richard dawkins (1 Viewer)

[sugar_referee]

I really don't buy this thesis that the consumerist paymasters are skewing us all into lazy, will-less Fritomunchers. The level of general education, demonstrations, popularist anger at injustice etc has never been higher in most parts of the world.
Part of the reason for this is obviously the huge increase and ease of access to information people have these days.

Why do people always assume that other people are brainwashed? It smacks of arrogance : " we're the only ones who really know!"
People are smarter than ever before, and more ready to question. Think of the 50's, for fucks sake. Just because consumerism is a problem doesn't mean it's not a smaller problem than , say, no one knowing anything about what's going on in China, which is how it would be if we didn't all buy the internets...

 

[Diumraid]

Re: The Church itself..
As I've tried to say clearly: I consider the Church to be the old order of mind-control, not that that has gone away but its bedrock has been eroded. Secularism tied with atheism, tied with scientism, tied with practical materialism, tied with the Church's own failure to be the institution it is supposed to be have all pretty much guaranteed that.

Bear in mind that Jesus the Christ did not actually found a church. The institution is borne of the apostles and followers trying to organise themselves into a society so the question of the nature of the Church is fraught from the get-go. I have difficulty with lots of the content even of the letters of St Paul but the institution of the Catholic Church has surely been rotten at the root since Emperor Constantine declared himself head of the Church thereby melding it with the Roman Empire. The corruption, brutality and power-brokering that followed can't be justified in any way.

Here's the rub.. even though I fully understand and sympathise with the Protestant Reformation and all it stood for, I think they dropped the ball. The disenchantment of the Western world began in earnest at that point as well as the sowing of the seeds of free-market capitalism (if you believe some important strands of sociological thought).

As perverse and bizarre as Catholicism is I think there is vital living knowledge in the heart of it. I reject much of what Catholicism means in the mundane sense but there is a wide spectrum of things to consider when deal in a more full way with the idea of the Church.

I'll attempt to lay these out in course..

 

[Diumraid]

I really don't buy this thesis that the consumerist paymasters are skewing us all into lazy, will-less Fritomunchers. The level of general education, demonstrations, popularist anger at injustice etc has never been higher in most parts of the world.
Part of the reason for this is obviously the huge increase and ease of access to information people have these days.

Why do people always assume that other people are brainwashed? It smacks of arrogance : " we're the only ones who really know!"
People are smarter than ever before, and more ready to question. Think of the 50's, for fucks sake. Just because consumerism is a problem doesn't mean it's not a smaller problem than , say, no one knowing anything about what's going on in China, which is how it would be if we didn't all buy the internets...

Interesting that you think its a kind of one-upmanship; that's the attitude that our society breeds, deeming protest to be preaching and critics to be sanctimonious. I'm sure that if I didn't feel inert, brainwashed and all of those things I probably wouldn't recognise it so much in what I see. I think the education system is complicit and in terms of real education is a sorry joke. Our appearance of real intelligence is actually mostly media savvy, training us to be able to put the pieces of culture that we're given together and be delighted with ourselves when we all know the same Monty Python sketch (or whatever) and eat the same foods and drink the same drinks, the pool of variation is evaporating before our eyes. It's all happened incredibly quickly.

 

[flashback]

ehh, yeah, so I mean I have some experience with this business of consumerist paymasters and so on.

I am trying to not knee jerk and say its total bollocks.
Its true that if you have a truly innovative idea, something that is way ahead of its time or very counter intuitive the scientific establishment will be slow to accept it.
Even a field I was working in for a short while, (micro RNAs) is contentious still despite it being the most published area of genetics at the moment. (Maybe, I dunno the exact numbers today actually.)

Scientists are extremely extremely conservative in their thinking. It takes a huge amount to change their minds, and once they change they tend to stay changed.
This can look like religious dogmatism I suppose, but in reality its not, its being safe, not getting caught up in the shouting and loads of nights looking over the data.
They will change their minds once they are satisfied, in fact they are very eager to change their minds its just that the proof levels that they must deal with are nothing like the proof level normal people have to operate with.


And unless you convince people you wont get published.
And if you dont get published you wont get tenure.
But science is anxious for newness, and people will hear you out.

But... but, to say that there is some sort of paymaster / shady background cabal pulling strings is not true.
In fact, the way Big Science in the US works is the opposite.

Its the worst kept secret really, but when you get a multimillion dollar grant (and I have been part of them personally) its not for work that you propose you will do. Its for work already done.
That is, you get to finish out and scale up the work you have done (with the last batch of money) but you immediately start working out what you are *actually* going to do with the money which will be something different.

And there are zero constraints on this. Effectively you have been handed say 5 million to study whatever you feel like. And I know PIs very well here, there is no behind the scenes demands to stay away from X. I know how it works. You frantically go out sniffing for anything interesting. Anything that will push boundaries.



