What useful stuff has *modern* philosophy accomplished for man-kind?

[Kharakov]

^Today's science is largely obscurantist nonsense like the above.

What is called "science" is definitely partially intended to obscure various facts about reality. However the ideas posted above aren't nonsense- you simply don't understand them or know how to use them. Doesn't mean they aren't understandable and/or have some sort of use.

It is simply a replacement for the theology of past days, something to keep the masses ignorant and obedient.

Believe whatever makes you happy little buddy. History is history, and you don't actually know what has happened, except for the information you have been handed.

 

[DBT]

^Today's science is largely obscurantist nonsense like the above. It is simply a replacement for the theology of past days, something to keep the masses ignorant and obedient.

Can you give a reasoned argument with supporting evidence that proves your proposition that ''today's science is largely obscurantist nonsense?'

 

[No Robots]

^I already pointed to Kharakov's post as an example. It's like trying to listen to a theologian explaining the trinity. It's all drivel with an underlying tone of bullying authoritarianism: if you don't get it, you must be stupid, anti-science and immoral.

 

[No Robots]

Here's another example:

Labbé developed a way to automatically detect manuscripts composed by a piece of software called SCIgen, which randomly combines strings of words to produce fake computer-science papers. SCIgen was invented in 2005 by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge to prove that conferences would accept meaningless papers — and, as they put it, “to maximize amusement” (see ‘Computer conference welcomes gobbledegook paper’). A related program generates random physics manuscript titles on the satirical website arXiv vs. snarXiv. SCIgen is free to download and use, and it is unclear how many people have done so, or for what purposes. SCIgen’s output has occasionally popped up at conferences, when researchers have submitted nonsense papers and then revealed the trick.--"Publishers withdraw more than 120 gibberish papers"​

Science today is corrupt and degenerate, like the Church of old.

 

[DBT]

Here's another example:

Labbé developed a way to automatically detect manuscripts composed by a piece of software called SCIgen, which randomly combines strings of words to produce fake computer-science papers. SCIgen was invented in 2005 by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge to prove that conferences would accept meaningless papers — and, as they put it, “to maximize amusement” (see ‘Computer conference welcomes gobbledegook paper’). A related program generates random physics manuscript titles on the satirical website arXiv vs. snarXiv. SCIgen is free to download and use, and it is unclear how many people have done so, or for what purposes. SCIgen’s output has occasionally popped up at conferences, when researchers have submitted nonsense papers and then revealed the trick.--"Publishers withdraw more than 120 gibberish papers"​

Science today is corrupt and degenerate, like the Church of old.

That is not an example that science in general is corrupt and degenerate. It's just an example of a silly idea that should be scrapped. It does not mean the whole of science is ''corrupt and degenerate'' - you are overextending (to say the least) the significance of your so called examples in order to support your assertion that ''Science today is corrupt and degenerate''

 

[No Robots]

That is not an example that science in general is corrupt and degenerate. It's just an example of a silly idea that should be scrapped. It does not mean the whole of science is ''corrupt and degenerate

Widespread use of automatic text generation to produce articles for publication is just "a silly idea?" I see that science has its true believers who will excuse any behavior by its representatives.

In other news, in a survey of scientists engaged in field research, the majority — 64 percent — said they had personally experienced sexual harassment while at a field site, and 22 percent reported being the victim of sexual assault. So, science is filled with perverts and sexual deviants as well as cheats, frauds and fakes.

 

[Keith&Co.]

So, science is filled with perverts and sexual deviants as well as cheats, frauds and fakes.

Wow.
Perverts and sexual deviants, fakes and frauds, all made the internet.
Beat polio.
Put rovers on Mars.
Filmed the giant squid.
Built space stations.
And have figured out exactly what the Paleo Diet really is.

NOW i see why creationists hate scientists. The fucking pervs have all the fun and STILL produce more results than creation science ever dreamd of.

Jealousy ill becomes you, No Robots.

 

[No Robots]

Jealousy ill becomes you, No Robots.

Science: still treating sex crime as a joke.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Widespread use of automatic text generation to produce articles for publication is just "a silly idea?" I see that science has its true believers who will excuse any behavior by its representatives.

I don't thin it would count as evidence that 'science' is corrupt unless someone tried to quote a gibberish paper in their own research. Did any of the published papers make it to a science journal, and end up on some serious researcher's bibliography?
That would be beyond silly. Right now, i can't see that it's more than a silly idea.

