Vox Popoli

CS asks for a distinction:

I was wondering if you could elaborate on the basis of an assertion that I recently saw you make on your blog (“You may now make your historically ignorant statement attempting to give science credit for that which either predates science, was created by non-scientists, or should more rightly be credited to entrepreneurial activity”) and that you also made in TIA – that it has often been wrongfully assumed that certain technological/beneficial advancements to humanity can be attributed to “science”. You reference a Current History journal article about soviet vs. US science spending in the TIA to show how massive government science spending doesn’t equal an abundance of technological/scientific advance, but I was wondering if you could point to any other material that supports your assertion; perhaps, quite simply, an example of a private industry development that people may think developed via academic science. Also, I was wondering if you could perhaps clarify your definition of the difference between developments attributable to “science” or “non-science” (e.g., would the hypothetical development of a new, effective miracle drug by academically trained/accredited scientists working for a private pharmaceutical company be a result of “science” or “entrepreneurial activity”). I realize you acknowledge the fuzzy distinction between science and non-science in the TIA and I may be generating a false dichotomy based on your treatment of this issue, but I am intrigued by your argument (since I typically would be one to credit ‘science’ by default for new advancements) and was hoping you could provide more info.

First, I note that it is deeply and profoundly disingenuous for science fetishists to attempt to claim for science technological accomplishments that predated the scientific method or were accomplished by non-scientists making use of the simple trial-and-error approach. If science is nothing more than trial-and-error, there is no such thing as a scientist; we are all scientists. The fuzzy distinction of which CS speaks is the result of two things, the incorrect expansion of the concept of basic experimentation to cover the entire methodology and the dishonest desire of science fetishists to claim every positive human technological accomplishment for science.

The scientific method is a reasonably rigorous and methodical process that involves copious record-keeping and intellectual intent. It is not merely noticing that chocolate and peanut butter happen to taste good together; baking is not science. In the same way, two young men experimenting with electronics in an effort to have fun or make money is not science; while mainframe computers most certainly the result of science, personal computers were not. To argue that a non-scientific technological development is science because it could not have taken place because of previous scientific developments is spurious reasoning, as the same logic could be used to demonstrate that the personal computer is the result of agriculture.

In answer to the question about the private pharmaceutical company, it’s not the profit motive that determines whether a given development was the result of science or non-science, but rather the approach to the problem. If a technological development is the result of the direct and purposeful application of the scientific method, it should be properly credited to science. If it is the result of the same shotgun approach to trial-and-error that was used successfully for millenia prior to the development of the scientific method, it cannot be.

I find the subject somewhat ironic, considering that despite my being occasionally labled an opponent of science or a scientific ignoramus, I probably have more patent applications and developed more technologies than 95 percent of my critics. If one of my designs were to prove useful in some scientific sense down the road, is there any doubt that it would be subsequently credited to science despite the fact that no one presently considers me a scientist or what I am doing to be science? Science is a useful, if dangerous, tool, but it is the height of ignorance and illogic to insist that Mankind could neither survive nor progress technologically without it.

Yes, I know what the media is reporting. You, on the other hand, know what credence I place in their analytical abilities and the forced tone of the coverage tends to underline my skepticism. I will wait until either a McCain victory in November or, far less likely, an Obama inauguration in January to declare the Lizard Queen electorally dead in 2008.

You got a nice Democratic Party there. Sure would be a shame if anything happened to it….

UPDATE – You can’t honestly say I didn’t warn you:

He thought a little thing like winning would stop her? Oh, Bambi. Whoever said that after denial comes acceptance hadn’t met the Clintons. If Hillary could not have an acceptance speech, she wasn’t going to have acceptance. “It’s never going to end,” sighed one Democrat who has been advising Hillary. “We’re just moving to a new phase.”

Even as Obama got ready to come out on stage for his victory party, the Clinton campaign announced that it had won a Wyoming superdelegate and Terry McAuliffe introduced her at Baruch as “the next president of the United States.”

Beezle finally begins to grok somewhat:

After several months visiting your site I still have no idea what your vision of what the ideal world should be. What about it? A blog post for me “The World According to Vox.” What’s the Vox Day — I won’t say “utopia” since I know that’s a bad word around here — dream world?

You have no idea because no such thing exists. You might with equal reason label me an anti-Panglossan or a hyper-Panglossan, in that my belief that we live in the best of all possible worlds tends to hang on the word “possible” rather than “best”.

One of the most startling things about reading Thucydides or any ancient is how “modern” and “sophisticated” those writers were. While some of their ideas may seem strange to us, one can easily recognize our behavior in theirs and vice-versa. Given what men like this have repetitively recorded of human nature over the millenia, one need only look at the increased centralization of power over the last three centuries to know that there are likely horrors in Man’s future that will dwarf any that have been known before, horrors of a magnitude more akin to the Black Plague and Noah’s Flood than the Great Leap Forward. And already, the Golden Shield rises in China as the Panopticon is constructed in Britain….

Read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and then you will know why I do not think of dream worlds.

In case you didn’t believe that some insane individuals truly think they have discovered meaning through science:

The reason science really matters runs deeper still. Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that’s precise, predictive and reliable — a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional. To be able to think through and grasp explanations — for everything from why the sky is blue to how life formed on earth — not because they are declared dogma but rather because they reveal patterns confirmed by experiment and observation, is one of the most precious of human experiences.

