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The Forum > Article Comments > An idea to help save the world > Comments

An idea to help save the world : Comments

By Nicholas Maxwell, published 4/10/2017

But then it dawned on me that Popper had failed to solve his fundamental problem - the problem of understanding how science makes progress.

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This is an interesting and well written article that you would expect from the author's situation in academe. He admits that there is a missing metaphysical foundation to natural science, i.e. one has to make the assumption that the universe is vulnerable to our investigation and understanding. Scientists are in the same position of which Anselm speak, one must have faith before one understands. If scientists did not have faith the the universe was understandable then they would be crippled in their endeavours form the start.

I notice that the author's understanding of rationality was based, as it has been since Descartes and the Enlightenment, on the insistence and interpretation of evidence. While this insistence is great for evidence based medicine and many forms of scientific research it breaks down when applied to the human, our identity, purpose, destiny etc. In this case Chesterton was right when he noted that "the world is a trap for logicians." It is often the case since Bacon talked about the improvement of the estate of man that logic falls short and even produces the madness we saw in the French revolution etc. All of the totalitarian regimes in the 20C were rationalistic. All were bread from Enlightenment rationalism.

I find the author's confidence that a new kind of rationality may be applied to all spheres of life alarming. The proper rationality for the circumstances of human life is that of Christian theology that has a history of 2000 years and is still researched by academics all over the world, only not in the author's department.
Posted by Sells, Wednesday, 4 October 2017 10:41:57 AM
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I think I mostly agree with Karl Popper! Except where endlessly repeatable experiments always always result in the same predictable outcome! And the very cornerstone of good science!

Science can save the world from itself? Yes but not if it's channelled exclusively into, for profit solutions that allow a small cohort? The pigs of, Animal Farm" to prosper at the expense of the endeavor and ideas of the innovators and thinkers?

This examination was very wordy and full of assumed pros and cons, that many, including myself may struggle with.

That said, yes science can save the world! But only if those whose vested interest in other outcomes get out of the way!

That science, is nuclear power coupled to, deionization dialysis desalination and decarbonisation via the harvesting of carbon as endlessly sustainable, liquid fuel, fertilizer and all manner of useful plastics, directly from seawater, where it first concentrates and is reabsorbed almost as fast as you can extract it!

Politicians thunder at various dispatch boxes as they seek to justify the extermination of entire ethnic communities as the world goes to hell in a handbasket?

Others fight with dogged determination for the status quo, regardless of the predictable harmful consequences!?

So why would our better Angels believe, there is anything here worth saving?
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Wednesday, 4 October 2017 11:16:52 AM
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This reference describes the limitations of conventional scientism:
http://www.aboutadidam.org/lesser_alternatives/scientific_materialism/reductionism.html

But what is the nature of the world altogether? Is it a definable realm which can in any sense be "saved"?
http://www.adidam.org/teaching/gnosticon/spirit-of-buddhism

Three references on the paradoxical nature of Conscious Light, Quantum Reality, and an all-inclusive "metaphysics" that extends from such an understanding.
http://www.beezone.com/da_publications/dht6.html
http://www.dabase.org/Reality_Itself_Is_Not_In_The_Middle.htm
http://www.dabase.org/illusion-weather.htm

Christian "theology" is of course very much stuck in the subject versus object dichotomy or the three operative myths of ego-culture.
http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/Aletheon/three_great_myths.html
Posted by Daffy Duck, Wednesday, 4 October 2017 12:16:08 PM
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Active critism can in small doses be like a plow on soil. It can tare up the ground to get to fertile soil underneath. The problem though is that continual active critism impedes teamwork, and stifles inspiration. For any real problem in the world that asks for a practical answer, the solutions need time to grow and to adjust for results while trying them out.

Strong critism before given the chance to succeed is just as harmful as using a plow after planting seed. It will uproot the progress that might be underway undermining the solutions chance of making it.

The second issue to compete with is the idea that by identifying the problem, you will make progress on a solution. On that premis continually seeking and critizing for problems is a good thing, because it means more solutions are being sought after too. Scientific theory doesn't work on that but builds on a teamwork of ideas to restructure or to discover from. That's probabley why the observation of science seeking unified theories is a valid observation. The teamwork of gathering other ideas and theories to build off sustains more solutions then staring at a problem and critizing all possible solutions as they come by.