I am not completely sure if that's what was being got at, since... basically I dont really understand the thread. But, yeah.
There yis go.

 

[snakybus]

I'm pretty sure that's not what he's driving at.

 

[flashback]

seriously?

for. fuck. sake.



right. talk to yis later lads. I'm back off to my glue sniffing.

 

[Diumraid]

I guess I'm talking about humanity conspiring against itself, the group against the individual.. the 'paymaster' idea is the circular question of power and profit as regards what is funded and developed as Mr Flashback said but also as regards how scientific findings are applied. The first myth that needs bursting is the idea of 'value-free' science. Pristine minds in pristine white coats in a pristine lab pursuing pure science for the benefit of all. While the machinery might be seen as essentially positive with some unfortunate torture, deaths and large scale destruction as collateral damage; one could argue that it's a profiteering machine of torture, death and destruction with some relatively minor collateral benefit.

Here's a good quote.


‘The more science and economics come to structure the material environment, the more they become synonymous with reason and order. Accordingly, and in keeping with the binary nature of language, any critique or opposition to the way of things is invariably categorised and dismissed as irrational and antagonistic. And since, as Marx pointed out, anything opposed to capitalism will only make it stronger, today’s anti-capitalist and anti-globalisation protests have become more symbolic of disorder than a threat to the establishment.’

GD Adamson ‘Philosophy in the age of science and capital’

 

[snakybus]

I saw a pretty good Adam Curtis doc that's sort of about this, here's a clip worth watching if you have 10 mins

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOojS5fjgGM

"the other" = drug companies? deh deh DEH, <we arezz robotzzz>

 

[sugar_referee]

but i think people are very aware that there's no pure scientific order, though there may be reasonably pure motives in individuals . The days of people buying completely blindly into everything they're told are over in terms of education, but actually the education system is still more progressive than ever before. I'm not saying it's perfect , far from it, but the sheer amount of attention being paid to the ethics and morality involved is very advanced compared to just a few decades ago. you can't subtract the choice of most people (me included) to take the easiest way for themselves.
In the same vein, I don't think anti-globalisation/ anti-capitalist movements are seen as symbolic of disorder for what they're protesting, it's the fact that usually what's being proposed as an alternative is usually very disorganised, because it doesn't just take one group to start up a world order, it usually brings in all types of people and all types of groups of people, and takes decades to unfold.
One thing that makes it very easy to see anybody with an opposing idea to the prevailing one as preaching is that mass protests etc bring with them the dangers and realities of violence - so easy for those in power to call them on how they've compromised themselves, even if they haven't . It dilutes your protest if you haven't got a better idea. That's very crude but true, I think.

There's nothing so intrinsically wrong with people wanting to protect what they have in their own private world - family, a living , a job, so forth. that's usually where what people call indifference and group mentality come to the fore.

 

[Diumraid]

but i think people are very aware that there's no pure scientific order, though there may be reasonably pure motives in individuals .

You've hit it, it's not individuals that are the problem.

The days of people buying completely blindly into everything they're told are over in terms of education, but actually the education system is still more progressive than ever before. I'm not saying it's perfect , far from it, but the sheer amount of attention being paid to the ethics and morality involved is very advanced compared to just a few decades ago. you can't subtract the choice of most people (me included) to take the easiest way for themselves.

I guess the education system worked for you. It failed me dismally and it fails a large percentage of people spectacularly.

In the same vein, I don't think anti-globalisation/ anti-capitalist movements are seen as symbolic of disorder for what they're protesting, it's the fact that usually what's being proposed as an alternative is usually very disorganised, because it doesn't just take one group to start up a world order, it usually brings in all types of people and all types of groups of people, and takes decades to unfold.
One thing that makes it very easy to see anybody with an opposing idea to the prevailing one as preaching is that mass protests etc bring with them the dangers and realities of violence - so easy for those in power to call them on how they've compromised themselves, even if they haven't . It dilutes your protest if you haven't got a better idea. That's very crude but true, I think.

Not symbolic of disorder in themselves: symbolic of disorder in otherwise orderly society.

There's nothing so intrinsically wrong with people wanting to protect what they have in their own private world - family, a living , a job, so forth. that's usually where what people call indifference and group mentality come to the fore.

Coservativism isn't the problem. If anything I'm advocating some kind of neo-neo-conservativism.

 

[magicbastarder]

By the same token, can these things be untangled?

well, in the facile sense that maxwell's equations are written without regard for what they mean for the human condition, they can. science may someday unravel all the laws of nature, and there may be no deeper answer to the question 'why?' than 'that's just how things are'. i suppose what i'm getting at is the boundary between science and philosophy; and how mutually exclusive those spheres of thought are. can science wrestle with questions without them becoming philosophy?