Piltdown Man was more than a silly idea. He was used in sincere research. The hoax affected careers. Has any computer-generated gibberish paper brought down anyone who was honestly trying to perform their job?
Note, if anyone blew off checking the papers and said, 'yeah, they're good,' then he deserves to be dope-slapped, but it's not a failure of science.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Jealousy ill becomes you, No Robots.

Science: still treating sex crime as a joke.

You started it.
You said 'science is full' based on a survey about only PART of science. But how much of 'science' was encompassed in thatfield research study? 64% of field researchers is what percent of 'science?' Can you really support your conclusions or are you exaggerating JUST a tiny bit?

 

[No Robots]

The huge cultural authority science has acquired over the past century imposes large duties on every scientist. Scientists have acquired the power to impress and intimidate every time they open their mouths, and it is their responsibility to keep this power in mind no matter what they say or do. Too many have forgotten their obligation to approach with due respect the scholarly, artistic, religious, humanistic work that has always been mankind’s main spiritual support. Scientists are (on average) no more likely to understand this work than the man in the street is to understand quantum physics. But science used to know enough to approach cautiously and admire from outside, and to build its own work on a deep belief in human dignity. No longer.--"The Closing of the Scientific Mind" / David Gelernter​

 

[Kharakov]

The huge cultural authority science has acquired over the past century imposes large duties on every scientist. Scientists have acquired the power to impress and intimidate every time they open their mouths, and it is their responsibility to keep this power in mind no matter what they say or do.

I've has my work dismissed in public by someone who spoke from position of authority, rather than knowledge. It is one particular case- it hasn't happened often, but it stuck in my mind because of the situation. They totally appealed to their authority in their field of discipline to dismiss something that is true. They said something along the lines of "I've been doing this type of math for over 25 years, almost every day, and I know that you can't do it that way." Guess what? They were wrong.

People who are authorities in their area of expertise can sometimes make stupid mistakes, and assume that the only way to do something is the way they've been doing it for 20+ years, because that is the way they'd been taught to do something. Math is math, and when it works, it works, and that's one of the greatest things about mathematics. You know that your work is right when it generates the same results as the other persons "only correct way to do things".

So while I always questioned authority before this experience, after this experience I absolutely knew as an absolute fact that I could never accept what an authority figure in any discipline claimed was an absolute truth. In other words, I've got to know it myself, which the majority of you here would totally agree with.

 

[No Robots]

To be honest, Kharakov, I rather like your theory of history. I just think you need to be careful about presenting it with any suggestion of authority.

 

[WAB]

The huge cultural authority science has acquired over the past century imposes large duties on every scientist. Scientists have acquired the power to impress and intimidate every time they open their mouths, and it is their responsibility to keep this power in mind no matter what they say or do. Too many have forgotten their obligation to approach with due respect the scholarly, artistic, religious, humanistic work that has always been mankind’s main spiritual support. Scientists are (on average) no more likely to understand this work than the man in the street is to understand quantum physics. But science used to know enough to approach cautiously and admire from outside, and to build its own work on a deep belief in human dignity. No longer.--"The Closing of the Scientific Mind" / David Gelernter​

Great article, No Robots! How could it be that we never crossed paths at FRDB? I remember seeing you there, but I don't think we ever interacted.

Anyway, I was involved in many threads related to the concept of the 'self', which I championed as an atheist and still do as a Christian. I could never tolerate the whole there is no self, there is no I point of view, which I see as totally contradictory and nonsensical.

I also argued that some people - and a few members at FRDB especially - just could not stand the fact that a person could have private, subjective experiences that were absolutely unobservable and untouchable by anyone else. It's nice to see that view articulated in the article:

Why bother? Because to present-day philosophers, Searle writes, “the subjectivist ontology of the mental seems intolerable.” That is, your states of mind (your desire for adventure, your fear of icebergs, the ship you imagine, the girl you recall) exist only subjectively, within your mind, and they can be examined and evaluated by you alone. They do not exist objectively. They are strictly internal to your own mind. And yet they do exist. This is intolerable! How in this modern, scientific world can we be forced to accept the existence of things that can’t be weighed or measured, tracked or photographed—that are strictly private, that can be observed by exactly one person each? Ridiculous! Or at least, damned annoying.

