[aout]

Surely everybody knows an "English Lit expert" but even after reading this exquisite requiem to believers I still find it impossibly hard to argue with these people. It always feels like they are trying to make the last stand of humanitarian values against the dictat of science.

In all their glorious "everything science says will be as wrong as religion and you my friend are blindly following it" it seems they can't understand the basic principle of science advancing toward some kind of truth yet admitting it is -still- wrong.

I don't know if trying to convince someone who doesn't trust science - and to some extent, logical thinking - with mathematics really works. Sure it convinces me but does it matter?

[mdpopescu]

I'm one of the people you're caricaturing here. I understand science, and mathematics, and logical thinking, which is why I believe (most) people blindly follow science as if it were a religion. (For a very recent example, see this article - io9.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-chocolate-helps-weight-1707251800 )

See also Scott Adams' musings on the subject: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/109880240641/sciences-biggest-f...

[mdpopescu]

... and, of course, the rebuttals to this were mostly of the "no true Scotsman" flavor. "It's not the fault of scientists, it's the bad media". Let's ignore http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/ (Why Most Published Research Findings Are False) and many other similar results - we have to defend scientists because!

Look - I'm an engineer. I use a sort-of Bayesian reasoning: I started from what I learned as a child and then kept adjusting probabilities. You (plural "you") wouldn't be surprised if I told you I believe most politicians are liars. Well, I got to "most scientists are wrong" the same way. Sure, I didn't actually talk to most scientists, or even heard about them; those I did hear about, though, are at best misguided.

In any case, my original argument wasn't about the scientists; my argument was: most people treat science as a religion. They feel very superior to the religious people who are accepting everything they are told uncritically and then turn around and accept everything that is prefixed with "science says". Ten years ago, I used to make fun of people for believing the Earth revolves around the Sun - I have yet to find a single one who could do better than "that's what scientists say". That is arguably worse than those who accepted the Ptolemaic model - for one thing, they could at least see that the Sun was rising and setting.

(I can rant on this subject for hours but I don't think this is the proper forum.)

[megaman22]

> ... and, of course, the rebuttals to this were mostly of the "no true Scotsman" flavor. "It's not the fault of scientists, it's the bad media". Let's ignore http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/ (Why Most Published Research Findings Are False) and many other similar results - we have to defend scientists because!

It seems like the worst offenders are in biology/pharmacology/genetics/biochemistry. I'm not trained in any of those fields, but it seems pretty obvious that organic life should be orders of magnitudes more complex than mechanics, materials science, aeronautics, or any of the other man-made scientific fields. They are also comparatively young subjects. We don't really understand enough about how all the pieces fit together, or even what all the pieces are, in biological processes to make much in the way of definitive statements.

But seriously, if I hear another nightly news story about how food X prevents cancer based on a study of a dozen people or the current consensus on whether eggs are good or bad for you...

[jleyank]

Careful. Human biological response is sufficiently well understood to permit the design of antibodies (which are grown in fermenters) that treat the symptoms of disease (RA, for example). There are decades of successful pharmacological research based on receptor targets, signaling pathways, etc.

However, your point is valid in that knowledge of, say, digital engineering is easier to understand and investigate as the systems are simpler. Those who are successful in the tech field should keep this in mind when they talk of disrupting fields involving wet-ware.

[RodericDay]

I'm an engineer too, and I fully agree with you.

My particular peeve is engineers who kowtow to economics, putting it in a much higher pedestal than sociology or anthropology, because it is "mathy". The implicit assumptions are usually along the lines of "the assumptions seem obvious enough, and look at all those formulae in the transformations thereof!"

[gizi]

Science id defined by its method: to set up experiments in order to look for counterexamples for a theorem. It is pretty much impossible to set up experiments in economics. While I agree that sociology and anthropology do not satisfy the definition of science, economics does not either. Where are the experiments? Without experiments, no science.

[tpeo]

Do astronomers perform experiments?

This is the example used in methodological discussions of economics. I don't know if astronomers do actually perform experiments on some limited scale, but it seems that classicaly they relied on "luck" to test predictions e. g. testing general relativity through observations of eclipses. In social sciences, there is a somewhat similar thing called "natural experiment", which is the main test for the validity of predictions. In both cases, the researcher takes a more passive role in testing his predictions.

