Save the environment! ... From what?

[BasharOfTheAges]

I suppose it's worth noting that I'm using the word theory rather loosely, half the times I really mean hypothesis. There is a difference between the two, but I think it's a rather nitpicky difference that takes a language nazi to care about.

Actually it's that mis-understanding that anti-science people use most often to seem credible to the dumb-as-bricks US population. They use it all the time in anthropogenic climate change discussions, they use it in evolution discussions, they use it to make people think the LHC is going to kill us all, etc. etc. By actually forcing the point that there is a difference between an hypothesis (an untested idea) and a theory (an idea that has been tested to hell and back and proven quite soundly with the preponderance of the data) you educate the dumb-as-all-fuck US population (I single out the US here, because just about everywhere else in the world there isn't this huge anti-science bandwagon that, typically, scared religious folks jump on because they somehow fear science).

[Otohiko]

ITT:

Cartesian positivism vs. hippie gaia-ism vs. Al Gore worship vs. narcissism

I know which one wins

[godix]

By actually forcing the point that there is a difference between an hypothesis (an untested idea) and a theory (an idea that has been tested to hell and back and proven quite soundly with the preponderance of the data) you educate the dumb-as-all-fuck US population (I single out the US here, because just about everywhere else in the world there isn't this huge anti-science bandwagon that, typically, scared religious folks jump on because they somehow fear science).

If someone got through high school science without understanding the difference between hypothesis and theory then there's little chance they're gonna learn it from me no matter what.

Also, while I won't disagree about the US being full of dumbfucks, it's not like other countries are actually any better. My hypothesis to explain humanity is that 95% of people anywhere at any time are mindless idiots and the 5% that actually can think are what prevent the world from becoming a Mad Max type shithole. I have yet to see any evidence to disprove my theory, although admittedly I haven't looked all that much because it'd be depressing as hell if I was proven right.

[Kionon]

Also, while I won't disagree about the US being full of dumbfucks, it's not like other countries are actually any better. My hypothesis to explain humanity is that 95% of people anywhere at any time are mindless idiots and the 5% that actually can think are what prevent the world from becoming a Mad Max type shithole. I have yet to see any evidence to disprove my theory, although admittedly I haven't looked all that much because it'd be depressing as hell if I was proven right.

Plato also believed this. So did Machiavelli, although for very different reasons.

[Otohiko]

So, more importantly, did Nietzsche. And it's a classic ploy to deny (or rather demonize) any notion of the collective and support some (rather laughable) notions of individualism and, politically, libertarianism and inevitable social/environmental/universal irresponsibility that follow from it. To quote Tarkovsky - "Calling themselves intellectuals, those writers and scientists! [...] Every minute they only think about how not to become cheap - how to sell themselves a little more expensively, so that everything of theirs would be paid for, every emotional movement! They know that they were "not born in vain", that they were "called upon" - after all, they live "only once"... Can people like that believe in anything?"

While people are obviously stuck in categorical thinking (that's just a physiological fact), the constant categorization of a lot of these things strikes me as just a pathetic unwillingness and fear of associating with the other. The fact is that for the most part, we (as still largely modern Western people) are scared shitless of the environment, of other people, and of our own inner selves in equal measure, because once you take off the decals we really have no fucking idea of what goes on in there and, it strikes me, most don't want to approach it without the decals. We don't know what goes on in 95% of the universe - I mean, we literally don't even really know what 95% of the universe is even made of. Does that mean 95% of all of the universe is shit? (dark energy = shit? fascinating theory). We sure don't know what goes on in 95% of people, so they must be shit. And we don't really have a solid grasp what goes on in 95% of our own psyche, what actually makes us tick and how we really develop. So what we do is throw out that 95% of shit, put everything else in neat little bricks with decals on them, and put a nice little invention called "individual" on top of it, and safely delineate it from the "other" which is "shit" or, translated to a more neutral term, which we are completely fucking terrified of and need to burn with fire if we possibly can. Sadly, given what little we do know, it's hard to deny that the individual is kind of a pathetic, if not entirely valueless decal too. We live in a fucking collective and we're completely and utterly useless without it - and even if we succeed at blocking out the little humans from our view and tell society to fuck off, we still haven't successfully left the collective. On the one hand, we probably have technology (hello delegated-humans). On the other hand, we still definitely have the environment that is inescapably shared with and shaped by the collective, unless we live on the moon (in which case, hello technology and thus humans that got us there). We share that environment with 6-odd billion humans now. Yeah, okay, I think global warming is a red herring. It may well also be bullshit. People love to argue about it, because it's necessarily categorical. It's either yes global warming or no global warming.

