3 ms·

I don't think political or cultural issues are particularly amenable to objective truth anyway. You can't run randomised control trials for most of the main pol

I don't think political or cultural issues are particularly amenable to objective truth anyway. You can't run randomised control trials for most of the main political or cultural points of contention.

moojd 3y ago
Yeah they are tangental concepts. Truth is only useful politically to inform decision making. Political frameworks and decisions are fundamentally subjective and would still vary wildly even if we could all agree on fundamental truths. It's the main reason I'm skeptical of technocracy.
- LogoEthoPatho 3y ago
  On that topic, few things bother me more than the phrase "trust the science." I understand the intention, but we should be encouraging skepticism and engagement with the underlying tools and methodology. People will scoff at this but you can find a ton of different "Flat Earthers" either accidentally proving the earth is curved using their own experiments (Eg. Bob Knodel), or even dying trying to prove them (Eg. "Mad" Mike Hughes). Science is not some "pure" pursuit of truth, with no care for politics, economics, social influence, or biases. Technocrats genuinely scare me, as they often combine these two things, by claiming authority via "trust the science" type nonsense, while holding delusions of scientific purity.
pastafarianism 3y ago
It's more of an open question. While we cannot use the scientific method to evaluate truth and even less so prove it in the mathematical sense with pure abstract reasoning without any wolrdly evidence, there could still be truths (in a weak sense of the word), at least for humans. Because as humans our morals are primarily based on our feelings/instincts/neurochemsitry/etc and those are highly similar (and of course there are exceptions and deviations such as psychopaths) across the world. Depending on our terminal goal as a civilization or society if humans really wanted to we could try and build some "axioms" of morals and build up other political and cultural truths from there.

moojd 3y ago

Yeah they are tangental concepts. Truth is only useful politically to inform decision making. Political frameworks and decisions are fundamentally subjective and would still vary wildly even if we could all agree on fundamental truths. It's the main reason I'm skeptical of technocracy.

LogoEthoPatho 3y ago
On that topic, few things bother me more than the phrase "trust the science." I understand the intention, but we should be encouraging skepticism and engagement with the underlying tools and methodology. People will scoff at this but you can find a ton of different "Flat Earthers" either accidentally proving the earth is curved using their own experiments (Eg. Bob Knodel), or even dying trying to prove them (Eg. "Mad" Mike Hughes). Science is not some "pure" pursuit of truth, with no care for politics, economics, social influence, or biases. Technocrats genuinely scare me, as they often combine these two things, by claiming authority via "trust the science" type nonsense, while holding delusions of scientific purity.

pastafarianism 3y ago

It's more of an open question. While we cannot use the scientific method to evaluate truth and even less so prove it in the mathematical sense with pure abstract reasoning without any wolrdly evidence, there could still be truths (in a weak sense of the word), at least for humans. Because as humans our morals are primarily based on our feelings/instincts/neurochemsitry/etc and those are highly similar (and of course there are exceptions and deviations such as psychopaths) across the world. Depending on our terminal goal as a civilization or society if humans really wanted to we could try and build some "axioms" of morals and build up other political and cultural truths from there.