This can be dauting to researchers, but overall it's for the best. There are indeed experiments in economics, specially in game theory. But the majority of possible experiments would cross the boundary of what is morally acceptable, and well into morally abhorrent e. g. randomly restricting a sample's access to education to estimate it's effects on wages.

[marcosdumay]

It helps that astronomy is a branch of physics. In a sense, astronomers do perform experiments, on different conditions but with the same theory. (By the way, that's what bothers me most about cosmology, it seems to not agree with any small scale experiment performed.)

Well, certainly, natural experiments can lead to knowledge. But that's a much slower and more dangerous path, artificial experiments are better in every sense, except that they are mostly not available for economics. Anyway, I don't think the use of natural experiments are the bottleneck currently holding economics back.

[JoeAltmaier]

That's an antique notion. There are plenty of rigorous experiments being done in all of those fields.

[gizi]

For every theorem in sociology, for example, can you show us what experiment they set up, and what results they obtained and how we can repeat their experiment in order to find counterexamples for their theorem? From there, I will acknowledge the scientific status of that one, single theorem. I will still consider every other statement in sociology to be non-science. Seriously, they must produce such data for every single one of their theorems. Physics does that. Chemistry does that. Why would sociology be entitled to the same scientific status without putting in the same effort?

[darkmighty]

Try telling that to this guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjVDqfUhXOY

[JoeAltmaier]

So we think that is a dangerous thing? Believing the best, tested results of experiments (science) is not superior to random religious tracts written thousands of years ago?

The critical difference between treating science as a religion, and treating religion as a religion, is that the science people have a good chance of being right.

Its rational and reasonable to be uncritical of scientific results - the scientist has already been critical for you. That's kind of the whole point.

[mdpopescu]

Just look at this statement:

_Its [sic] rational and reasonable to be uncritical of scientific results_

I do not believe that this person is sarcastic; I say that because I have talked to hundreds of people with the same opinion. People actually believe this. My authority is better than yours so you uncritically accepting your authority is wrong, me uncritically accepting mine is not only right but obviously so.

Ignoring the absurdity of the statement, and the mind-numbing appeal to authority - this also shows a lack of knowledge of history. When people used Aristotle as an authority 500 years ago, they did it using this same rationale: Aristotle had already done all the thinking, who are you to claim to know better?

This is just painful.

[nitrogen]

It's not an argument from authority, just a statement of the implied Bayesian priors. One who gives greater weight to scientific papers than to religious pronouncements is entirely rational in doing so. That is the entire well-argued thesis of the Relativity of Wrong essay we are discussing.

[RodericDay]

Unthinking faith in "the institution of science", particularly the denial that it can be co-opted for certain policy goals, and influenced by funding, and lack the foresight to control for important environmental variables, has and will continue to lead into stuff like eugenics, craniology, and austerity.

I'm still reeling from "Its rational and reasonable to be uncritical of scientific results"- smh.

[gizi]

The essence of science is its method: Setting up experiments in order to look for counterexamples for a scientific statement. Therefore, anybody who is uncritical of scientific results and does not desire to find counterexamples, is not engaging in science but in anti-science, which in turn is a dangerous and counterproductive ideology. The science-as-religion people do not have a good chance of being right. They are always completely wrong.

[JoeAltmaier]

Advocating positions shown likely true by science does not require a scientist at all. We don't all have to be in the lab, testing every conclusion. We have people for that.

The rest of us will do very, very well to believe the results of science. Because its the only game in town that's actually trying to get it right.

[jmaygarden]

This is painful to read. It leads to a statement like the following.

"The foremost scientific authority claims that the Earth is flat. There is no need to be critical of this scientific finding. All opposing viewpoints must be shunned, and proponents of those contrarian ideas ridiculed and ruined."

[nitrogen]

Science has an ongoing process for correcting itself. This is a false slippery slope ("leads to").

[jleyank]

Check out the referred-to video on Youtube re: accepting things without reflection. Here's a discussion of it:

http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/04/24/jacob-bronowski-asce...

Beware of dogma.

[cinquemb]

> In any case, my original argument wasn't about the scientists; my argument was: most people treat science as a religion. They feel very superior to the religious people who are accepting everything they are told uncritically and then turn around and accept everything that is prefixed with "science says".

