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Exactly this. Science has too much emphasis on the "now", on present knowledge. Take 17th century science... most of it would be ludicrous by any standard toda
by mclightning 5y ago
Exactly this. Science has too much emphasis on the "now", on present knowledge.
Take 17th century science... most of it would be ludicrous by any standard today. Now imagine applying that science onto humans/society... Science as a tool to deal with present knowledge, should not be used solely to manage societies or human situations with irreversible consequences.
- uniqueuid 5y agoThen propose another way of getting reliable, robust and explainable guidelines for managing societies? But of course, evidence-based decision making should not be turned into decision-based evidence making; science alone is not a basis for politics.
- mclightning 5y agoIn your very last sentence there; you summed up what I meant. I don't know why you expect me to come up with a solution on how to manage societies in a comment section.
- uniqueuid 5y agoSorry, that was needlessly aggressive. Glad we agree then.
- justanotherguy0 5y agoWell it would be helpful if you did. Maybe some nice corp would be willing to buy an issue of a journal so that you can publish and distribute the solution!
- mclightning 5y agohahaha indeed! issue of a journal seems to go pretty cheap these days :D
- TchoBeer 5y agoI don't think they expected you to come up with a solution to managing societies; I assume if you know of a better way to come up with reliable guidelines for running society you wouldn't have thought of it yourself. Maybe you could link to a book that contains the methodology that you think is better than science.
- mclightning 5y agoDude, we (me and other commenter) are already in agreement. Other commenter summed it up pretty succinctly. So I just didn't want to start a flamewar on semantics, except for pointing out that I can't come up with a solution in a short form here. I have a medium article in draft over 3 months on this exact topic. That's why my wording of the issue came out sounding more complicated. But other commenter saying "science alone" and me saying "using science solely" are basically pointing to same understanding. There are many examples in history for the said situation leading to social catastrophes; see Malthus (or Thanos' ideology if you like pop-cult), or Darwinian take on managing societies. Some lead to racism, some eugenics etc etc. Like the original commenter said; science is myopic and highly focused on the present body of knowledge available. But once we applied those results onto people and cause suffering, and 10 years later find some of those were wrong, we can not undo the human suffering. There needs to be a balance; when science is treading closely to the human dignity, well-being, life in general.