Is science failing humanity?

Originally posted by T_Jesus
Yes, a job at Wal-Mart and/or KFC will clearly be able to provide your child with the best education and chance at what we define as success in this world...

It's not IDEAL but it's a choice and it's a choice i believe they make consciously. In response to their self interested, and thus very human, choice i have decided to do the self interested responsible thing and to never take anything they say at face value; i after all know who they work for.

Originally posted by T_Jesus
As a scientist myself, I'd like to say something...

First, you'd need to find a source of virtually unlimited funds.

No you do not; most scientific breakthroughs are made in the garage with tens of thousands rather than tens of millions of dollars.

I'd like to know where you plan on getting that, because science requires a lot of money. It always has.

Simply not true and your free to cite historic examples.

Second, I never met an undergraduate in a science-based major who wishes to cause harm to the human race.

Then you have not been looking or you do not know how to look. One does not have to wish harm but there is a reason doctors and others go to jail for negligence and 'mistakes' in general.

And I think contrary to popular belief, scientists do not even kill lab rats without thinking twice about it. I've known many people who take them home as pets, and it's not to somehow relieve their minds that they at least saved some, it's to understand what we're killing to make the human life better.

So suddenly scientist are better than the hundreds of millions of people who daily slaughter animals for food? Why would they feel all that guilty about doing what is clearly in humanities best interest? Maybe they are not so sure that it is?

You can't say the same about people who eat meat on a daily basis, and never think twice about it.

There is survival and then there is killing to do experiments that have not gone anywhere for DECADES. How many animals have had to do for complete absence of results in cancer research?

I don't get how a scientist is any different from a common person who does nothing to turn the world around.

The only reason why the world is in fact getting 'better' is because common people do something after they were sold out by the scientist and politicians who were supposed to make their world better by doing the things they were asked to do.

In the United States, not many people even vote for the president, or vote at all in local elections -

Because a majority of Americans have realised that voting does not get them ANY benefit as the candidates simply do listen. There are also that tens of millions of Americans who are too busy surviving to concern themselves with learning to understand that the only way they are going to change the rat race is to act politically. If that is not bad enough half the voters were given a rather rude slap in the face when the guy who clearly lost were still 'selected' as president.

while at even government funded laboratories, scientists are generally very vocal about their political views and do vote (and if you believe they like our current administration, you're dead wrong, and openly express rage).

And these guys know exactly what to say and who to vote for to keep the money rolling in. Political activist for sure!

You know what you need to do instead? Focus on the real world problems rather than this illusion that scientists are socially inept and follow the will of others.

Thanks but it's long been established who the science establishment serves and we know that they are not socially inept but in fact know exactly on which side their bread is buttered and how to keep the butter coming.

I can tell you that we go to bars (and even get into bar fights! WOW!), go to the beach, go to the gym, and generally enjoy any sort of social event! Who would've thought that the days of Isaac Newton are over?!

So your human, wow! Did anyone here suggest that scientist were from another galaxy?

Start a guild that focuses on eliminating the economic dependence on the sales of weapons,

The economy is NOT dependent on that and it's in fact destroying the economies of the world. People are doing their best but it's complex struggle and far more so because the science establishment is generally being employed to misdirect people and to keep them ignorant of how best to act in their own interest.

or a guild that wants to eliminate all the lobbyists parading around Washington and whispering nonsense into your elected officials brains. Oh, and start a guild that stops watching TV, for god's sake...

It's what is on TV that is the problem and what those lobbyist are saying; not the fact that either exists. People are acting and doing these things but it would obviously be far easier if they understood that vacuum energy can be extracted, that global warming is nonsense, that many vaccines are killing their brains slowly, that GM crops are simply bad for us, that there is no established connection between AIDS and HIV and a hundred other examples. The fact that it takes people so long to respond to oppression is mostly due to the fact that they have been misled as to how it all fits together and that is the directly due to the lies and deceptions that are propagated by establishment scientist.

Stellar

Science is inseparable from humanity, as scientists are human, and choose ( a moral and philosophical decision) to practice it, they are ultimately not immune from the causality of their actions and decisions. Science is a product of the desire for diligent enlightenment on observable phenomena. This is known as empiricism. The pursuit of Science has an ethical responsibility for the knowledge it discloses, to the greater good, despite that it sees itself as a discipline free of social consequence. Were we are as a species today is a partial consequence of scientific endeavor.

So has science failed humanity?

On the one hand, it has delivered to us a longer life expectancy, greater health care, new means of generating wealth, instant communication, helped us become faster, stronger and smarter etc., however, we are standing on a rapidly toxifying planet that soon (on our present trajectory) will be unable to support us. I recall a Charlton Heston quote that springs to mind, made during his tenure as the head NRA in the US- "Guns don't kill people, People with guns kill people". I believe this presents a similar dilemma, and to address them one must dissect the political economy of these statements> Science tends to not take responsibility of how it facilitates the behavior of society, when its net product clearly enables and indeed empowers society to behave the way it does more EFFECTIVELY, right or wrong, positively or negatively. Consequently the question must be refraimed:

Science can take the money, but can it take the blame?

We live in a corrupt world were financial interests hold true power, and even science is enslaved to this oligarchy. The military industrial complex relies heavily on science to maintain its hegemony worldwide, and in turn uses most of the worlds resources to do so. This co-operation/by-product is inherently an ethical decision and

So are we the better for it?

Science will always explain how things work, but it will never answer why. I think science must generally take responsibility for its impact on humanity and seriously look at the philosophical vacuum empiricism casts upon all our common destiny's.

Much valuable knowledge from history has been ignored by science because mythology and culture have little place in the paradigm of empiricist practice and falsifiability, and this inability to see the forest from the trees will only lead us to winning first prize for 'species killing itself in the most efficient manner possible'.


-Trunkeight.