We had a subject in my lab yesterday that after the experiment had a "heated" debate where he put physics vs religion with one of the volunteers who was religious. While I was in the control room tinkering with the software, I listened in on their conversation and could hear the smugness of the subject as he used science as a tool to try and "convert" the volunteer. I thought the volunteer handled the conversation quite well, but it seemed like quite the inquisition from the "scientist"…

[JoeAltmaier]

Its easy to be smug about science; its so often right. If you don't have time to research the subject yourself, I'd always advise taking the side of the scientist.

[cinquemb]

If one considers all the research papers that have ever been published and retracted, and could enumerate over them and calculate their "rightness" and notices that greater than half are "right" then that would be a fact. As of today, no one has done that, and to assume it to be "often right" is quite dogmatic.

I posit that if one doesn't have time to research the subject themself, one shouldn't form opinion about such subjects beyond that they now know such subjects exist. But I suppose asking that of human beings is too much :P

[JoeAltmaier]

You typed that on a portable device, right? And without any sense of irony about the unreliability of science.

The rise of a civilization based on technology and information is a towering testament to the successes of science. Lets not fool ourselves.

[DanBC]

That's foolish. Scientists have to work hard to avoid bias. A lot of them don't manage it. Most science isn't as rigorous as eg ATLAS at CERN at avoiding biases.

There are plenty of scientists who are fucking idiots.

[JoeAltmaier]

There are a vast majority doing good work. Your cell phone is a towering testament to this. To be fair, try making the converse argument: how many religious zealots avoid bias? Zero. Lets not condemn science on the basis of a strawman ("some scientists somewhere are not very good")

[pdonis]

> If you don't have time to research the subject yourself, I'd always advise taking the side of the scientist.

If you don't have time to research the subject yourself, it means you don't care about the answer anyway. So why should you take any side? Why not just accept that you don't know?

[nitrogen]

I think what's being argued here is that the probability of being right by blindly following scientific consensus is greater than the probability of being right by blindly following non-scientific anything. Nobody's saying that science is never wrong, only that it's less wrong than other sources of knowledge, has a process that makes it even less wrong over time, and when it is wrong, it's only relatively wrong in the way that is described by Asimov.

[eli_gottlieb]

>Ten years ago, I used to make fun of people for believing the Earth revolves around the Sun - I have yet to find a single one who could do better than "that's what scientists say".

Wait... what? If the Earth didn't go around the Sun, why would we have seasons based on the angle of the Sun to the ground? Why would that angle continually cycle throughout the year? And what about the movements of the planets in the night sky, relative to Earth?

Sure, you could have a god who designed perversely complex features into the world for no causally sensible reason, but really, the simplest explanation for our available geological and astronomical data is that the Earth orbits the Sun.

[hansihe]

Steven Novella wrote a bit of a rebuttal to this article: http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/scott-adams-on-...

[aout]

I read your articles and could add one myself but fail to find it : a published scientific paper about how smoking is good for your health because it makes you think about your health at some point (basically saying "don't trust everything science says"). I also agree with you that (most) people blindly following science but I don't feel like you are the kind of person I'm caricaturing (which is true for the sake of my description).

You seem to grasp the concept of critical thinking and I believe that's why you would object. To me talking about science implies critical thinking. Somebody having an argument with you about science without acknowledging the certainty of being wrong is not talking about science but pseudo-science. And so you end up discussing with a fanatic, which is not a discussion.

I'm not saying that English Lit experts are everywhere but I feel like they just do not trust "science lovers" to be capable of critical thinking.

edit: It's like you're asking "how to convince science fanatics that they can be wrong" and I'm asking "how to convince English Lit experts that I know science can be wrong but still think it matters"

[carapat_virulat]

Yes, it's not 1989 anymore, people shouldn't have to rely on soap opera caricatures to learn what English literature experts think, how smug they are and how they are the natural enemies of physicists and scientists somehow. I am not saying people like that doesn't exist, but I don't think either that the Liberal Studies are trying to fight any kind of war with science.

The funny thing is Isaac Asimov and most of the science fiction writers have their books filled with traditional philosophical problems and literary figures, they just sugar-coat them with enough speculative science and avoid naming the concepts by name to avoid scaring their public.

The article linked is great, but let's not use it to reinforce senseless clichés.

[cholantesh]

Seems like Adams' thesis is that science is to blame for media's rampant misreporting of it. That's a really odd thing to suggest given that scientists express consternation about this on a regular basis, and devote much time and effort into trying to clear up common misconceptions that arise because of irresponsible pop media reportage.

