Maybe science isn’t the answer
- Relatively limitless energy
- Relatively limitless food and water.
In terms of quality of life I would also include
- improvements in healthy aging and longevity
- improvement in environmental health
- improvements in social inclusivity
- access to free health and education
- complete reliance on artificial technology
But that aspect is part of the ecosystem of interactive decision making. Its just intrinsic at the individual/family level but has ramifications at the meta-level local community, religion, ethnicity, state, political affiliation and country.
One simple example is the decision to buy brand new clothes. People who claim to be environmentally aware also want to look "fashionable" and chuck out last season's wardrobe in the name of shopping therapy. A need to "look good now" As a result they contribute unwittingly to unsustainable practices that negatively impact the meta world down the track. Only buddhist monks really address this by wearing the same robes throughout their life.
A more prosaic example is deciding to not take vacations or eat out so that you save to pay off your house. Some of these individual trade-offs we teach our children. Don't eat all the cake today or there will be no cake tomorrow.
I think Fenn's point is that science isn't the answer to getting world peace. I think he's correct, but I don't know of anybody who thinks it is, so it's something of a straw man argument.
I may be wasting my time saying this, but I don't see the point of being rude to him about it, and some of the posts here look pretty rude to me.
Who is being "rude" to him so far? His post was vague and dishonest and deserves the mild criticism he has gotten.
Well, for example, likening somebody's words to bovine faeces is often seen as somewhat impolite and unnecessary. funeralxempire seems to suggest that the "mild criticism" going on here is low-level bullying, and I think that suggestion has some merit. Small wonder there's so little peace in the world, if he's right.
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- Maybe science has made it easier for us to hurt ourselves
- Maybe science has helped us protect ourselves from existing problems
Either way, maybe things are grim?
Both are trade-offs but as we actively benefit from science the weight of consensus is on the side of science
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techstepgenr8tion
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A more prosaic example is deciding to not take vacations or eat out so that you save to pay off your house. Some of these individual trade-offs we teach our children. Don't eat all the cake today or there will be no cake tomorrow.
Just to make sure we're communicating (we probably are but I just want to make sure) - Sowell is saying that almost anything we can think to tweak or modify will have a zero-sum relationship with some other thing we care about and will likely have still other unintended consequences. That's what 'tradeoffs' as opposed to 'solutions' means.
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Human interaction at any level involves a power differential. As an equilibrium is reached (what the Romans called Pax Romana and what diplomats in the modern era refer to as detente and in neo-liberal speak is a contract) then the primary beneficiary of that relationship is the more powerful partner.
the labour market is a great example. Rich first world countries extract maximum economic benefit from manufacturing, those selling the raw materials are less benefited but gain some benefit, and those churning out raw materials using semi-slave labour in developing countries live a subsistence lifestyle.
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the labour market is a great example. Rich first world countries extract maximum economic benefit from manufacturing, those selling the raw materials are less benefited but gain some benefit, and those churning out raw materials using semi-slave labour in developing countries live a subsistence lifestyle.
Yeah I apologize, I can't follow how this tracks back to the Thomas Sowell quote.
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The loneliest part of life: it's not just that no one is on your cloud, few can even see your cloud.
I think it's more complex than that it seems.
I don't think the issue is technological advancement and progress in science.
I really think the issue is closer to the culture and ethics using said technological advances and science to justify nasty things.
Like the idea of an inferior and superior race, when it's just some stupid generational and collective wealth thing and generational and collective trauma crap.
All collective stupid beliefs, all those stupid traditions, many forgotten where the frick it came from and do not understand that some of them was once an advanced or a necessary thing thousand years ago, yet is oppressive and backwards in whatever respective present.
Eugenics does not erase those crap.
Getting an advanced tech does not erase those crap.
And the knowledge of sciences does not erase those crap but uses said knowledge against another. Kinda like how an abusive idiot's ego uses facts to justify shite.
While yeah, science is not the whole answer...
... It's not the problem either.
I think it goes deeper than just the recent findings in science.
And the closest thing that humans would have a break through with it, is psychology and spirituality, one that can also integrate physics and maths.
And I'm not talking about the woo-woo crap.
I'm talking about not passing generational and collective hate, while not forgetting history and reasonings behind the foolish outdated irrational beliefs.
As much as individuals have their own cycles to contend with, so do people, so do places, so do systems...
Some cycles can span countless generations, outside the scope of our most modern findings about the whole history as 99% of all human history remains a history.
Why do people fight, past the idea of humans being fearful of the unknown, being instinctively territorial and being tribalistic?
Where did humans learnt that, other than being chased by predators and being very clingy over limited resources?
Surely there are countless ways had human progressed past making systems based on said instincts, yet got held back by hundreds or thousand of years, forgetting countless knowledge repeatedly, whether it's man-made or through natural disasters.
The way I see it, it's because humans are an entire species with an historical amnesia.
And they're barely relearning things.
Like how women are not inferior species with their worth reduced to a biological function (would that imply that said biological function made women superior at some point?), or how children shouldn't feel debt just for being born and surviving (instead of being a valued more than a labor resource or viewing them as someone to live through by someone else), or how most males are emotionally neglected (yes, I said neglected. I'm talking about the discouraged feminine traits and all that emotionality all because of the idea of tradition).
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the labour market is a great example. Rich first world countries extract maximum economic benefit from manufacturing, those selling the raw materials are less benefited but gain some benefit, and those churning out raw materials using semi-slave labour in developing countries live a subsistence lifestyle.
Yeah I apologize, I can't follow how this tracks back to the Thomas Sowell quote.
It's cool! lucky this isn't an exam question.
The problem is not science, but the misuse of science. Humanity will tend to seek self-destruction. It can be seen in the past and will happen in the future. Science just changes the weapons/techniques that humans use to kill/hurt each other. Humanity needs a lesson in ethics, but then again, who will teach it to them?
