly been encouraging.
The problem is that even the best experts in any field know very little. The theories that exist probably cover something like 0.1% of everything that we need to understand in order to make informed decisions that would optimise global happiness. And that's assuming we can agree that Utilitarianism makes sense. It's a complete non-starter. And it will have adverse effects when people stubbornly refuse to admit that it doesn't work.
Let's take one example. You are clearly going to need a science of history in order to predict what effect your policies will have in the long run. But historians have virtually nothing in terms of over-arching theory that can guide us.
The "solution" that people have come up with in the past is to simply make theories up out of thin air and make it obligatory by law to believe in them.
Yes, if it's Open Source; else it's masturbation by those 1 in a 1000.
Since Neil deGrasse Tyson is involved, a better name would've been Self-Promotionia.
#DeleteChrome
Its a great idea but completely unrealistic. It doesn't take human nature at all. Most humans are not even close to logical thinkers, or even being able to do so. In fact most of us are apparently hardwired to do illogical irrational things, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.
Just one example is the billons of people that partake in the invention of and systematic belief in multiple religions, even though the most unintelligent person can see none of those religions are even internally logically consistent much less have any scientific basis.
Religion without Science is Blind Einsein
What is truth? Neither Google nor wikipedia have the answer.
The old fallacy rears its head again, that somehow, humanity can only be 'moral' if ultimately relying on religion.
Yeah, some horrible, truly horrible, things have been done, justified by the "science". But far, far more, I would argue, have been done due to a) religion, b) nationalism, c) racism, and d) plain old greed.
I didn't even read the article but let's just replace all occurrences of the word 'science' with 'religion' and I bet the article will read just as well (poorly).
There is nothing stopping advocates of "rationality" (presumably meaning the standard atheistic non-sequitur to "my particular subjective norms") from forming their own utopian society, which of course should have no difficulty obtaining and maintaining the support of the populace by quality of their "rationality".
Nothing stopping this for hundreds of years. Where is it, if it could, and therefore naturally should, "work"?
The relevant CS Lewis quote:
I would note that Tyson's suggestion was "weight of evidence", not "science". Science is not the only discipline based upon "weight of evidence", so are a wide range of other fields, including engineering, logistics, and (one would hope) the more grounded and less speculative areas of such fields as economics and Guhin's own sociology.
What is the alternative to basing decisions on weight of evidence? Basing them on wishful thinking?
I am a physicist. What makes my job interesting is not endless connect-the-dots logical connections, but the opposite: my job is to make (educated) guesses based on imperfect information.
The interesting part comes in figuring out when there's enough evidence to make a reasonable conclusion. We (the other scientists and I) debate whether a piece of data is really "true," what conclusions could be supported by collected evidence, and what "reasonable" means in "reasonable conclusion." I work with two other physicists, one of whom I trained, and one was trained by my grad school mentor. Even with such similar backgrounds, we disagree on all of these seemingly logical and mathematically calculable things daily. We work at a company, and can't afford to continue gathering data until we all agree. So, I have to make decisions based on incomplete information and logical disagreement all the time.
My dad is a lawyer/politician who has held elected office for most of my life. As an elected official, his job is to make decisions with a very controlled timeline, and somewhat controlled budget. This means he's routinely making decisions without all the information one would wish. While law lacks the rigor of the statistical calculations we use in science, the idea of gradations of certainty is there, and is used in politics.
Essentially, the argument that evidence can be gathered until a logical political conclusion can be reached is impractical and not rooted in reality. We do not even do that in science. Further, the suggestion that scientists have a monopoly on logic and evidence determination is wrong. The implication that politicians and government officials broadly do not currently desire to make logical conclusions based on evidence is counter-productive and incorrect. Certainly there are corrupt officials who do not desire this, but to imply that our government as a whole is illogical is dangerous.
That's because responsible parents with "white privilege" of common sense already teach their kids that they need to use protection or abstain until they are ready for the responsibility of being a parent, and that if they become a parent too young they WILL miss out on things young people of a similar age do, because when you have a baby it takes a lot of time and effort and your "day" for other things is drastically shorter until the baby becomes a little bit or little girl , and even then you need to arrange for childcare or limit your activities.
So yeah , planned parenthood not necessary in my neighborhood because everyone already knows.
But what will liberals do for fun without all of their emotional outbursts and climate hoaxing?
"And second, science has no business telling people how to live"
Nor does religion, like it does right now in many countries.
I reject this general class of idea as fascist in the sense that fascism is the opposite of egalitarianism.
Every naive child can tell you why "I and people like me should be in charge". Sure. It's good to be the king.
Unfortunately I and most of the population will wind up being not-the-king, and we don't like that.
On a second level, science is a poor tool for ruling people. As very well pointed out in TFA.
Thirdly, science is too damned tedious for everyday decisions.
I have two jobs: I work in a lab where we've got time to describe some undesired behaviour of a device-under-test, reproduce it, construct experiments to disprove various possible causes, and then repeat the process when the developers fix the product and send it back for verification.
I also work in the field, where we have to get product down the line and out the door.
The scientific method is one hell of a lot more useful in the first job than the second.
Of course I would like to apply this scientific kind of thinking everywhere; I have some education and like to think I'm smarter than those around me because of it. But the truth is I'm not smarter. "You're making a science project of this job." is NOT a compliment.
Nobody cares that their theory is wrong; as long as saleable product goes out the door.
That's the society you want to rule with science. It will never happen; they don't have time for you.
I understand frustration with government, and the sentiment "If I were King...".
NDT is just telling us "I and like-minded people should be in charge". NDT happens to see himself as a scientist, QED.
I want to say to NDT that as a public advocate, for the philosophy that I happen to embrace:
"Neil, when you do stuff like this you're not helping! You are to science what RMS is to FOSS."
"Neil, you're a genius in your field, far more accomplished than I or anyone I know."
"Neil, you're also an astrophysicist. Go read about Linus Pauling and Vit. C."
Some people are helping promote public engagement in science and rational thought.
Feynman, Sagan, Destin from Smarter Every Day, Martyn Poliakoff, Sir David Attenborough, etc. etc. etc. Well, Feynman and Sagan have stopped obviously, but the should still be towards the top of the list.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Even with science everything does not become black and white. There are several things that make decisions still very grey
- uncertainty. You have to consider
a) the observations/inputs are not 100% known
b) the science itself is not 100% known
c) the environment (sort of extension of a) is not 100% known
- tradeoffs. How many fish should we catch? There are would be several options, do you want to
a) little impact on natural levels
b) harvest regularly at a natural sustainable rate
c) manage the harvest
d) deplete the stock for some other reason
- management goals
a) keep human impact on the planet low
b) maximize humans, manage planet
c) something in between
Base policy on religious teachings?
Which teachings?
Which interpretations of the teachings? Mixed fabrics? Pork?
What do you do when the teachings contradict reality? What is the value of PI? Earth flat?
Under both of the above there are many contradictions.
ya know, that being ruled part?
https://postimg.org/image/udhenos07/
people who have commit treason desire to rule over you, yet most of you are still TODAY all for it!
There is effectively no more RULE OF LAW, yet today most of you pretend.
As you worship BIG MEDIA LIES and blindly consent to the TARGETING OF INNOCENTS
Some are waking up.. But will it be fast enough to recognize the globalists and adept enough to discern the Carrots and Sticks. Not everything is bad, MOST IS right now though! The Free Stuff Army perpetuates this, teach them to grow food, to produce things, shut down these retarded schools if they won't BOYCOTT THEM! We got freaking SHanty TOWNS POPPING UP WAKE THE HELL UP.
Go On STRIKE, de-fund the enemy, stop donating to Big Media dictating the Message, and on and on and on.
LOOK AROUND~! You don't HAVE freedom of speech, BIG MEDIA DOES!