[philh]

I feel like Adams uses the word "science" to mean lots of different things in that article. It can be a process, or it can be "the people who perform experiments to see what happens", or "the media reports on those experiments", or "the government policies influenced by advisors who followed the media", or so on. This makes it hard to unpack precisely what he's saying.

But I don't think it's about assigning blame. He's attempting to describe a situation and how it came about. If all the public sees is the media's irresponsible reporting on journal articles, then for current purposes it doesn't much matter if scientists themselves are trying to correct the media. The public will read the newspaper, the newspaper says science says X, and X turns out to be false. Then they read the newspaper telling them science says Y, and they won't believe Y.

[olavk]

Scott Adams seems to want science to be like religion, and is disappointed that it isn't.

[JackFr]

The issue is that many people trying to convince me about science are woefully unaware of their own assumptions and are typically ignorant of some basic philosophy.

In particular, I accept that the scientific method is a reliable path to knowledge, that is, it reliably leads to a true understanding of true things. However it does not follow that the scientific method is the only way to knowledge. It also does not follow that all true knowledge, or even a fraction of it can be acquired through the scientific method.

Other unvoiced assumptions speak to one's life's purpose. The old quote from Emil Faber, 'Knowledge is good', is certainly not a scientific conclusion, or a testable hypothesis. Valuing wisdom over ignorance and indeed freedom over slavery and life over death speaks to a purpose in life which is necessarily ungrounded in any science. I certainly do value all of those things, but it is not a belief anyone achieved through falsifiable hypotheses.

[andyidsinga]

> it does not follow that the scientific method is the only way to knowledge

there's something to that. It seems to me its partially because we often make "doing science" a mental / virtual exercise. A process that is done with data and in the realm of one's head.

But doing science should includes all of our senses.

The idea of gemba comes to mind ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemba ): > The idea is that to be customer-driven, one must go to the customer's genba to understand his problems and opportunities, using all one's senses to gather and process data.

[JoeAltmaier]

I hear this a lot: morality is above science. I don't believe it for a moment. Just look at those that believe in ignorance over wisdom, or death over life - they do very, very badly. Empirically these moral codes are useful and effective. That's science right there.

[gizi]

Science is a method, producing statements about facts. A type of behaviour is not a fact (e.g. "killing someone"). It is statement. Therefore morality produces statements about statements. How could a method dealing with statements about facts ever be in competition with a method dealing with statements about statements? That is impossible. In other words, by comparing morality and science, you are comparing apples and oranges.

[calinet6]

This is fumbling about a logical explanation to explain the difference between a logical field and a humanistic field.

It's far easier to say that these are two different worlds of truth; one is more quantitative, the other is more qualitative, and the two are intertwined, building truth upon each other. Science does not meaningfully connect with the human race without a profound understanding and application of the humanities. Humanities do not meaningfully derive human truths without a profound understanding of the reality of existence.

The two are so important to each other that it's a wonder they have always resulted in such dichotomous opposing arguments throughout history. It is stupid, even; a human folly of ignorance and small-mindedness, only effectively resolved through a deep and liberal education of both types of knowledge at once. They are paradoxically opposing and yet deeply intertwined, and it would improve both areas of knowledge to have a deeper understanding of—and especially respect for—the other.

There need not be a well-formed simple logical statement to tell us this is true.

[JackFr]

Put simply science is necessarily about 'is', and cannot be about 'should'.

(When confronted with that, a typical rejoinder is that there is no 'should' -- life, consciousness, agency, will is all an illusion, all is meaningless and it reduces to physics in the end. The problem with that view though is that you have to throw out truth and knowledge too then)

[nitrogen]

Are these widely accepted definitions of "fact", "statement", and "science"? Even if the distinction between "fact" and "statement" in this argument is sound, the example statement, "killing someone", is connected to innumerable "facts" of specific historic creatures having killed specific others, and the fact of their individual success or failure to reproduce is inextricably tied to the biological evolution of a moral instinct, and the cultural evolution of a moral code.

Furthermore, all human behavior can be linked to activity in the brain, which can be studied by neuroscience. Finally, empirical surveys of human behaviors and moral opinions exist.

Therefore, morality is within the purview of science.

[ThrustVectoring]

Game Theory explicitly talks about behavior in a rigorous way. That should be enough of a counterexample.

Science can talk about specific events ("John stabbed Joe with a knife"), it can talk about how people categorize them ("the stabbing had features X, Y, and Z that the typical mind categorizes at "murder"), and it can talk about how typical minds perceive and judge events it has categorized.

