Ideal World

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

Let’s imagine a world with no heaven, no hell, and no gods. Really, I want you to picture my ideal world, but first, I want to say what this world is not:

1- No afterlife
2- No gods
3- No envy (this is something that I considered to be a ‘possible’ result of the ‘ideal world’; it is, however, controvertible)

This is a secular discussion.

My third ‘not’ is sort of difficult to imagine, but it may become easier once I explain this. Let us analyze (not deeply) some key issues in human happiness, shall we?

1- Understanding
2- Privacy
3- Food/Drink
4- Shelter
5- Hobbies that can be shared
6- Friends to share those hobbies with
7- Sexual happiness (ages 12+, obviously some cases can give or take)
8- Artistry
9- Freedom of Expression
10- Freedom of Questioning/Speech
11- Freedom of Scientific Methodology

Now, this is closely linked to Secular Humanism, which I advocate. But, I advocate it as a personal philosophy and not a government construct. This is something I should have clarified to begin with, and I apologize for not doing it sooner. Pay close attention to the manner in which I discuss these aspects of ‘human happiness’, as they are intended to demonstrate a personal worldview that, if embraced by the majority of people, I believe would solve many problems of Social Philosophy.

Time to elaborate.

Understanding: Anyone who sees something wrong, from childhood throughout the rest of his/her life, and anyone who is unhappy, can share it with others, and can listen to others with similar problems. And if somebody is different from us, we actually make an attempt to understanding why they’re different, and if it just makes them happier to be different (in a harmless way), then we shouldn’t infringe upon them. We are not monsters.

Privacy: After a fulfilling day in this ideal world, a person can go somewhere to be alone (e.g. a happy 15 year-old goes to his/her bedroom to listen to music alone after a good day). Also, there should be opportunities to be alone throughout the day. If somebody just wants to be alone, then we should let them, but the reason for that person wanting to be alone should never have to be: “because nobody understands me”.

Food/Drink: Three meals a day with some tasty snacks should do it, here, along with whatever drinks warm people’s stomachs to heart’s content and cause positive feelings of satisfaction. There should never be starvation. Nobody should have to truly say “I have been hungry for so long” or anything like you’d hear those inhabitants of African poverty-stricken nations say. Children shouldn’t starve just because of their parents, but their parents shouldn’t starve either. In this ideal world, nobody goes hungry.

Shelter: People never have to stand out in the cold, out in the rain, or be slaughtered by natural disasters. There should be accessible places for people to go whenever these problems may arise, and to other each, people should offer the shelter that they have (temporarily, at least), and not have to worry about somebody coming in to steal from them after being pulled out from the cold. On the flip side, people should also be allowed to stand and play about in the falling rain whenever they wish, and perhaps be accompanied by their friends or a mate while doing so. It sounds romantic, but really, it’s only simple enjoyment. Either way, nobody should have to stand out in the blazing heat, for example, whenever humans have perfectly good air-conditioner technology.

Hobbies that can be shared: It is awesome for individuals to engage in hobbies that they enjoy, but if they ever want somebody to be there with them who enjoys it as much as they do, then finding those people shouldn’t be a problem. Let me give an example… an 8th grade student who enjoys sightseeing and admiring nature, as well as studying nature, should be able to place a poster about it (asking for someone else his/her age who is interested in it, too, to come along) without having to hear “you’re gay” or “you’re a nerd”, and the people who decide to study nature with him/her should be allowed to go along without having to be criticized in the form of labeling/stereotypical nonsense. Finally, if the person in my example wants a potential mate to come along, then as a girl (for example), she should be able to put ‘I want a guy to come and study nature with me and see the museums’ without hearing “loser” or “can’t find a date?”, etc. from her peers. Aside from my example, even hobbies that aren’t mainstream shouldn’t be frowned upon, unless they harm others. Right?

Friends to share hobbies with: It is okay to advertise the desire for people to come along with you in your hobbies, but it shouldn’t be a last resort thing. Instead, it should be because you are interested in others you haven’t yet encountered who enjoy the same pastimes as you. If you don’t already have friends to share your hobbies with, then fall back on my previous example as how you could go about making those friends. Otherwise, you should be able to make a phone call to a friend who is also interested, and of course, nobody should have to say “I have no friends” while they want friends. If they wish to be alone in life, or they hate whatever is mainstream, then they should be able to say “I hate you” without being frowned upon for it.

Sexual Happiness: Promiscuity isn’t something that I’d call ‘fulfilling’; casual sex isn’t something that I’d base my life on. However, if somebody else chooses to base their life upon it, then they shouldn’t have to hear ‘you are wrong’ from me, or anybody else. But that isn’t the point with this part. The point is… whenever somebody wants to have sex, it should be attainable and they shouldn’t be frowned upon for it. On the flip side, if somebody wants to be alone, then their privacy shouldn’t be a ‘problem’ for others, should it? No. And if people have fantasies and fetishes that are unusual, then they should be able to say it out loud in front of people without being frowned upon for it.