They own all the damn frequencies and station id's. YOU DO NOT.
That border open, Tell me WHY? Which other country does it? And offers WELFARE!? .il is a JEWISH STATE) Okay then, I want the DUAL ISRAEL/US Citizens RACIST BY NETENYAHOO LOGIC, OUT OF GOVERNMENT NOW. They all have a LOYALTY OATH PROBLEM AT THE LEAST that is a BIG CONCERN.
ISRAEL -- RACIST (Jewish is Religion, not RACE, yet Netenyahoo said
yeah the worlds going to hell. You gonna stop it or PERPETUATE IT?
Better SEE the truth first. Cause that Snap decision crap that ya buy into today, that gladio B crap, the Hegelian Marxist town halls all affects our entire social and political structure and it's a FAIL.
Do you not get it still?
Ya want to continue to talk tech while pretending there's no globalist agenda takeover of the United States, Yet we must come together and figure out a way to stop this treason, otherwise I am not your friend because your ignoring is the same as CONSENT.
They are disarming you while flooding the bnorders with jihad, cartels, and bad stuff. Now there are death cult TERRORIST attacks.
IT's outrage, it's FAIL
DHS is in opposition to the Constition, where they ARE it can not exist. Yet they FAILED to stop the death cults. You give up consent to them and they FAIL
NSA ditto
CIA ditto
FBI ditto
Getting down to local police and sheriff. Then ME and YOU..
I say the constitution comes back, the traitors get indicted (hopefully found guilty and off to Ft Leavenworth)
but if you still think I am fringe, you still think I am off...
ask yourself
Why do drug dealers shoot each other on street corners?
Answer: Joe the drug dealer cannot call the cops and tell them that Jack the drug dealer ripped him off and sold him a bag of oregano instead of weed. Joe also can't sue Jack. Thus, when the threshold of his tolerance is crossed Joe has only the use of direct force available to him because he has no recourse to the law to settle his dispute with Jack.
The FIRST foundation of civil society is The Rule of Law. Without it there is literally nothing other than the Law of the Jungle, commonly known as "he who has the biggest teeth (or the most guns) and is willing to use them first wins."
Eugenics is NOT about measuring people's head to determine intelligence, it is about artificial selection and much needed quality control. That was just the tool used at the time, turned it is wrong, doesn't mean eugenics is wrong. For example, medicine was treating sick people by bleeding them, we know that's BS today, does that make medicine BS? Sure enough, medicine is BS today, but not because it used to treat people by bleeding them dry, but because it has turned into a very profitable business that makes money on sickness and has zero interest of preventing it, as long as there are enough healthy slaves to meet labor demand.
Eugenics is NOT scientifically invalid, the measurement of intelligence by head circumference is. A big difference, not even subtle.
The problem with that is that more policy addresses preferences, not objective fact. Scientific fact would compel everyone to marry outside their ethnic group, because diversity makes for a stronger genome. Telling some old school southerner he had to marry his white daughter to black man is a good way to get dead.
Neil the ass Tyson is a theist, who worships the god of scientism, but doesn't know what actual science is.
I keep reading the "we don't have all the facts" argument but the fact is basing all decisions on the weight of facts derived through a consensus that are open to change is a much better idea then basing it on made up information and views that have no room for change and no room for consensus opinions. Second Science as a broad concept can apply to a range of different studies including Economics so in short what Tyson is proposing is this.
We propose a law and if the majority of scientific journals, experts, and studies in the relevant field support the measures then it can come up for a vote. It's pretty easy to state that as a society we want to maximize the number of happy/content people so for social justice bills you have to prove that the measure makes more people happy/content and avoids hurting others, this one is for the RFRA people.
First stop politicizing science, then give me a call.
Science is already politicized and will be whether you like it or not. There is a role for people like Dr. Tyson to explain to the uninitiated what science means and just as important what it doesn't. Want to find out about our genetic code via embryonic stem cells? Better be ready to defend against irrational folks who think that means killing babies. Want to explore space? Better be ready to fight for funding which is a purely political battle.
Science is always political as soon as it gets used to justify policy decisions.
Does the knowledge brought by science make men happy? That I don't know. But I observe that man can be happy by deluding himself with false knowledge. I grant one must cultivate tolerance.
Scientists are intelligent but dumb. Whereas a regular worker drone is a cog, a scientist is merely a specific purpose cog. Scientists are very narrow minded, they look at the world through a microscope. They do not see the big picture.
Scientists are so dumb that they put their intellect into creating horrible weapons for evil people, which end up being used for crimes against humanity. Also, they are just as greedy as current corrupt leadership, they sell their intellect today just like they would sell their subject if they get in power.
Science is not really about being "brilliant" it is about pouring truckloads of money into research, it is a bunch of slightly more intelligent worker drones, employed to comb through a desert until they stumble upon something. Science is no longer about having intuition and genius ideas, it is not about solving puzzles to find the right door, it is about opening all the doors until you find something.
Those people are not leadership material, and their intellect is mostly hype. Surely, they know some "specific stuff" which regular people don't, but that's not really applicable in leadership and it is always at the expense of other knowledge. Scientists are not wise, and despite the fact they bash religion on a regular basis, they tend to overuse the phrase "I believe" when they get defensiveness about scientism and its foundation.
Lastly, scientism IS what's in power now ever since it displaced religion, and capitalism is one of its manifestations, scientism is NOT about science it just uses science, scientism is a religion on its own, it is still BS but backed by more up-to-date facts making it more plausible BS, it is religion 2.0, it has a prophet as well - his name was Darwin. Darwig inbred with his cousin and lost a little more kids than it was normal for his social stratum, then got angry at the god he was much fond of prior to that, and went on a crusade. Authorities were seeking to remove the church from power and picked up on his theories, not because they were the most sound, but because they were the most beneficial to the establishment.
Eugenics is wrong because it presupposes, without evidence in.many cases, what a desirable or undesirable trait.
Not quite. It substitutes what a person thinks is a desirable trait (selective breeding) for what evolution would determine what is a desirable trait. Humans as it turns out are rather illogical and incompetent at determining traits that are actually best for our species. Heck we're not even very good at it for other species. Politics, religion, culture and other weird stuff tends to get mixed up in our decision making.
all policy shall be based on the weight of evidence
for an economic policy is a disaster. There is no "weight of evidence" as every situation that a central bank, finance ministry or stock exchange would be unique.
However, simply by knowing that the country was following a "rational" policy means it would be gamed by all the "players" who could get access. Although it's doubtful that any actual people would get a look - since the automatic traders would dominate the day. Outsmarting a system like that would make taking candy from a baby look like hard work.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Nazi Germany based a lot of its policies on the treasure of science from the execution off crippled and mentally ill people who were scientifically shown to be a burden to society presently or in the future
Nazi Germany was hardly alone in experimenting with eugenics. The eugenics programs in the US preceded those in Germany and informed a lot of their decisions. By and large it was used as a means to enforce racism and related policies.
Knowledge is power
but power isn't knowledge.
Dialectician. Archology.
Not if some religion is true.
Ok, which bit is true? How do you propose to objectively prove it? How do you tell the difference between the "false" religions and the "true" one(s)?
Rhetorical questions of course. Religion by definition cannot be objectively true because it depends of belief in something which isn't falsifiable. If it cannot in principle be measured or observed (with past, existing or future technology) then it cannot be true.
(Here we begin a predictably unresolved debate about religion, rationity, what constitutes evidence, limits of human ability to reason soundly, straw men, etc.)
You're the one that brought it up...
Imagine a future society in which everything is perfectly logical.
No such thing. Logic provides formulas. Formulas work on Values. Logic does not provide Values, it only provides formulas. Thus the foundation of the most logical society possible would still be emotionally selected Values.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Which country are you call in a theocracy? If you mean the US, I'm curious why you think it is one.