Morality is little more than an abstraction that human brains use to make social value judgements that help them fulfill their complicated set of values. If you can understand the values people have and the way these judgements help fulfill them, you've basically aced morality.

I'm not saying it's easy. I know several brilliant people working on this, and they're still getting surprises and uncovering edge cases. What I'm getting at is that statements like "most people think killing people is bad" can be reduced, with great difficulty, into statements about human behaviors and brain activity.

[foldr]

>"most people think killing people is bad" can be reduced, with great difficulty, into statements about human behaviors and brain activity.

I doubt it, but in any case, the important point is that you can't do the same thing for "Killing people is bad." It's an important distinction. Most people think that homosexuality is bad, but we wouldn't want to conclude that it therefore is.

[ThrustVectoring]

It feels like you can't do the same for "killing is bad" because people mean a bunch of different things by "killing is bad". Each piece, individually, is much more amenable to a reductionist treatment. Let me be more specific.

Suppose Alice gets in an argument with Bob, and stabs him. Is Alice worse off having done that? Is Bob? What is the impact on Bob's family, friends, and co-workers? Is society better off having a policy of arresting people in Alice's situation? And imprisoning them? Or socially disapproving of such action? When you learn that Alice stabbed Bob, how do you feel about it?

This is vaguely the lines which you'd take to talk about human morality in terms of behavior and mental states. This is not an exhaustive breakdown, and there's some parts that "morality" still claims afterwards. The point is that there's only so many things that people can mean by putting moral judgement on something, and there's nothing left when you've addressed them all. Addressing the pieces is usually done by going to human behavior and experiences.

Circling back to people thinking homosexuality is bad - we can make moral judgements about moral judgements. Statements like "'Thinking homosexuality is morally wrong' causes a great deal of pain for the people I care about."

Minor quibble: at one point, scientists believed that you couldn't prove whether or not two particles were identical in every respect. "I don't think that it's possible to prove X" isn't a proof that it's impossible to prove X. I'd rephrase that quote as "I don't know what a proof of X would look like."

[nitrogen]

FWIW I agree with you despite the downvotes you are receiving. So don't feel alone just because your comment sits at minus whatever.

I think the hangup people have is the mistaken idea that analyzing morality devalues it. But that's not the case. It does allow us to identify and discard obsolete morals (witness the sweeping acceptance of gay marriage), but those that survive are stronger for it.

[ThrustVectoring]

People have a very good reason to be wary of analyzing morality. The analysis falls short of fulfilling all the complicated things that people value, so almost without fail the analysis misses something important and you wind up with an abomination. As an example, a total utilitarian deciding to maximize total utility by spamming warehouses full of awesome living environments for rats.

[calinet6]

This, and most of the other arguments in the whole thread, are so highly simplistic. The links between science and humanity are many and complex, and vice versa. There is no winner, there is no right side. They build on each other, enhance each other, and neither science not the humanities has any real meaning in isolation.

Really, the whole dichotomous argument between the two is absolutely ridiculous. We need fewer people on the sides and more who are truly bridges.

[spydum]

you have to wonder if there is some magnetism in people which draws them to polarizing topics (both to build polarizing arguments, and to engage in them). Maybe it's as simple as we are highly competitive, and in the absence of competition, we create rifts just so we can establish who is greater?

[JoeAltmaier]

Simpler: people like to argue. Some multi-dimensional topics its hard to find a single definitive answer. Those topics, you can argue about forever.

[calinet6]

Ask Oppenheimer, after the first atomic bomb test, if morality is above science.

"We waited until the blast had passed, walked out of the shelter and then it was extremely solemn. We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita: Vishnu is trying to persuade the prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him he takes on his multiarmed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.'"

[JackFr]

What does 'badly' mean? Sounds a lot like an opinion to me.

[JoeAltmaier]

Lets not pretend we don't know how badly murderers end up in court. This is getting silly.

[JackFr]

It's not silly -- it's the whole point.

Suicide bombers see a different purpose to their lives than (presumably) you and I do. By their own measure they are not doing badly, they are doing quite well.

Or consider Richard Dawkin's famous criticisms of Mother Theresa. Mother Theresa unashamedly put religion ahead material comfort among the poor she ministered too. To say she was wrong in so doing is not a statement of fact. It is a statement of ones personal values.