Artistry: Let’s say somebody has ideas, no matter how abstract or cliche, and they wish to broadcast those ideas in the form of art (e.g. music, novels, short stories, movie scripts, movies, game scripts, games, etc.). That’s their right and they should be able to do so no matter what their income or age might be, or at least, it’s their right in my ideal world. Good for you if you have a great story that is mainstream. But, especially good for you if you have something new or different, perhaps weird, to show everyone through art, in whatever form. Artistry should be highly appreciated and never devalued. No person should be made fun of because they wrote a heart-felt story about something different than most other stories. Take ‘The Lovely Bones’, for example, which was a novel and recently released as a movie. Something different; something heart felt. That sort of thing should be highly appreciated, because stories and arts like that cause the evolution of artistry, memes of humans.

Freedom of Expression: So what if somebody wants to wear a gang-related t-shirt or a tobacco product advertisement to school? That’s their right and shame on anyone who opposes that right. Does wearing certain clothes physically harm anybody? Does a girl in short shorts harm anybody? Does a guy with four nose rings, three lip rings, and 75 tattoos kill everybody just by having those things on his body? No. Let people express themselves. Nobody should say “I didn’t get that tattoo because I was afraid of what my parents would say about it” or something to that nature.

Freedom of Questioning/Speech: “Don’t have sex or do drugs, teens.” … “Why not?” Whoever says ‘why not’ should not have to put up with grudges and glaring from across the room. The ones who glare should be glared at, protecting the rights to question morality, ethics, and lifestyles of all kinds; mainstream or not, it doesn’t really matter. As long as their questioning remains to be in the form of speech or writing, it doesn’t harm anybody, so leave them be.

Freedom of Scientific Methodology: How about that stem cell research debate? Isn’t it ridiculous? Yes, it is. Whenever science makes discoveries about the natural world, including inventions, especially whenever it enhances humans’ quality of life, it should be revered. I don’t want to hear ‘God vs. Science’ anymore, because there isn’t a contest. Humans use God to hurt other humans; humans use Science to improve human life. That’s the difference, and science wins if human well-being is on your mind. Let us embrace science in all its forms. We are living in the natural world, so we shouldn’t have to fantasize about supernatural things. There is so much that we have right here.

Well, this is my 1st actual ‘philosophy-related’ contribution to the community. I didn’t pre-write or edit this; it was a rough draft that I suddenly felt compelled to write… just as ‘in the mood’ sort of thing, or ‘spur of the moment’, if you will. Maybe I got carried away or maybe it doesn’t sound so crazy. At any rate, I’d like to see what everybody here thinks about it. Thank you.

Kind Regards,
~Moral Jeff

EDIT:: ‘Freedom of Science’ has been edited into ‘Freedom of Scientific Methodology’.

EDIT#2:: Added ‘This is a secular discussion’, subtracted a parentheses comment about opposition to scientific methodology, and clarified that I am demonstrating a personal philosophical view while I elaborate upon the ‘aspects of human happiness’.

2

Can I ask what the purpose of your post here is? Are you only asking us to imagine what you deem to be an ideal world? Or is there some philosophical significance as well?

3

How much different is my ideal world from what yours would be?

4

Well to be honest I dont know, because I am not sure what your ideal word is other than one without gods and afterworlds. The “no envy” and then the list of “good” human desires or needs doesnt really make much sense to me, philosophically.

5

Well if it ‘doesn’t make much sense’ to you, then don’t post on the thread. There is logic in that:

1.) I read a thread on a philosophy forum about an ‘Ideal World’.
2.) It didn’t make much sense to me.
3.) Therefore, I won’t post on it.

Stop wasting your time.

Kind Regards,
~Moral Jeff

6

Um, I was asking you to explain your purpose here, philosophically (or otherwise as the case may be), so I can get a handle on what exactly you mean by your ‘list’ in light of the 1, 2 and 3 in your OP.

I appologize that I asked you to explain your post. Clearly you have no interest in explaining what you mean here, which leads me to wonder if you even have any idea what you do mean. Or maybe this is just a random ranting or rambling post? In that case, I suggest you use the ‘Mundane Babble’ forum.

7

No need.

Actually, I wanted to you imagine my ideal world along with…

Which was in the OP, written in clear English.

Ha! Look, you’re in my textbook! Carl Jung said something about you… he called it ‘projection’. Clearly you have no interest in discussing your thoughts about what I’ve called an ‘ideal world’.

Whatever you think it might be, right? Haven’t I heard you say that all perception is imperfect and subjective (I think it was you, never mind if it wasn’t)?

No. This isn’t a ‘random ranting’ or ‘rambling’ post. The purpose for pondering an ‘ideal world’ is to solve all the problems that Social Philosophy generally discuss. Social philosophy doesn’t go in ‘Mundane Babble’. But thanks for your suggestion.