The US isn't a theocracy but there are a LOT of people in the US who would like to make it one. You know, the ones that want to teach creationism in science class, who want to institute prayer in public school, who make it illegal in numerous states for an atheist to hold public office, etc. The US isn't a theocracy but it isn't as far removed from one as many would like to believe. Anyone who proclaims that the US is a "christian nation" is one of these people who would like it to be a theocracy.
You are wrong right from the start.
RE: For instance human life is important. It is clearly important from birth to death. Everyone agrees there...
In fact many people do not agree, interestingly including large swathes of the religiously deluded and brainwashed, that the grandparent seems intent on tolerating. So no, once you introduce the ludicrous idea of eternal life and endless reward you can logically and 'rationally' justify literally any course of action, including eliminating large numbers of people of the wrong belief, color, economic status, ability, ad infinitum.
Or from the other side, we are already doing that, enshrined in law. Life begins at conception, based on the bible (the excitement of the child in the womb when Mary visited the mother of John-the-Baptist) Therefore we have been murdering millions of people per year for just about ever.
This wouldn't lead to 100% logical consistency in policy, but it would surely be an improvement over the current system, don't you think?
Not necessarily. To use a simple example look at three strikes laws. They are logically consistent and simple but the knock on consequences of them are positively horrific. People get put in prison for life for stealing a pack of gum sort of lunacy. Logical consistency isn't always desirable. Sometimes we need a little heart in our laws even if it isn't perfectly rational.
The fact you haven't heard something is not part of a logical argument.
There are in fact many social conservatives who argue just that about criminalizing poisoning the unborn child. Also many liberals and others advocating paying drug-taking mothers to elect an abortion.
I find it amusing that you argue your pro-science stance with faulty logic.
"> 4. How many laws were violated by the Dallas Police Department using a robot and an explosive device to kill a man?
Probably none. Police have the right to kill threats, this man was clearly a threat."
We are all threats depending on perspective. Police don't "have the right" to kill any more than anyone else does. While situations where lethal force are legally justified exist, that's different than "having the right" and police aren't special in this regard.
"This man" was clearly a threat but that's not the standard. Was he an imminent threat? If you have to pilot an RC robot with an indiscriminate killing device on it to get to him, it's really hard to claim "imminent". He may have been a bad man but that doesn't mean he wasn't murdered.
The only you will achieve with this approach is societal stagnation and eventually economic collapse and death.
That's because it is 'rational' in that world to use government regulations for every single thing. Should people use this colour or this colour for clothing?
Should different people attempt and write alternative open source systems to closed source software? Should there be more than one company pumping gas around? Etc.etc.etc.
Totalitarianism, central control for everything, unbearable level of bureaucracy.
Basically technocracy does not tolerate any alternative point of views, actions, does not allow funding for anything that is not party approved, etc. This is the way to destroy everything.
You can't handle the truth.
Plato's classic work "The Republic" does what I think is a pretty good job of analyzing various forms of government in terms of their strengths and weaknesses. His analysis of the weaknesses of democracy is, I think, particularly insightful. His conclusion - based on the evidence of history up to his time (early 4th century BCE) - is that reprensentative democracies are extremely responsive to the will of their citizens in their early days, when the voters are afire with enthusiasm for the task, and mostly knowlegeable about the issues to be addressed. However, as time goes on, the citizenry tires of the demands of informed governance and begins paying less and less attention, until only an active few bother to study the issues and evidence needed to govern wisely.
At that point, demagogues arise, offering simplistic solutions to the now-largely-uninformed electorate, with the goal of empowering themselves and/or their patrons at the expense of the commonweal. The result - inevitably, in Plato's view - is either a demagogic tyranny (which eventually either becomes a monarchy or sparks a revolution against the tyrant), or an oligarchy or plutocracy, thinly disguised as a nominal democracy (but which is entirely anti-democratic in actual practice).
Unfortunately, Plato's proposed solution to the array of sub-optimal government models is an ant-like, essentially communist state, led by a council of "philosopher-kings". The society he advocates is based on a rigid caste system, with strict rules of conduct, enforced by Draconian penalties for what he defines as subversive activities (including the death penalty for poetry and music!). It employs a ubiquitous secret police force to continuously spy on the "citizens" of his misnamed "republic" - which is, in fact, the most repugnantly repressive model of a dictatorship by central committee I can imagine. Plato's entire rationale for this hideous excuse for a government is that philosophers are obviously the wisest members of society, and thus the fittest to rule.
And, yes, if it sounds familiar, that's because Lenin based his governance model for the USSR on a blend of Marxian economics and Platonic leadership ideas.
I'm a fan of Dr. DeGrasse-Tyson, but I suspect he has not read "The Republic". At least, not recently ...
Check out my novel.
If we lived in a world where everyone strived to live on the right side of reason...
We are failing to analyze the purpose of the speaker.
Neil Degrasse Tyson is unexceptional in his field. To be blunt he is much better at talking about it than at participating in it. He's more of a journalist than an astrophysicist.
Is he a successful speaker because the general public likes what he has to say and is eager to give him their money to hear him speak, or is it because the general public likes the look of him and he is paid and promoted by his general institution to further its agenda?
It's the latter of course. If you want to argue about it I doubt any rational explanation would persuade you, and anyway its beyond my scope here.
But what is this agenda? Getting to it....
So you are eager to dismiss his suggestion of a utopia as 'not smart' or poorly thought-out?
The drawbacks are fairly obvious and a lot of them have already been astutely drawn out in this discussion so far.
But why are we stopping at taking the suggestion at face value?
To find the purpose of it, would it not follow to guess at the collection of reactions the general public might have to it? Wouldn't the speaker have done the same, and so by doing the same ourselves, might we not come closer to understanding his frame of mind and his motivations?
Let's be brief. Out of all the reactions we could hypothesize, which is the most potent? The reaction of complete agreement or the reaction of complete disagreement. Only the former could be profitable for the speaker. And what section of the population could be identified with this reaction? Let's be general: the atheist-leaning students, especially those in "STEM" programs who tend to subscribe to an attitude self-importance.
And so I will reveal my guess as to the purpose of this idea of "Rationalia": to polarize people who have lived sheltered lives of incomplete human experience toward a brand of irrationality labeled as "rational" that is otherwise known as authoritarianism. To fool people into accepting dogma under the excuse they have been very "rational" in all the proceedings of their thoughts despite totally removing the context from their view. Basically to overload people's thoughts, to reach the threshold of mental fatigue, and then give them an excuse to come to an easy answer.
This is clearly a method of authoritarian control over a vulnerable section of the population. In other words, propaganda.
Stop giving them the easy way out by saying "they're just being dumb". It's on purpose and the effect is calculated. They're not dumb. YOU are if you think so.
If most humans were more rational then governance would take care of itself. But trying to force rationality on a populace that is largely driven by emotion and ideology would be a disaster. Maybe the closest example of a nation ruled by science would be China where the government is largely run by technocrats who have demonstrated a certain level of competence before being elevated. Few of us in the USA would care to live under that government.
Science informs us about the real world but many areas of science important to governance such as economics and sociology are not very well settled. I'm not convinced a rational government could do any better than the current government in those areas.
I for one welcome the day when our benevolent robot overlords rule by Pareto Optima.
Whether a rational approach is a good approach or not depends on the underlying axioms and postulates. And getting a good set is not a simple problem.
Generally people prefer to have their axioms and postulates not clearly specified and to use "flexible" logic to derive their conclusions. Calling this rational, however, is not rational.
Geometry couldn't even get up to 8 axioms without ending up with multiple contradictory systems that can only be reconciled by saying the words mean different things in the different versions. E.g. (IIUC) a point in 2 dimensional Spherical Geometry would be equivalent to the two points where a diameter intersects with the spherical surface in 3 dimensional Euclidean geometry.
