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I find this worldview tends to face difficulties in practice because on any reasonably controversial issue you can find solid evidence that 'both' (assuming onl
by rjf72 8y ago
I find this worldview tends to face difficulties in practice because on any reasonably controversial issue you can find solid evidence that 'both' (assuming only two sides here for linguistic ease) sides are wrong, and evidence that both sides are right. So which do you choose? Neither? What if it's an issue that you find particularly relevant? Do you now base your decision on popular vote? Weighted vote? Or do you go with what you personally find most compelling? Something altogether different?
To avoid the hornet's nest that is contemporary issues let's go back a bit in time. Is Earth in the very center of the universe with literally everything in existence revolving around it, a geocentric view? Or do we live in a universe where the Earth holds no particular relevance and is just another rock rotating around our star, a heliocentric view? There is hundreds of years of astronomical evidence indicating that the Earth is at the center of the universe. But at the same time you understand that alternative views, heliocentricism in particular, have not been given anywhere near the same degree of consideration. It borders on heresy against the established political forces, but even in academia it turns against centuries of established research. But might we be missing something?
Personally you find the models used to articulate the astronomical 'reality' of a geocentric to be rather unrealistically fanciful. Mercury at some point in its orbit literally stops and just starts going the other way. Most of all the planets have to travel in these really peculiar swirly orbits that we don't really have any physical evidence of in any other phenomena. Perhaps most worrying of all to you, the models used to demonstrate a geocentric universe are completely unfalsifiable. Each time we make a new observation we simply tack it onto the model. There is no way the model could ever be refuted outside of being able to view the universe through the eyes of god himself, which is something we surely will never be able to do.
So would you choose to believe that the Earth is at the center of the universe? Or might you find it something less than compelling in spite of the fact that 'logic, evidence, reason, and reality' as framed by the times had entrenched it as indisputable fact? In any case there would certainly be no indisputable evidence that Earth was not at the center of the universe with everything else revolving around it.
- TheOtherHobbes 8y agoGeocentrism vs heliocentrism was actually a proxy debate between religious authoritarianism and the first stirrings of scientific empiricism. You buy ideology wholesale, and ideological thinking is essentially authoritarian. It means you can hide behind something that you assume is bigger than yourself to make your beliefs more plausible and your arguments more convincing. You can see this reduced to bare essentials when you talk to religious types who "prove" everything with a bible quote. If you don't believe in the authority of the bible this seems ridiculous, and if you do it's completely authoritative. But science has similar issues. It's not unusual to see "You can't argue with me, I'm a scientist" being used in the fringes of science where it isn't truly justified empirically or theoretically. It's even more popular among technical types who aren't scientists at all, but who use "science" to dismiss opinions they disapprove of as "woo". Ideology is essentially just people not-thinking in a herd. You can buy your value system wholesale, have it justified by the size and heft of your herd, and persuade yourself that your beliefs make sense - and even that they can't be argued with. The authoritarian part comes from the political reality that political "morality" is about power, status, and credibility, not about facts or accuracy. In a political moral framework you score points by destroying the power, status, and credibility of your opponent using any means possible - including outright lies and character smears. Humans seem much more likely to "prove" a point politically than empirically and with intellectual humility and integrity - which is fatal for real knowledge, because making and admitting mistakes in a political frame is a strongly losing move.