(original point was the difference between the laws of nature and what those laws mean for us)

 

[Diumraid]

well, in the facile sense that maxwell's equations are written without regard for what they mean for the human condition, they can. science may someday unravel all the laws of nature, and there may be no deeper answer to the question 'why?' than 'that's just how things are'. i suppose what i'm getting at is the boundary between science and philosophy; and how mutually exclusive those spheres of thought are. can science wrestle with questions without them becoming philosophy?

(original point was the difference between the laws of nature and what those laws mean for us)

My point, as before, is that things and facts do not make meaning. We make meaning, or better to say that we discover meaning if we consider meaning to be a real thing and not a 'mere construction of the mind'. In this way I consider science and philosophy to be of the same thing. The only question is the ends to which they are used.
Here is the real schism as I see it:
Either
The end justifies the means
or
The means justifies the end

Even religious types will go with the former, thinking that God has a book of accounts where, like in accounting, the debit and the credit cancel each other out. Even if I do a bad thing its OK if everything ends up rosy. Not so.

 

[cunt]

I still don't find it particularly clear what you're advocating with this "neo-neo conservatisim." You say religion was the old mind control, science the new one. Where does that leave us? You seem to be critcial of all approaches without having any any clear alternative.

I'm also banging my head against a wall with your insistence that the "meaning's" location outside rational explanation is somehow self-evident.

 

[egg_]

a 'mere construction of the mind'

Mere construction of the mind. Only hormones and instinct.

I think someone's been contaminated by Yoda saying to Luke "luminous beings are we, not this crude matter". Why do you hate your own body and the physical world so much?

 

[Diumraid]

I still don't find it particularly clear what you're advocating with this "neo-neo conservatisim." You say religion was the old mind control, science the new one. Where does that leave us? You seem to be critcial of all approaches without having any any clear alternative.

I'm more interested in good questions than answers but it should be clear that I'm saying that something has been lost. I advocate some kind of dynamic dialogue between modernity and the lost principles.

I'm also banging my head against a wall with your insistence that the "meaning's" location outside rational explanation is somehow self-evident.

It's a faith stance that reality is necessarily greater than human reason. You cannot possibly look at the totality because you can't be outside of it. It's all speculation. I don't have faith in reason, it's just a tool.

Mere construction of the mind. Only hormones and instinct.

I think someone's been contaminated by Yoda saying to Luke "luminous beings are we, not this crude matter". Why do you hate your own body and the physical world so much?

That's a pretty inflammatory assumption you're making. I think the mind / body split and the spirit / matter split are constructions, useful for looking at things but totally inadequate in the face of reality in its totality. In the reductivist view the brain is jelly and water, human beings are apes with go-faster stripes, concepts are ultimately meaningless. I don't accept this - would have thought that was evident.

This may look like I'm in with the Christian idea of the special nature of humanity - not exactly so. I think what human beings can achieve is absolutely special, it's not a given. Ignorance will mire a person; enlightenment sets a person free.

Bear in mind here that the timely nature of the long process of the formation of the universe, the evolution of life, the ascent of humanity are at odds with the timelessness of what's outside the box. If you try to understand truth etc in terms of timeliness, progress, past, future etc you are automatically on the wrong track. This is why religion is failing. Just about everybody is now inside the box of 'measurable' time and space thinking that everything can and should be understood that way.

I think Snakybus said that science is in its adolescence. This fits very well with developmental psychology where adolescence is associated with righteous indignation, black and white reasoning, egocentrism and a hatred of other peoples failings and hypocrisy. I suggest that society is riding tandem on this bike. Again, its not a question of what particular individuals think...

 

[snakybus]

ah jeez, I was hoping to do some work today

I'm gonna be fired lads!

 

[egg_]

That's a pretty inflammatory assumption you're making.

Haha I'm poking fun at you dude, that's all. I don't really think your whole philosophical outlook is based on Star Wars

I think the mind / body split and the spirit / matter split are constructions, useful for looking at things but totally inadequate in the face of reality in its totality

Hey guess what? I agree! Hooray!

In the reductivist view the brain is jelly and water, human beings are apes with go-faster stripes

... but then all of a sudden you disrespect jelly and water, and sneer at apes. Why do you think that human consciousness and human concepts are worthy of awe but jelly, water and apes are so crap that they couldn't possibly be made from the same stuff?

 

[Diumraid]

Haha I'm poking fun at you dude, that's all. I don't really think your whole philosophical outlook is based on Star Wars

Just rising to the bait

... but then all of a sudden you disrespect jelly and water, and sneer at apes. Why do you think that human consciousness and human concepts are worthy of awe but jelly, water and apes are so crap that they couldn't possibly be made from the same stuff?

If I were enlightened there would be none of this hierarchical nonsense.... sigh!
Buddha mind is a clear glass that reflects things as they are, not in terms of other things.

 

[flashback]

http://www.tvo.org/TVO/WebObjects/TVO.woa?video?BL_Lecture_20090314_838186_PaulStevens

 

[quackster]

lads, the weather's lovely, go outside and play