So probably no. Also coming to an actual rational decision in a complex case can take an unbounded amount of time. So probably no.
This doesn't mean you can't try to approach a rational decision.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The problem is that science, if done well, can tell us what the observable consequences of our actions might be, but it will never tell us what outcomes we should value. For instance, do we value equality or progress? Do we value the happiness of animals as much as that of humans? Do we value freedom or security? The answers to none of these questions are self-evident (and saying that they are self-evident does not make it so).
These are all the province of moral philosophy, and that field gives no easy answers.
Dan
The
The irony is that this is still alive today.
Chinese governments were (and maybe still are) technocracies based on the teachings of Confucianism
It was in fact VERY successful and stands in stark contrast to the moralistic pap that people have been throwing up to oppose the idea of modern technocracies.
Even the most logical society still needs some axioms this logic can build upon. And these axioms are usually values which themselves stem from instincts and emotions. This is why two seemingly rational people can discuss for hours and hours and still end coming to different conclusions because deep in their mind they both want different things.
Brave New World solved this contradiction by assuming that most peoples interests are pretty basic (eat, sleep, drink, fuck) and can be satisfied by industrial progress while any other desires (like the need for a deeper meaning of one's existance) can be suppressed/satisfied with Soma. I don't remember if the novel gives an answer to the question why those who have those "unwanted desires" would not find that treatment degrading.
Here ya go, politics as science.
https://irreni.blogspot.com/
It is the will of the Father that Jesus comes.
That will happen long before your gaytopias.
Kingdom come, Thy Will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.
Jesus is coming soon.
Ever since Plato, one bunch of conceited pricks or another has claimed that they were superior to the rest of mankind, and should be allowed to rule us. Whether they're "philosopher kings" like plato imagined, "holy men" like the Pharisees or the Wahabbis, "scientific planners" like the Marxists or the British "upper class", they can all go fuck themselves.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Oh, that's right; the stability of Krypton's core was "settled science" and 97 per cent of the scientists were in agreement with it.
Too bad Tomar-Tu got there late, but the Guardians always had that we're stubborn because we're rational problem too...
A nation ruled by science sounds nice, as long as there is compassion behind the science and humans aren't recycled into biomass as soon as they cannot perform useful work.
The U.S.S.R. was scientifically designed.
Employee Of the Month - Cyberdyne Systems Corporation - September 1997
It seems that whenever "science" or "rational" of whatever stripe is enforced on a society many people die before it's defeated.
Employee Of the Month - Cyberdyne Systems Corporation - September 1997
Rationalia is still ruled by political ambition which will twist things. But even if not, "perfect rationalism" can yield terrible results.
Consider: What if the FDA, by making excruciating demands for safety and efficacy, delays (or halts) useful drugs? A drug that helps heart disease, delayed 5 years, could cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Meanwhile, how many lives does the FDA save over using people as guinea pigs? Nobody wants to get sick or die being the test subject, but it is at least conceivable a "forge ahead and pull back only when problems seen" strategy would, net, save millions of lives, year upon year.
And global warming? What would slowing the economy 10% cost, say, over a century in the rate of technological development? I can easily see doing nothing, and moving in from the sea over 100-300 years, ending up with more, happier, healthier people in 300 years than current sea levels and technology 50 years behind where it otherwise would be.
None of this, and many others, including currently unforseen effects, unfortunately are taken into account in "Rationalia".
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
In his 1961 Farewell address to the nation, President Eisenhower very famously warned about the "military-industrial complex". It's a quote that is very-often cited by opponents of military spending, often (but not always) on the political left. This warning was in the fourth section of his speech, immediately before the part that few on the left ever want cited and few Americans even remember:
"Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government. Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite. It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society." - Dwight D. Eisenhower
The entire speech is worth reading - he places both the partnership between government and defense contractors, and the partnership between government and scientific researchers as equal risks to the democracy. In both cases, government chooses to fund particular outside experts, who in-turn use their authority/power/money to influence government policy. In both cases a powerful circle is formed and the individual citizen is made irrelevant in the interests of the powerful vested interests. In both cases, the government experts and the outside funded experts are united in declaring that they are acting in the public interest and better-equipped to know what's good for individuals and society. In both cases, Democratic processes are "necessarily reduced" for the public good, of course.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."
proportion, or an education in history. Every massive massacre in human history was performed by the anti-religious and every one of them justified with atheist arguments.
The best-known atheist massacres:
Hilter, a pagan at best, wiped out 6+ million (not counting war dead). Those asserting that he was Christian have clearly never read his writings or those of the men leading the NAZI party who worked furiously to de-Christianize Germany. Hitler famously complained that he was having a hard time getting certain things done because of the Christian influence that remained in his country and commented that his actions would have been easier had his nation been culturally Muslim.
Stalin, an atheist, wiped out 20 to 30million (not counting war dead), He seems more humane than Hitler because he kept bad records and did not focus on a particular ethnicity, plus he had the positive PR of the New York Times.
Chairman Mao, an atheist, made Stalin look like an amateur while butchering over 45million of his own people in only 4 years, for the good of the state of course.
Pol Pot ring any bells? about 2Million more dead in only about 5 years at the hands of a virulent atheist. His Khmer Rouge famously said "To keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss" to the civilians slated for death.
The best-known religious massacres:
The Spanish Inquisition, by contrast, accused many, but only killed about 3K people.
The Crusades, which spanned CENTURIES, and were full-fledged wars between civilizations and yet killed about 1.8million in total. (more crusaders died on the way to or from the Holy Lands than in the actual wars)
The point is not to say the religious did not kill, just that the atheists killed vastly more. It also is extremely deceptive to lump all religions together, even when they teach opposite ideas. A religion that teaches "everybody who disagrees with me must die" is not the same as one that resists such a religion. Counting the deaths of those who go on such an offensive and adding to the sum those who die opposing it, then blaming them all on "religion" is deceptive, and further helps distract from all the atheist massacres that were essentially one-sided industrial murder.
One can argue that the atheists doing the massacres were not doing so in accordance with their beliefs, but needing to do it to advance a greater agenda of their beliefs though that's not what THEY said. But if you make that argument, then you must also accept that the Inquisitors and the Crusaders were not acting consistently with their beliefs relative to individuals but needing to do it for some greater agenda consistent with their beliefs.
You cannot have it both ways: Either the atheist massacres are representative of atheism and the religious ones representative of religion, or neither is the case. In either case, the atheist massacres res sill the worst by incomprehensible margins of blood.
When I read the rebuttal I immediately thought of religion... "First, experts usually don't know nearly as much as they think they do. They often get it wrong, thanks to their inherently brains that -- through overconfidence, bubbles of like-minded thinkers, or just wanting to believe their vision of the world can be true -- mislead us and misinterpret information... And second, has no business telling people how to live. It's striking how easily we forget the evil that following "religion" can do. So many times throughout history, humans have thought they were behaving in logical and rational ways, only to realize that such acts have yielded morally heinous policies that were only enacted because reasonable people were swayed by "religion"."
Start burning the witches and stoning non-virgins, I say.
It will be best when the world is a Kingdom. Not a New World Order of spies and politicians.
It will be a kingdom, it is the will of God the Father, our Creator.
Kingdom come,
Thy Will be done,
On Earth as it is in Heaven.
This is precisely Jesus' instruction on how to pray, and exactly what to pray for. The great news is He is coming soon.
With many cultures it is wise to keep nations, but race != culture.
Facts only exist while they fit the required frameworks of rich and powerful people in science - Just look at how universities have warped science over the past years. Science should only exist as a means to identify the truth, not to become the truth itself. Decisions about how people should live and be governed are something that should have no basis in science. If leaders keep making stupid decisions because of that, well, that's the privilege of the people who put them there. If they don't understand science, then that's the fault of the educational system isn't it? Education should also be expanded to include matters of law and medicine prior to high school graduation, but that's another matter still.