Scientists and science worshippers of this sort inevitably end up as would-be dictators. They simply don’t understand that no matter how elegant a tool is, it cannot tell you the purpose for which it should be used. It’s bad enough that so many people so easily confuse legality with morality, but those who confuse HOW with WHY are an order of magnitude less sane. This is why the stereotype of the mad scientist exists and will continue to be with us so long as Man tolerates science.

Science creates no meaning. It can only destroy it, to the extent that it touches upon it at all. Those who see meaning where its very possibility is logically impossible are, quite literally, delusional.

Physicists, as the philosopher Daniel Dennett has noted, have very precise models that work very effectively. Evolutionary biologists, on the other hand, have horribly imprecise models that don’t even pretend to work at all. Naturally, given the idiosyncracies of human nature, it is the latter who are extremely arrogant and aggressively certain that they completely understand the way in which the material world is functioning:

Although cosmologists have adopted a cute name, dark energy, for whatever is driving this apparently antigravitational behavior on the part of the universe, nobody claims to understand why it is happening, or its implications for the future of the universe and of the life within it, despite thousands of learned papers, scores of conferences and millions of dollars’ worth of telescope time. It has led some cosmologists to the verge of abandoning their fondest dream: a theory that can account for the universe and everything about it in a single breath.

By the way, I went over the ten studies that were previously recommended to me as making use of an evolutionary model to predict something. They were nothing of the kind. In fact, from the thirty-five or so studies I have now read, it seems that most evolutionary studies are designed primarily to demonstrate that some previously observed animal behavior “is consistent with evolution by natural selection”.

Texas District Judge Barbara Walther, responding to a state Supreme Court ruling last week, signed an order filed by attorneys for the parents and Child Protective Services, allowing the parents to begin picking their children up from foster care facilities around the state. The first emotion-filled reunions came Monday afternoon, as parents trickled into foster care facilities to pick up their children.

It would be nice to see some CPS heads begin rolling soon as well. But I’m not holding my breath. It’s absurd that the judge put any restrictions on the parents; I certainly wouldn’t blame them if they decided to leave Texas and never look back.

Obama on sin:

GG:
Do you believe in sin?

OBAMA:
Yes.

GG:
What is sin?

OBAMA:
Being out of alignment with my values.

Ahem. Allow me to point out that regardless of one’s personal beliefs, the Christian intellectual tradition is rather clear in stating that sin isn’t being out of alignment with Obama’s values, but rather being out of alignment with GOD’S values as provided in the Bible. Now, in fairness, Obama could well be trying to talk around his Christian faith for the media’s benefit; it might be less than courageous, but it would certainly be understandable given the context of the ongoing political campaign. If Obama’s values are Christian values, which are directly derived from God’s values as provided in the Bible, then his statement is correct from a transitive point of view.

But since we don’t actually know what his values are – remember that Adolf Hitler also claimed to be a Christian when running for office – we can’t simply grant him the benefit of the doubt. And yet, I rather doubt that anyone in the media is likely to pin him down for clarification on this rather important issue. After all, if one does him the courtesy of taking him literally, the man is a complete lunatic with an actual god complex.

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg points out that the chance Obama has any coherent idea regarding what he’s talking about is close to nil anyhow:

I don’t know enough about Obama’s beliefs to know if he actually knows what the real Social Gospel movement was, or even if he really has that in mind when he uses the term. He may use the phrase Social Gospel the same way he (and so many others) uses the word “progressive,” i.e. in near total ignorance or indifference to its actual historical connotations. For example, when Obama held a rally at the University of Wisconsin, Madison he proclaimed “where better to affirm our ideals than here in Wisconsin, where a century ago the Progressive movement was born?” Obama seemed not to know or to care that the University of Wisconsin Progressives were almost all racists and eugenicists who might have thought — at minimum — that his parents should have been barred from having children.

I’m sure he’s very happy there, on the farm:

The Green Bay Packers addressed questions concerning the current status, future plans, and whereabouts of recently retired quarterback Brett Favre by announcing Monday that they had sent him to the country to live on a beautiful farm with a very nice family.

“We know you loved Brett Favre, but he wasn’t happy here. He couldn’t stay here,” Packers general manager Ted Thompson told hundreds of quiet but tear-streaked Packer fans assembled at the televised Lambeau Field press conference. “And he loved you, too—he loved you very much indeed—but he needed to go someplace where he could run and jump and throw his favorite football around. And he couldn’t do that here anymore.”

“So we took Brett out behind the Don Hutson practice facility last night, and we… Coach McCarthy and I, we… We gave him one last hug, and we said goodbye to him, and Brett went away forever,” Thompson said, his voice breaking several times. “Those loud banging noises you heard were probably the truck backfiring. He went to the farm in a truck, you know.”

Sometimes, it’s not terribly hard to understand why the rest of the world doesn’t necessarily buy into the American argument that we’re the good guys:

The United States is operating “floating prisons” to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees. Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic….

“By its own admission, the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have been ‘through the system’ since 2001. The US government must show a commitment to rights and basic humanity by immediately revealing who these people are, where they are, and what has been done to them.”

This is not exactly what one would describe to be an effective means of implementing the “hearts and minds” strategy which has been declared of supreme importance for ultimate success in the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism.

The EUSSR continues on the path of its predecessor:

The legendary “Gravy Train” really exists and will be pulling away from a Brussels platform next month. Euro-MPs are to get a special private high-speed rail connection when making their monthly trip from Belgium to the Strasbourg seat of the European Parliament. The same service will not be available to the public – for any price.

Mr. Frum’s skepticism notwithstanding, is there really any doubt that US transnationalists are following the same program?