~Moral Jeff

8

Okay, so you just want me to say what my ideal world would consist of. Cool, thats easy enough.

This world, in exactly the same manner as it exists now.

9

I’ll assume you’re perfectly ‘cool’ with human starvation, suppression of individuality, censorship, and war, right? Those things just enrich all of our lives, right?

10

I have huge problems with this, particularly if you’re trying to device a utopia. See Brave New World, and Aldous Huxley’s lecture on ‘the final revolution’ for the background.

The big one for me is that presenting this as a case of science ‘vs’ religion is a tabloid misnomer. Not just because science is a parareligion derived from the same logic and in a lot of cases the same formula of reinforcement of belief through ritual, because where science ‘works properly’ it is a departure from this.

Inasmuch as the stem cell debate is ‘science vs religion’ I don’t see much evidence for this outside of the US, and I would suggest it has a lot more to do with Roe vs. Wade than science vs. religion. Because the anti-abortion, pro-life crowd lost that one they’ve needed to latch onto issues such as stem cell research to give them a steady flow of apparent political relevance. This hasn’t got a lot to do with their actual beliefs, and has a lot more to do with how large groups and political institutions operate when their authority in threatened.

You bring this up as though it is guaranteed that stem cell research WILL produce benefits, and not just produce benefits but produce benefits which vastly outweigh the problems. There is no guarantee there, though we aren’t short of scientists willing to portray the research that way to support their political case. This is just like the ‘temperatures will rise by such and such an amount by whatever date’ claims made by anthropogenic global warming advocates. Science just cannot provide us with that sort of knowledge, never has been able to and never will. But just like the religious groups and institutions, the claim has little to do with the actual underlying beliefs of scientists, and a lot more to do with how scientific groups and institutions respond when their authority is threatened.

The classic example of how science has apparently benefited humankind is medicine. I know people training to be doctors and the recurring theme in their experience is not the upholding of scientific standards, or the desire to care for people, but a stereotypically macho culture of treating the junior doctors like shit as part of a sadistic initiation into the annointed sphere of being a doctor. When you look into the history of doctors, their class backgrounds and the actual roles they played within communities, this is not a surprise. When the people who are supposed to be caring for the population are primarily elitist, sexist, arrogant tossers it’s not something I feel I should embrace or seek to liberate.

Humans have not only used the notion of God to hurt other humans. There are literally billions of instances where, at least in the mind of the person doing something benevolent, God or some similar notion is their reason for doing so. People have believed in Gods, or something similar, for at least ten thousand years. As such, these notions have played roles in almost every aspect of human life in that period, sometimes to the detriment of humans. That doesn’t invalidate the notions though, it invalidates them being used as the justification or excuse for doing something detrimental.

Similarly, humans have not only used science to help other humans. In religious ideology you have heretics, the ‘enemy within’ that all societies cultivate to some extent to keep their shape and direction. In science you have the insane, more commonly known as ‘women’ (‘hysterical’ comes from the Latin for ‘womb’). Think about what has been done to the insane over the last few centuries in the name of medical science. We’ve locked them up, drugged them, tortured them, criminalised them, excluded them from almost every aspect of human society and then blamed them for feeling isolated and scared. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, comlpetely unscientific in its methodology, and yet continues on a large scale today. Technology provides us with a reasonable facsimile of a mood or an emotion in a drug form, and using this as our excuse we medicalise and ‘treat’ common human experiences like fear, sadness, anger, frustration and anxiety. Because we can apparently ‘make these people better’, we assume that we should. That’s a fallacy extremely common in scientific activity.

However, this should be totally unsurprising. We don’t train scientists to look at other humans as members of a society, as equals among equals, but as biological mechanisms. If you look on a person in the same way you look on a game of Tetris then it isn’t surprising you end up doing some pretty nasty shit to those digitized blocks. When you combine this alienating view of human beings with the highly competitive, patriarchal, pyramidal institutions that train and employ most scientists, what can you honestly expect them to end up doing, and being?

However, this is barely considered in the popular domain, in the mainstream. We recognise, for example, that banks and other financial institutions also have this culture and this structure, but the most progressive answer offered so far is that we should have more women bankers. Not that we should reform or replace the institutions, not that we should challenge the culture with a counterculture. That we should have a few more women bankers. Yet the existence of this culture in scientific institutions isn’t even mentioned. In truth, most people outside of ‘the loop’ have no fucking clue how the people in these buildings actually work. If it was laid bare to them then, as with so many other buildings, they would probably think quite differently about it.

