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by williamtrask
1262 days ago
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Science has given many things, and as a professional research scientist, I help it continue to do so. I by no means think science should go away. However, it also created the ability for humanity to destroy itself: the nuclear bomb, climate change, and plenty of other existential threats. Also there are plenty of non-tech tribes which display tremendous lifespans. To my knowledge, the common threads among centenarians is not usually tech or globalisation driven. Often they’re religious and they’re very often closely knit with their local communities. The jury is still out on whether science is net positive. We’re only a few hundreds if years in (12,000 if you want to start with the dawn of technology…being the plow). It’s made lives better and worse while simultaneously significantly decreasing the amount and depth to which humans believe they have a purpose, a pursuit I feel science has made little to no progress on. But my stronger point is that magical thinking was naturally selected (as in natural selection) to be almost universally advantageous for the first 99% of human existence. I’m not sure our 1% experiment with a scientific society is as of yet conclusively better. We’ve almost made humans extinct. We might still. I don’t know of a magical belief (karma, etc.) that has put humanity in such a grave threat as the Cold War or climate change, for example. |
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Would it be better to not have any knowledge at all and be at the mercy of nature?
Acquiring power always comes together with the possibility of misuse. Maybe those who never got as far as we got would prefer to eventually get wiped out by nature (and it's gonna happen either way, what with the heat death and all that). I'd still prefer to have lived to know the electron than the alternative