| HN Mirror

No rigour?

> Show me that liberal arts types are on average more ethical than science types

Liberal arts types? Science types? More ethical?! I could pick out more but that was a fun, dense one, and anyway I don't want to engage on that level because I don't think it'd help this exchange a bit. Frustrating indeed.

Physician, et c., et c.

I'm not trying to argue, anyway—I answered one reasonable (if a touch hostile) clarifying question and have since been trying to communicate that "recite entire fields of the humanities to me" is unreasonable in this context. How would you react to my demanding proof that science is as good at getting at the truth as you seem to think it is? (incidentally, outside this for-the-sake-of-argument analogy, I do probably largely agree with you on that, so this isn't intended as an actual point of contention) If you've got the patience of a saint, maybe you point out some examples of evident successes, you explain the process—but I say that's not enough, examples of apparent successes aren't proof, and so on. At some point you probably ought to tell me to go read a damn book or take a few courses (i.e. get an education in the thing I'm dismissing but also have so many questions about). It'd be crazy to expect you to produce a philosophy of science course (at a minimum—we could, if I were obstinate, keep digging deeper forever) over HN posts.

My usual approach if a whole lot of apparently-smart-people-with-seemingly-decent-taste think something is valuable and that certain things are true about it and I don't see it is to assume I lack the necessary education and that if I want to be able to understand it and have an informed opinion on it, I need to seek out that education, and to engage with that thing a whole bunch even if it's unpleasant and seems pointless or even bad at first.

I picked that attitude up from... literature and philosophy, largely. I've found it useful. I've never gotten over that initial barrier by asking questions to which I think I already have the answers, on a web forum. Not even (hahaha) this one. In the case of the arts the usual argument for their value, as far as what convinces people, is precisely that kind of direct engagement, perhaps with some guidance from a teacher.

Practically no-one arrives at the conclusion that the arts are valuable and express truths or provide an improving education by reading some scientific paper. Yet, so very many people do reach that conclusion, plenty of them a hell of a lot smarter than me, and they keep doing it well into the scientific revolution—including tons of scientists ("science type"—smh). So the best I can write is that, if you actually want to be convinced, that's the thing to do.

What you seem to be doing instead is asking me to prove to a skeptic's satisfaction that general relativity is true, purely via slam poetry and using only the vocabulary contained in Doctor Seuss books. Be pretty fucking impressive if I pulled that off, right? Wrong tool, wrong approach, if that skeptic's actually interested in being convinced—not that such a thing couldn't be good, or even useful, if such a work existed, just as some kind of scientific examination of the value of the arts might be good and useful, but in either case I doubt it would suffice to convince anyone on its own.

But, I repeat yet again, if things are going swimmingly for you, disregarding the possibility of valuable truth or insight existing in the arts or their being improving, keep going as you are. Seriously. The arts are largely a kind of exercise in working through our collective existential confusion and trauma, and if you don't see the need for that, holy shit, that's great—or if you do see the need for it, and have genuinely sought comfort and answers and guidance across the liberal arts and found all but science wanting, well, that's too bad but is also an entirely fine place to end up.

At any rate, if you want to see if anyone has tried to address your questions from a scientific perspective, you're on the Internet. Have you gone looking for that information? (maybe you have, I really don't know—hell, I could well be communicating with a top researcher in some very-relevant, specialized discipline for all I know)