Freedom of science to me sounds like the freedom of scientist to convince us that we need mass depopulation to save the planet from catastrophe (an idea that’s been around for two centuries, during which time the population has increased by more than an order of magnitude without said catastrophe happening), or the freedom to say ‘them Jews have longer noses than us and we can blame them for hoarding wealth, let’s slaughter them’ (the fascistic science parodied wonderfully by Roberto Begnini). In overlooking the very real facts of the role scientists and science have played in recent history you are completely missing what’s going on here, and as such your projection of a scientific utopia (read: biological dictatorship) is flawed to the point of being nonsensical. At least, it is to me.

11

They are necessary, they are inevitable. Humanity cannot attain to higher aspirations and realities until it transcends the current ones. History is a progress of overcoming the old with the new. To will the new without such an overcoming makes no sense.

I would like to see mankind at a further point in its evolution, yes this would be nice. But that point is already a necessary outcome of current conditions, assuming no planet-wide tragedy strikes us. And even if it did, so what? The universe moves on. We cant miss what we never knew, just like man will not suffer from his own non-existence if he, well, does not exist.

12

What is it, exactly? A book, movie, video, speech, or what?

What do you mean by the first sentence, here?

We probably won’t see much evidence in favor of stem cell research until biologists and medical scientists are allowed to conduct the research. The problem is that they can’t test the theories about stem cells due to people preaching about how already-aborted babies qualify as some form of ‘life’. Mostly, biologists/medical scientists have just asked for the umbilical cords. Wow… that’s harming life? I mean, you can see why I don’t ‘get’ it, precisely.

Ah, so it is an emergency panic move? I wouldn’t doubt this at all. You’re probably right.

No, you misunderstand me. What I meant by it was that the research should be allowed. I am not saying that stem cell research will save the world, hands down. No… I’m saying let’s find out and leave our scientists alone while they’re figuring it out.

We aren’t? What scientists are portraying stem cell research in a way to support the pro-life community?

Actually, it can. It is meteorology, which studies the tropospheric behavior (weather). Now, as far as years in advance… no, science can’t do that, but you don’t know that it ‘never will’.

That’s why the whole fuss about it is crazy.

Apparently? It has.

I don’t understand what you are referring to, here.

What? Maybe I’m wrong, but you seem to be making up any random excuse to degrade our view of medical doctors. I may have misunderstood. :question:

No, ‘God’ was their excuse for helping people, because it was popular as an excuse. Actually, these ‘benevolent’ actions were simply a product of good people who wanted to help others. Since people are widely criticized for good deeds, using ‘God’ as your excuse to help people creates a sort of cultural shield, mostly immune to criticism. Instead of saying “You’d help that lowlife!?”, the majority has to instead say “Praise God!” because in order to insult a good person who says “I work for God”, you’d have to insult their God, too, which is/was considered taboo.

People don’t work for Gods, because the Gods weren’t there to give them direct orders. People work for themselves, and sometimes (in good cases), others, too. If somebody does something ‘good’, then it is that person alone who caused it to happen, especially whenever there was no social pressure to do good things (like in modern US).

Not ‘in the name of medical science’. The scientific method doesn’t tell people to lock each other up, and neither do experimental results. Just as we don’t blame Gods for immoral actions, we don’t blame the scientific method. Who do we blame? Yes, that is the question: Who? ‘Who’ as in what human did it.

It isn’t ‘scientific’ to lock people up. That is a legal process. Laws require Psychologists to incarcerate individuals who have severe problems functioning in society. Certainly you aren’t blaming the psychologists for what the legislators have done?

You’re going political again. This isn’t common in ‘scientific’ activity. It’s common in ‘political’ propaganda, and there is a distinction.

Scientists don’t look at people like a game of Tetris. That’s outrageous in that it misrepresents how biologists view people. Most of them are secular humanists, which are people who certainly don’t devalue human life. Even for those biologists who aren’t, though, every single one whose works I’ve ever encountered has appreciated biological mechanisms as creatures, and not as blocks in some old arcade nintendo game, like you’ve contested.

The nutjobs in legislation are going to be punishing people by twisting science to its own liking. However, the scientists don’t have power over them; they are making discoveries about the natural world and the cosmos. You are pointing the finger at scientists for no reason.

I’m not sure that I’m following you, here. What is wrong with women bankers? Anyway, I do agree that we should challenge our culture (as often as necessary, to be honest).

I’ll edit it into ‘Freedom to Practice Science’, as in, the scientists are free to conduct experiments and gather results based on the scientific method. Freedom of Deception is not what I wrote originally, anyway, though.

Thanks for your thoughts,
~Moral Jeff

PS. I’d really like to hear your thoughts on the other aspects of my OP, by the way.

13

That’s true: the universe moves on anyway. I like your viewpoint.

Kind Regards,
~Moral Jeff

14

We have to appreciate that there has to be the chance that we may loose what we love if we are to truly love it.All the bad shit in life is what gives value to the good shit.

15

That is correct. But, how about never being in a position to say “I had no way out”. Do you know what I mean? I’ve met loads of people with ridiculously horrible lives (of course, some of them have exaggerated it). And I know… they’re wanting attention, right? Why wouldn’t people with horrible lives want attention? They’ve never had any of it, for the most part.

