| HN Mirror

Completely disagree!

  It is worth giving anything valuable the scientific treatment

No, it's worth giving anything valuable the personal, intuitive, feeling-based treatment. How do you feel about it? That's always the first question. Otherwise we end up with science as the soler arbiter of value, the final judge, the Court of High (scientific truth making) appeal? Right? Because anything I say, you can find some study and say "No" and you'll never believe nor acknowledge the validity of what I"m saying, at least not in a way you'll view as comparable to, equal to, or "shock to the horror" superior to, whatever your precious studies say. That's wrong.

Look--I'm not saying you're like that, 100%, it just seems that way.

  Lots of obvious things, even obvious to billions of people, turn out to be false on closer inspection.

Yeah, like science theories. Turn out to be false or not-reproducible, even thousands of papers parroted them, and counter-ideas were suppressed. Didn't matter. Science is biased, it's part of the mechanism, it needs to be reformed.

  That feeling of “this is so obvious”? It is just a feeling. No smarter than any of our other fallible feelings.

It is not just a feeling. It is something paramount; important. So no way. "Just a feeling": science as false truth supremacy, the incorrect attempted minimization of subjective experience, of emotion. It's never "just a feeling". Never was. Science is just another belief system. That if your measurement equipment, your concepts are wrong, it can't even touch what you feel and experience. So we can say: That idea of "science is so high bar". It's just an idea. No smarter than any of our other fallible ideas.

  I don’t think many people consider science as a sole arbiter. It is more a high bar arbiter. And that high bar is especially useful for human concerns when we (each of us individually) wade into unfamiliar territories that mix fact based things (health) with cultural beliefs or practices.

Um, 1) I think they do, and 2) I think you do from what you say here. It sounds like you're saying it's the only thing we really need to care about. What am I saying? Science is useful. It's a tool. But oft abused, but flawed humans. That's when it becomes dangerous: when the TruthMaker Machine is slaved in service of perpetuating and confirming pre-existing incorrect biases. As it often is. Also dangerous, this "temple of scientific truth" cannot be questioned. Because, theoretically, the method is sound. Yeah, the method is sound. But the implementation, the users of that tool, are flawed. Science is flawed. That's all that matters. The danger is, pretending this Scientific TruthMaking Machine cannot be assailed, that it's unquestionable. This lazy abusive dismissal of counterpoints and other views, is so often fallen back to by the fanatical proponents of science, who use it try incorrectly to quash anything against what they want: like it seem, you're trying to here: "Just a feeling", "science is the high bar". I mean you have faith in it, that it's better than everything else. And I bet, sometime in the past, or maybe the future again, you've been in an dispute, where you have absolutely refused to consider another's view, and completely dismissed it as invalid, by falling back to the mantra: "studies show", or the awful and abusive "just a feeling".

Careful what you say about "Just a feeling"--why would you want someone to doubt themselves? People have enough trouble staying in touch with who they are and what they feel and expressing that, and standing up for themselves. Why would you want to add doubt to that struggle? It's a very dangerous territory, and abusive one, to go. Every time I've seen someone trying to do that to someone else, it always proceeds trying to manipulate that person you're trying to cause to doubt, trying to have power over them, trying to abuse them. I mean it's a form of gaslighting, it's awful: "You don't really feel like that, it's a feeling, just a feeling, it's fallible, doubt it".

Look, man, it will probably seem I am attacking you: I'm sorry, I'm not attacking you: this slavish obeisance to science as truth is a common error, not unique to you, as is the abusive minimization of other's feelings--that's not even unique to the science acolytes, lots of people do that, doesn't make it right tho--I'm not even saying you actually do that or intend to, it just seems that way from what you wrote here.

---

My main thesis is: science and emotion, subjective experience -- can co exist. We can't define ourselves or our reality by either of them. But we have to seriously listen to them, if we want to be good. But you also can't think you can use science as this like stick to beat people with, or force them to comply...you probably have felt frustrated that there are people you feel you "cannot even reason with" as they won't listen to reason. But how do they feel? That you won't even listen to or acknowledge their personal experience and feelings? So if you want to engage with them, I'm not saying you can convince them...try stepping into their shoes first: acknowledge, and feel the truth of their views, emotions and experiences. Then they may be much more likely to consider what you are saying. Especially if you can make it so that you can maintain both: science and themselves.

Otherwise, if you just treat science as this unassailable machine to make truth, this unquestionable atrocity, you really make it into an abusive authority, a tool to subjugate people and their own personal experiences and feelings, and that's awful...and I don't think you want to do that. I mean I don't know but I don't think that's your intention. Because if you treat science like that, in slavish obeisance, unquestioning fidelity, it becomes a religion. A cult. And what's worse: it's a persecutory cult that seeks to admonish and chastise, abuse and punish, "outsiders" and "infidels", non-believers. And of course, any "absolute high bar" of truth making will be abused thus by human hands. Humans are weak, crazy, stupid and bad...among many other things, we can also be good if we choose to be...but we can be that bad stuff. But if you make science into such an absolute, you subjugate yourself to it. And inevitably try to subjugate others.

I feel so strongly about this, and that's right: emotions are a source of information, science is a tool. YOu need to consider the counsel of both and use science to life people up, to expand their world and experience not limit it. The default position must be: if science cannot speak to something, it is because science is too limited, not because "Science is RIGHT, and the Other is WRONG, BAD, FALSE, NONSENSE". The default must be a non-abusive, expansive, human-centric position that does not subjugate, but lifts people up.

You probably can't see past your resistances here: irrational people that feel they are right above all else, in the face of evidence, "feel good" platitudes that achieve nothing while the world burns...there are many failure modes of emotion, but the issue is not with emotion in itself, but rather how people respond to it, emotionally. Emotional logic, and people's seeking to avoid pain, they convince themselves of things. It's not "wrong" to do so...but it may not always be "true". But the resolution of that is not to banish emotion, it's to go deeper into it, because beneath those emotions people take on to cover other emotions that are more painful, is the emotional truth. So you just have to go deeper.

I think the truth is of science as well: when the science is wrong, or misapplied, you just have to go deeper.