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[Truean]

Not entirely work safe, but nothing too terrible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqDzKad2Q3M&feature=share

[Bauglir]

It should be pointed out, though, that the average person who "believes in" science generally does have something akin to a religious belief in it, because they don't participate in and have no particular need to be familiar with the actual methods used to reach conclusions. Anytime you hear somebody refer to generic "scientists" while making a point is a good tip-off, as is the conflation of scientific results or techniques with the general rules of science (experimentation, falsifiability, whatever you want to use here). That's not true of a lot of people, particularly those arguing in this thread about it, but most people understand science about as well as they understand the religion they follow. Kind of a vague idea, but it's not important enough to their lives to get to a deep understanding.

So while I don't know if I agree with the church/psychiatry thing, there are a lot of people for whom science occupies the same conceptual niche as a religion. There's just not another niche available, because not everybody can be a scientist (that's not even a statement of ability, by the way, because most people would seem to prefer doing something else with their lives), and at that point they have to take a lot of aspects of their worldview on faith.

I know this post kind of sounds like it's making out scientists to be the One True Knowers of the World or something, but I'm not trying to say that. Faith isn't necessarily inferior, and being a scientist really means shifting that faith into certain other areas (like the reliability of your colleagues and such). You can check any fact, but you can't check every fact, after all.

[G-Flex]

It should be pointed out, though, that the average person who "believes in" science generally does have something akin to a religious belief in it, because they don't participate in and have no particular need to be familiar with the actual methods used to reach conclusions. Anytime you hear somebody refer to generic "scientists" while making a point is a good tip-off, as is the conflation of scientific results or techniques with the general rules of science (experimentation, falsifiability, whatever you want to use here). That's not true of a lot of people, particularly those arguing in this thread about it, but most people understand science about as well as they understand the religion they follow. Kind of a vague idea, but it's not important enough to their lives to get to a deep understanding.

True, but I think it depends on how confident people are in it. Even without much grounding in the scientific process, a person can generally trust what scientists say without having much of an absolute belief in it.

EDIT: This isn't to say that nobody treats it that way, though, and it doesn't help that most people don't understand that "scientists have found findings indicate X" doesn't mean "scientists have declared that X is true, and engraved it into a mountain as fact for eternity". Science journalism does not help, as the chain of journalism is generally liable to turn "this one study found that X has a correlation with Y under Z circumstances" into "X causes Y".

[Willfor]

In concept, yes. In practice, I think you should run those numbers again.

Edit: Sorry, I posted before your edit.

[Vector]

Spoiler: This is what I was trying to say =/ (click to show/hide)

It should be pointed out, though, that the average person who "believes in" science generally does have something akin to a religious belief in it, because they don't participate in and have no particular need to be familiar with the actual methods used to reach conclusions. Anytime you hear somebody refer to generic "scientists" while making a point is a good tip-off, as is the conflation of scientific results or techniques with the general rules of science (experimentation, falsifiability, whatever you want to use here). That's not true of a lot of people, particularly those arguing in this thread about it, but most people understand science about as well as they understand the religion they follow. Kind of a vague idea, but it's not important enough to their lives to get to a deep understanding.

So while I don't know if I agree with the church/psychiatry thing, there are a lot of people for whom science occupies the same conceptual niche as a religion. There's just not another niche available, because not everybody can be a scientist (that's not even a statement of ability, by the way, because most people would seem to prefer doing something else with their lives), and at that point they have to take a lot of aspects of their worldview on faith.

I know this post kind of sounds like it's making out scientists to be the One True Knowers of the World or something, but I'm not trying to say that. Faith isn't necessarily inferior, and being a scientist really means shifting that faith into certain other areas (like the reliability of your colleagues and such). You can check any fact, but you can't check every fact, after all.

As far as the demon catalogs analogy, which seems to have thrown a lot of people for a loop, let me put it this way.  They're both long lists of things that plague mankind where we take a list of symptoms and give our best shot at guessing why this stuff happens.  In general, we don't know.

Way back then, that sort of stuff was totally valid information.  Most of the suggested cures now look completely ridiculous.  What are we going to look like in another 800 years, dozens of paradigm shifts later?  If we do well for ourselves, we'll have scholars sniffing and saying "ah, what barbarism."  But right now, we have to have faith in what we "know" and hope that it actually is right, and that our ways of knowing, our epistemology, turns out okay for us in the end.