Personally, my ‘bad things’ happened so conveniently, as if they were just definitely going to have a negative result no matter what. Thankfully, however, I’m not a person who had no way out whenever adversity struck. I didn’t give up, and it didn’t last long. But I do realize that others have suffered far worse fates than I have (‘fates’ is just an expression, as I don’t really believe in destiny).

Kind Regards,
~Moral Jeff

16

Brave New World is a book published in the early 1930s. The ‘ultimate revolution’ lecture is available in .mp3 format on archive.org (and other places), and the text of the lecture is available all over the place.

I mean that mainstream news, and other opinion-makers including many authors and intellectuals of varying kinds, love to present complex issues as simplistic binary oppositions. Art vs. Science. Science vs. Religion. Mind vs. Body. Nature vs. Nurture. Man vs. Woman. Young vs. Old. Black vs. White.

All of which are utter gobshite.

That is because the resistance to stem cell research in particular is not due to any moral, theological or philosophical principle, but rather is due to the need of a particular group to maintain its political relevance.

I wouldn’t say ‘emergency’ or ‘panic’, the Christian influence on US politics is still strong, they aren’t even close to panic stations yet. That would be a tabloidising of the issue as above.

Even that I disagree with. We shouldn’t leave scientists alone, we should monitor them scrupulously. Scientists have been responsible for some of the most horrific crimes (accidental and intentional) that the world has ever seen, often because they had no ethical training whatsoever, it isn’t built into the scientific method to care whether something should be done, only whether it can be done.

That isn’t what I meant. I’m saying that plenty of scientists refer to the ‘benefits for mankind’ of doing… whatever research, when one hasn’t a bloody clue about the potential benefits or detriments until one has actually done the research.

I do. Science cannot guarantee the future, it can only make informed and testable predictions. Now, informed and testable predictions can be very useful, but epistemologically science cannot see into the future any better than palm readers on Blackpool promenade.

The payoff for extension of life is that perfectly normal situations have been medicalised, often in an invasive manner, often in accordance with a bastardising political philosophy. I stand by ‘apparently’.

They are trained to be self-serving, arrogant assholes first, and intelligent carers of other humans beings a distant second. At least in this country they are. A couple of friends I’ve had who either did or are studying to become doctors are female, and they are treated in an appallingly sexist manner, constantly accused of lacking the mental capabilities needed due to their being female, constantly put into competition with each other, constantly made to feel they have to suppress their natural inclination to care for other people and become calculating automatons, assessing patients as slabs of meat and bone and not as human beings.

Do you have any idea how doctors talk about patients when those patients aren’t around? I do. Combined with a multitude of first hand experiences of perfectly intelligent but essentially unempathic doctors, I don’t have anything like as high opinion of them as most people do.

Don’t get me wrong, a good doctor is practically a saint in my eyes, and those who go into it because they want to help people, care for people and either fix them or diminish their suffering, they are people I have tremendous respect for and wish there were more of. But they are in the minority, in an industry and culture which attracts people who desire money and status, two things you’re virtually guaranteed as a doctor in the West. These attitudes aren’t confronted in their medical training. If anything, they are enhanced. That seriously bothers me.

So when people do good stuff, God is a mere excuse, but when the same people do bad stuff, God is the notion to blame?

Quite frankly, that is secular, anti-religious nonsense. It is equivocation of the most hypocritical kind. As I said, plenty of people have been motivated to do good things because of religion. Plenty of people have been motivated to do bad things because of science. That’s the reality.

I’m not talking about the abstract scientific method. I’m talking about what scientists actually do and have actually done. And yes, it was ‘in the name of medical science’.

Since I’ve actually bothered to look at what psychologists were doing before modern legislation existed, i.e. the history out of which that legislation arose, yes, I am blaming them for it. Not entirely, but primarily.

Name a branch of science that isn’t massively intertwined with politics.

For example, back in the early days of studying the atmosphere we came across what we now recognise as ozone depletion, the ‘hole’ in the ‘layer’. Now, because it was politically unacceptable at the time to believe this was a result of industrial pollution, it was dismissed (by scientists) as the result of anomalous readings, faulty equipment and so forth. They participated in what was effectively a lie. Same story with tobacco causing cancer. Same story with anthropogenic global warming, as recent events have made abundantly clear.

When scientists consistently lie for political purposes, and are colleagues with the politicians, get a lot of their funding and status through affiliations with politicians, the institutions become effectively partners in official deception. Same story with the ‘collapse’ of the World Trade Center. If it didn’t keep happening then I might have more faith in scientists as sincere professionals. But since it keeps happening the only conclusion I can come to, scientifically speaking, is that this is the product of a politically driven process for which ‘science’ is merely a marker of authority, not a belief in and adherence to a set of standards.

