[zarathustreal]

>Any science or truth exists only at the whims of the social order of the day.

This is not objectively true but I understand what you're trying to say. I'm sad to hear that your experience of science and truth has been only that which society has given you, or at the least that you feel that others are only experiencing it in that way

[antepodius]

Sorry, I should have worded that more clearly: Only that science or truth that is doesn't contravene the current social order is allowed air, allowed to be talked about without reprisal and shunning. The degree to which this is true is a canary for how totalitarian and neurotic your micro-society is. The micro-society of universities generally seems to be becoming more, rather than less, rabid and paranoid.

A lot of it is like Bostrom's idea of the decentralized electroshock dystopia: even though a significant proportion of people are witches, everyone's afraid of reprisal for not actively hunting witches, so the witches-in-hiding hunt their own when they're unmasked.

But this is the way of things; this wave will pass, eventually, as well. And like the soviet scientists who kept their heads down and mouthed the party line, the secret iconoclasts will survive till the current order is replaced by the next, with its own peculiar tabboos.

[zepto]

This is a crucial argument. Do you have a link to something that supports your statement that “this is not objectively true”? I think it would help a lot in these debates.

[tripzilch]

Yeah it's called "The Barstool Experiment". Look it up :-)

The short summary is: Two people sitting in a bar, discussing how there is no objective truth, or that "science or truth exists only at the whims of the social order" and stuff like that, all day long. And then a third person comes along and smashes their brains with a barstool. In some variations, the first two people are a scientist and a priest. But the third person is just some dude with a barstool.