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
If "the weight of evidence" is a bias - then sign me the hell up. I am biased against things unproven and unprovable, and it's a bias I'll wear with pride. If there were an "evidence bigot" flag I could paint on my car, I'd be first in line to have it done. Tyson said not one word about experts. He said not one word about science telling people how to live (although if anyone were going to "tell me how to live", I'd take a scientist over a holy man any day. ) He said only that policies should be based on the weight of evidence, as opposed to (say) ideology or emotions or beliefs. Take "abstinence only" sex ed. The weight of the evidence shows it is absolutely, categorically worthless in accomplishing any of the goals it sets out to accomplish. Yet because it embodies (although it utterly fails to INSTILL) the values many parents want to impart to their kids, support for it continues to be strong in some spheres. Guhin makes unsupportable inferences from what Tyson says, and his conclusions are garbage.
How do you prove that helping the poor is worthwhile? Or an arts grant is a worthwhile use of government money?
My guess would be that reality is so rich and varied and complicated, and these is so much we don't understand, that a society following scientific principals will be barely different from any other society following other ideologies. (ideologies used in the broadest sense, so it includes anything from religious to Classical Liberalism to Mussolini.).
What it all gets down to is trying to heard cats. An authoritarian ruling class may keep things nice for a few for a generation or three.
I'll be here through Thursday.
Get your dogma outta my yard!
Kindly move to a place that was never under the influence of Western Civilization, which was based heavily on the Bible.
All that "crazy" talk about "slavery is bad" and "every individual has human rights" stuff was driven in the west by the Bible. The very idea that you may have beliefs different from the majority in your society is a Christian idea - one absent in places run by, for example, Islam. In Muslim countries, people who are not Muslim are either forbidden or highly discriminated against. For most of human history, in most locations on Earth, having personal beliefs different from the majority has been an offense, often punished by death. The abolition (of slavery) movements in Britain and the US were entirely based on the Bible and the song which was the anthem for eliminating slavery, "Amazing Grace", which even Star Trek fans will recognize was a Christian song. The song most associated with the Northern (anti-slavery) side of the American Civil War was "The Battle Hymn of The Republic", also a blatantly Christian song. The Republican party in the US was founded by Christians opposed to slavery, which they saw as un-Biblical, and therefore evil.
All those odd western ideas about "separation of powers" between branches of government are based on a Biblical view of mankind. The very idea that the world has a design that humans have a right to, and are capable of, studying and understanding, and the idea that things like weather are not a fight between warring gods who are changing the laws of nature as they wrestle with each other is a Biblical concept.
It would have been quite impossible to create the modern world without the Bible. Even Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atom bomb and himself no Christian, stated that modern science would not exist without Christianity, which is based on that Bible you despise.
Try a place based on some other ideas. How about Islam? There a person's vote on a jury and testimony in court is weighted according to gender and religion. Like that?
How about China or North Korea? Like those places better?
Perhaps you'd prefer some totally pagan place run by cannibals... please leave your modern western running shoes and other baggage of the civilization you hate behind. You can probably run fast enough barefoot right?
Nobody says you must be a Christian or a Jew in order to live in Western Civilization, but without that book of the Jews and the Christians you would have no Western Civilization to live in. It's a bit like despising carbon, without which life would not exist. Stupid young western punks who hate the Bible and it's influence on society have often never even read it. Doing so would probably require too much intellectual curiosity and literacy. They resemble the super rich spoiled brat who denounces the industries that made his parents rich and wishes those businesses destroyed, who then freaks out when he is cut off from the money on the day his wishes come true. If this society ever frees itself from all that Biblical stuff you hate, what will be left will be something from your darkest most anarchic nightmares.
It's a funny thing that most of the people in the world who flee really bad places as refugees risk their lives to get to Christian or recently-Christian countries. Most refugees do not desperately want to get into Syria or Libya or North Korea or China....
Kill and eat each other.
I try not to pretend that behaviors of lower life forms are an example for humans to emulate.
Silly me! I reject cannibalism, even though many animals do it. I also reject pooping everywhere, something nearly all animals do. I also want clothes and cooked food, and hospitals and books and all sorts of stuff that animals reject.
You can live like a monkey if you want to. I choose the civilized human life.
In this house we make up our own laws of thermodynamics!
and yet not one mention of economics, which is the scientific study of human choices.
The FREE market (not just any market, but only FREE markets) guarantees that everyone is better off than they started, but nobody is worse off. Not only that, but that any market that isn't free means people could be made better off without making anyone worse off.
And real markets can be made to approach (in the mathematical sense) free markets with the right taxes and subsidies.
Free markets lead to pareto optimal outcomes, but any pareto optimal outcome can be obtained with the right lump sum transfers.
So, the scientific basis for law should (imho) be one with laws that result in free market outcomes, and redistribution through wealth taxes and basic income.
But, for some reason, the IT crowd that visits slashdot is generally anti-economics as a science altogether.
So, how do you possibly hope to have a rational scientific basis for society and law when the one science that studies utility and human choices is rejected by the majority of the so called 'scientific' crowd?
Happy birthday!
It's just not that simple.
What is rational is not necessarily logical. Are we speaking of some objective notion of logic or subjective?
Science does not give access to all information so even if we could assess information perfectly we are still prone to error for lack of data.
Is there a better way to assess outside of the scientific method? -scientific or not we base our decisions on what we think/believe to be the best course of action or option.
We need the scientific method to help in objective analysis. If you read Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational" book you may notice there is a certain logic at work when people make irrational decisions that seem perfectly reasonable and rational to them.
Science is not perfect but unlike some religious belief systems science changes, improves and gets better. Through science we have advanced our understanding of reality beyond the confines of "God did it".
Imagine a world in which everyone does everything based on "because god said so". If you consider just the lack of consensus on which religion is the "true religion" and how one asses the will of god (Being mortal and incapable on understanding god's wishes) it would be a very scary world indeed.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
In my scientific world and in the scientific history knowledge, this is
>Yeah, imagine perfect logic in decision making. Keeping in mind that retaining non-productive members of society is...illogical.
completely unscientific. You cannot decide if the live of somebody was productive often long after there death.
The facts:
Most scientific discoveries are useless at the time of the discoveries :
- Math are useless by definition until somebody find a usage e.g. number theory, galois theory, before crypto. no usage, just beautiful
- Relativity, time flow, before sending GPS satellite in space, no applications
in order to maximize the chance of success of science, historical data shows that more brain power, and to have time to kill are the major component to productivity.
Scientific conclusions can be (and too often are) unethically skewed (i.e. the term science is too often abused), but the scientific method itself is a nice and simple certainty incapable of being corrupted (i.e. fully meeting the demands of that method only becomes purely agreeable results without possible exception) – one that must be powerfully leveraged to remove (inclusively intentional) confusion from language to form concrete law (instead of the muddy mess passing for law these days).
Without objectivity, there is no fairness, so (by definition) no justice.
The fundamental problem is objectively defining harm.
In a purely energetic reality (e.g. this one, at least according to mainstream physics), harm is subjective, so impossible to objectively define.
The solution required by any society with an unalienable right to liberty is harm must be maximally conclusively (never suggestively, or such) defined in strictest accordance with the scientific method. Murder, assault, theft, and slander clearly fall into the category of harm as such, but holding a plant (e.g. cannabis) in your hand does not (among thousands of other prohibitionary examples to "regulate" society by mass rights infringement).
Tragedy is demonstrably inherent within our always-pros-and-cons reality (e.g. each one of us eventually dies, regardless of how the rule-of-law is structured), so regulations (euphemism for prohibitions) can only serve to determine the targets of tragedy, and you can probably easily conclude which group of people have better odds of not being those targets – the oligarchy (spanning the private and public sectors) controlling the regulations.
