On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 10:09 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On 1/27/2014 12:12 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote: > > So sure yeah, there's no limit to what you can do when you eliminate and > don't care about x. Louis C.K. had a good one: "Wow, I can't believe we > built the pyramids - yeah, we just threw human death and suffering at them > until they were built. There's no end to what we can achieve when we don't > give a sh•t how to get there..." Science that advances by eliminativism > comes with a price and some side-effects. > > > Just because there's a price doesn't mean you shouldn't pay it. We > eliminated the Egyptian gods, the divine Pharoh and their theology, so we > don't get pyramids anymore - and I'd call it progress. > > Well Louis' bit finishes in the contemporary world with: "Wow, look at all this amazing customized digital technology we have", waving around an iphone, "that's because where they build these things, people are so miserable they have to deploy nets outside the factories to keep them from jumping off the effin roofs... so that we can leave a grumpy comment on Youtube, while we're taking a sh•t". Sure, it's comedy. But it's not trivial in proclaiming "civilization" has not made the progress promised by "Science, liberalized from theology". I guess people think less about such problems as good and evil, fundamental science, philosophy, theology etc. and we may be materially richer for it, and technologically stronger, but perhaps ethically poorer and more naive about the limits our ignorance imposes, without which we will tend to use technology for savage and low stuff, simply because we lose the capacity to envision more appropriate beliefs in such complex contexts. Eliminate/negate belief, and pair just half of science (the how-techne bit, fundamentally laying aside "what" with belief implication) with what's left, our default opportunism, and Louis' joke is no surprise. It's also no surprise why many argue this way: it's simpler and clearer. Doesn't make it valid. I think we may be half blind in this sense. Children with access to the weapons shed. The ignoramus Greeks were onto this. PGC > Brent > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