Test them after there is a bit of time for them to grow. Truely scruntize them when they have peeked, or show signs of unseen harm on the horizons.
Posted by Not_Now.Soon, Wednesday, 4 October 2017 6:55:59 PM
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As for saving the world. That's in God's terroritory not ours. If we can cure the human heart of the evil it can possess, then perhaps we can save ourselves and save the world. But we have a self centered view mostly. For survival reasons, greedy aspirations, or just not wanting to be walked all over; much of our understanding when challenged comes down to will it benifit me or will it not? We also have a high population that seeks destruction to others from childhood gossip to adult murder rampages we have a second issue that needs saving from ourselves, our criminal element, not just for our benifit such as greedy corruption, but also save us from our own destructive natures.

You can't save the world, but you can make an impact. Love your neighbor and the brotherly love that comes with that will do more benifit then continual critism ever will. Love God and His love will work in you to love even those who would do you wrong. In this way it will heal the world around us and make a positive impact on the world we come in contact with.
Posted by Not_Now.Soon, Wednesday, 4 October 2017 6:56:29 PM
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Can science help feed the world? Yes it can and by turning deserted arid wasteland into gardens of eden, with the application of largely proven science. And pipelines.

Large concrete pipes that can be largely built by the new or returning settlers to carry desalinated water.

The only kind, we can conceivably rely on regardless of summer temperatures that regularly exceed 50C around the world.

I'm talking about new space age deionization dialysis desalination, that in relatively recent field trials in Texas. Proved to be four times cheaper than traditional desal and produced 90% potable water from seawater.

Produced by power at around 10 cents PKH.

Imagine what one could do to world hunger if that power cost 1.98 cents as the median average, as the power source for the desal/essential pumps!

Imagine if that same power source was tasked with harvesting CO2 directly from seawater, to through a series of compressions and catalytically assisted steps. No more energy demanding than current oil refining, to produce endlessly sustainable liquid fuels, such as methanol or ammonia, plus fertilizer and various plastics!

Moreover, done far more easily if rolled out at cost by not for profit agencies! Just to Quarantine onerous impositions like taxes, debt and dividend streams etc!

Knowing as we change the face of the planet and return much of it to a former afforested state? Replete with waving wheat fields,vineyards and grazing domestic animals, we will have given it enough allegorical fish and bread to feed a multitude.

And changed it back to the world of plentitude it once was. And then become beneficiaries of the changes we helped wrought!

Finally, we live on a world of finite resources, most of which can be profitably recycled and reused, time and time again.

As we accept that reality and the absolute need to educate the entire populace, perhaps we can stop the culture of breeding to be the dominant culture?

Why does there need to be a dominant culture? And just silly!

Faith can move mountains? No, but really big earthmoving machines can and have!
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Wednesday, 4 October 2017 7:23:25 PM
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Aims are never rational:

Whenever an aim is derived by rational conclusion, it must be derived as a means to a higher aim. If the latter is still rational, then it must itself be a means to an even higher aim - and so forth: ultimately, our highest aim(s) are irrational!

Suppose for example that your aim is to save the world: why would you want that?!?

Saving the world is still not an aim, but a means. It is also a mistaken solution to whatever real aim is behind it, because the world cannot be saved: the world will either end up in a big crunch, or dissipate infinitely with no particles left intact.

So what can the aim behind trying to save the world be?

Most likely it is an attempt to relieve guilt. We have done bad things to others and we somehow think that if we saved the world that we messed up, then we shall no longer feel guilty.

Violence is inherent in nature, including human nature. So as long as we identify with a human body and its various "needs", we are bound to feel guilty - and just imagine how guilty would you feel if for example you identified with a black hole... In order to stop feeling guilty, the only way is to stop identifying with natural objects, human bodies included, rather than to try to save or fix an unfixable world.

What has science to do with it? Pretty much nothing: we already know more than we need regarding how to achieve our aims, but where is the will to pursue what we already empirically know is good for our higher aims and to avoid what we already empirically know is bad for our higher aims?

What we most feel guilty for, is for making this world so miserable by filling it with far too many people in order to satisfy selfish desires for genetic lineage. What's the use of wishing to control the earth, the moon and the stars, when we cannot or would-not even control our own semen?
Posted by Yuyutsu, Wednesday, 4 October 2017 7:55:36 PM
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To Alan B

I don't think the article was about whether science can save the world or not, but that applying a version of critial thinking and critism that is part of scientific study and thought to other areas of life. Here's a quote from the article to say say it in the author's words.

"By means of judicious use of criticism, in personal, social and political life, we may be able to achieve, in life, progressive success somewhat like the progressive success achieved by science. We can, in this way, in short, learn from scientific progress how to make personal and social progress in life. Science, as I have said, provides the methodological key to our salvation."

To Yuyutsu.

