cbforever

You might like Ludwig Wittgenstein. He actually applies to alot of the problems with our first argument in my original thread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ33gAyhg2c

You might also like Baruch Spinoza:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVEeXjPiw54

I agree with your ideals here, I'm just not sure that's how things do or can work in practice.

Think of it like...Okay a screenplay. One would think that the way in which a film was presented, wouldn't matter if the content of the film was good. However, when you consider how humans absorb stories you realize that good content will never get to them if it isn't presented in a very specific structured way.

Similarly, we would need to change the way our political system functions to achieve that kind of position for scientists. There's too much misinformation out there and it's too easy to find some presumed "expert" to back your way of doing things.

That's why I brought up econ actually. No matter how scientific the field gets, it's too heavily politicized to be of much good.

Oh! Agent, found a guy who doesn't care about Happiness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer

Though from what I've read, I don't particularly like his philosophy - but you might.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0zmfNx7OM4

So Bill Nye said a bunch pf dumb stuff recently: http://qz.com/627989/why-are-so-many-sm ... hilosophy/

There's some serious irony in the way the author of that piece accuses bill Nye of not understanding philosophy, then demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of several science concepts.


EDIT: more coherent thoughts:

I think the article comes at the question from the wrong direction. It plays "god of the gaps." I hate the idea of non-overlapping magistaria (because it's so often abused to favor religion over science) but it might have currency here. Philosophy can be argued to be important because there are certain areas where science simply isn't the appropriate tool: questions of meaning, of ourselves, of life. It's less easy to argue that "our senses aren't perfect, and science doesn't know everything yet - thus we need philosophy," which is part of what this article is saying. The problem with that argument is that it is a losing battle; philosophy's magisteria becomes an ever-shrinking territory. Using apparent paradoxes in quantum mechanics (that have no bearing on the macro-world) or Einstein's conclusions to show that philosophy is needed is, in many ways, kind of a non-starter, because all it shows is how powerful science was in discovering these things.

Also, I just dislike that they use one of science's greatest strengths (that it is the perfect method to compensate for our imperfect senses and perception) as an argument against it.

The article isn't particularly good, but Bill Nye's response is about as cringe-worthy and ignorant as you can get.