From: Dehede011@aol.com
Date: Fri Jun 13 2003 - 22:48:53 MDT
In a message dated 6/12/2003 12:59:02 PM Central Standard Time,
hal@finney.org writes: On this list we claim to be willing to explore novel technologies.
Yet we engage in exactly the same styles of pointless rhetorical battling that
you can find in any other forum on the net. What is Extropian about how we
handle political disagreements? Nothing. We just yell at each other.
Hal,
At the risk of bringing down the wrath of the entire list on my head
please let me respond to that.
We seem to get so oriented toward the hard sciences that we forget
there is a whole world of philosophy, political science, theology and goodness
knows what else out in the real world that is derived and discussed in a
rational and reason based way. Science can lay claim to much but not to being the
only reason based field is not a claim science can sustain.
We fall for every con artist that comes along with three shells and a
pea once we get outside the field of hard science. We truly need a broader e
ducation for our scientists -- a scientist has to fill many roles besides
scientist.
Ron h.
BTW, this symbolically describes how I got out of hard engineering. I was an
airplane driver that had turned Mechanical Engineering student. In the
university (Washington University in St. Louis, Mo.) my best friend was a masters
student in physics. I lived in a nice logical universe.
One day I took an elective in mathematical statistics and really loved
that. I was immediately afterwards thrown in with some of the softer fields.
For a little while I suffered from brain stretching as my mind got expanded.
Eventually I pursued an MBA at the University of Chicago. I was sick
of seeing engineers, chemists, & phycists in manufacturing companies stuck in
a corner while people with half their intelligence made the important
decisions. (Oh, I forgot the occasional biologist)
Just one example, I have seen a man with a masters in microbiology out
in a boxcar load of peanuts in the Chicago winter using a "black light" to
detect rat droppings & urine while a semi literate ran the factory with threats
of physical violence.
I identify with the intelligence of the scientists and the engineers.
But I will never agree to see us keep ourselves so narrowly based that we
take orders from the goons.
If we do that you can kiss your extropic world goodbye because it will
be a goon world and will meet goon goals.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Jun 13 2003 - 22:57:56 MDT