[Platt] Usefulness" or practicality is a poor standard for judging the advances of science, as Pirsig rightly points out:
[Krimel] But frankly I find your endless posting of Pirsig quotes offensive as I suspect Bob does as well. You twist his statements into something enormously creepy. [Arlo] I'll point out too here that the same "practicality" that Platt blasts science for is the same "practicality" that an unregulated market would offer. The "market", I pointed out, would just as freely sell human child sex slaves to wealthy businessmen as it would bringing me the lastest box set of Dexter. The "market" has no qualms about trading nuclear arms to aggressive dictators any more than it does bringing me my anti-perspirant. Indeed, one could just as easily consider "practicality" as "what sells", what "works" in the free market, as one could point to it here. Its the same thing. Platt also uses the term "popularity" to blast "valueless science" concluding that "eugenics" was a popular idea, and yet its this same "popularity" that he desires to be the final end-all determinant of what sells in the market. I'm sure that "child sex slaves" would be very popular in the global market (given their popularity in the black market), and African slaves were very, very popular in the South (and still hold an allure to some, I gather). Indeed, in Platt's masturbatory world of unregulated markets, its "popularity" that would govern both scientific and market ecologies. There would be nothing BUT popularity to determine not only what is studied but what is sold, to determine what direction technology goes which follows hot on the heels of whatever is moving economically. "Eugenics" may attain "popularity", as might human slavery (for labor of for sex). If Platt makes the claim that "science" is only as good as the values of the culture, I'd agree. A culture that values biological superiority would naturally condone eugenics. And a culture that values social superiority would naturally condone slavery. It is the values of the people that (rightly) regulate both the market and science. Whether we regulate the market to provide copyright, or regulate scientific studies to not develop super viruses, its is an acknowledgment that "unregulated" in both the market and science opens the door to a host of evil that the intellectual level must constrain. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