Tell me, how do we assess psychological illness? Do we, for example, give them multiple choice psychological questionnaires, the results of which are analysed by computer?

Crikey, so we do.

Secular humanism taken to an extreme became Nazism.

Even calling them ‘biological mechanisms’ is confirmation of what I’m talking about. Thanks for proving my point for me.

The scientists participate in it willingly, and knowingly. Scientists aren’t mere passive observers of the universe, they are an active part of it. Always have been, always will be.

Nothing is per se wrong with women bankers, but having a few more women in these institutions won’t change them or the culture they propagate. We’ve got female MPs, but they’re almost all 80s powerdressing psychotic bitches who are aping the male politicians in every significant way. All this shows is that it isn’t the people, but the institutions and culture that need to be changed.

Of course, it’s far easier to blame it all on the fact that elite circles are dominated by white men, or dominated by Jews, or dominated by WASP, or whatever.

17

Thank you.

Yes. Everything shouldn’t have a ‘vs.’ in it.

Hmm… that’s interesting. It makes no sense any other way, so you’re probably right. If not, you’re very close to the truth, here.

They should be, in my opinion.

The last thing we need to do is allow random citizens (the majority of which aren’t very intellectual anyway) the right to breathe down the backs of scientists. By doing that, you’d terribly hinder progress in scientific discoveries and cause a collapse of technology (most likely). Not a good idea.

Aside from ‘Frankenstein’, with its mad scientist, tell me a real life example of scientists being responsible for ‘horrific’ crimes. :imp:

Even if they did, it isn’t relevant to whether or not the scientific method should be followed and righted to scientists. Are you going to punish a whole community due to the actions of one or two ‘bad apples’ (so to speak)? If you have to reach back 50 years in history to find this ‘corrupt scientist’, then I don’t need to learn about it, because it’s not modern. Since modern scientists should be punished and/or viewed disrespectfully (according to you), I’m afraid I need a 2009 or 2010 example of this corruption.

So if you discover a cure for cancer than has very mild side-effects, then you have no idea that it is going to help people? I think I can see you’re logic, now…

Informed and testable is better than random and psychic. Scientists can tell you much more than ‘palm readers’. I find it insane to qualify ‘palm readers’ above scientists, and I don’t think I’m alone in that perception.

Nice. Lengthening life is okay, but what crazy motives do they have for curing our diseases? I’ll tell you their motives, and it’s not a political game; their motives are to help people and let people continue their lives.

No. They’re trained in how to diagnose and cure diseases, swearing upon an oath (modern version of the Hippocratic Oath). Please, if you do not mind, find ‘Self-serving arrogance’ on the curriculum of a medical school and post it here.

That’s a weird class. When did the ‘self-serving arrogance’ class start? What year was its legislation passed?

What is it that qualifies as being treat in an ‘appallingly sexist manner’? What are the qualities of ‘sexist’ treatment? And who is doing this to them?

Maybe they do lack the required mental capabilities. ‘I am a girl!’ is no excuse to instantly evade criticism.

Medical offices have competitions? What is measured and included in these competitions? And… are they put onto a poster on the wall? Just what sort of ‘competitions’ against each other are they having? Furthermore, what is wrong with competing against somebody in an occupational field?

No. They’re pointing the finger at co-workers for (probably) just flirting with them, saying to themselves ‘I do not need to care about my patients’ and using the co-worker flirting as an excuse… that’s pretty lame.

Well, you have some pretty sick girlfriends, don’t you? I personally don’t associate with people like that.

Doctors don’t have to personally like their patients in order to successfully treat them. I really don’t care if my doctor thinks I’m an arrogant retard; he still treats me whenever I’m sick, so what does it matter?

Well if they cried every time they saw patients in critical conditions, then they’d spend less time curing and more time crying. Either way, you don’t know how these people really feel about their patients. Internally, they may want to break into constant tears whenever they see a car wreck victim, but externally, they must continue to act in a professional manner, focusing on the current emergency task… this prevents doctors from becoming unstable, so it isn’t necessarily a negative thing.

You want more doctors to say or announce that they care for their patients out loud. Well, no problem. Ask one.

What is wrong with being financially rewarded or having a respected reputation? Nothing. And, the desire for those things aren’t ‘bad’, either… they’re good. I’m glad that people wish to better their lives; I think that’s a good thing. Why do you think it isn’t?

No, but the most important thing is confronted in their medical training: how to cure and diagnose your patients. What does a doctor’s subjective ‘attitude’ matter if he/she is curing patients successfully and efficiently? It doesn’t.

Nope. God isn’t here; humans are. Humans are to blame.

No, it is secular, non-religious sense. For one moment, can’t you just thank a person for his/her good deeds instead of pointing to their ‘God’? For example, “Thanks, Doctor Johnson, for curing my cancer” not “Thanks, God, for curing my cancer”.