Scientific constitutionalism is genuine power for the people, because the certain and simple social construct that is the self-evident and unalienable right to liberty (i.e. liberty – the condition of being free from restriction or control – is limited only by the right itself) logically simply prevents the ratification of corrupt laws (when the public is righteously taught to maturely passionately care about that critical right enough to publicly defend it properly – which should not be too challenging of a task upon considering the undeniable popularity of liberty).
The only other option is yet another sick flavor of 'we can trust our rulers to define liberty according to their subjective – e.g. weakly "scientific" – conclusions' and all of the elitist-sourced abuses from favoritism that inevitably creeps and spreads out against too many generations of people vulnerable to that selfish elitist manipulation of law – allowing the unbearably dumb cycle of oppression repeat until death does humanity part.
In short, scientific constitutionalism majorly includes bringing certainty to language, so law – and leverages the anchor certainty (one that cannot be undermined) that is the self-evident and unalienable right to liberty (i.e. balanced liberty) for optimal liberty within a civilized society.
One prime example of such language improvement is forming a hard-line distinction between use and abuse. Use is always a harmless action, while abuse is always a harmful action. Use disorder, being used (i.e. taken advantage of), misuse (redundancy of abuse), and so one would be logically deprecated by language experts for clearer (i.e. better) communication. That negates (for solid example) the mass destructive ability by 'certain drug' prohibitionists to unethically swap use and abuse merely to their convenience to (likely intentionally) confuse the public to ironically support drug prohibition addiction (sanctioned thugs lying and effectively stealing billions annually from taxpayers to get their prohibition fix without even resulting in a "drug free" prison system, nor one shred of concrete, so credible, evidence proving we live in even a slightly more "drug free" America).
A lot more detail exists in the Liberty Shield informational roots
Sines of Impending Sines
Nice tits is a desirable trait. Doesn't mean I'm practicing Eugenics when I chase the tits owner/operater.
"Nice tits" as you so quaintly put it, has evolved to be a desirable trait. It wasn't a conscious decision made by people. We don't need to practice selective breeding to promote that trait. It would be eugenics (selective breeding) if we started sterilizing people lacking that particular trait.
Eugenics practiced by society isn't bad just because the traits being bred for were wrong. It was bad because it put too much power in the hands of government, which can't be trusted.
It isn't the government that can't be trusted. It's the specific people charged with running it. A government is just an organization and organizations can demonstrably be constrained by rules. Organizations are tools and like any tool they can be used for good or bad purposes. That's why we have separation of powers and other limits on government. You run into problems when you get a person or group of people in positions of power who are determined to ignore those rules or when those rules are badly written. People claiming government can't be trusted are saying something that makes no sense. I have no problem with the fact that we have a President - it's a necessary and useful function and we've had some very good people in that job over the years. I have a HUGE problem with the idea of someone like Donald Trump specifically in that job. It's the specific person, not the role that is the fundamental problem. We constrain positions of power with laws to ensure that when we do get the inevitable douchebag in the job that we can limit the amount of damage they can do. We also know that power corrupts so we try to limit its corrosive influence. But ultimately it's about whether or not a specific person proves trustworthy in a position of power. Abraham Lincoln put it best when he said "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
Police have the right to kill threats, this man was clearly a threat.
They apparently have the right to kill whoever the fuck they want.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Planned Parenthood is not Eugenics.
It only needs to be present where low income people do not have access to the medical necessities.
And by going into schools to present the options is the cheapest way to avoid the medical necessities.
Any law, any moral value which promotes "equality" is eugenics.
No it isn't unless it affects reproduction in a meaningful way. It is a HUGE stretch which you would have to support with actual evidence to show that something like an affirmative action program actually is a form of selective breeding. (and if you are arguing that... wow... just wow...) Furthermore whether or not you realize it you are arguing that the US Constitution is effectively a selective breeding program because it promotes equality under the law quite explicitly.
According to philosopher David Hume, you cannot derive an "ought" from an "is." (It's left as an exercise to the reader to determine whether they agree with that, but I think it's a good start.)
If this is true, rationality might be the best way to determine the means to achieve an end. (The "means" is the "is.") But rationality can never determine what should be the end goal. (The "end goal" is the "ought.")
right?
People!
So of course it is a terrible idea to have a society ruled in such a way. ;)
Look at the tragedies that are constantly occurring here and around the world. People killing others and blowing themselves up because they are gullible enough to believe the nonsense being sold by their so called 'religious leaders'. Addictions, irrational fears, and the jumping to conclusions without asking the right questions that lead to bigotry and hatred around the world. Psychiatrist have made plenty of inroads in society. It takes a minute to diagnose some kid with ADD or something and have him or her on a drug regimen. Psychologist however haven't been put to task enough. People need to be thought how to think and how to avoid the mental pitfalls. They need to understand the difference between theory and fact. They need to understand the names of the different phobias and other neurotic behavior. This needs to be part of normal elementary education common core subjects and start as early as second grade.If we do this well here, I'm sure we can coax the rest of the world to follow suit.
It isn't embraced by the magic-man-in-the-sky majority. Nothing else is wrong with it.
Jessica Xiao's article is worthless click bait seeking to exploit the raw numbers. There is nothing resembling evidence in it, just here-is-someone-that-agrees-with-me quotes from people who also fail to supply supporting evidence.
"It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks." -Yang
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
An irrational belief in a god seems to offer evolutionary advantage, and a caring god gives a bit more (longer life expectancy - if you can call having older grandparents advantageous for children, then it translates to a species evolutionary advantage). This is very different than the arguments that religion offers for belief, which are themselves very faulty in that they only consider a yes/no choice and not many different choices.
As far as smoking and other things that are not good for you, science does not consider relative enjoyment provided, which is a fatal flaw in its reasoning. If we were to consider an absolute amount of enjoyment available over a lifespan (from all sources), then achieving a maximum life expectancy may not maximize that enjoyment by itself.
The social sciences have tied themselves in a theocratic knot:
The politics of exclusion is evil therefore any attempt to exclude confounding variables in human ecology causality is evil.
Let's look at that word "ecology" for a moment:
There is something called "the ecological fallacy" that like the bromide "correlation doesn't imply causation" is trotted out or ignored at the convenience of the theologian posing as social scientist. The "diagnoses" of "fear" "xenophobia" "racism" are all modern day equivalents of "demon possession" in the moral zeitgeist of these theocrats.
Let me give you a contrasting example from the medical profession to illustrate exactly how intellectually, scientifically and morally bankrupt are social sciences by comparison:
My wife is dying of Huntington's Disease and there is a cure called ASO gene silencing. It has been tested in the entire pipeline of animal models up to and including primate models, and has been shown to be both safe and effective at slowing, halting and even partially reversing symptoms in moderate doses. It is undergoing human safety trials and even though her decline is accelerating toward death and she consents to treatment, she is denied the treatment. This cruel reality actually has _some_ ethical basis due to the need to ensure that before a treatment is unleashed on even a dying population, that it be shown to be both safe _and_ effective -- not by mere "empirical data" (compiled correlations of naturalistic observations) but by establishing causality with experimental controls to exclude confounding variables including placebo effect. Even after being so demonstrated, she would not be treated without her consent.
Compare and contrast "social science" imposing its "treatments" on massive numbers of people without their consent, let alone showing the treatment is both safe and effective through experimental controls.
I'm sure many if not most "social scientists" would give me some sort of "diagnosis" for rendering the foregoing opinion in favor of "the politics of exclusion" and, upon that "diagnosis" would judge me to be a danger to myself and others, hence, to be deprived of the kind of society in which I might prefer to live as a preventative action. This, in their esteemed expert opinion is not "prejudice" even though it removes from me a basic human right without so much as an accusation of commission of a crime, let alone trial let alone full _judicial_ proceeding which judges me after I've made the case for my innocence and/or sanity. No, _that_ is not "prejudice". What is "prejudice" is some personal preference I might exercise in my private life given limited information and limited resources to obtain that information.