[Aims are never rational:

Whenever an aim is derived by rational conclusion, it must be derived as a means to a higher aim. If the latter is still rational, then it must itself be a means to an even higher aim - and so forth: ultimately, our highest aim(s) are irrational!]

What are you trying to say? The article's use of aim is part of a wordy brand name of his idea. (I don't know if there's more to it then his branding a name to the idea he's trying to propose, when explainations get too wordy without saying much new, it's a red flag in my opinion. But I could be wrong on that aspect.)

Your use of aim though sounds like if the grand scheme kind of aim is irrational then it is all irrational and not worth pursuing. If that is not what your saying then please try your explaination again. If it is what your saying then I disagree wholeheartedly. The pursuit of any goal (aim?) can be worth it even if it stays out of the grand scheme of things outlook. But again, perhaps I'm misunderstanding both your use and meaning of aim as well as the author of the article's use of aim.
Posted by Not_Now.Soon, Thursday, 5 October 2017 3:39:40 AM
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Allowing the content of science to be dictated by ideological concerns inevitably produces two results: science that doesn't work at all, and the wholesale persecution of those who are presumptuous enough to point this out.
Posted by Jon J, Thursday, 5 October 2017 5:30:28 AM
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Feyerabend disagrees. His central thesis was that the idea of the operation of science by fixed, universal rules is unrealistic, pernicious, and detrimental to science itself
Posted by Toni Lavis, Thursday, 5 October 2017 6:03:51 AM
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Dear Not_Now.Soon,

I definitely did not mean to claim as if aims were not worth pursuing.

Yes, aims are irrational: all that means is that the author's idea as if it were possible to derive our aims using rational science, is logically flawed. The author explains his choice of brand-name as follows:

"Conventional ideas about rationality are all about means, not about ends, and are not designed to help us improve our ends as we proceed. Implementing aim-oriented rationality is essential..."

Yet just because they happen to be irrational, aims can still be, and indeed often are, worthwhile.

So how DO we improve our aims (as opposed to the means that we use to achieve them)? to some extent you could call it the work of the heart, rather than of the mind. Ultimately it happens by grace alone.
Posted by Yuyutsu, Thursday, 5 October 2017 7:59:27 AM
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My immediate thought is,
Who is trying to save it.
What or who are they trying to save it from.
What or who are they trying to save it for.

And the answers.

The elites are trying to save it.
They are trying to save it from us the peasants.
Many of them simply hate the thought that we peasants are living so well. The rest are worried we may use up too many resources, leaving not enough for their great great great grand kids.

Isn't it amazing that they have succeeded in brainwashing the youth of today to take up the cause of robbing themselves of what the older generation had developed for them to inherit?

Did stone age elites try to stop the peasants wasting precious stones?

Will the youth ever realise they have been conned?
Posted by Hasbeen, Thursday, 5 October 2017 8:16:16 AM
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" What's the use of wishing to control the earth, the moon and the stars, when we cannot or would-not even control our own semen?"
This is Australian Realism measuring the experiment scientifically and observing a planet Earth cancer of Jong-iun consciousness. The experiment terminates in a Thorium exponential over-supply.
Posted by nicknamenick, Thursday, 5 October 2017 8:42:08 PM
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<<An idea to help save the world>>

I put a question mark to that, in the context that in most people's lifetime on this page such an aim is simply not achievable and the human population should not be forced to accept any author's direction.

The best option is for one to go in their own direction. So science should not be the only pathway, to push others down.

The best advice I provide to others, is to take the view, that they as individuals, have the power to change the world, not fix it, and with the right mindset as an individual they can make a difference.

Many today, in Australia, do not allow time for reflection and such a practice is avoided. As a result many people's lives day in and day out simply remain the same.

One thing I do promote to encourage thought, is to attend film festivals. Many people attend a cinema, sit down and watch something but in my view waste time, seeing films that can be very bland or commercialised.

One film I saw yesterday at the Adelaide Film Festival was called "From Under the Rubble" https://vimeo.com/132212314 . It is very descriptive of those living in Gaza and what they are facing, particularly children.

I didn't really get to understand the situation enough for people living in Gaza before, who were innocent civilians caught in a situation they did not want or ever ask for.

Coming out of the film, with a mix range of feelings and thoughts, including sadness, hope and maybe a positive future for people living in Gaza, I decided to write to the Federal Government for the first time, expressing a need for change and for Australia to take a stronger position on this matter. Finally, encourage people to find some way to reflect and think and consider change, as humans we only have one life on planet earth to live.
Posted by NathanJ, Sunday, 8 October 2017 2:25:29 PM
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