🚀 go-pugleaf

Some further thoughts on science couched as a reply to lindsay.

lindsay@K.GP.CS.CMU.EDU writes in connection with the
discovery of high-temperature superconductivity:
> ...
> Speaking for myself, I found the discovery reaffirmed my trust in the
> scientific method. 
> ...
We do not disagree on this point; I am not attacking the scientific
method, nor am I attacking experimental physics.  I think if more people
had a better understanding of the scientific method then those ridiculous
claims about what happened during the first millisecond of the universe's
existence would receive the derision they deserve.  Surely such speculation
is on as shaky a footing as Velikovsky's, and I think more misleading
because physicists should know better, and should know too that these claims do
not lend themselves to experimental tests.   Perhaps
it is prejudice, but I have always distrusted astronomy and astrophysics.
Once we had Lowell claiming there were canals on Mars.  More recently
I understand that the supernova has shot holes in theories of supernovas
(sure, some theories were supported but others were not).  
The planetary space missions convinced me that there
is no substitute for observation.  The bottom
line is that a theory needs a certain 'critical mass' of experimental
backing before it can be trusted.

But I object to more than just astrophysics.  For example,
It is full speed ahead on the supercollider even though we are at a 
point in time when superconducting magnet technology is likely to
change rapidly.  Why should so much money should be devoted
to particle physics in the first place. I think the only reason for
the "in" people to get easy papers and 
maintain their reputations, though I suspect the government feels that
it can't risk not finding some super atomic bomb technology that
might come from the effort.  But the researchers can't lose because access
to the equipment is the only thing that determines whether or not
you can do particle physics research.

Something similar happened in Computer Science.  When VLSI
design tools became readily available a bunch of graduate students
invented RISC computers and showed that the experts had all been 
designing computers wrong all along.  (This may be an exageration but
contains a grain of truth)

On to another point, Lindsay also writes:
> ...
> Personally, I wouldn't like to live like a bushman. They have a murder rate
> higher than the rate in my community. 
>...
Murder rate arguments can not quell my suspicions that Bushmen led 
better lives than we do.  You are comparing our society at its best
with what the Bushmen have become under subjugation.  Such an unfair
comparison should not convince anyone.  
Likewise, comparisons between contemporary
society and other worse versions of it, such as the last century, 
are unconvincing.  Murder itself is a concept from our society, and had
I been a Bushman I might still have led a better life, even with murder
as a fact of life--for example, I might have been endowed with a compensating 
quality of courage.  And even if it should turn out that they don't
lead lives as good as ours, what then of the Aborigines, the Cheyene, 
the navijo, and so on.  And do not forget that the ancient civilizations
got on fine (existed at least) with out even mathematics.  (Yes I know
there was Geometry, but as a social force it wasn't there--they were
more honest about recognizing that it was a religion though)

Later Lindsay writes:
> ...
> As for modern medicine, it has some clear failings ... but it is remarkably
> efficacious at dealing with the major problems of the last century. 
> ...
> The next time the
> paramedics scrape a friend of yours into an ambulance, be sure to tell them
> that they aren't efficacious, so not to waste any money on transfusions.
> ...
The major problems of the last century are artificial ones; the proof
is that our life expectancy is about the same as in primitive societies.

It is not necessary for people to be scraped into ambulances in the first
place.

The problems of the last century are threatening to return (gonerea for
example has mutated).  And
is AIDS an accident? Or can we expect new diseases to appear when
we live overcrowded in cities? And of course AIDS has served to highlight
the risk you always take when you get a transfusion.  You might be surprised
to learn that x% (x>10) of hospital patients are there for
diseases they caught in a hospital.   

And if you think we have a quality of life up-side to all of this,
then witness the suicide rate.

Science has had no small part in shaping our society.
If we destroy ourselves through nuclear winter, biological warfare,
biological accident, genetic engineering, or through disastrous
climatic change caused by industry, then the issue is clear: science,
as we practiced it, was not only a mistake but a
catastrophie.  None of these catastrophies need actually happen
for science to be rightfully excoriated.

Another point is that most science since WWII is military in nature.
Science as religion may be a necessity--both to disguise its
true nature, and to motivate young people to become practitioners.
I have more than once heard scientists bemoan what science has become.
We used to have Openheimers and now we have Tellers.  I often think
of it as "Hitler's revenge".

Motivating young people is why OMNI can be regarded as truer to science
that Scientific American,  SA merely reports the status of current
works, but OMNI is in the business of presenting science as religion
and making sure there is a new crop of eager, young,
naive postulants competing for the priesthood.