AI might get to the answer of teaching ethics to humanity. However it may not get used by humans for good purposes in the end. It may take the threat of AI weaponized to bring humanity together. Time will tell either way.
A comment on history: WWI is known as the chemist’s war for a reason. One side started and the other followed. Both sides were guilty of such acts. The net result was humanity learned newer ways to destroy each other via chemicals/biologicals. Biological warfare was conducted during this time, but became overshadowed by chemical warfare. Inoculated treats were spread via airplanes to certain areas to contaminate enemy populations with diseases. This lead to further developments in the next war.
Actually every major war/conflict in the 20th century has been a catalyst for technological leaps forward. Nazism is directly responsible for space technology. Without German Nazi rocket scientists, the US space program would not have got off the ground. WWII also is responsible for the development of the modern airline industry.
Although the United States Has Been Attacked in Pearl Harbor
With American Lives Lost and The 9/11 Terrorist Attack, Never
The Less, the Last War on Our Soils Was the Civil War Back in 1865;
Yep, 159 Years Ago; Currently Folks in Many Other Countries Aren't
Nearly As Fortunate This Way as Yes Almost A Trillion Dollars Spent on
The Military in the United States With Our 4 Percent of World Population
Spending 40 Percent of What's Spent World-Wide on The Military in General
Is Surely a MIGHTY
DETERRENT For
Others to Attack
US or Allies Like the
Current Issue in Israel
Under the United States
Parental Military Coverage
That Allows Israel Currently Just
About Free Range of Killing With
Its Country's Perceived Enemies;
So Yes, Military Might Makes Those With
That Ability More Impervious to Blood On Their
Own Soils; And While We Might Not Like All that Military
Might, It Sure Does Provide A Much More Restful Night than
If one Happens to Live in Lebanon, Gaza, Ukraine, And Yes Currently
Iran too; Plus All the Other Countries in the World That Live in Perpetual
(And For that Matter, Israel
too Dependent on Our Help)
Wars and Bloodshed on Their Soils;
So, While These Tools Provided By
Technology, And in General, Systemizing
Science and Minds Drive The Progression
of More Dangerous Weapons, It Sure Has Led to Less Blood
Shed on The Soils of the Owners of the Tools and Their Friends
Supported too; You Bet, There is More Bloodshed in Gaza With
The Modern
Weapons of
Death The United
States Has Been Providing
To Israel For the Last Few Decades;
Plus, of course, Allowing the United States
to Kill Many More 'Brown Folks' in the Unwarranted
War in Iraq as Well; Yep, Privilege of Advanced Killing Tools indeed...
One Doesn't Have to Look too Far Back in History; Just Over the Atlantic
Now to See the 'Real Time' Current Effects; So It's True, The Advancement
of Killing Tools Has Saved Lives For those in Control of the Weapons and Not
So Much Modernly For those Dying Off From the Explosive Properties that Do Come..
Other than that While one May Not Agree With the Conclusion of the OP; It Surely
Is Just an Opinion
And Not Any
Effort to
Be 'Dishonest'
Or Other Pejoratives
Associated With Intellectual Bullying;
And on the Topic Too, Directly With the Generalized
Question, "Maybe Science Isn't The Answer," to the
Problems at Hand;
There is Love of Peace
And Love of War;
A Big Difference
in the Two is Some Folks
Have More Emotional Intelligence
And Associated Empathy and Compassion
to Solve Problems Diplomatically Rather than
Being the 'Big Bully' on the Block; It's Actually a
Rather Small Way of "Trump Being;" Yep, Much Loved
By Those
Who Seek
Satisfaction
From Discontent,
Anger and Hate; Yet THere
Is a Better And Much More
Intelligent Way When the 'Yang'
of Systemizing Intelligence is Combined
With the 'Yin' of Social Empathetic Intelligence as
Appropriately
Currently
Studied
By Simon
Baron Cohen;
Indeed, at Least
The Most important
Intelligence for a Warmer
Than
Cold Life,
in Many More
Ways Than Just
Material Weapons of Wars...
Yep, Like
Having a
Really Good
Balanced Life Now,
Overall,
WITH MORE OTHERS..
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Actually every major war/conflict in the 20th century has been a catalyst for technological leaps forward. Nazism is directly responsible for space technology. Without German Nazi rocket scientists, the US space program would not have got off the ground. WWII also is responsible for the development of the modern airline industry.
War progressed the development of rocket technology, but it was moving on it’s own by the time WWII started. You can see the modern development as early as the 1910s with model rockets. They were studying aerodynamics with those early attempts. It only sped up rocket technology by 10 to 15 years total. If there was no WWII, rocket technology to go to space would have still happened, just later on in time. Airplane development would have had a similar route. War is a catalyst for technology, but did not cause their initial creation.
BTW - I have a guide to designing aero planes book that was written in 1912. It details the beginnings of how to use aerodynamics for lift back then.
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A nice and concise little realization I just had:
Much like western culture's been poisoned by tabula rasa / blank slatism I think there was a 19th and 20th century idea held by liberals that evil is caused by ignorance and that curing ignorance cures evil.
I can unpack that more later.
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I can relate to that. "They know not what they do," as a certain teacher said when they nailed him to a cross. Driving along, we see a car in front of us do something wacky and perhaps dangerous, and we think we can read the driver's mind and declare him to be a stupid bastard. Then we find out he was having a heart attack. Perhaps the worst ignorance is when we think we know what we don't know.
But by the same token, ignorance can do good as well as harm. I would fear for my elderly father-in-law's peace of mind if he began to doubt his conviction that he's going to Heaven to meet his wife when he dies. But objectively, there may be no Heaven.