The fact that we all have allowed it to stoop to a yes/no debate on global warming is a fucking disgrace. Look, we are doing something with technology right now and we really have no idea where we're taking it. At a time when we know, for fact, that we can successfully destroy our own collective as we know it - this is actually fucking terrifying. So instead of - from both sides of this debate - facing up to this fact, we're just trading yes/no back in forth. And looking to science to solve everything for us.

Science will not save us when people who have the brains to argue epistemology build a collective cosmology on the assumption that 95% of everything is shit and the only salvation is shutting out the facts and riding out whatever non-flood will befall us aboard The Individual. Except shockingly, the same 95% of people in our collective believe in that very same 95% figure, because of course that 95% is outside anything they can make sense of and they'd rather all of it be disregardable shit than be forced to see the other-ness of their own collective nature. This is the beginnings of alienation, the mother of all inequality, us-and-them thinking, and it is the beginnings of our glorious scientific ethics which have got us to a point where we have been a few button presses away from the end of civilization as such.

You have to be insane to believe that this is the finest that we as a race can do and that this is what will save us from our own glorious march into autoegotechnocratic fuckwhat that surely awaits us sooner rather than later if we keep going at that pace. We're fighting that 95%. We'll soon purge it all successfully. 95% of everything is dead to us already. There should soon be some pure 5% white daffodils on the grave.

[Kionon]

This is the beginnings of alienation, the mother of all inequality, us-and-them thinking, and it is the beginnings of our glorious scientific ethics which have got us to a point where we have been a few button presses away from the end of civilization as such.

Read much Marcuse, do we?

[Garylisk]

But let's talk about real controversial issues, like diet and nutrition! I eat almost nothing but protein, fat, and vegetables.

This might seem like an unrelated derailment attempt, but there is a point, and I wonder if anyone will catch it. Hint: It has to do with scientific method.

[Kionon]

But let's talk about real controversial issues, like diet and nutrition! I eat almost nothing but protein, fat, and vegetables.

This might seem like an unrelated derailment attempt, but there is a point, and I wonder if anyone will catch it. Hint: It has to do with scientific method.

No, let's not.

There is no one scientific method. There are many. Which scientific method is best is a philosophical question, not a scientific one.

[godix]

stuff

I think I prefer it better when you're telling stories that end in horrible, but funny, injuries to yourself. Be my clown.

[Garylisk]

There is no one scientific method. There are many. Which scientific method is best is a philosophical question, not a scientific one. [/size]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

Although procedures vary from one field of inquiry to another, identifiable features distinguish scientific inquiry from other methodologies of knowledge. Scientific researchers propose hypotheses as explanations of phenomena, and design experimental studies to test these hypotheses. These steps must be repeatable in order to dependably predict any future results. Theories that encompass wider domains of inquiry may bind many independently-derived hypotheses together in a coherent, supportive structure. This in turn may help form new hypotheses or place groups of hypotheses into context.

You probably mean:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific ... of_science

Paul Feyerabend similarly examined the history of science, and was led to deny that science is genuinely a methodological process. In his book Against Method he argues that scientific progress is not the result of applying any particular method. In essence, he says that "anything goes", by which he meant that for any specific methodology or norm of science, successful science has been done in violation of it. Criticisms such as his led to the strong programme, a radical approach to the sociology of science.

Damn philosphers, always fucking with shit.

But, regardless, when you do research, you do need to stick to a consistent method. A lot of research on diet and nutrition has been done inconsistently and with much bias. It draws more parallels to climate change research in that respect than you would think. That was my only point.