[bluefone]

And I don't think that Scott Aaronson's comment makes philosophical sense - Why do we need to extend our senses to know the truths beyond our world? An ant doesn't care to know whether there is a coast line or mountain ahead at 100km distance. It has no business with those distances. There is nothing wrong in imagining Jupiter as a humanified god and its moon as his wife. This is basically tying back things which are outside of human reach to things that make sense in our world. That's how it should be, instead of saying that Jupiter is a big ball of gas or rock. That doesn't matter to our life and evolution on Earth. Speed of light doesn't matter too. 99.99% of the Science and progress we made is unnecessary and childish work done by people who have luxury of not needing to bother about their food and family. And the catastrophic results of such childish "inventions" by these rich kids (scientists) was imposed on global populations. These so called inventions are Oil, Plastics, industrialization, racial mix and related conflicts, urbanization, weaponry, weird social trends, climate changes, general degradation of human biological abilities, natural quality of food, biological diversity and so on. And what did Science achieve? We proudly announce that we busted the dangerous myths enjoyed by our ancestors!!

Oh, You discovered that Earth is not the center of the universe and Sun doesn't go around Earth? Please go a step further to realize that there is no absolute frame of reference that shows what goes around what. Earth going around the Sun is just as equally true as Sun going around Earth. And yes, there is nothing wrong in saying Earth is the center of universe as you can claim any place in the universe as "the center". And you spent countless amount human energy and money to establish the half-truths like this, and call it Science and progress?

[silentwanderer]

It’s human nature to make inferences about the world - to observe effect and infer cause. No matter whether the cause you land upon is Jupiter sending a storm to kill the crops, or global weather patterns, you’re still using data to make guesses about how the world works. “Science” (capital s) isn’t limited to discovering oil or landing men on the Moon, it’s also about feeding your family, or guessing what the best birthday present for your kid is. It’s an inextricable part of us.

[noSyncCloud]

This is, frankly, a surreal and almost unbelievable opinion to read on the internet in 2023. On HN of all places: although (almost) nothing surprises me any more, this sure did.

[bluefone]

It surprises most of us because we have been brain-washed to think that science is good, myths are bad, to think that we can ignore our biology, gender, nature etc. How does relativity matter to human life? Why is the world filled with nukes, plastics, global-warming gases, GM foods, confusion about gender and biological roles? It's time to realize that the progress we made is actually degenerate and regressive from the view point of biological adaptation which is the only goal for humans.

[tux3]

I could hardly disagree more, in light of all the goodness, the lives saved, the artifice that we have gained through hard work and choose to not throw away every day.

The worries that we have today are, to me, preferable and much less violent, bloody, or tragic than the worries of yesterday.

I think diversity of opinion can contribute useful perspective, but I'd encourage not calling most people brainwashed who disagree. Even if that were true, it's hardly conductive to changing anyone's mind.

Sometimes people have different values and cannot agree. Assuming good faith can help cross that bridge.

[ponderings]

That is some great advice. For me the brainwashing diagnosis works like this: If you have control over someones mind the first thought to program into it is to have them think it isn't so. The false thoughts are locked into place with anger towards anyone who dares to question it. If there is a man behind a control panel or if the brainwashing evolved naturally doesn't really matter to the result but it does ask for different less crude terminology.

Here are some triggers: People are going to die anyway, people want to make an infinite amount of babies at all cost, we really want others to have less if as a result of it we can have more for ourselves. We love animals, then we eat them. We love nature, then we burn and cut it all down for personal gain. etc

I really believe eugenics is the dirtiest word in the dictionary. If you try talk about it Ill probably get angry much sooner than reasonable.

[nonameiguess]

Why are you even on this site? This is a fully general argument against intellectual curiosity, and the very mission of this site is to submit and discuss "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

[ponderings]

Our intellectual curiosity is a very powerful thing and with great power comes great responsibility.

If anything is applied it becomes a defining ingredient of our society. Products we buy and services we use partially define who we are both personally and collectively.

To me that means that before you create a product or service, before you unleash the curiosity, you might as well ask yourself what kind of people you want to create.

Forget tinkering with whatever random thing is thrown in front of you. Put them all in a bag, carry it around and carefully examine some when you have the time.

There has to be something in the bag that modifies the humans in your preferred way.

What is wrong with people? What is their problem? You decide!

[ponderings]

That is because you are not suppose to talk about it either because people get mad or under the assumption they won't be able to understand. Without asserting truth, where the topic goes wrong often Ill attempt to do a simple example, fail and prove my point (haha)

We have a law here that roughly says for all government construction projects there must be 1% spend on art. The most convenient way to deal with this "problem" it to take the 1% and have some artist create one of those unsightly giant blobs of metal. The size justifies the price. No one needs this, few can appreciate it and with a lot of effort you could create something or many things that more people would enjoy.

We also have science budgets. The most convenient way to deal with that problem is to have as large as possible experiments where size also justifies the cost. If one was to make a lot of effort one could create many experiments each with a weight in practicality. The very idea might be offensive for pure science. But say, improve wind, wave, solar, improve batteries, etc or even a big project like an attempt to fix scientific publishing, the study replication problem, the archiving of research data, etc Or you can spend everything on one giant particle collider. It would be interesting but when we sort the set by usefulness it wont be in the top 100k.

One might look at great scientists and see what impact their work had on the real world. Faraday pops to mind. You could ignore everything Tesla did after his AC motor and it would still be stunning.

And then Relativity Theory. A pile of free floating nonsense with no connection to anything. I could be accused of not understanding the elegance of it but I don't have to as nothing practical followed. There was no real world revolution of the kind that makes great scientists. Just saying it doesn't make it true.

Pure science is to slow to meaningfully fill the void of possible questions. We have by comparison only a hand full of real problems to solve. We might actually make some progress there if we care for it. Those answers will trigger an infinite chain of new questions - practical questions.