Nope. The desire to do ‘good’ things doesn’t come from religion; it comes from people. And, the desire to do ‘bad’ things doesn’t come from science; it comes from people. Point your finger in the right direction for once.

Just who are these terrible scientists? And why should we use those ‘evil’ scientists in order to fulfill your hating wish for their research to be unrealistically monitored?

Let’s see…

1.) Joe told me, the Psychologist of 1800’s, that he feels hatred for every other human being in society.
2.) Incarceration will separate him from other human beings.
3.) Valium will suppress his anxious anger.
4.) Therefore, I will incarcerate him for a while, prescribing Valium to him.

That’s how they seen it back then… of course, this was before neurology and other concrete methods of measuring mental difficulties were discovered.

Politics act based upon mainstream ideas. ‘Violating’ mainstream ideas would stop elections from being won. Legislators appease these mainstream ideas through laws. Scientists are citizens are the country, too. Therefore, scientists must abide by the law, which is a result of politics.

Mainstream ideas, especially religious ones, tend to disregard science. No wonder science is massively intertwined with it… :unamused: This isn’t rocket science.

Politics are in charge of the law. Fail to comply with people who are in strong authority over you and… you’ll probably lose your ‘profession’, funding, or public ‘credibility’. There are severe risks for opposing mainstream ideas, as well as political leaders. Again, this isn’t the scientists’ fault, but I know you’re going to continue acting like it is. Sorry, I just can’t pretend, anymore.

They believe in things just like other human beings. People believe in stuff. Period.

Because politicians enable scientists to receive more funding for research, they must be agreed with every now and then. Look at the funding, though… that improves our world through increasing research and experiment capabilities.

I prefer personal interviews, but that’s just me. And anyway, computers can function via a checklist much faster than us humans can, so what is wrong with using technology in order to help people? (Again, there is an undue hatred for anything ‘science’ related)

No, croc-hunter; we don’t. Using technology to our advantage isn’t the same as ‘looking at people like blocks in tetris’, mate.

That’s a lie. Secular humanism didn’t transform into Nazism. Either your history is twisted or your science-hater buttons have been pressed again. Which is it?

That makes no sense. What point did I just ‘prove for you’?

Everyone is a part of the universe, but that isn’t really a point in your favor, is it?

Never looked at it that way, myself. I always just thought that they were hard-working women holding jobs in order to support themselves or their families. Never thought they had a responsibility to magically cure our culture. Where did that come from? Did some female banker pull your leg or something?

Sounds like you hate science and females who have life goals and don’t complain constantly.

It doesn’t show that. It shows that some women are bankers and some women are in the military.

SIATD v2’s Hit List
1.) Science
2.) All US Doctors
3.) Female Bankers
4.) Female MPs

Irrational hatred can sometimes influence people to commit murder. Just please, whatever you do, don’t kill some innocent doctor, scientist, or woman.

~Moral Jeff

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I don’t see the Christian political groups as any more or less deserving of coverage and relevance than the secular political groups. They’re both a bunch of deluded, ignorant, prejudiced wankers in my view.

So you’d happily continue to live in a scientific dictatorship?

  1. Chernobyl
  2. The Tuskegee projects
  3. The investigation into the ‘collapse’ of the WTC
  4. Sterilisation programs run in the third world
  5. The global warming myth
  6. The aforementioned Nazi scientists who defined racial superiority (a common theme in science until about 1960)
  7. The producers of biological weapons
    :sunglasses: The producers of chemical weapons
  8. The producers of nuclear weapons, including those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (an attack entirely facilitated by ‘technological progress’)
  9. The producers of any other kind of weapons
  10. The creators of threshing machines and the like which led to mass agricultural unemployment and ultimately starvation despite generating an increase in production
  11. The creators of spy satellites

That enough or do I need to go on?

I’m not disputing the scientific method. I’m disputing the actual role scientists have played and continue to play in modern life.

See above. The WTC7 report only came out in 2008, I think. The global warming lie is still going on, despite the disgraced former head of the Climate Research Unit in East Anglia admitting that there’s been no warming for 15 years.

Try again. Before one had done the experiments, one doesn’t know what the outcome will be. That is proper observation of the epistemological status of science. You make observations, draw explanations from those observations, devise experiments to test those explanations, and then observe the experiments to try to assess whether that explanation is correct.

So, saying that research ‘will’ benefit mankind before the research is done is NOT a scientific claim, if we’re being strict about what science can actually do. The research ‘may’ benefit mankind, but as with the Manhattan project it may just escalate and exacerbate existing problems. Technology is an enabler. However, whether than enabling is a good or bad thing is not a judgement most scientists stop to make. Only whether the enabling is possible. Once you’ve built the doomsday machine just to see if it could be done, then you’ve got a socking great big doomsday machine that some psycho might actually use one day.

If you never build it then you never have that problem.

I didn’t qualify palm readers above scientists. Re-read what I actually wrote.