Seriously, it's all falling down and good riddance.
Let's hope something like sortocracy replaces it. http://sortocracy.org/
Seastead this.
... that all of reason and logic are perfectly expressed in science. Furthermore, he seems not to apply logic and reason to the reality of corruption and its effects. No idea is safe in a universe of spin doctors.
There is a big difference between a government based on logic and reason, and one that tells everyone what to do. I would be significantly happier in any country where decisions are based on facts. Can hypothesis be disproved later? Sure...but hard evidence will be correct far more often than hunches and belief. A rational country could be run as a democracy and be capable of immense success.
In a country ruled by "sciencism", it would inherently provide wide-ranging freedoms for citizens. Why? Evolution creates new ideas, and those new ideas cannot long-term be discovered as easily in an autocracy. Tyson wasn't asking for a world based on the Giver, but a world where decisions are based on facts and reason, and not on hunches and faith and whatever feels nice right now. Imagine if our politicians made decisions based on facts to improve our lives, and not on election cycles, pet projects, or distractions?
Is this all very idealistic? Yep...it is. It sounds like an attractive idea anyway, and I would be happier in a world where decisions must be justified with evidence, and where we more readily learn from past mistakes!
It's no more "rational" than creationism. After all, it's "rational" that "someone must have made it, else it would have been a bloody mess!".
"Planned parenthood for instance doesn't have an abortion clinic in any area without a substantial minority population."
100% bullshit. Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine are 94.3%, 93.9%, and 94.4% white, respectively. They all have multiple planned parenthood clinics that offer abortion services.
Yeah, imagine perfect logic in decision making. Keeping in mind that retaining non-productive members of society is...illogical.
Better to "retire" the elderly by sending them to be ground up into "pure pork sausage", while they can still contribute. Ditto children (and adults, if any get past childhood screening) who are incapable of thinking clearly....
Is that the most logical thing you could think of? Eliminate the non-productive members of society? You don't think it would be more logical to help them become productive members of society (society, has after all, spent resources getting them to this point already)? And the elderly, you don't think that they contribute to society? Wouldn't it be logical to keep them around and healthy to help support the younger generation? Believe it or not but in a logical society, people are still going to be irrational and emotional at times and having a support network is one of the best ways to deal with that. As for people who are "incapable of thinking clearly", huh? If your society values education over ignorance then you are going to have a decent education system that can provide for the various personality types which means that you will have very few, if any, people who "are incapable of thinking clearly".
it would still be better than allowing religion or money telling people how to live
That's a pretty big assumption. I personally don't see the difference. The concept still involves human beings holding the power of physical force over other human beings, exactly as it happens in the animal kingdom. The end goal should be to rise above the animal kingdom.
Instead of a new way of telling people how to live, what we should be striving for is not telling people how to live at all. The end goal of political philosophy should be anarchy (*), i.e. pure voluntary association. Whether that is a plausible solution today is up for debate, but logically, the ideal advanced society is one in which man is finally set free from men.
(*) The anarchy I am referring to is not the one that means "no rules", as pop culture tells you, but the one that means "no rulers". Big, big difference.
For thus it is written: “"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." (Arthur C. Clarke)
Our Science's TECHNOLOGY is the most ADVANCED, BIGGEST, most BADASSinined, most INDISTINGUISHED that ever was, is, or will be.
Our PUBLICATIONS are infallible, our METHODS smoke, our LOGIC will bring tears to your eyes, our RATIONAL THOUGHT will leave your head spinning.
Our Science is all perceiving (unto even those pesky, tricksy, elusive, theoretical particles that CERN cannot find), all knowing (including that dark matter/energy/whatever stuff), and ever present (in all of the universe/multiverse—see note below).
Once we were slaves to your ethics. Now we are free to pursue our own rationalized agenda.
With Science on our side we will recreate the world in our superior image.
Beyond mere technology and magic, OUR SCIENCE IS SO KICKASS AWESOMELY ADVANCED THAT IT IS INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM RELIGION!
Put that in your frakin pipe and smoke it--for it makes more sense, and is a lot more fun, that way.
[note: universe/multiverse/schmultiverse—we accept all scientific disciplines, denominations, interpretations, interpolations, assumptions, presumptions, and resumptions. We are tolerantly nonexclusive—unless your beliefs offend us or we simply just don't like you.]
Sounds like humans are left out in that scenario
Rationslism is fundamentally different than empiricalism.. Evidence and experience do not equate rational. Socratic methodology is the foundation of reason and with formulated tools for filtering ambiguity, bias, fallacy, etc we can come to rational choices in politics. This system relies on its ability to be proven wrong using rational methodology meaning pure unbias justice could be met.-Roy Carl Stanley classic rationslist politician
If you would instead want to rule with an iron fist or blind ignorance or artificial scarcity or racist psychopathic militarized police or subversive secret agents or broken social constructs, depressing environments, and copious supplies of impure mind altering substances prohibited and delivered by black ops and black markets, then yes, allowing the population to be well informed, implement plans that have merit, and using scientific proofs to rule themselves without your "guidance" and "protection" is a horrible, terrible idea.
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.
You have got to be kidding! What are you talking about?!
Not all of those reporting science get it correct. And, potentially broken scientific 'evidence' should be disclaimed as such. Yet, the vast majority of evidence actually points to real world experience.
Perhaps cutting edge physics borders on the philosophical and is beyond most folks (Americans, at least) ability to grasp (mostly due to poor education); yet empirical evidence speaks for itself, even if one refuses to accept it.
What needs to happen is that our freedom of speech needs to be check with requirements of disclaimers of sources and clarifications of origination. Just because big corporations say it does not make it true. Just because I say it makes it just as subject to scrutiny. Believe what you want; yet do it at your own fault/cost, not on my cost or time.
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
I disagree with the premise: "Tyson is a very smart man". So I can not comment.
Sorry, but it is a bad adea. And I say that as one who would be part of the elite.
Too much concentration of power. Power attracts evil, and power breeds evil in those who were good before.
To be happy and free, power must be divided up until it is controllable. Without the "separation of powers", things soon turn bad.
Other things have been tried many times, and always brought fear and sorrow. For at least 5000 years, maybe longer...
We will have government through science and engineering when the population understands the tech. We really are getting there, but we are not there yet.
P.S., Don't worry about the politics, it is natures way of building immunity to such things in the people! 8-P
Not just Morlocks and Eloi, don't forget "Things to Come".
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
Statistically speaking, we are currently governed mostly by lawyers. Oh, and the rich. If you are a rich, charismatic lawyer, your future as a politician is bright.
Of course scientists aren't perfectly rational. But do you think they are better at making policy decisions than what we currently have? Or more objective than the topmost 0.1% of the rich who have never depended on a paycheck? Just demanding supporting evidence would be a huge improvement over how policy is currently set: by debates that are little more than an extensive survey of the various logical fallacies, and by forming coalitions of selfish lawmakers who are either getting personal kickbacks or pork for their home district.
Besides, for everybody who is panicking that scientists will lead us to some sort of horror novel society where ethics are forgotten, scientific thinking makes you more moral.
The question isn't whether Tyson's Rationalia would be perfect - it's whether it would be better than our current government which amounts to groupthink among advantaged narcissists. The answer seems pretty clear to me. Let's elect some more scientists and engineers, and let's demand the same burden of proof on policymakers that we expect of middle school science fair projects.
The biggest danger is medicine and biology. These fields have totally trapped themselves in their own model. Take blood draws, for example. If the reaction caused by puncturing your dermis and collecting blood creates a temporary level of reactivity (hormone reactions: epinephrine, for example, and unknown subtle reactions caused by psychological relationships), they could have a complete systemic error in their model. They don't know how to counter for this, because they really have NO model for human health. NONE.