[eli_gottlieb]

>Suicide bombers see a different purpose to their lives than (presumably) you and I do. By their own measure they are not doing badly, they are doing quite well.

And objectively, suicide bombers are dead, which puts them far behind those of us who remain alive -- at least, by any sensible measure. Of course, when you unravel the story behind the average suicide bomber, you usually find that they were shamed or pressured into the deed, and in fact, have not accomplished, in committing a suicide bombing, all their own noble goals in life.

They are actually sad, pathetic people exploited by powerful clerics to be turned into little more than explosive puppets.

[nitrogen]

The existence of personal values is a fact that has biological and cultural origins that can be studied.

Also, you are conflating one person's opinion with science.

On the subject of cultural differences in morality, these can be surveyed empirically and considered within a framework of natural selection (both biological and cultural). One can choose to derive any moral framework they wish, but scientifically speaking, the moral frameworks that survive are those that can yield the greatest memetic survival advantage of the framework itself.

And in the end, it's all just physics anyway.

[nitrogen]

However it does not follow that the scientific method is the only way to knowledge. It also does not follow that all true knowledge, or even a fraction of it can be acquired through the scientific method.

We would have to agree on the definition of "true knowledge" to come to a complete understanding of each other's positions, but I'll take a stab at justifying my opinion that science is the only possible source for all "true knowledge". I'll define "true" as empirically tested and repeatable by others, and "knowledge" as statements about something tangible (e.g. brains), or about intangible concepts embodied within tangible things (e.g. brains thinking about ideas).

One needn't fully accept these definitions for the argument to hold, if one accepts that personal experience is a source of personal knowledge. Basically, if we consider all the claimed sources of knowledge, and consider which "way" of knowing applies in the most places, gains the most new knowledge over time, and has the best track record for producing societal advancements of knowledge and technology, the only "way of knowing" left standing is science.

You also mention "life purpose" and "knowledge is good" as counterevidence to science. But scientifically speaking, there is no objective purpose or objective good. There is only natural selection favoring the evolution of a desire for knowledge. That desire can be studied scientifically via neurology and related disciplines.

[JackFr]

Ultimately, your 'justification' is just an assertion that if it doesn't come via the scientific method, either its not true or its not science.

I wouldn't call the idea that "Knowledge is good", wisdom is better than ignorance, and freedom is better than slavery, etc. counterevidence. But I believe they are true things which I cannot prove via any sort of experiment, in particular because 'good' and 'better' are of necessity subjective.

[nitrogen]

I don't think you can dismiss my line of reasoning by saying "ultimately" and then saying something I didn't say at all.

It seems that we indeed cannot agree on a useful shared definition of "true". The laws of physics are ultimately indifferent to our notions of truth, and yet our notions of truth are instantiated as emergent phenomena within physics.

[Alex3917]

> It always feels like they are trying to make the last stand of humanitarian values against the dictat of science.

Except for that in reality the legitimacy of science becomes more and more tenuous with each passing year. In the past 40+ years there have been few if any major advances in the scientific process that have seen wide adoption, despite the innumerable problems that have come to light. And not only have there been no major improvements, but things have actually gotten significantly worse thanks to the corporatization and gamification of academia, the increasing use of proprietary technologies and source code, etc.

[voronoff]

Computerized statistics and online journals/digitized libraries are ENORMOUS advancements in the scientific process.

[aout]

True, but humanitarian values do not need a last stand. So how do you discuss with someone being this radical with reasonable arguments? I don't feel like "you can't" is an answer :/

[calinet6]

This is why the liberal arts are, in fact, so critically important. It's difficult to understand the beauty of knowledge and science without also understanding it's humanity, and conversely, it's difficult to fully understand humanities without also understanding knowledge, how we know things, and the profound reality of the world around us.

Furthermore, a scientist well versed in the humanities almost to the point of spirituality will have a much easier time translating knowledge between the logical and the human. Both are intertwined, and both contain mountains of truth, and each is made better by the other.

Loren Eiseley was one such scientist.

Some good writings of his can be found here: http://www.american-buddha.com/eiseley.toc.htm

[cinquemb]

Why does one have to trust science, or what we think of the scientific process today? Does science enable us to do things in the "reality" that one and others may perceive than without it? I'd think yes. Is the way we go about it now, forever the most optimal for constructing such things? Probably not, but humans are probably closer to a local maxima constrained by all the things that make the process inefficient now… which to be fair, I don't think is limited to science but how we are as humans.