Some doctors are motivated by that and as I said I have tremendous respect for them. Many are not.

Oh for pity’s sake.

I’m not talking about the questions they are asked in their exams, but the culture into which they are inducted. I made that perfectly clear.

Lots of things happen that have no legislation supporting them. Seriously, you’re trying to divert from what I’m saying because you know you haven’t an intelligent response to it. I can see that. You already know that. Just stop it.

Their teachers, almost all of which are white men over the age of 50, almost all of which still cling to a world where women barely even worked, let alone worked in widely respected jobs like being doctors.

Given that you go on to accuse me of hating women, this is a pretty hypocritical statement right here.

If the aim of medicine is to care for people as best as is possible then people need to work together, not constantly be fighting for attention, credit and status.

At the end of the third year of training here in the UK, most medical students take a practical examination where over a period of several hours on one single day they are sent rushing around to various ‘stations’, and at each one is a task that takes between 3 and 10 minutes. They do dozens of these, and are assessed at each ‘station’ and an overall score drawn up which determines who continues into the fourth year and who is forcibly removed from the course.

Not only is this a pretty ineffective way of testing people, it is extremely competitive.

But again, I’m talking about something beyond the mechanics of how the course is taught, something cultural and psychological that is driven into doctors.

What in the fuckery are you on about?

Again, what the fuckery?

I’m not talking about personally liking people. I’m talking about seeing them as a human being worthy of respect regardless of whether you like them, and not as a mere ‘biological mechanism’.

Self-control is one thing. Seeing people in the same way an electrical engineer sees a circuit board is another.

Again, you’re deliberately misinterpreting me.

Try again. What is wrong with wanting to be a doctor not to help people but to make money and looked up to?

Everything.

By ‘better’ you mean ‘have more money and status’.

Consider this, doctors who help people because they believe helping people is a good thing are treating their patients as ends in themselves. Doctors who help people because it gets them money and status are treating their patients as means to an end. You call yourself ‘moral jeff’. What’s your ‘moral’ assessment of that?

Means to an end. You believe in this so much you don’t even recognise that you do believe in it. No wonder you’re struggling with this.

You keep changing your mind on this.

Of course I can.

I think you’re trying far too hard to argue, rather than to understand.

So what people believe has nothing to do with their reasons for doing things?

If that’s the right direction then I’m happy being wrong.

Try again.

Valium was invented in the mid 20th century. Try again.

Name a branch of science that isn’t massively intertwined with politics.

Science is a mainstream idea.

It is the scientists fault when they willingly go along with lies to protect their wages. Just as a prison guard who beats up someone is committing assault.

Welcome to ‘1st lesson in the blindingly obvious’. Your lecturer for today is Moral Jeff.

All those things I mentioned above really improved the world didn’t they? Where would we be without anthrax, VX gas, tactical nuclear weaponry, fuel-air bombs and ricin?

Watch Adam Curtis’s documentary series ‘The Trap’. It isn’t brilliant, but since you’ll misinterpret my explanation I can’t be bothered to write it.

Defining people’s mental state (and therefore medical and legal status) according to a coded, mathematical analysis of their apparent feelings is exactly like treating people as blocks in tetris. It denies them autonomy. It denies them dignity and respect. It denies them virtue. It denies them credit and responsibility for their actions. It dehumanises them in the worst way, because it even denies them the right to argue with it.

I think you need to read more about what secular humanism really is. If you like I can walk you through the baby steps. But Nazism is a derivation of secular humanism whether you can accept that without throwing accusations around, or not.

As I said, you believe this so strongly you aren’t even aware that you believe it. You just completely take it for granted and don’t even notice your assumptions and beliefs even when they are glaringly apparent in your use of language. I really can’t be bothered with this much longer.

Continuing your lecture into the blindingly obvious I see.

Are you honestly not familiar with the notion of changing the demographic makeup of institutions as a means to reforming them? It’s been a mainstay of central left-wing politics (which I’m guessing is your favoured shade) for, oooooh, over half a century. Why do you think some Scandinavian countries have 50-50 parliaments?

Sounds like you’re clueless.

This is why I can’t be arsed. You’re responses only seek to be contrary. You have no desire to even understand what I’m saying, let alone determine if it is true.

Go fuck yourself.

19

:-k


I’m sure somehow it is possible to qualify the above as ‘religion’ via some clever argumentation. Work on that. As it is, warmachinery is prone to be seen as a product of science.

Stepping over this minor, formalistic objection, an ideal world for me would be a world without the word ‘hobby’.

20

SIATD v2…

During your post, you kept repeating that I ‘believed strongly’ in something, but so strongly that I didn’t realize it.

What is it that you were talking about?

~Moral Jeff

P.S. I am very familiar with ‘Secular Humanism’, thank you. And I support it; the modern format of it, not some ‘Nazi’ thing that, for whatever reason, pretended to be secular humanist.