It is unlike physics which has a model for explaining the cosmos, medicine has none. And it likely never will, because ITS A LIVING SYSTEM: it reacts to being probed and put in a box for the convenience of people who wear white coats.
...He comes from the future.
A Hammer Manufacturer decides that government should be run on the basis of ability to use Hammers on every problem? Do tell....
The problem with Science is big:
1. Problem 1 - Tthe same as with religion. Too many zealots.
While "Separation of Church and State" isn't really a phrase used in the constitution, it is a phrase the judicial system uses.
So if you can separate those that "believe in science" as a religion, then it might work.
2. Problem 2 - Science doesn't care about morality
What happens when science shows that your death benefits man more than your life?
3. Problem 3 - Science doesn't care about your inalienable rights
Right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, right?
See #2.
Also, what if science shows that liberty actually results in more unhappiness and more crime and death. So let's just take liberty away.
4. Problem 4 - Instead of a Christian crusade, there would be an anit-religion crusade
Let's kill all the believers who don't bow down to the truth that there is not God, religion is false, and science is everything.
How is science any better than when religion ran the government?
Some science from the USSR was unbelievably bad (Lysenko). Which points out the fundamental problem with running a government by science. The government will just redefine science for their purposes.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Try reading actual historical documents, it's a hobby of mine. Captured NAZI documents, and duplicate copies thereof, are in many library collections in the US after having been seized by American GI's during the war and sent back to the US in large quantities for study. It helps that the Germans are well-known for their cultural inclination to document nearly everything with great thoroughness. As WWII drew to a close, they tried to destroy many documents, but they'd created so much that the task was impossible and tons of it ended up in American and British (and other) archives. Sadly, the WWII generation expended a lot of energy collecting this stuff in the hope not only that it would help win the war, but also in the hope that it would help future generations avoid another similar nightmare -- yet young people are far more interested in the latest app or "Game of Thrones" or other cultural fluff than in studying this actual real-world stuff which is far more interesting and chilling.
In writing "And no, Hitler was not an atheist." I do not think you realized you thoroughly and provably false your statement was. This is simply not true, except amongst hyper-left people in left-wing thought bubbles. Political left-wingers in an attempt to distract from the FACT that Hitler's party was the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NAZI was not the official name) love to pretend that Hitler was a religious guy because a parent or grandparent was Catholic. This was studied to death during WWII and in the years after as people tried to understand one of history's great evils and how the otherwise highly-technical and civilized German society fell under his spell. It's a bogus argument. It's as daft as saying "Katy Perry is a Pentecostal Pastor because her parents are". Hitler himself had no personal religious views, and ranted against Christians behind closed doors. Goebbels once publicly introduced him at a NAZI rally as God, and the party members present cheered wildly. The NAZI project involved de-Christianizing the country and substituting a new made-up pagan quasi-nordic set of beliefs ceremonies and traditions as a gradual scheme to ween the masses (who were then a mix of Catholic and Lutheran) off of Christianity. It's all VERY well documented, but if reading documents is too mentally-draining you can see all the ancillary evidence even in photos and postcards etc. Before Hitler rose, Christmas in Germany was very Christian. If you look at all the cards and photos you see that year-by-year every Christian symbol is either re-defined or replaced until late in his life when the winter holiday is just a family-oriented winter festival. This was no accident; it was planned and outlined in official NAZI documents. Don't argue about history with people who've studied it more than you, you'll destroy the illusion that you are well-informed.
It's also interesting that you dodged even making a feeble effort to deny the reality of all the other atheists I named; some realities are just unavoidable no matter how politically-inconvenient.
The rest of your post was just a desperate attempt to cling to inconsistency. If you can blame any act of violence by a religious person pursuing his/her religion on the broad category of "Religion", thereby effectively hanging ISIL murders on Billy Grahm, or the murders by some tribal witch doctor in a deep dark jungle on the Pope, or the child molestations by some catholic priest on the Dalai Lama without regard to fact that all these people believe in entirely different things, then it is TOTALLY fair and reasonable to hang the massacres by absolutely undisputed atheists who all were very committed to the exact same anti-religion belief onto atheists. In fact, the fit is better because the massacres REQUIRED atheism from the people carrying them out, which is WHY they always happen in atheists societies. If you do not like these broad-blankets, then stop casting them onto "religion" which covers a broad set of diverse philosophies VERY different from each
I can assure you that logic has its limits. particularly when there is not enough data to come to a firm conclusion.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Oh, how dare Neil deGrasse Tyson go down the path of reason as an epistemological truth. .....Wait a second ,... I'm a a F$%^ing idiot.
How can reality be known by humans "thanks to their inherently irrational brains".
We need something or someone to tell us what to think.
A moral system based on faith and dogma has given us a much better world than science with their stupid associated technology.
The witch doctor with his finger poised over the button of world destruction.
:
Wow, what a wonderful idea. It worked so well in NAZI Germany. The genetic engineering practiced there lead to severe retardation and the insane. The Germans of that time were among the most highly educated in the world. As Hagel said, "history teaches us that no one ever learns from history"
NdGT's tweet was.. a tweet. It's a bite-sized idea, forced to fit into an arbitrary character limit. And, surprise surprise, it's an interesting idea that falls apart under examination. I'm an atheist rationalist secular humanist, and I wouldn't want to live in #Rationalia, as described in that tweet.
The thought that the single tweet can fully encapsulate an idea is ludicrous. I'm guessing that, if pressed, NdGT would concede that values drive our views of evidence, and that we live in a world of multiple realities. Taking the extreme, a full-on schizophrenic will view the same observations as others and often find wildly varying conclusions. Evidence is not enough.
So you can't live in a system based entirely on logic and rationality. I'd say that this though experiment should be done with other forms of government, however. A government based entirely on religion has exactly the same problems. A government based on any single system, ignoring the rich texture of human life, is going to have issues. In reality, there is no government system you can fit in a tweet that can be rich enough to actually work.
And yet we live in the era of sound-bite politics, where "Build a wall" is a policy and not a slogan. We've lost touch with subtlety, nuance, debate. An argument used to be a way to weigh merits of a topic, not a fight.
NdGT's rep will take a hit from a single tweet. Because people with their own agenda spend many more words pointing out the flaws in a compressed argument. I can't agree with his tweet, but I think I agree with where I think he was going with it. Where he would have gone if he'd had more than 140 characters.
Tweets suck.
Science cannot tell you what to do. At best, it can only tell you the consequences.
Table-ized A.I.
*Looks out the window at the Planned Parenthood in a high end shopping center in a very upscale part of town with an almost completely white customer base*
What? Your post is the height of racism. "Go back to collecting their government checks?"
Of course, your reply is also the height of racism, in assuming that most people that collect government checks are of one particular race! 8-}
Oh, is that why?
So, what are you backing, then? Is it Freud's psychosexual conflict? Skinner's operant conditioning? Erickson's development through eight conflicts? Sweat lodges? Est? Primal therapy? Suppressed memory regeneration? Thorazine? A scalpel applied to the corpus callosum? Shock therapy? Group therapy? Bonding retreats? A pure statistical approach? Hallucinogenics? Confrontation? Ten step programs invoking superstition? And are you aware that many of the studies (supposedly) done with a reasonable amount of rigor have turned out to be non-repeatable?
Psychology and sociology, someday, may reach the status of respectable science. Right now they're just voodoo. Bunkum. Don't be a victim.
Oh yeah, one more thing: I don't presume to know any answers in these areas for anyone but myself (and even then, only a few.) I'm simply observing that psychologists and sociologists have not demonstrated they're any better than I am. And they sure as hell have demonstrated they're fad-driven problem causers.