[emphasis mine]

 

[DBT]

The huge cultural authority science has acquired over the past century imposes large duties on every scientist. Scientists have acquired the power to impress and intimidate every time they open their mouths, and it is their responsibility to keep this power in mind no matter what they say or do. Too many have forgotten their obligation to approach with due respect the scholarly, artistic, religious, humanistic work that has always been mankind’s main spiritual support. Scientists are (on average) no more likely to understand this work than the man in the street is to understand quantum physics. But science used to know enough to approach cautiously and admire from outside, and to build its own work on a deep belief in human dignity. No longer.--"The Closing of the Scientific Mind" / David Gelernter​

There is no form of human endeavor that is free from self interest. Consequently there is the tendency of those in a position within an organization to protect their own investments in the field, their own work, interests and achievements. This of course includes most if not all of the branches of science....obviously, you can include religious beliefs and their organizations, politics, business, etc, etc. But the thing that sets science apart from the rest is the scientific method: observation, gathering and testing information and peer review, a process that has shown good results, despite the unavoidable flaws of human beings.

 

[WAB]

Good post, DBT.

****

No Robots, I found a paragraph I like even better. It says something I spent thousands of words trying to express on FRDB's forums (fora?):

I cite Keats or Rilke, Wordsworth, Tolstoy, Jane Austen because these “subjective humanists” can tell us, far more accurately than any scientist, what things are like inside the sealed room of the mind. When subjective humanism is recognized (under some name or other) as a school of thought in its own right, one of its characteristics will be looking to great authors for information about what the inside of the mind is like.

Not only great poets and authors, but philosophers, theologians, painters, composers, musicians, athletes, artisans, cooks, butlers, farmers, rocket-scientists, lab techs, nurses, dishwashers, ditch-diggers, and lunatics.

 

[Keith&Co.]

The huge cultural authority science has acquired over the past century imposes large duties on every scientist. Scientists have acquired the power to impress and intimidate every time they open their mouths, and it is their responsibility to keep this power in mind no matter what they say or do.​

Why is the burden on the experts? Wouldn't it be better to educate the laymen? So that when a scientist opens his mouth, the rank and file don't feel intimidated? At least, not until they find out the scientist's area of expertise, and his qualifications to speak on the topic? Shouldn't the burden be placed on the listern just as much, to make sure that he filters op-eds for people knowing what the fuck their talking about?

Scientists have the same freedom to have and share opinions as the Archie Bunker types working the shipping docks. If people are overimpressed by an astrophysicist talking about gay rights or how women are inferior to men, that doesn't mean the astrophysicist should not talk, or add disclaimers to limit the impact of his speech, no more than any Tea Party politician feels a need to explain how little his opinion should matter.

Of course, some of us don't need a disclaimer. You hate certain conclusions that scientists have come to, because they appear to threaten your beliefs, so you attack science in general. That's clear from your post history, but no one's making you add a summary to that effect to your first contributions to any thread, right?​

 

[Togo]

The huge cultural authority science has acquired over the past century imposes large duties on every scientist. Scientists have acquired the power to impress and intimidate every time they open their mouths, and it is their responsibility to keep this power in mind no matter what they say or do.​

Why is the burden on the experts? Wouldn't it be better to educate the laymen? So that when a scientist opens his mouth, the rank and file don't feel intimidated? At least, not until they find out the scientist's area of expertise, and his qualifications to speak on the topic? Shouldn't the burden be placed on the listern just as much, to make sure that he filters op-eds for people knowing what the fuck their talking about?​

Which is presumably why we should simply ignore people who question whether philosophy has any value on the basis that it doesn't work like science. That has some interesting implications for threads like this one​

 

[Keith&Co.]

Why is the burden on the experts? Wouldn't it be better to educate the laymen? So that when a scientist opens his mouth, the rank and file don't feel intimidated? At least, not until they find out the scientist's area of expertise, and his qualifications to speak on the topic? Shouldn't the burden be placed on the listern just as much, to make sure that he filters op-eds for people knowing what the fuck their talking about?

Which is presumably why we should simply ignore people who question whether philosophy has any value on the basis that it doesn't work like science. That has some interesting implications for threads like this one

Wel, not necessarily ignore. Some people really like straight lines and an opening to lecture.
But at the least, we need to understand if the objection is a meaningful critique or, well, yap flapping.

 

[No Robots]

Fraud, sex crime and bullying are merely symptoms of the disease at the the heart of science. As Marx puts it, "cience, unlike other architects, builds not only castles in the air, but may construct separate habitable storeys of the building before laying the foundation stone." Science is without adequate foundations, and is thus doomed to further decadence and predatory behavior.