I'm not trying to say that I went in to get checked out and I felt demonized (I didn't--I felt sick.  Pathologized, but not ooga-booga-demon-from-hell-ized).  I'm not saying that this stuff was semantically equivalent, but that the developments are parallel in their overall structure... and that as Bauglir said, the science box is now starting to wedge itself into the "taken on faith" spot, with similar reactions to the idea beginning to occur.


I'm sorry for being so confusing.  Hopefully this can start to make a bit more sense.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

What are we going to look like in another 800 years, dozens of paradigm shifts later?  If we do well for ourselves, we'll have scholars sniffing and saying "ah, what barbarism."

In 800 years there are not going to be any scholars. In 800 years humanity is either going to be extinct or completely unrecognizable to people living today.

[Vector]

In 800 years there are not going to be any scholars. In 800 years humanity is either going to be extinct or completely unrecognizable to people living today.

. . . That's the only part of the argument that you took issue with?

I'm not trying to predict the future, here.  I'm just saying that current science has the advantage of, well, its being current.  Looked at from a different time period, it's not going to seem like that reasonable thing we've all come to know and worry about.

[Bauglir]

I'm not entirely sure about that, but it depends on a lot of what you mean, I guess. I see a lot of things going the way of Newtonian physics; taught in introductory courses and primary/secondary schools as decent enough approximations for the average person, but usurped by more detailed theories in professional environments that regard the past ones as reasonable approximations for the cases they were able to handle. But then, that's only as far in the future as I can imagine - the nature of paradigm shifts, of course, makes that rather dodgy, since next thing you know we'll have a shift in our concept of paradigms or something equally game-changing. But I don't see most current things going the way of, say, the 4 Humours outside a few of the sciences only recently considered sciences.

I will say that I doubt there will ever be a humanity without some position analogous to "scholar", but that's because I doubt humanity will ever know all that there is to know, Singularity or no. Seems like rather much of a tangent, though.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

. . . That's the only part of the argument that you took issue with?

Oh no, I completely disagree with almost everything you said, but we've had this conversation before (multiple times, if my memory serves) and I'm not interested in rehashing it.

[G-Flex]

What are we going to look like in another 800 years, dozens of paradigm shifts later?  If we do well for ourselves, we'll have scholars sniffing and saying "ah, what barbarism."

In 800 years there are not going to be any scholars. In 800 years humanity is either going to be extinct or completely unrecognizable to people living today.

Or surprisingly similar. Even comparing modern post-industrial society to ancient Rome more than 2000 years ago, people don't seem to have changed very much.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

What are we going to look like in another 800 years, dozens of paradigm shifts later?  If we do well for ourselves, we'll have scholars sniffing and saying "ah, what barbarism."

In 800 years there are not going to be any scholars. In 800 years humanity is either going to be extinct or completely unrecognizable to people living today.

Or surprisingly similar. Even comparing modern post-industrial society to ancient Rome more than 2000 years ago, people don't seem to have changed very much.

Rome managed to prop themselves up to a much higher-than-period standard through the process of being a mercilessly brutal regional superpower with a massive number of slaves.

One big difference between them and us is that we have networks. Humans seem to love networking, really. We networked telegraph wires across the oceans not long after inventing them, and replaced them with radio and telephone systems later. Both of those are in the process of being replaced by satellites and the internet in general right now, and it isn't going to stop. Networks brought a change in how the work operates. You could see that as a paradigm shift, actually.

[G-Flex]

I'm not really talking about standards of living, though. I'm talking about the human condition. Even Pompeii's graffiti was surprisingly similar to what you'd find people writing on walls today.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Pompeii's graffiti wasn't new even in Pompeii's day. It's all messages of sex, violence, and/or politics drawn on walls. People have always loved sex, have always committed violence, have always argued about politics, and have always, always drawn on everything they could get away with drawing on.

[Willfor]

Pompeii's graffiti wasn't new even in Pompeii's day. It's all messages of sex, violence, and/or politics drawn on walls. People have always loved sex, have always committed violence, have always argued about politics, and have always, always drawn on everything they could get away with drawing on.

Why are you trying to argue exactly what he is trying to say to you? Like, exactly what he's trying to say to you? You are literally repeating his message back to him. In your reply. To him.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

What I mean is that the Pompeii graffiti is mostly related to base stuff that doesn't really have the capacity to be changed through time. Other aspects of human society do, though.